Abraham Lincoln is hailed as the Great Emancipator, but this is more schoolbook hagiography than reality. The reality is that Lincoln was a complex individual and many libertarians argue that the man was a tyrant. The thing that many people will find disturbing about the man was his racism. Clearly, he disapproved of slavery, but his views of race were more David Duke than Martin Luther King.
Here are actual things the man said/wrote:
“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races – that I am 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; and I will say in addition to this 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. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything.”
Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858
(The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume III, pp. 145-146.)
Lincoln was a complex individual, and his views on race were progressive for his day. He did not believe that black people were equal to white people in their endowments, but he did believe they were entitled to the same rights as whites. Lincoln said,
...notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence--the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas that he is not my equal in many respects, certainly not in color--perhaps not in intellectual and moral endowments; but in the right to eat bread without leave of anybody else which his own hand earns [the Republican version of what the other rights amount to?], he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas and the equal of every other man.
The fact is that Lincoln had prejudicial views of blacks that would be the cause of scorn and derision today. Yet, he also believed in their human rights. I think this is an important distinction to make. You don't necessarily have to like people to respect their rights. This is the difference between a libertarian and a progressive. This is a subject I can and will address in future posts. But I think it behooves us to see our nation's supposed saints as they really were as opposed to how they have been depicted for us in textbooks.
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