|
16th U.S. President Abraham Lincoln
1861-1865
(February 12, 1809 - April 15, 1865)
| President Abraham Lincoln |
|
| Library of Congress |
President Abraham Lincoln
Born: February 12, 1809, in Hodgenville, Hardin County, Kentucky.
Died:
April 15, 1865. Lincoln died the morning after being shot at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., by John Wilkes Booth,
an actor.
The South's Viewpoint of President Abraham Lincoln:
Almost thirty years before the Civil War, South Carolina threatened
to secede from the Union. Why? Because of High Tariffs and not because of slavery (see Nullification Crisis). Later, when the South desired to secede, this was President Lincoln's response to secession, not slavery, in
his First Inaugural Address on March 4, 1861: "No State, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union." Lincoln
was adamantly concerned about secession and not about slavery.
It was only when Lincoln feared losing the Civil War (1861-1865) that he
freed slaves in the South. "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it,"
wrote Lincoln in 1862. "What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save
the Union." (See President Abraham Lincoln on Race.)
The proclamation, which also
permitted and kept slavery intact in the border states, was a political decision to block the South from gaining
recognition from England and France (The Trent Affair, Preventing Diplomatic Recognition of the Confederacy, and American Civil War and International Diplomacy). Whether slavery was intact or abolished, he stated that either was
completely acceptable in order to preserve the Union.
Lincoln, who had
previously refused the U.S. Supreme Court a hearing or ruling on secession, merely invoked "freeing the slaves"
as justification to preserve the Union. As president, he was completely
and unequivocally pro-Union. So, was the war about freeing the slaves or denying Southern Secession?
(Lincoln also didn't receive a single Southern electoral vote.)
In addition, Lincoln unilaterally:
declared war without the consent of Congress, suspended habeas corpus, arrested scores of political opponents and newspaper
editors, and deployed troops to New York City to force conscription on an unwilling populace.
W.E.B. Du Bois*, in The Crisis
magazine in May 1922, wrote that President Lincoln was one huge contradiction: "[President Abraham Lincoln] was big enough
to be inconsistent—cruel, merciful; peace-loving, a fighter; despising Negroes and letting them fight and vote; protecting
slavery and freeing slaves. He was a man—a big, inconsistent, brave man."
* W.E.B. Du Bois (February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was
the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He was a civil rights activist, public
intellectual, professor of sociology, historian, writer, and editor.
Recommended
Reading: The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War. Description: It hardly seems possible that there is
more to say about someone who has been subjected to such minute scrutiny in thousands of books and articles. Yet, Thomas J.
DiLorenzo’s The Real Lincoln manages to raise fresh and morally probing
questions, challenging the image of the martyred 16th president that has been fashioned carefully in marble and bronze, sentimentalism
and myth. In doing so, DiLorenzo does not follow the lead of M. E. Bradford or other Southern agrarians. He writes primarily
not as a defender of the Old South and its institutions, culture, and traditions, but as a libertarian enemy of the Leviathan
state. Continued below...
DiLorenzo holds Lincoln and his war responsible for the triumph of "big government" and the birth of the ubiquitous,
suffocating modern U.S. state. He seeks
to replace the nation’s memory of Lincoln as the “Great Emancipator” with
the record of Lincoln as the “Great Centralizer.”
Advance to:
Recommended
Reading: Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe. Description:
While
many view our 16th president as the nation’s greatest president and hero, Tom Dilorenzo, through his scholarly research,
exposes the many unconstitutional decisions of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln Unmasked, a best-seller, reveals that ‘other
side’ – the inglorious character – of the nation’s greatest tyrant and totalitarian. Continued below...
Recommended Reading:
Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream, by Lerone Bennett.
Description: Beginning with the argument that the Emancipation Proclamation did not actually free African American slaves,
this dissenting view of Lincoln's greatness surveys the president's policies, speeches, and private utterances and concludes
that he had little real interest in abolition. Pointing to Lincoln's support for the fugitive slave laws, his friendship with
slave-owning senator Henry Clay, and conversations in which he entertained the idea of deporting slaves in order to create
an all-white nation, the book, concludes that the president was a racist at heart—and that the tragedies of Reconstruction
and the Jim Crow era were the legacy of his shallow moral vision. Continued below...
About the Author:
Lerone Bennett Jr. is the executive editor emeritus of Ebony magazine and the author of 10 books, including Before the Mayflower,
Great Moments in Black History, Pioneers in Protest, The Shaping of Black America, and What Manner of Man, a biography of
Martin Luther King. He lives in Chicago.
