[CHARLITE]

"Lincoln believed that if he could convince the legislatures of the loyal slave states to agree to compensated emancipation, he could end the rebellion, restore the Union, and begin the end of slavery."

The only fault I find with Owens' composition is that he seems to repeat this idea nearly verbatim, three times in the course of the article.

[paulmartin]

Lincoln still considered African descended people inferior to Caucasians.

[Pelham]

Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare 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.

Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations and had never recanted them; and more than this, they placed in the platform for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read:

Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.

Lincoln's First Inaugural Address. Maybe he forgot to read Owens in National Review Online.

[truth_seeker]

In my simple mind, there was some relationship between Lincoln running as the Republican candidate, and the fact that party was recently formed based on abolition.

Let others dither until the end of time, about all the finer distinctions.

Slavery was abolished in Britain in the 1830s and the time was well nigh, for the US to do likewise, as it did.

Women eventually got to vote, too. Time marches on.

[Luke]

Guelzo argues persuasively that Lincoln’s “face was set toward the goal of emancipation from the day he first took the presidential oath.”

Why is it I have a sneaking idea Guelzo was educated at a liberal institution of indoctrination? Lincoln's one goal was to maintain power anyway he could. He had just been elected President to a nation that had lost it's Southern States. If he wanted to free slaves why didn't he free slaves in the North with his Emancipation Proclamation?

I think some of you put these threads on FR just to get old folks like me rantin' and a ravin'. Not tonight friends. Peace!

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

bttt

[A. Pole]

Civil War not necessary. The slavery would be abolished same way as serfdom was abolished in Europe. Sooner than later.

And on better terms - freed slaves would get the grants to stand on their own feet, same grants as white settlers were getting.

[Ditto]

Lincoln’s strategy relied on the economic principles of supply and demand. He believed that if he could prevent the expansion of slavery into the federal territories and prevail upon state legislatures, beginning with the northern-most slave states, to accept gradual, compensated emancipation, the demand for slaves would fall while the supply would increase in the deep south. The combined effect would be to reduce the value of slave property. By thus “shrinking” slavery, he would make it uneconomical and once again place it back on the eventual road to extinction that he believed the Founders had envisioned.

This is key to understanding the causes of the Civil War. If Lincoln had his way and stopped expansion, the slave system would have collapsed on itself, and states would have been forced to end on their own.