The 2013 Oscars has awarded Daniel Day-Lewis in Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" the best actor prize for his performance. Spielberg's film depicts the 16th American president, at the end of the civil war endeavouring to pass an amendment that will lead to the abolition of slavery.
But let us make no mistake. Lincoln held racist views. When he said “all men are created equal” he meant all white men. Lincoln supported the pre-Civil War “Black Laws,” which stripped African-Americans of their basic rights in his native Illinois, as well as the Fugitive Slave Act, which compelled the return to their masters of those who had escaped to free soil in the North, he was a white-supremacist whose projected plan for dealing with racial problems was ‘colonization’ – the deportation of all American blacks to Africa, Haiti, or Central America – anywhere but the United States, which would be for whites only. If Lincoln had had his way there would be no black people in America today.
This quotation from a speech he made in Charleston in 1858 shows how he really felt:
“I am not now, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social or political equality of the white and black races. I am not now nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor of intermarriages with white people. There is a physical difference between the white and the black races which will forever forbid the two races living together on social or political equality. There must be a position of superior and inferior, and I am in favor of assigning the superior position to the white man.”
Lincoln would never have been nominated if he were a radical abolitionist. He was chosen because he was a moderate in the Republican Party. It is probable that he found slavery objectionable, but he most certainly would not have gone to war over the issue. We find Lincoln writing to Alexander H. Stephens in 1860:
"I fully appreciate the present peril the country is in, and the weight of responsibility on me. Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would, directly or indirectly, interfere with the slaves, or with them about slaves? It they do, I wish to assure you...that there is no cause for such fears..."
Karl Marx, writing about the 1860 election that brought Lincoln to the White House, stated that:
“....if Lincoln would have had Emancipation of the Slaves as his motto at that time, there can be no doubt that he would have been defeated.”
Over and over again he stated that he was opposed to equality of the races. He was not an abolitionist, he denigrated and distanced himself from them. In 1862 in a letter to the New York Tribune Editor he wrote:
“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or 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 in the same year, addressing a meeting of freed black leaders at the White House, Lincoln said:
“But for your race among us there could not be a war, although many men on either side do not care for you one way or another. You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race. You are cut off from many of the advantages which the other race enjoys. It is better for us both to be separated.”
In fact, the Emancipation Proclamation was issued as a war measure against the rebels and did not apply to those slaves loyal to the Union. The Republican Party made quite plain the fact that it was not opposed to the continuation of slavery in the South provided it was not spread into the frontier areas in which the Northern industrialists wished to establish their own slave system - wage labour.
Before his career as a politician Abraham Lincoln had served as a corporate attorney for some of the biggest interests in Illinois, including “Railroad Barons” As president he signed legislation that virtually gave away miles of public land to the railroads for free. His son, Robert Todd Lincoln, went on to a successful career as the president of the Pullman Car Company.
But let us make no mistake. Lincoln held racist views. When he said “all men are created equal” he meant all white men. Lincoln supported the pre-Civil War “Black Laws,” which stripped African-Americans of their basic rights in his native Illinois, as well as the Fugitive Slave Act, which compelled the return to their masters of those who had escaped to free soil in the North, he was a white-supremacist whose projected plan for dealing with racial problems was ‘colonization’ – the deportation of all American blacks to Africa, Haiti, or Central America – anywhere but the United States, which would be for whites only. If Lincoln had had his way there would be no black people in America today.
This quotation from a speech he made in Charleston in 1858 shows how he really felt:
“I am not now, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social or political equality of the white and black races. I am not now nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor of intermarriages with white people. There is a physical difference between the white and the black races which will forever forbid the two races living together on social or political equality. There must be a position of superior and inferior, and I am in favor of assigning the superior position to the white man.”
Lincoln would never have been nominated if he were a radical abolitionist. He was chosen because he was a moderate in the Republican Party. It is probable that he found slavery objectionable, but he most certainly would not have gone to war over the issue. We find Lincoln writing to Alexander H. Stephens in 1860:
"I fully appreciate the present peril the country is in, and the weight of responsibility on me. Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would, directly or indirectly, interfere with the slaves, or with them about slaves? It they do, I wish to assure you...that there is no cause for such fears..."
Karl Marx, writing about the 1860 election that brought Lincoln to the White House, stated that:
“....if Lincoln would have had Emancipation of the Slaves as his motto at that time, there can be no doubt that he would have been defeated.”
Over and over again he stated that he was opposed to equality of the races. He was not an abolitionist, he denigrated and distanced himself from them. In 1862 in a letter to the New York Tribune Editor he wrote:
“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or 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 in the same year, addressing a meeting of freed black leaders at the White House, Lincoln said:
“But for your race among us there could not be a war, although many men on either side do not care for you one way or another. You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race. You are cut off from many of the advantages which the other race enjoys. It is better for us both to be separated.”
In fact, the Emancipation Proclamation was issued as a war measure against the rebels and did not apply to those slaves loyal to the Union. The Republican Party made quite plain the fact that it was not opposed to the continuation of slavery in the South provided it was not spread into the frontier areas in which the Northern industrialists wished to establish their own slave system - wage labour.
Before his career as a politician Abraham Lincoln had served as a corporate attorney for some of the biggest interests in Illinois, including “Railroad Barons” As president he signed legislation that virtually gave away miles of public land to the railroads for free. His son, Robert Todd Lincoln, went on to a successful career as the president of the Pullman Car Company.
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