Lincoln a Racist?
I recent participated in a debate on the blog Port McClellan (www.portmcclellan.com) responding to charges that Lincoln was a racist.
The specific charge is,
Lincolln's (sic) statement 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” is about as racist as you can get.
Lincoln's quote is from his debates with Stephen Douglas in 1858. Here are a couple of my postings.
posted by Jay Cline at 5:02 PM
3 Comments:
Lincoln, whose wit and sarcasm I always appreciate, admire, and, when ever possible, emulate, was charged by Douglas as a dangerous radical who was advocating racial equality (no, you didn't misread that and I didn't mistype it). I guess Douglas got it wrong, if Lincoln was, in fact, a not-so-closet racist.
Lincoln, on the other hand, focused his words on the immorality of slavery and attempts to restrict its growth. Remember, he is speaking before a live audience, with no TV or radio to play to. Oration is as much theatre as anything Shakespeare ever wrote.
And Lincoln was good at it.
I am reading the 4th debate now, and I certainly understand Robert's confusion. Taken at face value, Lincoln certainly sounds, at the very least, like a pro-slavery advocate.
But as one of those rare individuals who knows sarcasm when I read it, and given that Lincoln was responding to highly charged political accusations that attempted to peg Lincoln as an extremist abolitionist (political death in the mid-1800s), I am really looking forward to reading these rather lengthy debates, if only for the sheer joy of Lincolnian word play.
5:14 PM
I would venture to say that perfect equality means that Lincoln was not in "favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races." In concrete terms, I would further go out on a limb and say that it means Lincoln was "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." Why? Because Lincoln believed "there is a physical difference between the white and black races which [he] believe[d] 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 [he] as much as any other man [was] in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."
But hey, that is just what Lincoln said. I lost my translation dictionary for English-to-English in the 1850s along with my Klingon-to-English translator.
Posted by: DSC | Aug 18, 2005 6:38:20 PM
Confining the argument strictly to what little has been quoted from the 4th Debate thus far, I am inclined to agree with DSC. But respecting those argumentative boundaries, it does seem that Lincoln is at least no rabid racist (assuming, for the sake of the argument, there is more than one kind). After all, it does seem to Lincoln "quite possible for us to get along without making either slaves or wives of negroes". Not to mention Robert's own admission that Lincoln was in favor of freeing the slaves and providing free passage to their homeland. Far from pushing the lot over the seawall.
Except, I know Lincoln better than that, and beyond the artificial confines of the argument thus far.
In the same debate (I did post the weblink of all seven Debates, did I not?) Douglas disparages the party that is putting up Lincoln's candidacy,
"He (Trumball, the other Senator from Illinois and an opponent of Douglas - jc) waited until I became engaged in this canvass (18th century vernacular for debate - jc), and finding that I was showing up Lincoln's Abolitionism and negro equality doctrines, that I was driving Lincoln to the wall, and white men would not support his rank Abolitionism, he (Trumball again - jc) came back from the East and trumped up a system of charges against me, hoping that I would be compelled to occupy my entire time in defending myself (which Douglas very nearly did - jc), so that I would not be able to show up the enormity of the principles of the Abolitionists. Now the only reason, and the true reason, why Mr. Lincoln has occupied the whole of his first hour in this issue between Trumbull and myself, is, to conceal from this vast audience the real questions which divide the two great parties. "
Douglas is responding to Lincoln's charges (which were really Trumball's) about Douglas' alleged disingenuous tactics in Congress (as I touched upon in my previous post). Douglas is upset that Lincoln is evading the issue of Lincoln's rank "Abolitionism and negro equality doctrines".
Now, I believe Webster's Dictionary, both 18th and 21st century circa, defines abolitionism as an ideology fervently and radically opposed to slavery. I guess those damn Abolitionists were pretty stupid, thinking Lincoln was their man.
Further, I would venture to say that the 18th century's "perfect equality" translated into 21st century vernacular, means equal outcomes not equal opportunity.
But, the jury is still out on this, so we'll see ...
