Why Is It That Abraham Lincoln Is Portrayed As One Who Wanted To Abololish Slavery?

Especially in schools, we learn that Lincoln was a great man who wanted to get rid of slavery. That wasn't the case. Anyone who reads up on him finds out that ridding slavery was never one of his intentions.





Why is he portrayed as doing so?|||You seem to have misunderstood what Lincoln WANTED to do, and what he thought he COULD do practically and under the Constitution.





He was not an 'abolitionist' in the sense that his agenda was to pass federal laws to ban slavery. But he DID wish for the end of slavery, had a strategy for moving TOWARD that goal, and acted strongly to end it, by Constitutional means, when the opportunity arose.





Here's an overview of HIS views. First to summarize:





Lincoln thought slavery a moral EVIL and wished to see come to an end, but he thought the wisest course was to tolerate it where it existed, but PREVENT its SPREAD.... by which means it would be put "on the road to extinction".





He did not believe he (as President) or the Congress had Constitutional authority, to act against it in the states, though they COULD and SHOULD keep it out of the territories.


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Let's let Lincoln explain himself-- in his statements over YEARS.





First, Lincoln declared slavery a serious WRONG -- not just a personal wrong, but a great injustice, destructive to society, and contrary to the most basic 'proposition' he believed the country to be founded on.





in the 6th Lincoln-Douglas debate (Oct 13, 1858)





"I suggest that the difference of opinion, reduced to its lowest terms, is no other than the difference between the men who think slavery a wrong and those who do not think it wrong. THE REPUBLICAN PARTY THINK IT WRONG-WE THINK IT IS A MORAL, A SOCIAL AND A POLITICAL WRONG. We think it as a wrong not confining itself merely to the persons or the States where it exists, but that it is a wrong in its tendency, to say the least, that extends itself to the existence of the whole nation. Because we think it wrong, we propose a course of policy that shall deal with it as a wrong. We deal with it as with any other wrong, in so far as we can prevent its growing any larger, and so deal with it that in the run of time there may be some promise of an end to it"


http://www.nps.gov/archive/liho/debate6.鈥?/a>





shortly after -





"I believe the declaration that 'all men are created equal' is the great fundamental principle upon which our free institutions rest; that n---- slavery is violative of that principle; but that, by our frame of government, that principle has not been made one of legal obligation; that by our frame of government, States which have slavery are to retain it, or surrender it at their own pleasure; and that all others--individuals, free States and national Government--are constitutionally bound to leave them alone about it."


- letter to Hon. J.J. Brown, Oct 18, 1858


http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2657/2657鈥?/a>





"there is no reason in the world why the n----- is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence,--the right to 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, he is not my equal in many respects, --certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowments. But in the right to eat the bread, without 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."


- Speech at Columbus Ohio, Sep 16, 1859





Cooper Union Address (Feb 1860)


"If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality - its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension - its enlargement. All they ask, we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and OUR THINKING IT WRONG, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being right; but, THINKING IT WRONG, AS WE DO, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this?"


http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/鈥?/a>








In his First Inaugural Address (Mar 4, 1861)


"One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended"


http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres31.html





(Do note that seven states had seceded at this point, and Lincoln is seeking to win them BACK. So don't expect an outright attack on slavery here! Yet he DOES repeat the belief that slavery is WRONG.)





Shortly before issuing the Emancipation Proclamation (when he had decided to do so), in explaining how he made decided his actions re slavery as President Lincoln concludes:





"I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free."


http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/鈥?/a>





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The issue then is, what did Lincoln propose could and should be DONE about this evil.





In his famous "House Divided Speech" (June 1858), kicking off his Senate race against Douglas:





"I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will 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 its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new, North as well as South."


http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2934鈥?/a>





Here he briefly shows how HE, as on OPPONENT of slavery, expected slavery to become EXTINCT -- by stopping it from SPREADING. (He repeated this point many times in the debates with Douglas.)





Again, in the Cooper Union Address, after the quote cited above, he ends the speech by explaining the Republican strategy and its reason. (Note that INSISTS on NOT yielding to the demands of Southerners and Democrats in response to THREATS of disunion.) :





"Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored - contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between THE RIGHT AND THE WRONG, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man - such as a policy of "don't care" on a question about which all true men do care - such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance - such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did.





"Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT."


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The REST of the story is in Lincoln's actions AS President





1) he presented the Emancipation Proclamation, which he believed he had the authority to invoke as an act of WAR, as ALSO an act of JUSTICE for which he was hopeful of GOD'S approval


http://www.nps.gov/ncro/anti/emancipatio鈥?/a>





2) his fight from EARLY in the war for "compensated emancipation", which he achieved in Washington DC but the border states refused to accept





3) his later all-out push for the passage of the 13th amendment - a CONSTITUTIONAL means of ending slavery nationally





see much more here:


http://www.mrlincolnandfreedom.org/|||Because inevitably, that is what he did.





I agree that his original decision was capitalistic in heart to raise the prestige of the manufacturing north over the agricultural south, but by crushing the agricultural people, he abolished slavery...slaves were necessary in the agricultural areas before tractors and machinery and not in factories. Abe wanted the north to make more money and be able to get cheaper goods.





Just as it is today, war is caused by nothing more than money making propositions. If something good comes of it, the historians will emphasize that and negate the money making, selfish and greedy aspects of it. Another part of the propoganda machine at work...this generation didn't invent that.|||Many people learn only the superficial essence of history. You have delved deeper to realize that Lincoln frequently tried to tell the Americans of the South that he had no intention of abolishing slavery in their states if they would stay in the Union. Many Southerners refused to believe his promises. Many African Americans praised Lincoln as their liberator. The myth grew. In the end, Lincoln became the emancipator due to the war, but that was not his original inclination when he began his presidency.|||Because he in fact did want to. In July 1862, Congress moved to free the slaves by passing the Second Confiscation Act. The goal was to weaken the rebellion, which was led and controlled by slave owners. While it did not abolish the legal institution of slavery (the Thirteenth Amendment did that), the Act showed that Lincoln had the support of Congress in liberating slaves owned by rebels. This new law was implemented with Lincoln's "Emancipation Proclamation."





Ending slavery was always a primary goal of the Lincoln administration. However, the American public was slow to embrace the idea. In a shrewdly penned letter to Horace Greeley, editor of The New York Tribune, Lincoln masked his goal of ending slavery by making it subservient to the cause of preserving the union.





The Emancipation Proclamation, announced on September 22 and put into effect on January 1, 1863, freed slaves in territories not under Union control. As Union armies advanced south, more slaves were liberated until all of them in Confederate hands (over three million) were freed. Lincoln later said: "I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper." The proclamation made the abolition of slavery in the rebel states an official war goal. Lincoln then threw his energies into passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to permanently abolish slavery throughout the nation.