Lincoln and Slavery

It sounds ridiculous and unnecessary, researching Lincoln and slavery. But I'm vetting American heroes with an emphasis on racism, and finding surprises and a slow evolution in Lincoln's words and actions.

Lincoln served in the Illinois Assembly and U.S. House of Representatives as a member of the Whig Party from 1834 to 1849, He opposed both slavery and abolition, saying in 1837: 

"[The] Institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy, but the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils."

What he did support at that time was the program of the American Colonization Society to settle freed slaves in Liberia.¹

He re-entered politics in 1854 as a leader in the new Republican Party, created after the Kansas–Nebraska Act allowed slavery to expand West.² In 1854 he said:

"If A. can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B.---why may not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A?---

You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own.

You do not mean color exactly?---You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own.

But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you."³ (emphasis added)

In the first Lincoln Douglas debate in 1858:

“I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the Black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position.”⁴ (emphasis added)

But at the same time he noted privately:

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy."⁵

The conclusion is that Lincoln personally opposed slavery, but was willing to publicly tolerate it in the South. His primary goal was to preserve the Union, and he was willing to continue slavery for that. In an 1862 letter to the editor of the New-York Tribune, Horace Greeley, he wrote:

"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. . . I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free."⁶

Lincoln eventually issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in the Confederacy. He pushed the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery in all the United States, and recommended extending the vote to African Americans.⁷ 

But as Frederick Douglass said at the dedication of The Freedmen’s Monument in Lincoln Park, Washington, DC in 1876:

" . . . 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. He was ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of the white people of this country."⁸ (emphasis added)

Racist, or merely pragmatist? Perhaps Douglass recognized Lincoln's slow change with his qualification of "first years". Or maybe at the end Lincoln felt his first task was safely accomplished.

---

¹ Republican Party (United States), Wikipedia, retrieved 7/6/20. 

² Abraham Lincoln, Wikipedia, retrieved 7/6/20. 

³ Fragment on Slavery, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler et al, The Abraham Lincoln Association, Volume 2, pp. 222-223, April 1, 1854?, retrieved 7/7/20.

⁴ First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois, Collected Works, Volume 3, pg. 16, August 21, 1858, retrieved 7/7/20. 

⁵ Definition of Democracy, Collected Works, Volume 2, August 1, 1858?, retrieved 7/7/20. 

⁶ Letter to Horace Greeley, Collected Works, Volume 5, pg. 388, August 22, 1862, retrieved 7/6/20. 

⁷ Lincoln on Slavery, National Park Service, retrieved 7/6/20. 

⁸ Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, April 14, 1876.

Jefferson and Slavery

Shannon LaNier, a TV news anchor, has complex feelings about being descended from Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. "He was a brilliant man who preached equality, but he didn't practice it. He owned people. And now I'm here because of it."Drew Gardner / Smithsonian Magazine

On the first 4th of July after the George Floyd killing I was struck by the contradiction between the Declaration of Independence and an original Constitution that enshrined slavery. How could the man who wrote "all men are created equal" also be a slave owner?

Jefferson the abolitionist

From his earliest days as a plantation owner, lawyer, and member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, Jefferson took steps against slavery: 

1. He argued that it was a threat to society.
2. He drafted a new Virginia Constitution in 1776  abolishing slavery.
3. He proposed legislation in 1778 to make slave trade to Virginia illegal.
4. He proposed an ordinance in 1784 to ban slavery in the Northwest Territories.
5. He discouraged labor-intensive crops like tobacco in favor of wheat. 

The U.S. Congress abolished the slave trade into America in 1808, but the slave population in the South was self-sustaining by then. Slavery was only becoming more important to the South's economy, and the number of slaves in Virginia increased 60% between 1790 and 1830 to almost 470,000, or 39% of the total state population.

Jefferson the slaveholder

There was a problem with Jefferson's unsuccessful attempts at abolition: he was a racist. He wrote of "the real distinctions which nature has made" between European and African descent, reminiscent of John Stuart Mill's description of the African "race itself" as too immature for democracy. Jefferson did not believe that Whites and Blacks could co-exist peacefully in a free society, and he proposed resettling freed slaves in Africa. He was influenced by slave revolts in Haiti from 1791 to 1804, and Gabriel Prosser's in Virginia in 1800. 

Jefferson wrote this description of maintaining slavery: 

" . . . we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other."

Jefferson feared the United States would be destroyed by slavery, either in a race war as brutal as Haiti's, or a civil war if part of the country continued slavery. He was right.

More Information

• A selection of Jefferson quotes about Race and Slavery »
• Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello: Paradox of Liberty »