Well, *DUH*! So did everybody who lived at that time - including some of the most ardent abolitionists.
That was an evil of their time - but their virtue in laying their lives down to free their brothers in Christ was their own, and was heroic.
Lincoln still considered African descended people inferior to Caucasians.
Well, *DUH*! So did everybody who lived at that time - including some of the most ardent abolitionists.
That was an evil of their time - but their virtue in laying their lives down to free their brothers in Christ was their own, and was heroic.
IIRC, Lincoln also suggested to Frederick Douglass and others, that emancipated slaves be re-settled outside the US. Alexander Stephens reported that shortly before Lincoln's assasination, he told Stephens he had no plans for assisting freed slaves in adjusting to their new way of life. That was reportedly during a conversation they had at Hampton Roads. As Stephens relates it, Lincoln said, "I guess they'll just have to 'root hog or die.'" That would have fit Lincoln, since he followed black minstrelsy and "Root Hog Or Die" was popular at the time.
So did almost every other Caucazoid in North America including the Radicals.
So did just about every other white man in the U.S., North and South.
He generally qualified any statements of the sort. See the chapter on the Declaration of Independence in Harry Jaffa's Crisis of the House Divided for Lincoln's view of equality.
Maybe, and maybe not? But what's your point. Probably 99% of people thought that then, including many staunch abolitionists. Most also thought Irish Catholics were inferior too.
Lincoln was a politician, so it's hard to know what he really thought about "equality" of the races. But that he opposed slavery is without question. And in one of his last public pronouncements --- one that may have actually cost him his life -- he called for the right to vote for black veterans of the Union Army, and other "educated and accomplished" blacks. It has been reported that John Wilks Booth attended that speech and vowed on the spot to kill Lincoln for supporting the right of blacks to vote. Three days later, he did kill him.
And ask yourself. Why did the Democrats call him "Black Lincoln" if the guy was such a "racist"?