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LITR 4328 American
Renaissance Research Posts 2015 (research post assignment) Research Post 1 |
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Heidi
Kreeger
Speaking Honestly of Abe
When you think of
“great” speeches given by our nation’s leaders, Abraham Lincoln is always on the
short list of profound orators. His image is one steeped in honesty, and doing
the right thing. One of my personal favorites from Lincoln is The Gettysburg
Address, and while discussing the speech during class one of my peers commented
that he was not necessarily an advocate for the abolishment of slavery, but was
rather more focused on keeping the union together. This piqued my interest and I
set out to find answers to the question: was Abe Lincoln an abolitionist or not?
I began my search
in a non-conventional way, and found short answers to my questions on the
History Channel’s website. They have a page that lists five facts you may not
know about Lincoln, and if historically accurate in its entirety, it is my
favorite source for condensed information on this topic. The first fact
“answers” my question in the simplest of terms as it says point blank that he
was not an abolitionist. They go on to say that
“Lincoln
did believe that slavery was morally wrong, but there was one big problem: It
was sanctioned by the highest law in the land, the Constitution… In a three-hour
speech in Peoria, Illinois, in the fall of 1854, Lincoln presented more clearly
than ever his moral, legal and economic opposition to slavery—and then admitted
he didn’t know exactly what should be done about it within the current political
system”.
The website goes on to say that Lincoln did not believe that blacks and whites
should have the same rights. This seems contrary to one of the most powerful
lines in the Gettysburg Address, the opening line in fact, that “our
fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and
dedicated to the
proposition that
all men are created equal”. History Channel’s elaboration is this:
“Though Lincoln argued that the founding fathers’ phrase “All men are created
equal” applied to blacks and whites alike, this did not mean he thought they
should have the same social and political rights. His views became clear during
an 1858 series of debates [where] Lincoln made his position clear. “I will say
then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way
the social and political equality of the white and black races,” he began, going
on to say that he opposed blacks having the right to vote, to serve on juries,
to hold office and to intermarry with whites.
Of
course this information is slightly shocking to me, and I am confident that I am
not alone in this sentiment. In his article “About
Lincoln” by C.W. Dustin, he speaks on this fact when he says that “The
majority of people, especially those of the younger generation, would probably
say, at once, that Lincoln was an undoubted abolitionist…It is, I think, the
general impression; and quite naturally so, because of his issuance of the
Emancipation Proclamation”. But the History Channel has something to say about
the go-to argument on the Emancipation Proclamation as well! They say that:
“Since
Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as a military measure, it didn’t
apply to border slave states like Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, all
of which had remained loyal to the Union. Lincoln also exempted selected areas
of the Confederacy that had already come under Union control in hopes of gaining
the loyalty of whites in those states. In practice, then, the Emancipation
Proclamation didn’t immediately free a single slave, as the only places it
applied were places where the federal government had no control—the Southern
states currently fighting against the Union.
Here I can see that my peer was correct, his proclamation and even his support
of the thirteenth amendment can be attributed to war strategies more than his
actual belief that slavery needed to be abolished. Obviously Lincoln was a
complicated man, with one foot on each side of abolitionism. I think John Sexton
describes this dichotomy best through the viewpoint of one of Lincoln’s greatest
critics, Frederick Douglas. In his article “On Lincoln’s ‘Pragmatism’”, Sexton
speaks on the Douglas and his Eulogy “Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln” in
which he states that
“Seeking
to bury as well as to praise, Douglass charged not that Lincoln was a racist
(the former once said that the latter was the only white man he ever encountered
who treated him, a black man, without a particle of evident race prejudice) but
that black people ranked second in Lincoln’s affections to the Union as a
whole—and therefore, practically speaking, subordinate to the white majority.
According to Douglass, Lincoln, while he was responsible for emancipation, or a
“new dispensation of freedom,” was also “preeminently the white man’s President,
entirely devoted to the welfare of white men.” Moreover, “in his interests, in
his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, [Lincoln] was
a white man”.
It seems then that the answer to my question is an unequivocal “no, Abe
Lincoln was not an abolitionist”. That is not to say that he was a bad person,
or consciously believed that black people were inferior, simply that he was a
man shaped by the times and the situation he was placed in. At the end of the
day we can all be thankful that the war resulted the way that it did; however, I
still have lingering questions. The History Channel website also listed as a
fact you may not know that Lincoln supported colonization and believed the best
solution for race relations and ending slavery was to relocate the majority of
black people to Africa, specifically Liberia. Apparently Henry Clay and Thomas
Jefferson, Lincoln’s political heroes also supported colonization and I would be
interested to know what made such great men convinced that this was the best
answer?
Sources:
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http://www.history.com/news/5-things-you-may-not-know-about-lincoln-slavery-and-emancipation
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http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/texts/AmClassics/founders/Lincoln/LincolnGettysburg.htm
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