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Abraham Lincoln: Tyrant, Hypocrite or Consummate StatesmanAmerican History | 4 comments | Print This Post | Email This Post
Facing the charge of racial amalgamation, Lincoln said, ‘I protest against that counterfeit logic which concludes that because I do not want a black woman for a slave, I must necessarily want her for a wife.’ Lincoln is not saying that he wants, or does not want, a black woman for his wife. He is neither supporting nor opposing racial intermarriage. He is simply saying that from his antislavery position it does not follow that he endorses racial amalgamation. Elsewhere Lincoln turned antiblack prejudices against Douglas by saying that slavery was the institution that had produced the greatest racial intermixing and the largest number of mulattoes. Subscribe Today
Lincoln was exercising the same prudent statesmanship when he wrote to New York newspaper publisher Horace Greeley asserting: ‘My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to 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 do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.’ The letter was written on August 22, 1862, almost a year and a half after the Civil War broke out, when the South was gaining momentum and the outcome was far from certain. From the time of secession, Lincoln was desperately eager to prevent border states such as Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri from seceding. These states had slavery, and Lincoln knew that if the issue of the war was cast openly as the issue of slavery, his chances of keeping the border states in the Union were slim. And if all the border states seceded, Lincoln was convinced, and rightly so, that the cause of the Union was gravely imperiled.
Moreover, Lincoln was acutely aware that many people in the North were vehemently antiblack and saw themselves as fighting to save their country rather than to free slaves. Lincoln framed the case against the Confederacy in terms of saving the Union in order to maintain his coalition — a coalition whose victory was essential to the antislavery cause. And ultimately it was because of Lincoln that slavery came to an end. That is why the right wing can never forgive him.
In my view, Lincoln was the true ‘philosophical statesman,’ one who was truly good and truly wise. Standing in front of his critics, Lincoln is a colossus, and all of the Lilliputian arrows hurled at him bounce harmlessly to the ground. It is hard to put any other president — not even George Washington — in the same category as Abraham Lincoln. He is simply the greatest practitioner of democratic statesmanship that America and the world have yet produced.
This article was written by Dinesh D’Souza and originally published in the April 2005 issue of American History Magazine.
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4 Comments to “Abraham Lincoln: Tyrant, Hypocrite or Consummate Statesman”
You say Lincoln “never acknowledges black inferiority”…
Well… September 18, 1858…
“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway 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. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything.”
By Bubba on Feb 3, 2009 at 4:59 pm
“Of course the Southerners objected that they should not be forced to live under a regime that they considered tyrannical, but Lincoln countered that any decision to dissolve the original compact could only occur with the consent of all the parties involved. Once again, it makes no sense to have such agreements when any group can unilaterally withdraw from them and go its own way.”
I believe the purpose of the U.S. Constitution was to unite groups of people (in their own various sovereign states) under the umbrella of a representative government. The States preceded the construction of the Union and have the right to leave said union, “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
By Terry on Feb 4, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Lincoln argued that the South had no right to secede — that the Southern states had entered the Union as the result of a permanent compact with the Northern states….Where was that written or agreed upon? Didn’t Virginia have the option to secede before she joined the union? In a voluntary union a state should have the ability and right to leave that union if the citizens of that state so wish.
By Patricio Bridges on Aug 10, 2009 at 11:25 am
D’Souza’s arrogant and dismissing claims that secession was unconstitutional flies in the face of easily verifiable reality: NY, RI and VA all joined the union on the condition of unilateral withdrawal should they find the new Constitution tyrannical; in Jefferson’s First Inaugural, he invites discontented states to withdraw peacefully; the Hartford Convention of 1814 seriously contemplated secession for New England; and most obvious: if Lincoln was so valiantly defending the Constitution, willing to sacrifice untold lives, treasure and blood, you would think that the SPECIFIC CLAIM OF PERPETUAL UNION would be in writing, that the mechanics of secession would be well spelled out, like the Presidential Oath or the 10th Amendment. Instead, D’Souza merely uses his own self-suited logic, as did Lincoln, in formulating and espousing imagary constitutional principles that are not on paper but merely within a man’s own head, heart and soul.
By Bob Bird on Sep 14, 2009 at 1:05 am