What were some of Abrham Lincoln's unlined racism?

Question

What were some of Abrham Lincoln's unlined racism?

Answer 1

He loved to tell racial jokes

Answer 2

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The popular notions of the 16th President of the United States were often crafted to glorify the man and his office, rather than explain the reality of Abe Lincoln. He is either painted in the tones of a semi-mythical demigod or the political pragmatist, but not the historical figure, of which there are tremendous amounts of information available that contradicts the popular notions. In David Donald's biography called "Lincoln," the man who emerges is an indecisive leader with few firm convictions, not the great leader riding events, but thrown about by them, so that he was constantly in a reactionary mode. But the image that comes out of the most recent research on Abe Lincoln, contained in the book "Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream," by author Lerone Bennett, Jr., is a full-scale assault on the two-dimensional image of the painted saint.

England emancipated her slaves as early as 1772), one can argue that Lincoln shared the racial prejudices of most (but, of course, not all) of his white contemporaries.

In 1858 Abraham Lincoln gave a speech in Chicago affirming the equality of man, and then gave another address the same year in southern Illinois in which he stated that he opposed "bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races." As President of the United States Lincoln initially allowed the four slave states that remained in the Union during the Civil War - Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri - to dictate his policy on slavery.

One can argue that Lincoln refused to free and arm the slaves because of his ingrained racism; but one could easily add that the arming of the black community, which had suffered such indignities at the hands of the white community, was the very nightmare that haunted many of the white people in north America since the days of Thomas Jefferson. It's one thing to free them, in theory, but it is entirely another thing to put weapons in their hands, especially when you are deeply aware of the way they have been treated for so long. The deepest fear among white people in north America at the time of the Civil War was of a secret desire among the African American community to seek revenge, because the white people had no real idea as to whether or not the black people around them harbored such thoughts, since the whites did not want to hear the black people's real emotions, and the blacks had learned long before never to honestly express their feelings, for fear of reprisals. That is the very essence of a slave state: fear of revenge and fear of reprisals.

Lerone Bennett, Jr author, attributes the abolitionist policies that came out of the Civil War not to Lincoln, who had to be dragged into it, but to abolitionists like Wendell Phillips, Thaddeus Stevens, Frederick Douglass, and the Radical Republicans in Congress, who in 1862 pushed through the Second Confiscation Act, freeing slaves of owners who supported the Confederacy. The Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Lincoln, Bennett wisely observes, did not free a single slave because it applied only to areas outside of the Union's, and therefore Lincoln's, control. In fact, the Proclamation, with its tricky legalese wording, was designed to save as much of slavery as it could, and to the end of his life, Lincoln was a devoted, unrepentant proponent of white supremacy. (If anyone doubts this they should not read about the Proclamation, but carefully read the document itself. It should take all of 30 seconds to recognize that it is written in pure legal mumbo jumbo, meant to obfuscate, and it was, at the time of its issuance, completely unenforceable).

"Forced Into Glory" does a marvelous job of describing the age in which the abolition of slavery took place, offering a valuable discussion on the vicious Black Laws of pre-Civil War Illinois, which not only denied African Americans of basic civil and political human rights, but also required any African American entering the state to post a bond of $1,000. Bennett highlights little known acts of Congress that paved the way for the emancipation of the slaves of the United States.

For example, the Confiscation Act of 1862, and also an even earlier revision of the military code that forbade Union soldiers from returning fugitive slaves to bondage. Even more significantly, Bennett covers a measure passed by Congress that freed the families of African American men who enlisted in the Union Army, sidestepping the Emancipation Proclamation by destroying slavery in those loyal border states where the Proclamation never took effect, proving that all white Americans did NOT share Lincoln's racist opinions. Most importantly, Bennett presents compelling evidence that historians have routinely sidestepped Lincoln's true racial views. Previous scholars downplayed or outright ignored Lincoln's commitment to colonizing African Americans outside the country, which he advocated widely throughout his entire political career, a position he shared with his political hero, Henry Clay. This was no fleeting notion.

Lincoln's commitment to the idea of deporting black Americans is mentioned in numerous prewar speeches, two State of the Union addresses, several Cabinet meetings, and in a notorious meeting with African American leaders at the White House, at which he urged them to encourage their followers to leave the country.

Lincoln was hardly alone in his idea that America was a white republic. Virtually every major political leader of the early republic held this view, including Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, John Marshall, and even George Washington himself. Historians have simply decided to excise this indecent aspect of Lincoln, so that they can force his image into the mold of the sainted president, which was invented as a device to manipulate public opinion in favor of any policy of the sitting leadership. Historians all quote Lincoln's allusion to the "monstrous injustice" of slavery in his Peoria speech of 1854, but not the passage in the SAME speech asserting that he would send the liberated slaves "to Liberia - to their own native land." A phrase Lincoln used even though some African Americans' ancestors had been in north America longer than Lincoln's!

Answer 3

His decision not to completely abolish slavery until the war was over.