Dissertation
 |  |  |  |  |
The first time Abraham Lincoln spoke out in public concerning slavery was in 1837, during his time as a
member of the Illinois legislature. Pro-slavery regulations had been passed and Lincoln joined with his
fellow Sangamon County representative, Dan Stone, in protesting these resolutions.# It is possible to see
from Lincoln’s service on the Illinois legislature, and during his single term in the House of Representatives
a general trend that is opposed to slavery, though mostly in a low key and non-confrontational manner. Aside
from a hiatus following his Congressional service, Lincoln was thoroughly involved in the major slavery-
related discussions of the 1850s, firstly as a member of the Whig party, and subsequently as a Republican.
Lincoln was usually tolerant of Southerners’ views on slavery in their own states as he realised that the
majority of white Southerners owned few or no slaves. Where he found cause for concern was in the actions
and perceived intentions of the slaveholding elite, together with their Democratic allies in Congress. This
chapter will discuss how the topics of slavery, slaveholders, and especially the possible extension of slavery,
came to dominate Lincoln’s political thought, as he became increasingly aware of the deplorable realities of
the institution. In turn, the changing political attitudes of the time influenced Lincoln’s views on slavery.
Political Development
The Illinois assembly’s resolutions of 1837 ‘readily affirmed its strong disapproval of abolitionist societies
and doctrines, and declared that “the right of property in slaves is sacred to the slaveholding States by the
Federal Constitution.”’# Despite the possibility of a unfavourable reaction from the Illinois electorate, Lincoln
registered his no vote as a protest against the pro-slavery measures. Lincoln felt compelled to stand up
against an apparent predilection towards slavery, and could not therefore support resolutions in favour of the
institution. Lincoln admitted that ‘the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy’ but that
‘the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils.’# A common theme of
Lincoln’s political statements on slavery can be seen in embryonic form here. While speaking out against the
institution, Lincoln cannot bring himself to side with abolitionists. This position is further exemplified by his
lack of condemnation following the murder of Elijah Lovejoy in 1837 by a pro-slavery mob. Lincoln preferred to
let the legal system deal with the murder of this abolitionist Illinois publisher in due course. The Lincoln-
Stone protest does reveal, however, a significant amount of moral courage, as denouncing slavery was
unlikely to garner Lincoln much support in a state like Illinois where antislavery sentiment was weak. Aside
from the vote in 1837, Lincoln’s focus during his days as a state legislator was on a different form of slavery,
at ‘breaking up the economic slavery of the Jacksonian sort.’# The institution of black slavery would not
achieve prominence in Lincoln’s political thought until his election to the House of Representatives in 1846.
While serving in the Thirtieth Congress, Lincoln took a firmer stand against some of the injustices he saw as
inherent in slavery. Part of the reason for this must lie in the greater prominence that slavery had in
Washington compared to Illinois. As Richard Carwardine notes, Washington was a city where blacks made
up a quarter of the population, a city with two thousand slaves, therefore Lincoln ‘could not avoid encountering
some of the bleakest features of the peculiar institution: the auction block and the trading warehouse.’#
Slavery’s prominence in the capital brought the issue to greater importance in Lincoln’s mind, as
demonstrated by his support for antislavery measures and legislation. While never adopting an overtly
abolitionist tone, Lincoln began to demonstrate more evidence of his oft-professed natural animosity towards
slavery. Among his friends in Congress were vociferous opponents of slavery such as Joshua R. Giddings
and Horace Mann, who helped Lincoln to ‘see that the atrocities that occurred everyday in the national capital
were the inevitable results of the slave system.’# With the strongly antislavery influence of his colleagues and
the evidence of slavery he could see throughout Washington, Lincoln’s attitude towards the institution
became more outspoken.
The political aftermath of the Mexican War in 1845 demonstrated that although slavery had achieved greater
importance in Lincoln’s agenda, the Illinois Representative was still not entirely focused on the institution.
The prospect of Texas being added to the Union as a slave state did not stir in Lincoln resentment against an
overwhelming ‘slave power’ whose members formed an ‘active political movement dedicated to preserving
or expanding slavery in the United States.’# Lincoln confined his reservations to voting against measures that
would lead to the slavery’s expansion, a stance in line with the Whig Party position of ‘no-territory’, which
formed a ‘positive alternative vision of manifest destiny.’# The same could be said for Lincoln’s responses to
the Wilmot Proviso, which sought to limit the possibility of slavery’s expansion. The Proviso was favoured by
Northern Whigs, but Southerners in the Whig party, some of them friends of Lincoln, were opposed. Lincoln
claimed to have voted in favour of it ‘at least forty times’, though this is considered an exaggeration.# His
consistency in voting for the proviso further demonstrates a stance that affirmed his moral opposition to the
spread of slavery, even at the cost of proving unpopular with some of his Whig party friends. Yet despite
signalling his opposition to the annexation of a new slave state, and his support for the Wilmot Proviso,
Lincoln rarely gave detailed statements of his position on slavery.
