Lincoln was no advocate

Abraham Lincoln is most revered for being "The Great Emancipator" and given credit for his "stand" on racial "equality". Unfortunately, neither of these claims to fame hold to their full capacity when a closer look is taken at Lincoln's actions and words.

The one example hidden in plain sight is written in the Emancipation Proclamation itself. In this 1862 document, Lincoln unconstitutionally granted freedom to slaves in the Confederate states. And while he did this, he omitted granting freedom in the slave owning states of the Union of which he did have constitutional authority over. The Emancipation Proclamation specifically called out which states slaves were to be freed in, but it did not declare freedom to slaves in Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, (or in New Jersey where slaves born before 1804 were "life long apprentices"), or any southern state (or county) already under control of the Union. The document asserted that the proclamation would apply only to those states "still in rebellion" by January 1st of 1863.

Another interesting piece of history involving Lincoln and slaves' freedom occurred in 1861 in the state of Missouri. After the battle of Wilson's Creek, John C. Fremont, the Union Army commander in the West, issued a proclamation freeing slaves in particular circumstances. President Lincoln ordered the proclamation to be reversed, thus denying those slaves freedom. He reportedly resented having the issue of slavery brought to the foreground in the midst of a war.

In 2006, an original letter dated March of 1861 was found, signed by Abraham Lincoln and addressed to the governor of the southern state of Florida ... it's content, consisted of a request to support the 13th amendment, despite Florida's secession. This version of the amendment would have permanently enshrined slavery by prohibiting any future amendments from granting Congress authority over a state's decision to allow slavery. The 13th amendment that we know abolishing slavery wasn't adopted until December of 1865, after Lincoln's death.

These actions reinforce many of Lincoln's own words, which are quite explicit in themselves.


Lincoln expressed support of racial equality when he said "...there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, - the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man... in the right to eat the bread without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal,... and the equal of every other man." But he still expressed how he felt blacks were not equal when in the same speech, as well as a previous speech, he 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 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 will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot live while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior. I am as much as any other man in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." He also goes on to say "...he is not my equal in many respects, certainly not in color, perhaps not in intellectual and moral endowments..."

In 1862, Lincoln invited a group of prominent free black men to the White House to urge them to support sending black people back to Africa. During his argument, he said, "Your race suffers greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffers from your presence. If this is admitted, it affords a reason why we should be separated."

In an 1862 letter to the editor of the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley, Lincoln blatanly states his absolute indifference to slavery outside of his own moral judgement: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it 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 some and leaving others alone I would also do that." This letter was dated exactly one month before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued.

While Abraham Lincoln paved the way for blacks today, he did so purely out of what he felt to be political necessity. He believed in human equality, but was no advocate of racial equality or civil rights as we know them.




Sources:

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/transcript.html
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/
http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/geography/slave_laws_NJ.htm
http://www.abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org/Library/newsletter.asp?ID=64&CRLI=144
http://civilwar.cloudworth.com/local/3398.html
http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=JJJWPXFRT4pPZB2NBh34XnCrWmPscQJ5KpRzlgcfvJrl8xp8FG7R!-1632266300!2064305130?docId=5002005572
http://www.bartleby.com/251/pages/page358.html
http://www.bartleby.com/251/pages/page356.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,943970-2,00.html
http://www.etymonline.com/cw/lincoln.htm
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/greeley.html