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 Exclusionary laws were a pre-war phenomenon and were repealed after the Civil War.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.
again, he did not merely pay it lip service for votes at the moment - which alone would be rather damning. By all accounts he believed in the flamingly racist statements he made publicly and repeatedly. He said similar things to small groups and to individuals. There is zero evidence he did not believe what he said.
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.
LOL! C'mon! You're trying to weasel here and you're not very convincing at it. Lincoln was an open and avowed racist. His own words make that clear and while you say there's no evidence he was more racist than most others, I'd say he was. He not only thought nonWhites not the equal of Whites, he ethnically cleansed Indians and tried to deport Blacks. He was head of the American Colonization Society which was dedicated to the purpose after all.
He sarcastically told his old friend Alexander Stephens that newly freed blacks would have to "root hog or die" to scratch a living out of the soil. Then there is this from Frederick Douglas:
Frederick Douglass says the President of the United States has become an “itinerant colonization preacher,” who has made himself look “ridiculous” by pitching this idea that we should leave the nation of our birth https://psmag.com/news/remember-that-time-abraham-lincoln-tried-to-get-the-slaves-to-leave-america-55802
There is of course much more for anyone who cares to look and who is not interested in simply making excuses for Lincoln. You say exclusionary laws against Blacks were repealed after the war. Yes its true they were.......years and years after the war. Blacks did not start moving North in any numbers until the 1880s despite the fact that the South had been plunged into dire poverty. Hint: that's when Blacks finally could move North. Even then there were riots against Blacks in several Northern states.