In the second session of the Thirtieth Congress, Lincoln announced that he would introduce a bill allowing
gradual emancipation in the District of Columbia. Whereas he continually reaffirmed that the federal
government had no jurisdiction to interfere with slavery in the states, the District was federal territory, and
therefore Congress could pass legislation concerning the institution within that area. The proposed bill would
have declared that no person residing in federal territory, or born within it, could be held in bondage. Lincoln
was always concerned about the constitutional rights of the slaveholders and therefore the owners would
have been compensated to ‘the full value of his or her slave…upon which such slave shall be forthwith and
forever free.’# Despite the limited area that the proposed bill would have affected, Nicolay and Hay noted that
Lincoln’s proposal was greeted with ‘that violent and excited opposition which greeted any measure, however
intrinsically moderate and reasonable, which was founded on the assumption that slavery was not in itself a
good and desirable thing.’# As Carwardine and Guelzo have suggested, supporters of slavery saw Lincoln’s
D.C. bill as a threat to slaveholders’ constitutional rights, while on the opposite side of the issue, fervent
antislavery congressmen saw the bill as too weak to combat the evils of the institution. With little prospect of
the bill being passed, Lincoln meekly retracted his proposal and shied away from subsequent emancipation
proposals. Don Fehrenbacher has noted that even as the president-elect in 1860, Lincoln acknowledged that
‘he had “no thought” of recommending such a measure and that Congress clearly would not follow his advice
if he did.’# After the failure of his bill, Lincoln’s contribution to the slavery issue as a congressman was
effectively ended and he returned to focusing on the economic issues that his Whiggish sensibilities were
mostly preoccupied with.
During the 1860 presidential contest, Lincoln suggested that he ‘was losing interest in politics, when the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again.’# For Lincoln the Missouri Compromise of 1820
represented the defining achievement of Henry Clay’s political career. In Lincoln’s view, the Compromise
was a ‘nearly sacred political pact’, that Clay had brokered between the opposing sides of the slavery issue,
and which promised to keep slavery ‘isolated, limited, and hence on the road to eventual extinction.’# By
defining a line above which slavery could not be permitted, Lincoln had felt confident that the Compromise
placed slavery past prominence, and the nation could move on to other political matters. Lincoln and other
Northern Whigs were mortified by the repeal of the Compromise through the Kansas-Nebraska act of 1854,
spearheaded by the Democrat Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln saw this act as ‘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.’# Lincoln was concerned that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise would set a
dangerous precedent. Democratic party newspapers suggested that Lincoln’s Peoria speech on the act ‘was
one that would have come from Giddings or Sumner, and that class of abolitionists’, and warned him that ‘no
talent he may possess, no industry he may see, no art he can invent, can stay the power of truth that supports
the friends of the Nebraska measure.’# The Kansas-Nebraska act threatened to embolden the supporters of
slavery to use their dominance of the national government to push for slavery’s acceptance in the western
territories. Thus the political ramifications of a slavery related issue spurred Lincoln to re-enter the political
limelight.
There was such a strong sectional divide in the Whig party towards the Kansas-Nebraska act that James
McPherson has suggested that Kansas-Nebraska signalled the end of the Whigs, and that ‘this law may
have been the most important single event pushing the nation towards civil war.’# Northern Whigs were
outraged by the audacity of the act, as demonstrated by an increasingly combative tone in Lincoln’s
speeches. Speaking in his home town of Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln asked:
What natural right requires Kansas and Nebraska to be opened to slavery? Is not slavery universally granted
to be, in the abstract, a gross outrage on the law of nature? Have not all civilised nations, our own among
them, made the slave trade capital, and class it with piracy and murder? Is it not held to be the great wrong of
the world?#
Lincoln was clearly troubled by the prospect of slavery entering into lands that had been declared free.
Colleagues on the legal circuit in Illinois suggested that he seemed withdrawn and spent much time taking
notes in the State Library from congressional slavery debates for possible future use.# But despite the
greater significance of the slavery debate in Lincoln’s thinking, his views remained those of a cautious Illinois
Whig, rather than a fire-eating abolitionist. While Lincoln opposed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise he
was not adverse to the admission of additional slave states in areas below the Compromise line. Before
1856, this stance separated Lincoln from the antislavery sentiment emerging from the new Republican party
and was consistent with the conservatism of Illinois Whigs.#
Lincoln saw the support of slaveholders, men who would benefit most from slavery’s expansion among
those who had sided with Douglas on the Kansas-Nebraska issue. As Lincoln suggested, ‘the South had got
all they claimed, and all the territory South of the compromise line had been appropriated to slavery; they had
gotten and eaten their half of the loaf of bread; but all the other half had not been eaten yet.’# Lincoln was now
concerned that following victory on the issue of expanding slavery into the new territories, the slaveholding
elite might push for further concessions, even to the point at which the North would be reopened to slavery.
