That is easy to do.
President Lincoln wasn't a race pimp.
"I confess that I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down down, and caught, and carried back to their stripes and unwarranted toils; but I bite my lip and keep quiet. In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip, on a Steam Boat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there were, on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons. That sight was a continual torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border. It is hardly fair for you to assume, that I have no such interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable. You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the Northern people do crucify their feelings, in order to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution and the Union."
8/24/54
"If A can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B. -- why not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A.?
-- You say A. is a white, and B. is black. It is --color--, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be the slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own.
You do not mean color exactly? -- You mean the whites are --intellectually-- the superiors of the blacks, and therefore, have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own.
But, say you, it is a question of --interest--; and, if you can make it your --interest--, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you."
1854
My friends, I have detained you about as long as I desired to do, and I have only to say, let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man; this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position; discarding our standard that we have left us. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal."
A. Lincoln, 7/10/58
"I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. 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. [Loud cheers.] I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects---certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man."
August, 1858
"I do not expect the Union to be dissolved--I do not expect the house to fall--But I do expect it will cease to be divided. Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is the course of ultimate extinctioon; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new--North as well as South. Have we no tendency towards the latter condition?"
1858
"The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society. And yet they are denied, and evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them "glittering generalities"; another bluntly calls them "self evident lies"; and still others insidiously argue that they only apply to "superior races."
These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect. -- the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads, plotting against the people. They are the van-guard -- the miners and sappers -- of returning despotism. We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us. This is a world of compensations; and he that would -be- no slave, must consent to --have-- no slave. Those that deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God cannot long retain it."
3/1/59
"But to be plain, you are dissatisfied with me about the negro. Quite likely there is a difference of opinion between you and myself upon that subject. I certainly wish that all men could be free, while I suppose that you do not. ....peace does not appear as distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to worth the keeping in all future time. It will have then been proved that, among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost. And then, there will be some black men, who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet they have helped mankind on to this great consumation; while, I fear, there will be some white ones, unable to forget that, with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, have strove to hinder it. Still let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy final triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let us dilligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the rightful result."
8/23/63
"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel...
In telling this tale I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the Nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God."
4/4/64
"it is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers."
4/11/65
sources: "Abraham Lincoln, Mystic Chords of Memory" published by the Book of the Month Club, 1984 and:
"Lincoln, Speeches and Writings, 1859-65, Library of the Americas, Don E. Fehrenbacher, ed. 1989
Walt
[Walt] That is easy to do.
[Walt] President Lincoln wasn't a race pimp.
[Walt} "I confess that I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down down, and caught, and carried back to their stripes and unwarranted toils; but I bite my lip and keep quiet. In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip, on a Steam Boat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there were, on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons. That sight was a continual torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border. It is hardly fair for you to assume, that I have no such interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable. You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the Northern people do crucify their feelings, in order to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution and the Union."
=====
Just the thought of how miserable this all made Abe feel brought tears to my eyes.
Why, I do declare, the very thought of Old Abe biting his lip brought visions of Clinton to mind. And then I heard Barbra Streisand singing in the background. Could it be? Could it be? Could this just be a Clinton-like bullcrap story?
Let us read the rebuttal of Lerone Bennett, Jr., to this Lincoln legerdemain.
What about ... the famous letter Lincoln wrote in 1855 recalling his anguish at the sight of shackled slaves during a steamboat trip in 1841? "You may remember, as I well do," he wrote to his intimate friend Joshua Speed fourteen years after the event, "that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there were, on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons. That sight was a continual torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border" (CW 2:320). This is strong testimony, indicating what seems to be repugnance over "a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable."
But:
In a letter Lincoln wrote to Speed's sister Mary immediately after the event he expressed neither repugnance nor anguish. On the contrary, he invoked the usual racist argument about happy slaves, saying that "nothing of interest happened during the passage" except "vexatious" delays. Almost as an afterthought, he wrote in the next sentence: "By the way, a fine example was presented on board the boat for contemplating the effect of condition [his emphasis] upon human happiness. A gentleman [sic] had purchased twelve Negroes in different parts of Kentucky and was taking them to a farm in the South. They were chained six and six together .... In this condition they were being separated forever from the scenes of their childhood, their friends, their fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, and many of them from their wives and children, and going into perpetual slavery where the lash of the master is proverbially more ruthless and unrelenting than any other were; and yet amid all these distressing circumstances, as we would think them, they were the most cheerful and apparantly [sic] happy creatures on board .... How true it is that 'God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,' or in other words, the He renders the worst of human conditions tolerable, while He permits the best, to be nothing better than tolerable. To return to the narrative ..." (CW I:259-60).
Here, to borrow Lincoln's language, is a fine example for contemplating the effect of racial conditioning on perception. And one should note, before passing on quickly, Lincoln's revealing slip in referring to the slavedriver as a gentleman. As we have indicated, and as we shall see repeatedly in the following pages, Lincoln never got over the poor White reflex of genuflecting mentally to "gentlemen" who separated mothers and fathers from children and deposited them in the deep South where the lash of the gentleman and his overseer was heard all day and all night long. Notice also the direction of Lincoln's concern. He was moved to speculate on the moral condition of the slaves; he was not moved to speculate on the moral condition of gentlemen who bought and sold men, women, and children.
Forced Into Glory, Lerone Bennett, Jr., p.255-7