LINCOLN ON RACE IN AMERICA This research paper

It would be inaccurate to categorize Lincoln as a racist.

Lincoln always regarded slavery as a moral evil. As President of the United States, his actions (and the Union victory in the Civil War) were largely responsible for the abolition of slavery and for the initial steps taken by the federal government to ensure the political and civil equality of the former slaves, an effort which was tragically cut short by Lincoln's assassination and the resurrection of southern white power after the war. At the same time Lincoln was until the middle of the war a gradualist with respect to abolition and held conservative views on race which reflected the temper of his times. For most of his long political career, he opposed the full political and civil equality of African-Americans and he never favored their full social equality or integration into American society.

Even as a relatively young man, Lincoln found slavery to be morally abhorrent. He describes in Document #6 his repulsion at seeing a dozen slaves chained together by their master on a riverboat on which Lincoln travels to St. Louis (p. 11). In #6, he refers to the institution as a "monstrous injustice," which makes a mockery of America's claim as the home of the free (pp. 14). He stated flatly in #6 that "no man is good enough to govern an

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quite limited. They had the right to be dominated or killed by others. In speaking of a female slave he said she had a "natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of anyone else, she is my equal, the equal of others" (#10, p. 28). Due to "a physical difference" and white superiority over them "in moral or intellectual endowment," (#13, p. 42), none of which Lincoln ever defined, "living together in perfect equality" was in his view impossible. In expressing these views, Lincoln was very much in accord with the prevailing sentiment among whites at that time. (Despite the abolitionist movement, most northern states denied free blacks, for example, the right to vote before the war. In the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln goes out of his way to assure his listeners that he was not in favor of racial intermarriage or any other form of social equality for blacks (#16, p. 41). However, to his discredit, he went further and denied that he favored negro citizenship or granting blacks the right to vote, to serve on jurors or to hold public office (#16, p. 41). These early views were, however, inconsistent with those he espoused toward the end of the war. The man grew in office. A great advocate of fr
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Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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