Recommended Reading: Lincoln on Race and
Slavery [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover), by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Editor,
Introduction), Donald Yacovone (Editor). Description: Generations of Americans have debated the meaning of Abraham Lincoln's
views on race and slavery. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation, authorized the use of black troops during the Civil War,
supported a constitutional amendment to outlaw slavery, and eventually advocated giving the vote to black veterans and to
what he referred to as "very intelligent negroes." Continued below...
But he also harbored grave doubts about the intellectual capacity of African
Americans, publicly used the n-word until at least 1862, enjoyed "darky" jokes and black-faced minstrel shows, and long favored
permanent racial segregation and the voluntary "colonization" of freed slaves in Africa, the Caribbean, or South America.
In this book--the first complete collection of Lincoln's important writings on both race and slavery--readers can explore
these contradictions through Lincoln's own words. Acclaimed Harvard scholar and documentary filmmaker Henry Louis Gates, Jr.,
presents the full range of Lincoln's views, gathered from his private letters, speeches, official documents, and even race
jokes, arranged chronologically from the late 1830s to the 1860s. Complete
with definitive texts, rich historical notes, and Gates's original introduction, this book charts the progress of a war within
Lincoln himself. We witness his struggles with conflicting aims and ideas--a hatred of slavery and a belief in the political
equality of all men, but also anti-black prejudices and a determination to preserve the Union even at the cost of preserving
slavery. We also watch the evolution of his racial views, especially in reaction to the heroic fighting of black Union troops.
At turns inspiring and disturbing, Lincoln on Race and Slavery is indispensable
for understanding what Lincoln's views meant for his generation--and what they mean for our own.
Recommended
Reading: Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America (Simon & Schuster) (February 5, 2008) (Hardcover). Description: In 1858, Abraham Lincoln was known as a successful Illinois
lawyer who had achieved some prominence in state politics as a leader in the new Republican Party. Two years later, he was
elected president and was on his way to becoming the greatest chief executive in American history. What carried this one-term
congressman from obscurity to fame was the campaign he mounted for the United States Senate against the country's most formidable
politician, Stephen A. Douglas, in the summer and fall of 1858. Lincoln challenged Douglas
directly in one of his greatest speeches -- "A house divided against itself cannot stand" -- and confronted Douglas on the
questions of slavery and the inviolability of the Union in seven fierce debates. As this
brilliant narrative by the prize-winning Lincoln scholar Allen Guelzo dramatizes, Lincoln would emerge a predominant national figure, the leader of his
party, the man who would bear the burden of the national confrontation. Continued below...
Of course,
the great issue between Lincoln and Douglas was slavery. Douglas was the champion of "popular sovereignty," of letting states and territories decide
for themselves whether to legalize slavery. Lincoln drew a
moral line, arguing that slavery was a violation both of natural law and of the principles expressed in the Declaration of
Independence. No majority could ever make slavery right, he argued. Lincoln lost that Senate
race to Douglas, though he came close to toppling the "Little Giant," whom almost everyone
thought was unbeatable. Guelzo's Lincoln and Douglas brings alive their debates and this whole year of campaigns and underscores
their centrality in the greatest conflict in American history. The encounters between Lincoln and Douglas engage a key question
in American political life: What is democracy's purpose? Is it to satisfy the desires of the majority? Or is it to achieve
a just and moral public order? These were the real questions in 1858 that led to the Civil War. They remain questions for
Americans today.
Recommended
Reading: Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney: Slavery, Secession, and the President's War Powers, by James F. Simon (Simon & Schuster) (Hardcover). Review From Publishers Weekly: This surprisingly taut and gripping book by NYU law professor Simon (What Kind of Nation) examines the
limits of presidential prerogative during the Civil War. Lincoln and Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney saw eye to eye
on certain matters; both, for example, disliked slavery. But beginning in 1857, when Lincoln
criticized Taney's decision in the Dred Scott case, the pair began to spar. They diverged further once Lincoln
became president when Taney insisted that secession was constitutional and preferable to bloodshed, and blamed the Civil War
on Lincoln. In 1861, Taney argued that Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus was illegal. This holding was, Simon argues, "a clarion
call for the president to respect the civil liberties of American citizens." Continued below...
In an 1862
group of cases, Taney joined a minority opinion that Lincoln lacked the authority to order the seizure of Southern
ships. Had Taney had the chance, suggests Simon, he would have declared the Emancipation Proclamation unconstitutional; he
and Lincoln agreed that the Constitution left slavery up to individual states, but Lincoln
argued that the president's war powers trumped states' rights. Simon's focus on Lincoln and Taney makes for a dramatic, charged
narrative—and the focus on presidential war powers makes this historical study extremely timely.
|
.)