But in 1848, as a congressman, he wrote legislation that would have barred slavery from the District of Columbia.
Consider this text from the AOL ACW forum:
"It is useful when thinking about Abraham Lincoln's attitudes toward slavery and Blacks to remember that Lincoln was a Southerner born in a slave state to parents born and raised in slave states. His family shared some of their culture's bias toward individual Blacks, but opposed the institution of slavery. This background and the early move of the family to a free state shaped Lincoln's attitudes early in his adult life. Now consider several facts about Lincoln's political career:
1. While Lincoln was building political strength in local Illinois politics, he opposed the war with Mexico as inexpedient for several reasons, including that it was waged to increase the power of slave states in the institutions of Federal government.
2. During Lincoln's first term as U.S. congressman from Illinois in the late 1840's, he continued to criticize the Mexican war and worked out a bill (never introduced) calling for a referendum in the District of Columbia designed to free the slaves in that Federal enclave and compensate their owners.
3. His reentry into national politics in 1854 was clearly for the purpose of opposing the expansion of slavery into the territories under the provisions of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. He had his heart and soul involved with the idea of gradual emancipation to bring the fullest meaning to the words of Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal.
4. From 1854 to his nomination for the presidency in 1860, as James McPherson noted in his DRAWN WITH THE SWORD, "the dominant, unifying theme of Lincoln's career was opposition to the expansion of slavery as a vital first step toward placing it in the course of ultimate extinction." In those years he gave approximately 175 political speeches. McPherson notes that the "central message of these speeches showed Lincoln to be a "one-issue" man - the issue being slavery." Thus, Lincoln's nomination to the presidency was based on a principled opposition to slavery on moral grounds, and that position was clear to voters both in the South and the North.
5. In his early speeches and actions as president-elect and president, he was clear in his opinion that he had no legal authority to interfere with slavery in the slave states. However, he was persistent and consistent in his efforts to encourage and aid voluntary emancipation in the loyal Border States, territories and the District of Columbia. These efforts predated his publication of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
In summary, I think one can safely say that Lincoln was clearly a gradual abolitionist from the beginning of his political career.
[end]
Walt
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/apr16.html
In 1849, Illinois Congressman Abraham Lincoln attempted to introduce a bill for gradual emancipation of all slaves in the District. Although the District's slave trade ended the following year, his emancipation attempt was aborted by Senator John C. Calhoun and others.
[Walt] Consider this text from the AOL ACW forum:
OK
[Walt] "It is useful when thinking about Abraham Lincoln's attitudes toward slavery and Blacks to remember that Lincoln was a Southerner born in a slave state to parents born and raised in slave states. His family shared some of their culture's bias toward individual Blacks, but opposed the institution of slavery.
http://www.genealogytoday.com/us/lincoln/indpress.html
http://www.genealogytoday.com/us/lincoln/genesis.pdf
[Walt quoting] This background and the early move of the family to a free state shaped Lincoln's attitudes early in his adult life. Now consider several facts about Lincoln's political career:
[Walt quoting] 1. While Lincoln was building political strength in local Illinois politics, he opposed the war with Mexico as inexpedient for several reasons, including that it was waged to increase the power of slave states in the institutions of Federal government.
[Walt quoting] 2. During Lincoln's first term as U.S. congressman from Illinois in the late 1840's, he continued to criticize the Mexican war and worked out a bill (never introduced) calling for a referendum in the District of Columbia designed to free the slaves in that Federal enclave and compensate their owners.
His FIRST TERM as opposed to what?
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/sites/uscapitol.htm
Lincoln's connections to this building are varied and rich, beginning on December 6, 1847, when he took his seat in the Thirtieth Congress. During his single term as the lone Whig Party representative from Illinois, he lived across the street at Mrs. Ann Sprigg's boardinghouse. The Library of Congress now stands in this location, just east of the building.
