Abraham Lincoln: Saint or Sinner

[Rev.Cambeul]

BBC

To most Americans Abraham Lincoln is the nation's greatest president - a political genius who won the Civil War and ended slavery. But does Lincoln really deserve all this adulation? 150 years after the war his reputation is being re-assessed, as historians begin to uncover the dark side of his life and politics.

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6855735/Abraham.Lincoln.Saint.Or.Sinner.WS.PDTV.XviD-FTP

[Rev.Cambeul]

"Negro equality! Fudge! How long, in the government of a God, great enough to make and maintain this Universe, shall there continue knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagougism as this."
Abraham Lincoln (Fragments: Notes for Speeches, Sept. 6, 1859)


We can [oppose slavery] without being called negro worshippers.
Abraham Lincoln (Speech at Columbus, Ohio, Sept. 16, 1859)


"I can conceive of no greater calamity than the assimilation of the Negro into our social and political life as our equal."
Abraham Lincoln (August 14,1862)


"We can never attain the ideal union our fathers dreamed, with millions of an alien, inferior race among us, whose assimilation is neither possible nor desirable."
Abraham Lincoln


I have no purpose to produce political and social equality. I am not in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes or of qualifying them to hold office or allowing them to intermarry with white people... I have never had the least apprehension that I or my friends would marry Negroes, even if there was no law to keep them from it... I will, to the very last, stand by the law of this state which forbids the marrying of white people with Negroes.
Abraham Lincoln


"I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will forever forbid their living together in perfect equality: and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there should be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the supremacy."
Abraham Lincoln


"Judge Douglas has said to you that he has not been able to get me to answer the question whether I am in favor of Negro citizenship. So far as I know, the Judge never asked me the question before" (applause) "He shall have no occasion to ever ask it again, for I tell him very frankly that I am not in favor of Negro citizenship." (renewed applause) "... Now my opinion is that the different states have the power to make a Negro a citizen under the Constitution of the United States if they choose ... If the state of Illinois had that power I should be opposed to the exercise of it." (cries of "good," "good," and applause)
Abraham Lincoln


"I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way 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 will ever forbid the two races living together in 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. I am as much as any other man in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

"...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, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas and the equal of every other man."
Abraham Lincoln (Sixth Debate with Steven A. Douglas at Quincy, Ill., Oct. 13, 1858)


"But for your race among us there could not be war, although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or the other. Nevertheless, I repeat, without the institution of Slavery and the colored race as a basis, the war could not have an existence.

"It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated. ...I suppose one of the principal difficulties in the way of colonization is that the free colored man cannot see that his comfort would be advanced by it. You may believe you can live in Washington or elsewhere in the United States the remainder of your life, perhaps more so than in any foreign country, and hence you have come to the conclusion that you have nothing to do with the idea of going to a foreign country. This is (I speak in no unkind sense) an extremely selfish view of the case."
Abraham Lincoln (Address on Colonization to a Deputation of Negroes, Aug. 14, 1862)

[G.L.R.]