He must have worked on the idea of voting rights for Black's posthumously because at the cabinet meeting a few hours before he was shot, Lincoln continued to say voting rights was an issue that belonged solely to the States to decide for themselves.
Excerpted from:
Lincoln and Johnson
Their Plan of Reconstruction and the Resumption of National Authority
First Paper
by Gideon Welles
Galaxy Magazine, April 1872, pp. 526
Louisiana, he said, had framed and presented one of the best constitutions that had ever been formed. He wished they had permitted negroes who had property, or could read, to vote; but this was a question which they must decide for themselves. Yet some, a very few of our friends, were not willing to let the people of the States determine these questions, but, in violation of first and fundamental principles, would exercise arbitrary power over them. These humanitarians break down all State rights and constitutional rights.
He must have worked on the idea of voting rights for Black's posthumously because at the cabinet meeting a few hours before he was shot, Lincoln continued to say voting rights was an issue that belonged solely to the States to decide for themselves.
You -know- that is not true. Lincoln advocated voting rights for black soldiers privately in 1864, and publicly a year later.
"I barely suggest for your private consideration whether some of the colored people may not be let [to the elective franchise] - as, for instance, the very intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks."
--letter to Michael Hahn (Gov. of Louisiana) 3/13/64
"it is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers."
4/11/65
Note the date. It was over this speech that Booth vowed to kill Lincoln, and three days later, he did.
So Lincoln's ideas grew and changed over time. Those that would attempt to besmirch Lincoln's memory want to focus on Lincoln's comments during the 1850's and exclude what he said as president because it doesn't suit them. The record shows that by the end of his life, Lincoln was coming to the conclusion that blacks deserved ALL the rights of citizenship.
Walt