Abraham Lincoln: by James M. McPherson

Abraham Lincoln: by James M. McPherson

Copyright 2009

QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION

Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin on Sinking Spring Farm.  
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The traditional notion that the Lincolns moved because of a dislike of slavery may have some truth; they belonged to a Baptist denomination that broke from the parent church on the issue of slavery.  The main reason for the move, however, was the uncertainty of land titles in Kentucky, which caused Thomas Lincoln to lose much of his property. Indiana offered secure land titles under the Northwest Ordinance. Pg. 2

Thomas Lincoln neither encouraged nor understood his son's intellectual ambition; quite the contrary, he chastised Abraham's lazy preference for reading over working. Pg. 3

The sight of men and women being bought and sold in the slave markets of New Orleans: Recalling another trip on the Ohio River to Louisville he wrote years later that "there were on board ten or a dozen slaves shackled together with irons. That site was a continual torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio or any other slave border." 
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Lincoln’s opposition to the Mexican War was not popular in Illinois. 
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Lincoln had said little in public ab out slavery before this moment, but during the next six years he delivered an estimated 175 speeches whose “central message” was the necessit5y to exclude slavery form the territories as a first step toward its ultimate extinction everywhere. That had been the purpose of the Founding Fathers, Lincoln believed, when they adopted the Declaration of Independence and enacted the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 barring slavery from most of the existing territories. That is why they did not mention the words “slave” or “slavery” in the Constitution, but instead used the euphemism of “persons held to labor.” The Kansas-Nebraska Act had reversed the course of the Founding Fathers. That was why Lincoln was “arounds” by thislaw, he later recalled, “as he had never been before.” 
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“I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bring about in any the social and political equality of the white and black races (applause).” 
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“Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man, this race and …the other race being inferior… and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.” Whether or not the black man was equal to whites in all respect, “in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal…” 
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On the basis of thorough research, Lincoln explicated the parallels between the Republican position on slavery and that of the Founding Fathers; they too had believed that Congress could exclude slavery from the territories and looked forward to its ultimate disappearance. “Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”   
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The core of the Republican ideology: All work in a free society was honorable. Slavery degraded manual labor by equating it with bondage. “I am not ashamed to confess that twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer, mauling rails, at work on a flat-bot – just what might happen to any poor man’s son.” …There is no such thing as a freeman being fatally fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer.  
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Lincoln wrote that the slave states had nothing to fear from him, but added: “I suppose, however, this does not meet the case. You think slavery is right and out to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. 
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“… the necessity that is upon us, of proving that popular government is not an absurdity. We must settle this question now, whether in a free government the minority have the right to break up the government whenever they choose. It is an issue which can only be tried by war, and decided by victory.”  
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He spent a great deal of time in the War Department telegraph office reading reports from his generals and sending instruction to them. He borrowed books on military history and strategy from the Library of Congress AND OTHER SOURCES, and burned the midnight oil mastering them. 
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The greatest frustrations he experience were the failures of several Union general sto act with the vigor and aggressiveness he expected of them. 
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McClellen, a Democrat, did not really want to strike the “rebels” a hard blow. 
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“Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert? … I think that in such a case, to silence the agitator, and save the boy, is not only constitutional, but withal, a great mercy.”  
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If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it.  …my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal with that all men every where could be free.” 
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In his capacity as commander in chief, Lincoln believed that He had the constitutional power to seize enemy property (slaves) being used to wage war against the United States. Pg. 47

These exemptions produced cavils that the Emancipation Proclamation did not in and of itself free a single slave, and that Lincoln proclaimed slaves free where he had no power to enforce the edict and did not touch slavery where he did have the power. These claims are false in several respects. He had no power to seize slaves as enemy property from owners who were not enemies. Tens of thousands of slaves and “contrabands” lived in parts of North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, and Arkansas occupied by Union forces, but to which the proclamation did apply. 
Pg. 48