Was Abraham Lincoln a Racist?

If Abraham Lincoln had not been shot in Ford's theater, he would be 200 years old today. The good they die young. But how good was he?

Henry Lewis Gates Jr quotes Lincoln from a speech delivered in 1858:

“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 will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch 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.”

Lincoln despised slavery as an institution, an economic institution that discriminated against white men who couldn’t afford to own slaves and, thus, could not profit from the advantage in the marketplace that slaves provided. At the same time, however, he was deeply ambivalent about the status of black people vis-à-vis white people, having fundamental doubts about their innate intelligence and their capacity to fight nobly with guns against white men in the initial years of the Civil War.

Even as he was writing the Emancipation Proclamation during the summer of 1862, Lincoln was working feverishly to ship all those slaves he was about to free out of the United States. So taken was he with the concept of colonization that he invited five black men to the White House and offered them funding to found a black republic in Panama, for the slaves he was about to free.

Even as late as April 1862, James Redpath recorded Lincoln’s saying of President Fabre Nicholas Geffard of Haiti (who had offered to send a white man as his ambassador to the United States), “You can tell the President of Hayti that I shan’t tear my shirt if he sends a nigger here!”

It's an interesting article, and for the most part I believe Gates' conclusion gets it right. Lincoln was a man of his times... A product of his times. If his attitude towards Blacks had been the same as today's liberals or conservatives, he could not have been elected. In fact, I believe he would have been an outcast.

The Left likes to trash some of the Founding Fathers for owning slaves. Dead men from another time are easy targets. (Ask J. Edgar Hoover.) But I prefer to concentrate on the positive... How after 50 years of Liberal help, every descendant of slaves in America has risen to unthinkable heights of fortune, education, family, and success.

But happy birthday Abe! May the history books continue to treat you kindly.

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