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Posted on 06/21/2026 2:52:40 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
Abraham Lincoln’s perspective on slavery was not static. Initially, he viewed slavery primarily as a political and constitutional problem that threatened national unity. However, as the horrors of the Civil War progressed, his focus shifted toward a moral and spiritual imperative for total emancipation.
As the war deepened, Lincoln began to immerse himself in the language and theology of the Bible, which profoundly shaped his evolving moral stance. He grew convinced that the nation’s survival was contingent upon its obedience to God’s standard of justice. He moved away from purely secular legalism to a worldview that saw the conflict as a divine reckoning for the sin of human bondage.
“Woe unto the world because of offenses! For it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh!" (Matthew 18:7)
Lincoln often quoted this verse to explain the gravity of the nation’s predicament. By connecting the institution of slavery to the “offenses” warned against in Scripture, he validated the abolitionist critique that slavery was a violation of the divine order. This biblical framework allowed him to see the war not just as a political insurrection, but as a moral tragedy requiring a spiritual remedy.
(Excerpt) Read more at pursuegod.org ...
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Didn’t he want to send them all back to Africa?
I believe Lincoln did ask a delegation of American free blacks if they would want that. (I think Douglass was in that delegation. ) They said no they’re Americans born here not Africa all they wanted was a chance.
The Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t issued until the war had been raging for more than a year and a half. If the goal was to end slavery, why would he have waited to issue the proclamation until the war had become a protracted, bloody mess? And as the majority of slaves lived in places where Lincoln’s order would be ignored, it’s primary impact was to undermine the Southern war effort, not to end slavery.
Lincoln’s lack of forsight — his failure to prepare for the inevitable collapse of the institution of slavery — cost one in four former slaves their lives because there were a million black former slave missing from the 1870 US Census. They simply vanished into history.
His abhorence of slavery does not change the fact that everything he ever wrote or said on the matter of race relations would be wiewed by 21st Century eyes (even 20th Century) as racist.
Lincoln was the Slick Willie of the 19th century. The Civil War was a struggle over political power in DC. Southerners, who largely controlled all three branches of government up until Lincoln, knew that their grip on power was ending and therefore they sought independence. Abolitionists were the shock troops of the Republican Party who were funded by big business in the NE, who wanted high tariffs and government funded RRs.
The war was started by Plantation Oligarchs who wanted to preserve and extend slavery.
The tariffs helped enable to North to industrialize which gave them a massive advantage as the CSA barely had any industry. The Union also had massive immigration in the preceding decades which also gave them a huge advantage. Why would any poor white from Europe want to migrate to the South to compete with slave labor. They wouldn’t.
The civil war was a massive mistake by the people who started it.
I’m confused about the debate. The South said slavery was ending so why did it fight a war to preserve it?
Would slavery have ended if the Confederacy had won?
Another man I will not worship as required per invented dogma.
And the first thing the returned slaves did was enslave the native Africans. They were expert slavers by then. The roots of the dysfunction and civil was in Liberia can still be traced back to that.
Lincoln made a political calculation to keep the British from allying with the south.
There was no legal way for Lincoln to fight the war on the basis of ‘ending slavery’. Northerners might well rally to preserve the Union, but freeing the slaves? Despite losing political power, eg control of the Senate in 1850, the slave states had more than enough votes to scuttle any Amendment that would ban slavery. And the U.S. had nowhere near the money to compensate slave owners for the loss of their slaves.
Lincoln claimed that at Commander-in-Chief that since slaves were used to help the Confederate war effort, that he had the power to seize them as contraband, just as the military could seize weapons being shipped to the Confederacy. He knew that he had no Constitutional power to seize slaves in the Union slave states nor in Confederate states under Union control such as most of Tennessee and much of Louisiana.
Because of the Union victory in 1865, slavery in the old Confederacy had come to an end. Most Union slave states passed laws freeing slaves, which, apparently states (but not the Federal government) had the power to do.
Lincoln, of course was murdered very shortly after the war’s end, so he played very little role in what was to be done to the South or the freedmen.
If only Lincoln had had your hindsight.
the argument goes around and around. it’s telling for me that God allowed him to finish his war against slavery, but still took him along with the men he had sacrificed for the cause.
all i know is that A. Lincoln was a self-taught genius and polymath of the highest rank. that puts him into the top 10 or so smartest people who have ever lived. and talk about Reagan the Great Communicator, Lincoln was that way before the great RR.
” Honest Abe “ only freed the slaves in the South as a war tactic. He assumed that they’d rise up.
After the war, he planned to have blacks in the U.S. shipped to Central America, or to Africa. He did not believe that blacks could ever peacefully assimilate with whites. This is all easily verifiable, as long as one doesn’t trust NEA history books.
Lincoln’s been portrayed throughout history as the Great Emancipator.
He was NOT. The winners always write the history books.
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