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To: Non-Sequitur
We'll never really know if President Lincoln had made his proposal as a way of getting the idea of black sufferage started, with expanded sufferage to follow, or whether he really meant for it to be restricted to only some blacks.

Your speculative excuse ignores the fact that the issue of black suffrage was already existant, and that in his very last speech Lincoln deliberately separated himself from those who wanted full rights for blacks. Contrary to what some revisionist lies imply, Lincoln did not invent the issue.

Instead he was assassinated and black sufferage for all was severely restricted by the southern state governments for another 100 years.

First, as you pointed out earlier, suffrage was not an executive decision, and Lincoln could not give blacks the vote anyway.

Second, your entire point is a non-sequitur, as it was Lincoln's political opponents within his own party who were the true advocates of black suffrage. If anything, it was easier for them to achieve black suffrage with him dead and not there to interfere with the rest of Congress by promoting his exclusionary and conditional alternatives to full rights.

Third, let us not forget the North. It was the Northern States that invented black codes and 'Jim Crow' type laws.

264 posted on 02/06/2003 6:08:02 PM PST by thatdewd (Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est.)
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To: thatdewd
Your speculative excuse ignores the fact that the issue of black suffrage was already existant...

Not in any of the southern states it wasn't, and not in many of the Northern states as well.

If anything, it was easier for them to achieve black suffrage with him dead and not there to interfere with the rest of Congress by promoting his exclusionary and conditional alternatives to full rights.

Your opinion only. President Lincoln might well have become a strong proponent of universal black sufferage since he was already a supporter of the concept of sufferage to begin with. As a stronger leader than Johnson, he may have been able to block the worst aspects of Reconstruction from the Congress, and talk the southern states out of the worst of their black laws.

Third, let us not forget the North. It was the Northern States that invented black codes and 'Jim Crow' type laws.

You've been reading DiLorenzo again, haven't you? It was the southern states who perfected them long before the rebellion, and who perpetuated them into the last half of the 20th century.

276 posted on 02/07/2003 3:59:00 AM PST by Non-Sequitur
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