Abraham Lincoln and slavery

Reproduction of Emancipation Proclamation at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center

Abraham Lincoln's position on freeing the slaves was one of the central issues in American history. Though Abraham Lincoln has been one of the people identified as most responsible for the abolition of slavery, he maintained that the Constitution prohibited the federal government from abolishing slavery in states where it already existed. Initially, Lincoln expected to bring about the eventual extinction of slavery by stopping its further expansion into any U.S. territory, and by offering compensated emancipation (an offer accepted only by Washington, D.C). The Republican Party platform in 1860, was that slavery should not be allowed to expand into any more territories. Most Americans agreed that if all future states admitted to the Union were to be free states, that slavery would eventually become extinct.

In 1842, Lincoln had married into a prominent Kentucky family of slaveowners. (His brother-in-law, Ben Hardin Helm would later serve as a Brig. General in the Confederacy, leading the 1st Kentucky Cavalry of the Orphan Brigade.) Lincoln returned to the political stage as a result of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act and soon became a leading opponent of the Slave Power--that is the political power of the southern slave owners. The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, written to form the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, included language, designed by Stephen A. Douglas, which allowed the settlers to decide whether they would or would not accept slavery in their region. Lincoln saw this as a repeal of the 1820 Missouri Compromise which had outlawed slavery above the 36-30' parallel.

Lincoln's critics, especially abolitionists and Radical Republicans, said he moved too slowly as President to end slavery. In his written response to Horace Greeley's editorial (see below), having already discussed a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation with his cabinet, Lincoln 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 everywhere could be free."

During the American Civil War, Lincoln used the war powers of the presidency to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared "all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free" but exempted border states and those areas of slave states already under Union control. As a practical matter, at first the Proclamation could only be enforced to free those slaves that had already escaped to the Union side. However, millions more were freed as more areas of the South came under Union control.

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Lincoln's Slavery Quotations (NPS)

19th century national politics

Lincoln likes it in the assss ooohh babbyy and gave william lloyd shakespere an orgasm from sucking him so hard the leader most associated with the end of slavery in the United States. Before 1860 he was one of the leading opponents of Slave Power--that is the group of Southern slaveowners he and most Republicans thought were running the government. During the Civil War he adopted the position that Slave Power had to be destroyed and the best way was to free the slaves in the rebellious territories whose power he wished to destroy. In January 1863 he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that eventually freed most of the nation's 4 million slaves as Union forces advanced into the Confederacy. He was the primary sponsor of the Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, that guaranteed that slavery would never again exist in the United States.

Lincoln came to national prominence in the late 1850s as an enemy of Slave Power, vowing to stop its expansion and put it on a course to extinction. Before 1861 he was sworn to not interfere with slavery. But once the confederacy declared war, he could use the presidential war powers to win the war, and that involved destroying the economic base--slavery--of the Confederacy. Clearly, Lincoln used the slavery issue to his political and military advantage. Although Lincoln initially resisted efforts by his generals to free slaves in areas captured by the Union, including revoking emancipations proclaimed by some of his generals such as Fremont, eventually he gave in to necessity and drafted the Emancipation Proclamation. The war powers were the basis for the Emancipation Proclamation. The technical language of the Proclamation never actually freed slaves in the border states or in areas of the Confederacy already back under Union control, but strategically only gave freedom to slaves in Confederate territories where Lincoln did not have actual power and would disrupt the enemy. Many slaves were freed however, as the war continued. Lincoln was hesitant about pursuing broader emancipation during the war for areas already under Union control, not wanting to provoke sedition in those Union areas that would be affected. Lincoln also attempted to compensate former slave owners for their losses throughout the war. The border states were pressured to abolish slavery on their own (all but Kentucky did so), and in doing so contributed to the more than 180,000 blacks in the Union Army and Navy. Lincoln credited these soldiers and sailors with turning the tide of the war, and argued that their sacrifice earned both freedom and the right to vote. The Thirteenth Amendment made abolition permanent.