Posted by: Jay Cline | Aug 18, 2005 7:51:51 PM
Mr. Lincoln wanted to send the former slave back to his homeland. But where is that Mr. Cline? Oh, do you mean after he has been stripped of his cultural cultural roots, that he should then be sent back to the land of his ancestors? I don't think so. His homeland, after two hundred years of involuntary labor, is America, as Africa is much more foreign to him than Europe is to the Caucasian. That's why, as Richard Wright, in perhaps the most insightful novel ever written about the African-American experience, called him "The Native Son."
Posted by: Robert Calrton | Aug 19, 2005 7:26:48 AM
First, I apologize for referring to Lincoln's time as the 18th century.
D'Oh! Even a math wizard like me has trouble with new math...
Second, as a teaser to my next Douglas-Lincoln Debate report, let me just quote Lincoln in response to Robert,
"If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia,-to their own native land."
That should directly answer where. But the real kicker is the phrase "first impulse", which will ultimately answer Robert's allegations that we are ignoring what atrocities had been committed up to that point.
I would ask, for a third time, what would Robert have done to resolve this moral quagmire. Robert et al seem very keen on criticism, but apparently do not have the wherewithal to posit even unworkable solutions...
Posted by: Jay Cline | Aug 19, 2005 7:44:10 AM
Apologies. This is rather long (five pages as a Word doc):
Is Lincoln a racist?
Yes.
The man has said some rather disturbing things, quotes that I was predisposed to dismiss as sarcasm. But Lincoln repeats these words in the other Debates, with a very obvious measure of sincerity. I fear I have ascribed to my hero far too much wit and ability.
Imagine the moral arrogance to judge a race, a people, who have not the opportunity or means to improve themselves, to educate themselves, to share in cultural experiences that could shape their understanding of the world; imagine the moral arrogance to condemn a people with simplistic epitaphs like nigger, or boy; imagine the moral arrogance to ascribe to people the physical lack of ability to understand, to judge them worthless as men and beyond redemption.
But how could a man who so obviously opposed slavery, who opposed the spread of slavery into new territories and states, who opposed the permanence that compromises afforded to slavery, who denounced the notion that the Founder Fathers intended for slavery to be perpetuated in perpetuity, how could such a man be so morally deficient?
Could Lincoln and his generation not see that their supposed superiority came not from any inherent ability or grace, but from opportunities denied to blacks, opportunities to learn and see the world from taller heights?
Our own modern understanding of racism comes from the experiences of such brave men as the Tuskegee Airmen and other black soldiers during WWII. They demonstrated noble valor and honor and sacrifice that was believed to be beyond their ken. And I certainly recommend the recent movie made in their honor.
The revelation they gave us prompted President Truman to integrate the armed forces in 1948; followed by President Eisenhower’s armed support against the State of Arkansas for the integration of public schools; and ultimately the profound and momentous march on Washington by Martin Luther King and his deliverance of “I Have a Dream”.
We are proud beneficiaries of this enlightenment.
So it begs the question, does it not, that if we hold all those dead white guys in moral purgatory for utterly failing to understand the nobility and honor and courage of the black man, are we not also guilty of the same moral arrogance in ascribing a racist epitaph to a man and an entire generation that had no experiential foundation to understand that hateful epitaph, an epitaph that was not even in existence before 1936?
(yes, Virginia. Language changes; if you want to understand a 19th century man, you need to speak his language. So maybe English to English dictionaries are not quite as useless as Klingon ones)
The truth is I have allowed Robert and DSC too much latitude and far too much longitude defining the boundaries of the debate. With their crass 20th century political correctness and their abject blindness to political evolution and their dogmatic belief that what was and what is, will always be, they have attempted to put their finger in the dike that threatens to expose their own blind 20th century prejudices.
The truth is that we should not, we cannot judge others strictly by our own preconceived notions of right and wrong, by our own imperfect ideologies of morality, by our own superior point of view as we stand upon the shoulders of our history. We are what we have become, we are the history that we have lived. And to assume that our moral knowledge is now perfect is to assume a moral arrogance that we are privileged to witness the end of times, that there is no more history to be lived.
There are 150 years of history betwixt us and Lincoln’s times, 150 years of profound history that the 19th century racists had no experience with. And our modern 20th and 21st century notions of race is as profoundly influenced by those 15 decades as Lincoln’s mid-19th century notions of race are not.
While DSC digs up an English to English dictionary to complement his Klingon dictionary, allow me to educate.
