Liberal Forum

OdeToJoy » 12 Aug 2023, 9:58 am » wrote: ↑

12 Aug 2023, 9:58 am

Did you even read the beginning of the article.  It shows his evolution from the prejudices of his time:

Three days before he met his destiny, Abraham Lincoln stepped through a door where no president had gone before—he openly supported the granting of political rights to African Americans. In this his last public address, the president commented on the Reconstruction of Louisiana and its impact on the newly emancipated and other persons of color. Despite demands from certain “Radical” Republicans in Congress and appeals from black elites in the state, in spite of a gentle and clandestine suggestion from the president himself, Louisiana had rejected the idea of African American inclusion in the body politic. Lincoln took the opportunity provided by those assembled in celebration of Lee’s surrender, to convey his belief that the right to vote be “now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.” Although disappointed by the state’s decision to deny suffrage, he remained hopeful that black men would soon be allowed to join their white counterparts in the exercise of one of the most sacred duties and rights of citizenship. Skulking in the crowd that night was John Wilkes Booth, who upon hearing Lincoln offer support for black voting rights supposedly exclaimed: “That means *** citizenship. No, by God! I’ll put him through. That is the last speech he will ever make.”

And ended with:

Historians are fond of saying that Lincoln “grew” in the presidency. Perhaps so. If the war taught him anything, it taught him the value of all Americans, even those degraded by slavery and whose lives had been circumscribed by discrimination. He had recognized their right to benefit from their own labor early on. Perhaps the war taught him that the ability of a man (or woman) to eat the bread he earned was only part of what made America strong. Perhaps he was beginning to understand that freedom without the protections afforded by a political voice made the idea of American liberty a hollow promise. It is unwise to speculate about how far and how fast he might have been willing to travel along this road of racial equality had he lived, but we can be assured that the men and women who stood to be the beneficiaries of that equality would have been a constant reminder to him of his and the nation’s obligations to them.