Wait, are you going to maintain that Lincoln did not on several occasions speak of his horror at the idea of “miscegenation”?
We both know he did. The context is truthful.
We “don’t know” if Lincoln was not only opposed but fiercely opposed to equality?
Once again, we both know he was. He said so quite openly many times.
We will have to agree to disagree about Lincoln being more flaming or less flaming than most others at the time in his racism. What is beyond dispute is that he was an open and avowed racist. This was not merely something he said for public consumption either - as you and his other apologists would have it. He said similar things in private and among small groups or to individuals as well. Every indication is that he believed exactly what he said on the subject.
As to Blacks not moving up North:
Any claim that their failure to move was due to a lack of funds is comical. They could have and certainly would have taken the old (free) heel-toe express had they been allowed to move there. They weren’t. The Northern states were quite clear in not wanting Blacks and in making it practically impossible for them to move there. Multiple states like Kansas and Oregon explicitly banned them. Others like those in the Midwest and Northeast passed laws designed to keep them out and back that up with white mob violence against Blacks as well as a refusal to work alongside them.
So the Negro [in the North] is free, but he cannot share the rights, pleasures, labors, griefs, or even the tomb of him whose equal he has been declared; there is nowhere where he can meet him, neither in life nor in death. In the South, where slavery still exists, less trouble is taken to keep the Negro apart: they sometimes share the labors and the pleasures of the white men; people are prepared to mix with them to some extent; legislation is more harsh against them, but customs are more tolerant and gentle. -Alexis De Tocqueville, “Democracy in America”, Harper & Row, 1966, p.343.
Want quotes from other foreign observers? I can provide them as we both know.
No, it was not a lack of fund or a lack of job skills that kept Blacks in the economically devastated South after the war. It was virulent racism on the part of White Northerners.
Once again, we both know he was. He said so quite openly many times.
Fiercely? Doubtful. He said he didn't favor full equality between the races. In that he was a typical 19th century American. But was he more opposed to equality than other Americans? No. The issue came up during his campaigns and he had to address it.
And once again context. What "we don't know" is what that fragment about "fudge" was supposed to be mean about "Negro equality." That's not at all clear.
This was not merely something he said for public consumption either - as you and his other apologists would have it. He said similar things in private and among small groups or to individuals as well.
You will have to provide some evidence of that.
Multiple states like Kansas and Oregon explicitly banned them. Others like those in the Midwest and Northeast passed laws designed to keep them out and back that up with white mob violence against Blacks as well as a refusal to work alongside them.
So you've never heard of the Exodusters? Figures. I don't deny that Northern Whites didn't want to work beside Blacks. But once again, you are mixing up prewar and postwar developments. Exclusionary laws were a pre-war phenomenon and were repealed after the Civil War.
And hey, Virulent, you don't even address the planters' desire to keep workers down on the plantation. They weren't going to be picking the cotton themselves.
Bear in mind, though that some small group meetings weren't truly private. Editors and politicians met with presidents and those meetings were as political and as significant as anything said on a podium before a crowd. Still, if you have evidence, provide it.
P.S. You missed this quote as well:
My friends, I have detained you about as long as I desire to do, and I have only to say, let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man, this race and that race, and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position, discarding our standard that we have left us. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.
I can't say which quotes represent his truest and deepest feeling, but apparently he did say it and didn't deny saying it, though it couldn't have done his political career more good than harm.
I'm left wondering what really want with all this. Lincoln's dead and you're still alive. Count yourself lucky and walk away with that win.