The quotes that are used to condemn Lincoln as a 19th century racist amongst a generation of racists were taken out of context, not from the Debates, but rather history itself. Between Lincoln and us, there has been a dramatic shift in the whole of American political spectrum. Lincoln's words, used today, would be disparaged as extremist to the max, in touch with only the likes of George Wallace and David Duke, and that accusation has already been flung like so much dung in this blog.
Wallace and Duke, with their despicable racist views, represent an extremist point of view in today's world, an extremist point of view that fears change and evolution. They are extremists on the right, though that does unfairly paint more mainstream conservative viewpoints.
Lincoln felt that there were physical differences between the races that would forever separate them. This was not sarcasm. He obviously felt it sincerely.
But in terms of comparative political spectrums, Lincoln was as much a left wing extremist in his time as George McGovern, Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich combined, is in our time. We need look no further than the Douglas-Lincoln Debates.
Douglas was a Democrat, a Jeffersonian Democrat, who earlier, with the other major party of the time, the Whigs, crafted and drafted 20 years of peace between the North and the South over the issue of slavery. In their mind, they were merely sealing the plan of the Founding Fathers started with the Constitutional debates and compromises.
But in 1853-1854, something happened.
In the wake of the Compromise of 1850, and then the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, the Whig party fell apart on the issue of slavery and the more radical Republican party rose it from its ashes. The Republican party was the party of the Abolitionists. Douglas himself called it thus (he also derisively referred to the members of the new party as Black Republicans).
These "Black Republicans" wanted to put an end to decades of complacency, to take a very progressive attitude and stem the tide of slavery expansionism in the new territories and the new states. The "conservatives" of the Day were Douglas’ Democrats.
One resolution of this new party, which Douglas quotes in the First Debate,
“2. Resolved, ... the Republican party, (is) pledged to the accomplishment of the following purposes: to bring the administration of the government back to the control of first principles; to restore Nebraska and Kansas to the position of free Territories; that, as the constitution of the United States, vests in the States, and not in Congress, the power to legislate for the extradition of fugitives from labor, to repeal and entirely abrogate the fugitive slave law; to restrict slavery to those States in which it exists; to prohibit the admission of any more slave States into the Union; to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia; to exclude slavery from all the territories over which the general government has exclusive jurisdiction; and to resist the acquirements of any more Territories unless the practice of slavery therein forever shall have been prohibited.”
Lincoln himself later amplifies in the same Debate,
"When they remind us of their constitutional rights (Southern people - jc), I acknowledge them, not grudgingly, but fully and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives, which should not, in its stringency, be more likely to carry a free man into slavery, than our ordinary criminal laws are to hang an innocent one.
"But all this, to my judgment, furnishes no more excuse for permitting slavery to go into our own free territory, than it would for reviving the African slave-trade by law. The law which forbids the bringing of slaves from Africa, and that which has so long forbid the taking of them to Nebraska, can hardly be distinguished on any moral principle; and the repeal of the former could find quite as plausible excuses as that of the latter."
In terms of 20th century racism, Douglas was far and away the greater racist. While Lincoln professed uncertainty with regards to his beliefs that white and blacks could never live as equals, Douglas was dogmatic about it. Douglas wanted to leave the issue of slavery to the individual states; Lincoln thought this "monstrous" and was adamantly opposed to allowing any new state to be a slave state.
Douglas orates in the First Debate,
"For one, I am opposed to negro citizenship in any and every form. (Cheers.) I believe this Government was made on the white basis. ("Good.") I believe it was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity for ever, and I am in favor of confining citizenship to white men, men of European birth and descent, instead of conferring it upon negroes, Indians, and other inferior races. ("Good for you." "Douglas forever.")"
and,
“I do not question Mr. Lincoln's conscientious belief that the negro was made his equal, and hence is his brother, (laughter,) but for my own part, I do not regard the negro as my equal, and positively deny that he is my brother or any kin to me whatever. ("Never." "Hit him again," and cheers.)”
and,
"It is the true intent and meaning of this act (Kansas-Nebraska Act - jc) not to legislate slavery into any State or Territory, or to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the federal constitution."
Lincoln's response is telling, if you look close enough,
"Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment, is not the sole question, if, indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, cannot be safely disregarded. We cannot, then, make them equals."