From the National Park Service:
http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:XvDKQLe0YqUJ:www.nps.gov/liho/congress.htm+lincoln+1849&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
The first session of the 30th Congress was to convene on December 6, 1847. In October the Lincolns rented their house for $90 a year to Cornelius Ludlum, and they left for Washington via Lexington, Ky., where they visited the Todds. After an arduous stagecoach and railroad trip, the Lincolns arrived in the Nation's Capital. Though Lincoln was active as a new member of Congress, his colleagues generally appraised him as a droll Westerner of average talents. Lincoln's opposition to the Mexican War which had broken out in May 1846 soon made him unpopular with his constituents. In Illinois the patriotic fervor and hunger for new lands disspelled any doubts that the people may have had about the American cause. Lincoln's "spot" resolutions asking President James Polk to admit that the "spot" where American blood was first shed was Mexican territory and his anti-administration speeches created surprised resentment at home and earned him the nickname "Spotty Lincoln." Illinois Democrats called Lincoln a disgrace.
[Walt quoting] 3. His reentry into national politics in 1854 was clearly for the purpose of opposing the expansion of slavery into the territories under the provisions of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. He had his heart and soul involved with the idea of gradual emancipation to bring the fullest meaning to the words of Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal.
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/sites/uscapitol.htm
With his background as one of eleven managers of the Illinois State Colonization Society elected in 1857, Lincoln brought with him ideas about colonization. He supported the separation of the races for several reasons. He believed that blacks were inferior to whites and therefore not entitled to live in the same society as whites. He also rationalized that the removal of the black laborers would create a market for white laborers. "Reduce the supply of black labor by colonizing the black laborer out of the country and by precisely so much you increase the demand for and wages of white labor." His basic motive, however, for his extensive efforts was to once again have a purely white America.
[Walt quoting] 4. From 1854 to his nomination for the presidency in 1860, as James McPherson noted in his DRAWN WITH THE SWORD, "the dominant, unifying theme of Lincoln's career was opposition to the expansion of slavery as a vital first step toward placing it in the course of ultimate extinction." In those years he gave approximately 175 political speeches. McPherson notes that the "central message of these speeches showed Lincoln to be a "one-issue" man - the issue being slavery." Thus, Lincoln's nomination to the presidency was based on a principled opposition to slavery on moral grounds, and that position was clear to voters both in the South and the North.
Negro equality. Fudge! How long in the Government of a God great enough to make and maintain this Universe, shall there continue knaves to vend and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagoguism as this? (The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler, Rutgers University Press, 1953, September 1859 (Vol. III p. 399))
[Walt quoting] 5. In his early speeches and actions as president-elect and president, he was clear in his opinion that he had no legal authority to interfere with slavery in the slave states. However, he was persistent and consistent in his efforts to encourage and aid voluntary emancipation in the loyal Border States, territories and the District of Columbia. These efforts predated his publication of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
With his background as one of eleven managers of the Illinois State Colonization Society elected in 1857, Lincoln brought with him ideas about colonization.
He wanted to remove Blacks from America. He wanted to send them to any land mass other than North America.
[Walt quoting] In summary, I think one can safely say that Lincoln was clearly a gradual abolitionist from the beginning of his political career.
Nah. This began with his second term as a congressman.
This unimpeachable anonymous source specifies Lincoln's first term as a U.S. congressman so we do not confuse it with all those other terms as U.S. congressman.
LINCOLN AND HIS DC EMANCIPATION PLAN
A New York congressman named Daniel Gott offered on Thursday December 21, 1848, a resolution requiring the appropriate House committee to report a bill banning the slave trade in the nation's capital.
The proslavery forces responded by offering a motion to lay Gott's resolution on the table. This, in plain English, was a motion to kill the resolution and to let Gott know who ran the House. But to the consternation of proslavery forces, the House rejected the motion, with eighty-five congressmen, including the entire Giddings antislavery contingent voting nay, and eighty-one congressmen including the whole Southern contingent, voting aye. How did Abraham Lincoln of Illinois vote? Did he side with the proslavery Southerners or the antislavery Northerners? He sided with the proslavery Southerners and voted aye.
