Lincoln on Inequality
“I think it cannot be shown that when I have once taken a position, I have ever retreated from it.”
This quote spoken by Abraham Lincoln to Frederick Douglass in 1863 is telling of his character in multiple regards. It has been cited within the context of his humble personality when he admitted he was not as quick and willing to support black soldiers as Douglass wished. However, it is also reflective of his strength of conviction in the beliefs he held throughout his life. While most historians agree that Lincoln was thoroughly consistent in his declaration that he was antislavery, it is less accepted as to the motivation of why he was antislavery. To address the motivations behind his antislavery beliefs and goal of the end of slavery requires that his beliefs about the role and status of African Americans be established.
Opinion amongst historians is diverse and wide-ranging in regards to how Abraham Lincoln approached issues of race and equality. Don Fehrenbacher criticized Lincoln’s failure to move beyond the immediate horror and damage of slavery towards confronting, “that systematic racial discrimination might be, like slavery, a stain on the national honor and a crime against mankind.”[1] David Lightner found that Lincoln employed a politician’s touch in determining when to support black equality in America and how much equality white Americans were willing to tolerate. “I believe that if Lincoln’s words and actions are understood within their specific historical context, it becomes evident that when Lincoln said or did things that were inconsistent with egalitarianism, he did so with the deliberate intent of misleading his countrymen with regard to his personal beliefs and ultimate aims.”[2] Lerone Bennet took the provocative stance that Lincoln did not care about black Americans at all, “Insofar as it can be said that Lincoln had a policy it was to rid America of both slaves and blacks.”[3] Others employ historical empathy in categorizing Lincoln’s views and attitudes on racial equality within the context of the generational attitudes of the mid-nineteenth century, “. . .whether Lincoln changed his mind, the weight of evidence and logic seems to support the hypothesis that Lincoln died with the same basic views on black-white relations that he had held tenaciously throughout his public life.”[4]
From a limited summary of the historical research on Lincoln’s personal beliefs about the role and status of black Americans in society, it is clear that his views were complex. At the most they were in flux and evolving and, at the least, they were stunted and inconsistent. Considering that his life was cut short before he could more specifically develop what post-emancipation America would look like, it is valuable for historians to consider how his beliefs on racial equality could have influenced the role and status of black Americans after the Civil War. By analyzing and evaluating a selection of primary documents and statements, both public and private, made by Lincoln throughout his life, one will not find an absolute answer to what his beliefs were about racial equality. But one can gain a clearer picture of the fault lines that Abraham Lincoln stood on and what distinctions he was willing to make about the role of African Americans in society. Throughout the selection of documents taken from three pivotal periods in Lincoln’s life consider the following question: How did Abraham Lincoln differ between his beliefs regarding racial equality and slavery?
Eulogy on Henry Clay--July 6, 1852
Henry Clay was born on April 12, 1777 in Virginia. He later moved to Kentucky shortly after his marriage to Lucretia Hart and served a long career in American government as a powerful influence in both the Senate and House of Representatives on behalf of Kentucky. Known as the Great Compromiser, Henry Clay was a nationalist throughout his career. First, as a “War Hawk” who sought out the conflict with Great Britain in the War of 1812, then as a champion of the American System that helped to transform American manufacturing and transportation, and as a statesmen who sought political consensus on most politically divisive issues throughout his life.[1]
Abraham Lincoln (1854) Henry Clay (1819)
Clay was one of the founders and leaders of the Whig Party, an opposition political party to Andrew Jackson’s Democratic Party. Though he was had decades of political experience both in the Legislative and Executive Branches of the federal government, he ran three unsuccessful presidential campaigns in 1824, 1832, and 1844. His most influential mark on American life was as his role as the “Great Compromiser,” who found consensus amongst disparate interests in America when disunion seemed inevitable. He was instrumental in crafting the Missouri Compromise and providing the framework for the Great Compromise of 1850. Henry Clay died on June 29, 1852. Lincoln organized a committee to arrange for a public tribute to Henry Clay, which was organized for July 6, 1852. Lincoln delivered a eulogy he wrote for the occasion.[2]
Abraham Lincoln was a member of the Whig Party in his early public career and even as late as 1859 classified himself as “always a whig in politics.”[3] He spoke of Clay as his “beau ideal of a statesman” which reflected that Lincoln for a time sought to follow Clay in his footsteps.[4] Historian David Herbert Donald consistently demonstrated that Lincoln saw much of himself in Clay and that his eulogy of Clay contained reflections about Lincoln as well as Clay. “Mr. Clay's lack of a more perfect early education, however it may be regretted generally, teaches at least one profitable lesson; it teaches that in this country, one can scarcely be so poor, but that, if he will, he can acquire sufficient education to get through the world respectably.”[5] This quote obviously speaks to the parallel of personal ambition that drove two men towards great ends without a prolific education in their childhoods.[6]
General Jackson Slaying the Many Headed Monster (1836) The United States Senate, A.D. 1850. by Robert E. Whitechurch (1855)
Most of the eulogy was a factual account of not just Clay’s political career, but simultaneously of the political strife in American politics throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. Although, Lincoln did not describe Clay’s proclivities for less-than-republican virtues such as gambling, drinking, and flirtations with women; Lincoln did address Clay’s beliefs and actions as a slaveholder directly and clearly.[7] Through this portion of Lincoln’s eulogy, he reflected beliefs that he felt should be remembered, honored, and taken on by those who survived Clay.
