Since you introduced the Lincoln-Douglas debates, how about this racist statement by Lincoln during first debate:
I have to give you credit for giving longer excerpts. Usually when the Lost Causers throw them out they leave out the part that says,
" I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that, notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man.
Now, if Lincoln was a hypocrit (e.g., politicking) on the matter of equality, it is also possible he was politicking on the matter of his views on slavery.
Except that you cannot find a single quote anywhere where Lincoln says something good about slavery. I'll let Lincoln answer Douglas with the same words he used in that debate:
When the Judge says, in speaking on this subject, that I make speeches of one sort for the people of the northern end of the State, and of a different sort for the southern people, he assumes that I do not understand that my speeches will be put in print and read North and South. I knew all the while that the speech that I made at Chicago, and the one I made at Jonesboro and the one at Charleston, would all be put in print, and all the reading and intelligent men in the community would see them and know all about my opinions. And I have not supposed, and do not now suppose, that there is any conflict whatever between them. But the Judge will have it that if we do not confess that there is a sort of inequality between the white and black races, which justifies us in making them slaves, we must then insist that there is a degree of equality that requires us to make them our wives. Now, I have all the while taken a broad distinction in regard to that matter; and that is all there is in these different speeches which he arrays here; and the entire reading of either of the speeches will show that that distinction was made. Perhaps by taking two parts of the same speech he could have got up as much of a conflict as the one he has found. I have all the while maintained that in so far as it should be insisted that there was an equality between the white and black races that should produce a perfect social and political equality, it was an impossibility. This you have seen in my printed speeches, and with it I have said, that in their right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” as proclaimed in that old Declaration, the inferior races are our equals. And these declarations I have constantly made in reference to the abstract moral question, to contemplate and consider when we are legislating about any new country which is not already cursed with the actual presence of the evil,—slavery. I have never manifested any impatience with the necessities that spring from the actual presence of black people amongst us, and the actual existence of slavery amongst us where it does already exist; but I have insisted that, in legislating for new countries where it does not exist, there is no just rule other than that of moral and abstract right! With reference to those new countries, those maxims as to the right of a people to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” were the just rules to be constantly referred to. There is no misunderstanding this, except by men interested to misunderstand it. I take it that I have to address an intelligent and reading community, who will peruse what I say, weigh it, and then judge whether I advance improper or unsound views, or whether I advance hypocritical, and deceptive, and contrary views in different portions of the country. I believe myself to be guilty of no such thing as the latter, though, of course, I cannot claim that I am entirely free from all error in the opinions I advance.
Lincoln's positon is consistent, whatever Douglas tries to convince the crowd: blacks were equal to whites not socially, not mentally, not physically, not economically, not etceterally. But they were supposed to be equal under the law, endowed with the same unalienable rights as a white man. Do we look at this today and say that he's a racist? Yes. But given that Douglas is constantly trying to paint him as a radical miscegenist, it's pretty clear that his views on race were well ahead of most.
>>>Lincoln's positon is consistent, whatever Douglas tries to convince the crowd: blacks were equal to whites not socially, not mentally, not physically, not economically, not etceterally. But they were supposed to be equal under the law, endowed with the same unalienable rights as a white man. Do we look at this today and say that he's a racist? Yes.<<<
Well, you at least admit he was a racist (I know that was hard for you to do). He was not only a racist, but he preferred white supremacy, as in this statement:
"I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."
In other words, Lincoln would have been a good candidate for the Klan.