Lincoln’s “racism” is one of pragmatism, of recognizing the uncertainty of what it means, not one of moral arrogance.
But on the rights of blacks and the institution of slavery,
"there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. [Loud cheers.] I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man. [Great applause.]"
and,
"I think, and shall try to show, that it is wrong; wrong in its direct effect, letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska-and wrong in its prospective principle, allowing it to spread to every other part of the wide world, where men can be found inclined to take it.
"This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world-enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites-causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty-criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest."
and,
"When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it, in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution."
One of Douglas’ most incendiary accusations is that Lincoln is calling for war. In an earlier speech that predates the Debates, Lincoln’s famous “A House Divided” speech at the close of the Illinois Republican State Convention in Springfield, Lincoln asserts that,
“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free” (thank you Basler).
Douglas takes him to task,
“(Lincoln-jc) tells you that it cannot endure permanently on the same principles and in the same relative condition in which our fathers made it. Why can it not exist divided into free and slave States? Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, Jay, and the great men of that day, made this Government divided into free States and slave States, and left each State perfectly free to do as it pleased on the subject of slavery. ("Right, right.") Why can it not exist on the same principles on which our fathers made it? ("It can.")The knew when they framed the Constitution that in a country as wide and broad as this, with such a variety of climate, production and interest, the people necessarily required different laws and institutions in different localities.” ... “One of the reserved rights of the States, was the right to regulate the relations between Master and Servant, on the slavery question. At the time the Constitution was framed, there were thirteen States in the Union, twelve of which were slaveholding States and one free State. Suppose this doctrine of uniformity preached by Mr. Lincoln, that the States should all be free or all be slave had prevailed, and what would have been the result? Of course, the twelve slaveholding States would have overruled the one free State, and slavery would have been fastened by a Constitutional provision on every inch of the American Republic, instead of being left as our fathers wisely left it, to each State to decide for itself. ("Good, good," and three cheers for Douglas.)”
Lincoln first responds with another little homily,
“He has read from my speech in Springfield, in which I say that "a house divided against itself cannot stand." Does the Judge say it can stand? [Laughter.] I don't know whether he does or not. The Judge does not seem to be attending to me just now, but I would like to know if it is his opinion that a house divided against itself can stand. If he does, then there is a question of veracity, not between him and me, but between the Judge and an authority of a somewhat higher character. [Laughter and applause.]”
but Lincoln continues more seriously,
“I leave it to you to say whether, in the history of our Government, this institution of slavery has not always failed to be a bond of union, and, on the contrary, been an apple of discord, and an element of division in the house. [Cries of "Yes, yes," and applause.] I ask you to consider whether, so long as the moral constitution of men's minds shall continue to be the same, after this generation and assemblage shall sink into the grave, and another race shall arise, with the same moral and intellectual development we have-whether, if that institution is standing in the same irritating position in which it now is, it will not continue an element of division? [Cries of "Yes, yes."] If so, then I have a right to say that, in regard to this question, the Union is a house divided against itself; and when the Judge reminds me that I have often said to him that the institution of slavery has existed for eighty years in some States, and yet it does not exist in some others, I agree to the fact, and I account for it by looking at the position in which our fathers originally placed it-restricting it from the new Territories where it had not gone, and legislating to cut off its source by the abrogation of the slave-trade thus putting the seal of legislation against its spread. The public mind did rest in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. [Cries of "Yes, yes,"]”
and thus does Lincoln effectively abscond with Douglas’ self-proclaimed moral authority as he claims inheritance from the Founding Fathers.
Lincoln drives the final nail in Douglas’ Constitutional rhetoric,
“I think, that he (Douglas - jc), and those acting with him, have placed that institution on a new basis, which looks to the perpetuity and nationalization of slavery. [Loud cheers.] And while it is placed upon this new basis, I say, and I have said, that I believe we shall not have peace upon the question until the opponents of slavery arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or, on the other hand, that its advocates will push it forward until it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South. Now, I believe if we could arrest the spread, and place it where Washington, and Jefferson, and Madison placed it, it would be in the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind would, as for eighty years past, believe that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. The crisis would be past and the institution might be let alone for a hundred years, if it should live so long, in the States where it exists, yet it would be going out of existence in the way best for both the black and the white races. [Great cheering.]”