Lincoln focused more on Clay’s work and efforts through the American Colonization Society than through Clay’s actions as a slaveholder:
“He did not perceive, that on a question of human right, the negroes were to be excepted from the human race. And yet Mr. Clay was the owner of slaves. Cast into life where slavery was already widely spread and deeply seated, he did not perceive, as I think no wise man has perceived, how it could be at once eradicated, without producing a greater evil, even to the cause of human liberty itself.”[8]
Lincoln reflected on two important beliefs that he came to in his early political career that he carried throughout much of his life. The first point was that black Americans—free or slave—are part of the human race. Though he made references to the Declaration of Independence and the Framers, Lincoln did not follow through with the logic that because black Americans are part of the human race they are bequeathed with all of the same natural rights as white Americans. But Lincoln divulged a consideration he rarely spoke or wrote about in his early political career with his second important belief: if slaves were immediately emancipated, a greater evil would be produced through the subjugation of free black Americans. Lincoln subscribed to the same belief as Henry Clay that one of the greatest obstacles in the path towards gradual emancipation was the widespread belief that black Americans would be placed into a nebulous status between slave and citizen. To address such a problem, Lincoln subscribed also to the same belief as Henry Clay that colonization was the clearest solution.
Horace Mann Joshua R. Giddings
David Herbert Donald attributed Lincoln’s consideration of racial equality as an obstacle to gradual emancipation in the later portion of his early political career to his experiences in Washington DC as an Illinois Representative. Lincoln worked and campaigned for the Wilmot Proviso with other Congressmen with more intense anti-slavery (if not outright abolitionist) feelings like Horace Mann and Joshua R. Giddings. Later in his life, Lincoln claimed to be disgusted by the slave auctions and lodges which held sold slaves in the nation’s capital city. Lincoln later witnessed the yeomanry of Kentucky reject a state constitution in 1849 that supported gradual emancipation of slavery in Kentucky. These experiences contributed to Lincoln’s understanding that slavery produced wide array of problems from denigration of America’s founding principles to support a barbaric practice to the development of an unofficial hierarchy of political and social status that placated poor white farmers.[9] By 1852, for slavery to exist as an institution, black Americans had to be considered less than white Americans. White Americans (slaveholder and yeoman farmer alike) did not want to compete with free blacks for land or jobs. While Lincoln was settled in his belief that immediate emancipation would only exacerbate those problems, he struggled to find a solution that allowed free blacks to live in a slave-less American society of the future. Colonization was the panacea to these problems.
“He [Clay] considered it no demerit in the [American Colonization] society, that it tended to relieve slave-holders from the troublesome presence of the free negroes; but this was far from being its whole merit in his estimation. In the same speech from which I have quoted he says: "There is a moral fitness in the idea of returning to Africa her children, whose ancestors have been torn from her by the ruthless hand of fraud and violence. Transplanted in a foreign land, they will carry back to their native soil the rich fruits of religion, civilization, law and liberty. May it not be one of the great designs of the Ruler of the universe, (whose ways are often inscrutable by short-sighted mortals,) thus to transform an original crime, into a signal blessing to that most unfortunate portion of the globe?" This suggestion of the possible ultimate redemption of the African race and African continent, was made twenty-five years ago. Every succeeding year has added strength to the hope of its realization. May it indeed be realized!”[10]
James Madison's American Colonization Society Certificate
The American Colonization Society founded in 1817 was the most popular of varied efforts at colonization as a viable solution to the problem of free blacks in America. Great Britain established its own colony in Africa in Sierra Leone for much the same purposes in 1787 and again in 1792. Following suit, the American Colonization Society helped found the colony of Liberia in 1820.[11] Lincoln viewed this as the most effective method to address the problems of free blacks post-emancipation. In theory, southern slaveholders would be able to avoid their fears of larger slave insurrections if emancipated slaves were sent to Liberia. Likewise, white yeomanry, factory workers, and frontiersmen would be able to avoid competition with free black labor should they be sent to Liberia. Lincoln maintained that any colonization efforts should be voluntary. He viewed this as the best course of action in addition to the opportunity it provided black Americans in following in the footsteps of the Founding Fathers in establishing a free and independent republic of their own.[12] Through such a process, black Americans would cathartically uplift the image of black man as an equal to the white man throughout the world.
