"To the dismay of his biographers and Lincoln Day Orators everywhere, Lincoln was indiscreet enough to say on public platforms that he believed in the Illinois Black Laws that Douglass and other Blacks deplored. It was in Charleston, Illinois, on Saturday, September 18, 1858, a day that will live in infamy to all those condemned to the unenviable task of denying the undeniable, that Lincoln defined himself for the ages, announcing:" ~ Lerone Bennett, Jr. ~
While I was at the hotel to-day an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people. [Great laughter.] While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]---that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
So there he is, then, everybody's, or almost everybody's, favorite President, confessing his racial faith and giving unimpeachable testimony before some fifteen thousand Whites that he was opposed to equal rights and that he believed there was a physical difference between the Black and White races that would FOR EVER forbid them living together on terms of political and social equality.
The Charleston speech in which Lincoln said these terrible things is not in a foreign language. It is not in Latin or Swahili or Greek-it is in short, blunt Anglo-Saxon words, and no literate person can misunderstand the man or his meaning. Who was he? He was, he said, a racist who believed, as much as any other White man, in White supremacy and the subordination of Blacks.
How do the defenders of the faith deal with this smoking-gun evidence? They deny, first of all, that the gun is smoking or that it is even a gun. Few Lincoln defenders, for example, quote that paragraph in its entirety or in context. The usual practice is to paraphrase the offending paragraph without telling us what Lincoln said.
Another technique is to give us the paragraph or parts of the paragraph, en passant, and to smother the harsh words with great Mahlerian choruses of affirmation. Neely, in fact, praises Lincoln for his restraint, saying that in this statement Lincoln went as far as he was going to go in denying Black rights (1993, 53). But a man who denies Blacks equality because of their race, and who denies them the right to vote, sit on juries or hold office, couldn't have gone much further.
All who report the statement in whole or in part give Lincoln instant absolution (see pages 122-3). Fehrenbacher and Donald say Lincoln was forced to make the statement. "The whole texture of American life," Fehrenbacher says, "compelled such a pronouncement in 1858... (1962, 111, italics added). Fehrenbacher, a sophisticated scholar who added to our knowledge of the nineteenth century, didn't mean that, for he knew that sticks and stones can break bones but that a texture can't compel a grown man to say anything.
Donald, like Fehrenbacher, said it was politically expedient and perhaps "a necessary thing" for Lincoln to say he was a racist in a state where most Whites were racist, adding, to his credit, that the statement "also represented Lincoln's deeply held personal views." Having conceded the main point, Donald says paradoxically that it was not Lincoln's true feeling and that Lincoln was not "personally hostile to blacks" (221). But here, once again, an attempt to prove that Lincoln was not a racist backfires and ends up proving the opposite. For what could be more hostile than an attempt by any man to deny a whole race of people equal rights because of race?
Almost all Lincoln specialists blame not Lincoln but Stephen Douglas who, they say, made Lincoln say it. According to this theory, Lincoln, pressured by Douglas, said he was a racist because he, wanted to get elected to office. The proof, they say, is that he was ashamed of what he said at Charleston and didn't say it again.
If Lincoln was ashamed, he had a strange way of showing it. For he traveled all over Illinois and the Midwest, proudly quoting the Charleston Confession, even to people who couldn't vote for him. Nineteen days after the Charleston speech, he quoted the same words to an even larger crowd at Galesburg. A month later, he prepared an extract of his best speeches on the subject and listed the Charleston Confession (CW 3:326-8). A year later, in Columbus, Ohio, he was still quoting the Charleston speech to prove that he was opposed to equal rights.
The most ingenious -- and startling -- explanation of what Lincoln said at Charleston comes from the Bogart School (see page 211), which praises the aesthetics of the Charleston Confession while deploring its sentiments. At least one interpreter, Pulitzer Prize-winner Garry Wills, said there was poetry or potential poetry in the passage, which he scanned:
I will say then/that I am not/nor ever have been/in favor of bringing about/in any way/ the social and political equality/of the white and black races ....
In a triumph of style over content, Wills said that what Lincoln said was indefensible but that he said it "in prose as clear, balanced, and precise as anything he ever wrote;" a view that depends, of course, on one's perspective and one's understanding of prose and clarity (92).
What shall we call the scanned Lincoln lines? The poetics of racism or the racism of any poetic that subordinates any man or woman to any other man or woman because of race, color, or religion?
And to understand the truth of Lincoln's poetic, and how one racism invokes and includes all racisms, one must make another transposition and ask what Lincoln's words would sound like in another language and another color:
I will say then...
that I am not
nor ever have been
in favor of
making voters
or jurors
of Irishmen
or Italians
or Albanians.
It's the same principle, and Lincoln pressed that principle from one end of the state to the other from the 1830s to the 1860s.
Between 1854 and 1860, Lincoln said publicly at least two times that America was made for the White people and "not for the Negroes."
At least eight times, he said publicly that he was in favor of White supremacy.
At least twenty-one times, he said publicly that he was opposed to equal rights for Blacks.
He said it at Ottawa:
I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and 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. (CW 3:16)
He said it at Galesburg:
I have all the while maintained that inasmuch as there is a physical inequality between the white and black, that the blacks must remain inferior.... (Holzer 1993,254)
He said it in Ohio. He said it in Wisconsin. He said it in Indiana. He said it everywhere:
We can not, then, make them equals. (CW 2:256)
Why couldn't "we" make "them" equals?
There was, Lincoln said, a strong feeling in White America against Black equality, and "MY OWN FEELINGS," he said, capitalizing the words, "WILL NOT ADMIT OF THIS..." (CW 3:79).
No, I admit of Stephens disgusting racism.
Your entire argument is that The Good King Lincoln put down the evil slavers who thought as Stephens did. The problem you can't circumvent is that Lincoln's own opinions were indistinguishible from those of Stephens, Davis, or any of the others with respect to equality. He went so far as to be more harmful in his intentions to the blacks, keeping them out of the territories because:
Get that, Espinola? Let's look at it again. Lincoln says that, if slaves are allowed in the territories, there is no fear of the spreading of slavery, as you and Colonel Kangaroo have repeatedly implied with your lying, weaseling posts. Spreading of slavery was not the issue at all. What did King Lincoln say the issue was again?
Now, where is that source for the supposed coup which Davis was to lead in Washington?
"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition."