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.'
Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Roy P. Basler, ed., "Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois", 8 Sep 1858, Vol. III, pp. 145-146.
More Lincoln:
"My friends, I have detained you about as long as I desired 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."
A. Lincoln, 7/10/58
None of the quotes you provide sustain an idea that Lincoln thought blacks were inherently inferior to whites. In this same time frame -- at another of the Douglas debates -- Lincoln indicated he didn't know if blacks were inferior or not.
Lincoln is not on the record saying blacks were racially inferior to blacks and you cannot put him there.
He -is- on the record as saying that blacks were just as good as soldiers as any and that there was no man in the country whose opinion he valued more than that of a black man -- Frederick Douglass.
In the famous Greeley letter that the neo-reb fringe loves to quote partially, Lincoln said that he was willing to adopt new views as soon as they were shown to be true views, and, while it is certainly true that he said in 1858 he was not willing to make voters or jurors of blacks -- in 1865, he was.
Walt
Nonsense - He IS and he DID:
'But even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race. ... The aspiration of men is to enjoy equality with the best when free, but on this broad continent, not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of ours.'Please define the terms "inferior" and "equal" in your fantasy universe.
And that black man is -on- the record as saying that HIS OPINION was that The Lincoln was prejudiced against blacks. That black man even stood up and said so at a freakin' memorial service for The Lincoln:
"It must be admitted, truth compels me to admit, even here in the presence of the monument we have erected to his memory, Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man. He was preeminently the white man's president, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men."
"I have said that President Lincoln was a white man and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race.
"Though Mr. Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white fellow countrymen against the Negro, it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery."
Some samples of Frederick Douglass's opinion on The Lincoln's prejudice against blacks. Since you claim The Lincoln valued Mr. Douglass's opinion over every other American, I thought maybe his opinion would of interest to you. And these quotes all come from a memorial service for Lincoln, just imagine what he must have been saying in private.