While all of these motivations follow a theoretical logic and offer a Lincoln who considered the issues of racial equality at some level, it is clear that colonization plans were designed more to address the problems emancipation produced for white Americans, not black Americans. These efforts ignored that most black Americans did not want to colonize in Liberia (as they were born and raised in America) and this plan did little to reconcile the principles the American republic was founded on with the reality of problems slavery produced. When one considers the costs associated with such a project, it is clear why the American Colonization Society failed in this effort, despite Lincoln’s hope that their goal would be realized. It is reflective of Abraham Lincoln’s views on emancipation and equality that when he first considered the issue of reconciling the two races, it was through a plan of voluntary expulsion. Though rationally thought-out, this was a plan of wishful thinking that Lincoln continued to indulge in throughout his political career into his presidency. At this point in his career, though he was ardently antislavery, his views on racial equality were less developed.
American Colonization Society Map of Liberia Etching of Cape Palmas, Liberia (1853)
Lincoln hoped for and at times planned for the success of different colonization schemes into order to ameliorate the myriad obstacles the end of slavery would bring. As a politician who sought office in the 1850s, he varied his stance on colonization at different points and usually with vague description. As President, he used the mirage of colonization’s success both as a device win the support of political operatives in Congress as well as a means to end slavery while not creating a host of new racist systems of labor to fill the vacuum slavery would leave. In 1862, he pursued a plan congressmen from Delaware towards the emancipation of Delaware’s meager slave population with federal funding to immigrate the freedmen to Central America. The plan ultimately failed due its unpopularity amongst Delaware’s slave-owners. He sought a similar plan and pitched it to a delegation of the leading African Americans who summarily rejected it as a moral outrage.[13] The idea of colonization was a powerful though elusive one for Lincoln. It is significant for what it represented to antislavery advocates like Lincoln, a solution to the problem of racial inequality should slavery ever end.
Though it is clear that there are portions of this eulogy that demonstrate areas in which Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln shared beliefs on issues such as national unity, gradual emancipation, and colonization; this eulogy also marked the beginning of a period in which Lincoln began to redefine his political beliefs and identity. David Lightner commented on the parallel of this transition away from the tenets of the failing Whig Party with the death of one of Lincoln’s political role models. “In his eulogy following the death of the Great Compromiser in 1852, Lincoln pronounced that he had no intention of binding himself to the doctrines of his fallen leader. Even as he eulogized Clay, Lincoln quoted Jefferson’s prophetic words on the evil and the danger of slavery. . .”[14] Two years after this eulogy, Lincoln revived his political career in his protest and campaign against the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In so doing, it was clear that he had moved away from a strict adherence to the beliefs of the Whig Party by more directly confronting the expansion of slavery and assumed a Jeffersonian dedication to the authentic power of the People. His public statements adopted language centered on more democratic tendencies than republican. However, the beliefs he cultivated in his early political career held a strong influence over his beliefs throughout his entire life.
[1] Rush, Thomas. "Henry Clay (1777-1852)." American History: From Revolution to Reconstruction and Beyond. University of Groningen, 1 Jan. 1994. Web. 10 July 2014.
[2] Rush, Thomas. "Henry Clay (1777-1852)." American History: From Revolution to Reconstruction and Beyond. University of Groningen, 1 Jan. 1994. Web. 10 July 2014.
[3] Abraham Lincoln to Jesse W. Fell, [December 20, 1859] in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 8 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1953), 3:512
[4] Abraham Lincoln Ottawa Debate Remarks, [August 21, 1858] in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 8 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1953), 3:29-30
[5] Abraham Lincoln’s Eulogy on Henry Clay, [July 6, 1852] in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 8 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1953), 2: 125
[6] Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln. New York City: Simon & Schuster, 1995. Print. 165
[7] Rush, Thomas. "Henry Clay (1777-1852)." American History: From Revolution to Reconstruction and Beyond. University of Groningen, 1 Jan. 1994. Web. 10 July 2014.
[8] Abraham Lincoln’s Eulogy on Henry Clay, [July 6, 1852] in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 8 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1953), 2: 125
[9] Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln. New York City: Simon & Schuster, 1995. Print. 165-166
[10] Abraham Lincoln’s Eulogy on Henry Clay, [July 6, 1852] in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 8 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1953), 2: 125
[11] "American Colonization Society." Brotherly Love: Africans in America. PBS, n.d. Web. 12 July 2014.
[12] Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln. New York City: Simon & Schuster, 1995. Print. 166
[13] Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln. New York City: Simon & Schuster, 1995. Print. 343-345, 367
[14] Lightner, David. “Abraham Lincoln and the Ideal of Equality.” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society Vol. 75 No. 4 (1982): 292. Web.
