Abraham Lincoln and slavery

rdf:langString Abraham Lincoln and slavery

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rdf:langString Abraham Lincoln by Byers, 1858 - crop.jpg

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rdf:langString Abraham Lincoln's position on slavery in the United States is one of the most discussed aspects of his life. Lincoln often expressed moral opposition to slavery in public and private. "I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong," he stated in a now-famous quote. "I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel." However, the question of what to do about it and how to end it, given that it was so firmly embedded in the nation's constitutional framework, in Congress, and in the economy of much of the country, was complex and politically challenging. In addition, there was the unanswered question, which Lincoln had to deal with, of what would become of the four million slaves if liberated: how they would earn a living in a society that had almost always rejected them or looked down on their very presence. As early as the 1850s, Lincoln was attacked as an abolitionist. But in 1860, he was attacked as not abolitionist enough: Wendell Phillips charged that, if elected, Lincoln would waste four years trying to decide whether to end slavery in the District of Columbia. Many abolitionists emphasized the sinfulness of slave owners, but Lincoln did not. Lincoln tended not to be judgmental. In his 1854 Peoria, Illinois, speech, he said, "I have no prejudice against the Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist amongst them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up." In 1865, in his second inaugural address, he said, "It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged," and he urged "malice toward none" and "charity for all." Nonetheless, Lincoln suggested, God had judged the nation for the "offence" of slavery. Lincoln focused on what he saw as a more politically practical goal: preventing the expansion of slavery into the new Western territories, which, if it occurred, could lead to new slave states, and if it was prevented would eventually lead to slavery's demise. He supported excluding slavery from territories with the failed Wilmot Proviso in the 1840s. His 1850s activism was in reaction to the 1854 Kansas–Nebraska Act, designed by his great rival, Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas. The Act was a radical departure from the previous law of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had strictly banned slavery from all new states north of the 36°30′ parallel (except for Missouri). Lincoln suggested that if slavery were allowed to spread it would block free labor from settling in the new states and, as a result, the entire nation would soon become ever more dominated by slave owners. When Lincoln became president, the departure of the Southern members of Congress at the beginning of the Civil War made it finally possible to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. The District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act of 1862 provided partial compensation to slave owners, paid out of federal funds. Lincoln hoped to persuade the border states of Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri to do the same, because that would eliminate their incentive to secede from the Union to join the Confederacy. Their secession might result both in the North losing the Civil War and in the continued existence of slavery. On September 22, 1862, having waited until the North won a significant victory in the battle at Antietam, Lincoln used the power granted to the president under Article II, section 2, of the U.S. Constitution as "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy" to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. It provided that, on January 1, 1863, in the states still in rebellion, the enslaved people would be freed. On January 1, 1863, as promised, he issued the final Emancipation Proclamation, which declared "that all persons held as slaves" in "States and parts of States ... in rebellion against the United States" on that day "are, and henceforward shall be free." The proclamation immediately freed on paper millions of the enslaved, but it had little practical effect until the Union Army was present. Week by week, as the army advanced, more slaves were liberated. The last were freed in Texas on a day they called "Juneteenth" (June 19, 1865), which became a federal holiday on June 17, 2021. Although Lincoln stated in the Emancipation Proclamation that he "sincerely believed [it] to be an act of justice," he issued it as a "military necessity," because he believed that the U.S. Constitution would not permit it on any other basis. The Emancipation Proclamation was a war tactic, because by freeing enslaved people it deprived the South of labor, and it allowed African American people to "be received into the armed service of the United States." Lincoln worried about the consequences of his action, fearing an endemic racial divide in the nation. Nonetheless, during his second presidential campaign, he ran on a platform to forever abolish slavery by constitutional amendment. According to Michael Lind, Lincoln was for most of his life a moderate Northern mainstream white supremacist and proponent of black colonization abroad in Panama, Haiti, and Liberia. An ardent follower of Henry Clay, he envisioned an all-white United States without slavery. Leading Lincoln scholars, however, do not see Lincoln as a white supremacist and view his support for colonization as intended at least in part to make emancipation more palatable to racist white people. Until late in his life, Lincoln wanted human rights — the rights listed in the Declaration of Independence (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) and the natural right to eat the bread they earn with their own hands — for black people, but civil rights, such as the vote, "only on their own soil", that is in their own lands abroad, to which they moved pursuant to voluntary colonization. Nonetheless, in 1864, writing to the governor of Louisiana, and in 1865, in his last public speech, which led directly to his assassination, Lincoln supported voting rights in the United States for some African Americans. He was the first U.S. President to do so.