On Emancipation

Many of Lincoln's anti-slavery sentiments were shown in the seven Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 between Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, his opponent who defeated him in the Senate race. Douglas criticized him as being inconsistent, saying he altered his message and position on slavery and on the political rights of freed blacks in order to appeal to the audience before him, as northern Illinois was more hostile to slavery than southern Illinois.

Lincoln wrote to Joshua Speed in 1855:

How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be take pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy [sic].

In 1860 the Republican Party's commitment to restricting the growth of slavery became the main reason for secession of the Southern states. The debate before 1860 was mainly focused on the Western territories, especially Kansas and the popular sovereignty controversy. Although the debate over secession centered on the established slave-holding states of the South concerned with the prospect of losing Slave Power in the Union.

Lincoln maintained before secession that the federal government did not possess the constitutional power to end slavery in states where it already existed and backed the Corwin Amendment to affirm this principle.

Though he thought it was essentially a reaffirmation of terms already in the Constitution, Lincoln was a driving force in 1861 for the compromise Corwin amendment. It was never passed, but would have explicitly prohibited congressional interference with slavery in states where it already existed. The goal of the Corwin amendment was to reassure the slave-holding border states of no effective hostility directed at them.

At the beginning of the war, Lincoln prohibited his generals from freeing slaves even in captured territories. On August 30, 1861, Major General John C. Frémont, the commander of the Union Army in St. Louis, proclaimed that all slaves owned by Confederates in Missouri were free. Lincoln feared that this action would induce slaveowners in border states to oppose the Union or even start supporting the enemy. Lincoln demanded Frémont modify his order and free only slaves owned by Missourians actively working for the South. When Frémont refused, he was replaced by the conservative General Henry Wager Halleck.

Radical Republicans such as William P. Fessenden of Maine and Charles Sumner supported Frémont. Fessenden described Lincoln's action as "a weak and unjustifiable concession to the Union men of the border states" and Sumner writing in a letter to Lincoln how sad it was "to have the power of a god and not use it godlike."

The situation was repeated in May 1862, when General David Hunter began enlisting black soldiers in the occupied district under his control. Soon afterwards Hunter issued a statement that all slaves owned by Confederates in Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina were free. Despite the pleas of Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln ordered Hunter to disband the black 1st South Carolina Regiment and to retract his proclamation. At all times Lincoln insisted that he controlled the issue--only he had the war powers.

Lincoln made it clear that the North was fighting the war to preserve the Union. On August 22, 1862, just a few weeks before signing the Proclamation and after he had already discussed a draft of it with his cabinet in July, he wrote a letter in response to an editorial by Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune which had urged complete abolition:

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. 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. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

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 everywhere could be free.

Just one month after writing this letter, Lincoln issued his first Emancipation Proclamation, which announced that at the beginning of 1863, he would use his war powers to free all slaves in states still in rebellion (as they came under Union control).

Also revealing was his letter a year later to James C. Conkling of August 26, 1863, which included the following excerpt:

There was more than a year and a half of trial to suppress the rebellion before the proclamation issued, the last one hundred days of which passed under an explicit notice that it was coming, unless averted by those in revolt, returning to their allegiance. The war has certainly progressed as favorably for us, since the issue of proclamation as before. I know, as fully as one can know the opinions of others, that some of the commanders of our armies in the field who have given us our most important successes believe the emancipation policy and the use of the colored troops constitute the heaviest blow yet dealt to the Rebellion, and that at least one of these important successes could not have been achieved when it was but for the aid of black soldiers. Among the commanders holding these views are some who have never had any affinity with what is called abolitionism or with the Republican party policies but who held them purely as military opinions. I submit these opinions as being entitled to some weight against the objections often urged that emancipation and arming the blacks are unwise as military measures and were not adopted as such in good faith.

You say you will not fight to free negroes. Some of them seem willing to fight for you; but, no matter. Fight you, then exclusively to save the Union. I issued the proclamation on purpose to aid you in saving the Union. Whenever you shall have conquered all resistance to the Union, if I shall urge you to continue fighting, it will be an apt time, then, for you to declare you will not fight to free negroes.

