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“When southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery, than we; I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists; and that it is very difficult to get rid of it, in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia,-—to their own native land. But a moment's reflection would convince me, that whatever of high hope, (as I think there is) there may be in this, in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible. If they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough in the world to carry them there in many times ten days. What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery, at any rate; yet the point is not clear enough for me to denounce people upon. What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially, our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment, is not the sole question, if indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, can not be safely disregarded. We can not, then, make them equals. It does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted; but for their tardiness in this, I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the south.”

For some reason I never see D’Souza introduce this quote in his musings.

I'd like to see him explain this as a justification for today's liberals to stream to the polls and vote a straight Republican ticket.

I'm thinking D’Souza should just pretend this was never the policy of the head of the GOP.

For some reason I never see D’Souza introduce this quote in his musings.

Possibly because he's too busy making idiotic claims like there was never a single Republican slave owner?

But as for your choosing this particular quote it doesn't surprise me at all. You and your Confederate brethren and sisterhood are the masters of the partial quote and quote out of context. Lincoln went on to say, "... but I hold that, notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man."

Can you show me a quote from any Southern leader showing they believed the black man was their equal in any way? Or a quote indicating that they believed a black man had any rights a white man was bound to recognize? You or D'Souza can respond; I don't much care which.

jeffersondem: "I'm thinking D’Souza should just pretend this was never the policy of the head of the GOP. "

Lincoln's Peoria Speech was delivered in October 1854, when Lincoln was a Whig, not Republican.
Lincoln did not certainly become Republican until the 1856 elections.

The reason Whigs were replaced by Republicans can be boiled down to one word: abolition.

All of which we can be certain D'Souza knows and Democrats like jeffersondem are loathe to admit.