After the House voted overwhelmingly to take up the main question with Lincoln and the Southerners voting nay, Gott's resolution was adopted by a vote of ninety-eight to eighty-eight Southerners and their Northern supporters, publicly opposing the call for a bill banning the slave trade in the District of Columbia.
This was not the end of the struggle, which continued for several days, inflaming the climate and triggering intense campaigning by proslavery and antislavery forces. After calling in IOU's and deploying heavy artillery like Senator John Calhoun of South Carolina and President James K. Polk, White Southerners renewed the battle on the same terrain on December 27, offering a series of motions that defined the issue and contesting forces. The first resolution was a pending motion to reconsider the House vote directing the committee on the district of Columbia to report a bill prohibiting the slave trade in the district. The antislavery contingent countered with a motion to kill that motion by laying it on the table.
Thus the issue was joined and members arrayed themselves on one side or the other.
A vote to lay the motion on the table was, as everybody understood, a vote for the Gott amendment and against the slave trade.
A vote against the motion to table was a vote against the Gott amendment and for slavery and the slave trade.
All White Southerners, whatever their party, and all their allies and supporters, whatever their motives, voted against the motion to table, thereby asking for a reconsideraiton of the decision to ask for a bill banning the slave trade in the District. All antislavery members voted for the motion to table, which was defeated.
How did Abraham Lincoln of Illinois vote? He voted with the proslavery contingent, which prevailed with his help and the help of other Northerners.
A contemporary, Congressman George Washington Julian of Indiana, was surprised by Lincoln's vote. "To vote [with the proslavery side, as Lincoln did] would have been regarded as a direct support of the slave trade. This, few northerners were willing to do .... Unlike several of his northern brethren, he [Lincoln] showed no disposition to dodge the question, but placed himself squarely on the side of the South" (qtd. in Riddle 170).
In the midst of all this skirmishing, on Wednesday, January 10, 1849, Lincoln made a strange move, pushing himself to the front ranks of the contending forces by announcing that he intended to offer a bill for the gradual and compensated emancipation of slaves in the District of Columbia.
In any case, Lincoln offered it as a substitute motion, saying that his proposed measure had the support of some fifteen White citizens of the district. ... Lincoln refused to name his White backers.
What happened to Lincoln's bill? He never introduced it.
Whatever the reasons, Lincoln's retreat was a victory for District of Columbia slaves, who were freed outright by Congress in 1862 and who would have remained in slavery until the 1890s or even the twentieth century under the conservative document Lincoln drafted.
The leading experts on his congressional career, Beveridge, Riddle and Quarles, say his votes on slavery were confusing at best and confused and opportunistic at worst. The major exception to this chorus of criticism is Donald, who said, as we have seen, that Lincoln voted for slavery and the slave trade because he loved free speech so much and thought it was wrong to abolish slavery without the consent of "the [White] inhabitants of Washington," not, mind you, the consent of the slaves.
The most damaging evidence against Donald's theory, however, is Lincoln himself, who voted to table a Giddings bill, which called for a referendum by the people of the District on the question of slavery. There was, to be fair, a slight difference between Giddings's understanding of government of the people and Lincoln's understanding of government of the people. Giddings called for a referendum of all the people of the District, including the White i>and Black residents; Lincoln's bill called for a referendum of the free White residents of the District. Since Lincoln opposed a referendum of all the people, his problem wasn't the absence of a referendum -- his problem, as always, and as his bill proves, was race. Furthermore, and at a deeper level, it can be argued that Lincoln or any other person who believed that the only way to end slavery was to ask slaveholders to voluntarily commit suicide by free ballots either didn't understand the situation or was a de facto supporter of slavery as it existed.
See Forced Into Glory, Lerone Bennett, Jr., pp. 236-9