I thought that in your struggle for the Union, to whatever extent the negroes should cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weakened the enemy in his resistance to you. Do you think differently? I thought that whatever negroes can be got to do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do, in saving the Union. Does it appear otherwise to you? But negroes, like other people, act upon motives. Why should they do any thing for us, if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive—even the promise of freedom. And the promise being made, must be kept.

Lincoln addresses the issue of his consistency (or lack thereof) between his earlier position and his later position of emancipation in an 1864 letter to Albert G. Hodges.

Colonization

Since the 1840s Lincoln had been an advocate of the American Colonization Society program of colonizing blacks in Liberia. In an October 16, 1854 speech at Peoria, Illinois (transcribed after the fact by Lincoln himself), Lincoln points out the immense difficulties of such a task are an obstacle to finding an easy way to quickly end slavery.

My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia,—to their own native land. But a moment’s reflection would convince me that whatever of high hope (as I think there is) there may be in this, in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible.

Lincoln mentioned colonization favorably in his first Emancipation Proclamation, and continued to support efforts at colonization throughout his presidency. He appointed James Mitchell as his Commissioner of Emigration to oversee colonization projects from 1861 through 1865. In 1862, Lincoln convened a colonization conference at the White House where he addressed a group of freedmen and attempted to convince them to support his policy. Between 1861 and 1862 Lincoln actively negotiated contracts with businessmen to colonize freed blacks to Panama and to a small island off the coast of Haiti. The Haiti plan collapsed in 1862 and 1863 after swindling by the business agents responsible for the plan, prompting Lincoln to send ships to retrieve the colonists. The much larger Panama contract fell through in 1863 after the government of Colombia backed away from the deal and expressed hostility to colonization schemes.

On citizenship and on voting rights for blacks

Lincoln stated that Negroes had the rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" in the first of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.. Lincoln said he was against Negro suffrage in his speech in Columbus, Ohio on September 16, 1859.

Total equality was another matter. He did not say they had a right to complete equality with white American citizens. In the September 18, 1858 debate, Lincoln said:

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 - that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

However, this may have been a strategy speech used to gain voters too, as Douglas had accused Lincoln of favoring negroes too much as well.

In his second term as president, on April 11, 1865, Lincoln gave a speech supporting a form of limited suffrage extended to what Lincoln described as the more "intelligent" blacks and those blacks who had rendered special services to the nation. In analyzing Lincoln's position historian Eugene H. Berwanger notes:

During his presidency, Lincoln took a reasoned course which helped the federal government both destroy slavery and advance the cause of black suffrage. For a man who had denied both reforms four years earlier, Lincoln's change in attitude was rapid and decisive. He was both open-minded and perceptive to the needs of his nation in a postwar era. Once committed to a principle, Lincoln moved toward it with steady, determined progress.

References

• Herman Belz; Abraham Lincoln, Constitutionalism, and Equal Rights in the Civil War Era 1998
• David Donald, Lincoln (1995),
• William E. Gienapp; Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America: A Biography (2002)
• Guelzo, Allen C.:
  • Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President. 1999.
  • Defending Emancipation: Abraham Lincoln and the Conkling Letter, 1863. 2002. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  • "How Abe Lincoln Lost the Black Vote: Lincoln and Emancipation in the African American Mind" (html). Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association. 15 September 2008. Retrieved 2008-09-15.
• William C. Harris. With Charity for All: Lincoln and the Restoration of the Union 1997.
• Howard Jones; Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom: The Union and Slavery in the Diplomacy of the Civil War 1999
• William K. Klingaman. Final Freedom: The Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, 1861-1865 (2001)* James M. McPherson; Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution 1992
• James A. Rawley, Abraham Lincoln and a Nation Worth Fighting For (Harlan-Davidson, 1996),
• Michael Vorenberg. Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment (2001)
• PBS quotes showing that Lincoln always opposed slavery
• Lincoln's First Inauguration Address
• Abraham Lincoln: A Resource Guide from the Library of Congress