Before Lincoln Was President, What Was On His Mind?

Who was Abraham Lincoln, what did he believe? Maybe we can learn from his own words.

In 1846, while serving one term in the House of Representatives most notable for his opposition of the Mexican War, and for his proposal for the gradual abolition of slavery in Washington, D.C. he spoke to the thinking of the Know Nothing Party.

"I am not a Know-Nothing. How could I be? How can anyone 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 pretense of loving liberty- to Russia,for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."

On accepting the nomination for the U.S. Senate at the convention for the Illinois Republican Party in Springfield in June 1858.

"We are now in the fifth year, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation.
Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented.
In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached and passed.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved, I not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other.
Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new - North as well as South."

While Lincoln was firmly convinced of slavery's immorality. Lincoln was not, however, an abolitionist. In the political world of the mid 1800s where slavery was the one issue that either built or destroyed a politician's career. Lincoln walked a careful line, believing slavery was wrong, but also believed it was legal under the Constitution. He opposed keeping slavery from growing into any new state or territory but didn't believe that the government had the Constitutional authority to have any say in those states where slavery was already planted. Lincoln hoped, as did Jefferson and Washington before him, that if it was cut off from expanding, it would eventually die out under it's own weight.

By modern standards, much of Lincoln's thoughts and statements about blacks would be called racist. He did not think blacks were equal to whites in intellect or ability. He opposed the idea of blacks voting, serving on juries, or intermarrying with whites. Earlier in his career Lincoln believed that all blacks should be removed from the United States and resettled in some other country. "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 high hopes there may be in this, in the long run, its sudden execution would be impossible."

Still Lincoln fervently believed that when the Declaration of Independence said "all men are created equal," it included Negroes, and Lincoln took that to mean that blacks should be given the opportunity to labor for wages as white men did.

In September 1858 in a speech in Edwardsville, Illinois, Lincoln warned.

" When you have succeeded in dehumanizing the Negro; when you have put him down and made hit forever impossible for him to be but as the beasts of the field; when you have extinguished his soul and placed him where the ray of hope is blown out in darkness like that which broods ovr the spirits of he damned, are you quite sure that the demon you have roused will not turn and rend you?"

Be very careful when looking into history and trying to place our values, mores, and thinking upon those figures of the past. Our experiences and theirs are quite different. What appears to us as profound racism if seen in someone today, was actually very much the opposite during that time in history, it was those, like Lincoln and their open minded, and support of blacks that caused so much fear and angst in the hearts and minds of so many of their countrymen.