Lincoln has just put the blame for the war looming over the horizon on those who would establish slavery as a permanent, protected institution.
Yes, Lincoln was a racist.
But he didn’t live in a 20th century world, a world where the Tuskegee Airmen and Martin Luther King resoundly demonstrated the honor and courage and intelligence of the black man.
Despite my aversion to alternate histories, one can only wonder how those two shining examples might have reinfluenced Lincoln’s misgivings on “perfect equality”.
Posted by: Jay Cline | Aug 19, 2005 3:01:04 PM
5:18 PM
To summarize, clarify and elaborate, the two dominant political parties of the 1850s were the Jefferson-Democratic party and the emerging National Republican party. The single divisive issue between them, and for the nation as a whole, was the long term status of the institution of slavery in America.
The Democrats were a mixed lot; Southern slave owners wanted to be left alone, Northern industrialists were irritated that the issue of slavery was distracting and thwarting the westward expansion and growth of the nation. Compromise and maintaining the status quo, and states rights, were paramount concerns.
The Republican Party grew out of the older Whig party, mostly those Northern Whigs like Abraham Lincoln who feared recent congressional action threatened to "have placed that institution (slavery - ed.) on a new basis, which looks to the perpetuity and nationalization of slavery" (First Douglas-Lincoln Debate).
Although, as Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Senator from Illinois whose priorities of expansion and growth of the nation were in danger of getting sidelined by the slavery issue, pointed out in his first Debate with Abraham Lincoln, "(A)t the time the Constitution was framed, there were thirteen States in the Union, twelve of which were slaveholding States and one free State", most of those states had actually implemented formal plans toward gradual emancipation long time ago and had reached fruition.
Seven Northern and Mid Atlantic states had passed legislation that prohibited further slavery by 1800 and had ended the existing practices before 1850. New Jersey passed legislation in 1804 and formally ended slavery within that state by 1865. The Northwest Ordinance of 1789, which organized the land between the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys in the Midwest, specifically forbade slavery in those Territories.
These various state and national legislative actions towards a gradual emancipation was sufficiently acceptable to most people who wanted slavery abolished. The Missouri Compromise of 1820, which forbid slavery in the territories of the Louisiana Purchase north of the southern border of Missouri (except for Missouri), was resolved peaceably as it allowed the admission of Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. This maintained a delicate representational balance in Congress between slave and free states and set a precedent for the next four decades.
However in the 1850s, the issue began to polarize on whether slavery was to be a permanent institution or phased out throughout the country. This time it was about the admission of California as a free state and the status of recently acquired territory in the Southwest from Mexico. The Compromise of 1850 split the difference on many issues, but it also dealt a severe blow to the alliance between Northern industrial Whigs and Southern slave owner Whigs.
Four years later, Congressmen, such as Douglas, again attempted to reach a compromise with the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. But the balancing act finally failed. Those who believed in the eventual demise of slavery lost hope and that with each compromise slavery would never really be abolished.
As Lincoln argues in the First Debate,
“(The Democrats) have placed that institution on a new basis, which looks to the perpetuity and nationalization of slavery. [Loud cheers.] And while it is placed upon this new basis, I say, and I have said, that I believe we shall not have peace upon the question until the opponents of slavery arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction” ... “I believe if we could arrest the spread, and place it where Washington, and Jefferson, and Madison placed it, it would be in the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind would, as for eighty years past, believe that it was in the course of ultimate extinction.”
Between the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Douglas-Lincoln Debates, the Supreme Court had ruled in the Dred Scott case that a slave was property and could not be taken from their owner because of any travel through states where slavery was illegal.
To many Northern Whigs, that was just too much. The Whig party fell apart and the National Republican Party emerged with a platform to put slavery back on the gradual road to extinction. “Popular sovereignty” efforts by the Democratic Party to allow each new state to decide whether it would be a free or slave state heated up the debate as the Republicans and Abolitionists saw this as proof of conspiratorial alliances to thwart any resolution of the slavery issue.
Of course, states that were already slave states did not see any need to have the slavery issue resolved beyond what they saw as their constitutional right to own slaves. Maintaining a parity between slave and free states was more important, and these increasingly conflicting priorities ultimately set the free and slave states on its collision course toward civil war.
5:19 PM
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