From: "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <rosserjb-AT-jmu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: on nation building
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 09:30:13 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)


     This is not inconsistent with what I said.  Lincoln 
was personally opposed to slavery from his youth.  But he 
did not see it as politically viable until the Civil War 
was in progress to affirm that position.  His parents 
opposed slavery as members of an anti-slavery Calvinist 
Baptist sect. 
     BTW, that Lincoln opposed slavery did not mean that he 
thought that "Negroes" were equal.  Such inconsistencies 
were quite common during the nineteenth century, and can be 
found in Marx and Engels as well.
Barkley Rosser
On Tue, 3 Mar 1998 11:04:20 +0000 Lew 
<Lew-AT-dialogues.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> In article <SIMEON.9803021816.B-AT-oem-computer.jmu.edu>, Rosser Jr, John
> Barkley <rosserjb-AT-jmu.edu> writes
> 
> >    Sorry, but Lincoln was against slavery.  He did not 
> >openly support the abolitionist agenda because he saw it as 
> >politically non-viable.  But as the Civil War proceeded, he 
> >gradually moved abolition onto the agenda, first through 
> >the Emancipation Proclamation and later through amendments.
> 
> I believe Gore Vidal has written in detail on this point, though I have
> not read his book. Anyone? In a debate with Steven A. Douglas, Lincoln
> said:
> 
> "I am not in favour of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of
> qualifying them to hold office... I am not in favour of negro
> citizenship" (_The Civil War_, by Henry Hansen, p.30)
> 
> In November 1860 Lincoln wrote to Alexander H. Stevens:
> 
> "Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican
> administration would directly or indirectly interfere with their slaves
> or with them about their slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you...
> that there is no cause for such fears" (Hansen, p30)
> 
> Referring to Lincoln's Inaugural Address in 1861, Hansen comments:
> 
> "Lincoln spoke calmy and without rancour. He repeated his declaration
> that he had no purpose to interfere with slavery in the States where it
> existed. He would execute the laws in all the States, since he
> considered the Union unbroken" (Hansen, p47).
> 
> It was only when the war was going badly for the North that Lincoln
> publicly came out in favour of abolition.
> -- 
> Lew
> 
> 
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-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
rosserjb-AT-jmu.edu




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