The more Lincoln read and heard of the policies of Douglas and his associates, the greater his concern
became. Suggestions of a ‘slave-power conspiracy’ were still in their infancy, but the notion did not seem too
alien to Lincoln even in 1854. As Robert Cook has suggested, the Southern slaveholders did possess a
‘disproportionate influence on the country’s affairs by dint of the three-fifths clause of the Constitution and its
persistent domination of the Democratic Party’# Lincoln condemned Northern Democrats, especially
Douglas, of ‘complicity allowing the slave oligarchs to run the nation, of selling out to their southern
colleagues for a few measly positions in the national Democratic hierarchy.’#
In 1854 and 1855, Northern Whigs hoped to use their opposition to Kansas-Nebraska as a platform on which
they could make inroads against the Democratic party. They had not counted, however, upon the emergence
of the Know-Nothing party. Opposed to immigrants who threatened the prosperity of native-born Americans,
the Know-Nothings disrupted the emergence of a distinct Northern Whig party. For Lincoln, the Know-Nothing
party’s views on labour were little removed from those of slaveholders: ‘I am not a Know-Nothing. That is
certain. How could I be? How can anyone who abhors the oppression of Negroes, be in favour of degrading
classes of white people. Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid.’# Lincoln’s increasing
feeling of the inherent wrongs of slavery led him to question his future as a member of the Whig party. Initial
attempts to bring him into the ranks of the Republican party had met with rebuttals, as Lincoln was perhaps
wary of aligning himself with a party which seemed dedicated to abolitionist goals. Gradually, as Brian Dirck
has noted, Lincoln accepted that ‘Clay’s solutions to the passions aroused by sectionalism and slavery were
at best temporary. Clay was a man who periodically calmed the national political waters, but he could not
keep the storms from continually occurring.’# If Lincoln was going to have any hope of bringing about the
eventual extinction of slavery he would have to accept the Whigs’ failure. By the end of 1855, Lincoln realised
that there was a necessity for the ‘fusion of all the opponents to the extension of slavery in a new political
party.’# This brought him into the ranks of the Republicans.
After Kansas-Nebraska the next major issue to inflame Lincoln’s antislavery sentiment was the Dred Scott
decision of 1857. Lincoln saw Chief Justice Taney and his fellow Supreme Court Justices as being in
collusion with men like Senator Douglas and the Southern slaveholding elite. Taney had ruled that no black
person, whether slave or free, could become a citizen of the United States. Lincoln felt obligated to oppose
the decision which in his view restricted black freedom, and would lead to the further expansion of slavery. In
his famous ‘House Divided’ Speech in 1858, Lincoln suggested that the Dred Scott ruling would ‘declare the
perfect freedom of the people,’ which had been enshrined in the Constitution, ‘to be just no freedom at all.’
This was a dangerous precedent in Lincoln’s opinion and he concluded that: ‘We shall lie down pleasantly
dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free; and we shall awake to the
reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State.’# Lincoln found the decision
personally shocking, as he had always placed great faith in the role of the Supreme Court as arbiters of the
Constitution. Taney’s decision however, represented a great threat to the legacy of the Founding Fathers, and
the unnatural continuation of the institution of slavery. The Dred Scott decision played an important role in
Lincoln’s antislavery argument during the debates with Stephen A. Douglas in 1858.
Once Lincoln reached the conclusion that his moral stance against the evils of slavery was making headway
against Douglas, the themes of the seven debates followed similar lines. Lincoln depicted Douglas as a
proslavery Northerner performing a political service for the slaveholding South, ‘an invertebrate dough face,
just another Northern dupe in the Slave Power conspiracy.’# In turn Douglas suggested that Lincoln was a
black-loving abolitionist. Both portraits stretched the truth, but each speaker played on Illinoisans’ prejudices,
both toward slaveholders and to blacks, to try to make political gains. Douglas’s professed belief in the right
of popular sovereignty to determine whether territories such as Kansas were opened to slavery was seen by
Lincoln as evidence of a dangerous indifference to the spread of the institution. Treating slavery as a ‘morally
neutral question’ as Douglas appeared to advocate, was evidence of Douglas’s rejection of the ‘true policy of
the Founding Fathers: federal prohibition of slavery expansion.’# Ultimately, Lincoln and many Republicans
found the idea of slavery’s expansion to be more worrying than the conditions of the institution itself.
According to Lincoln the Kansas-Nebraska act sent a dangerous signal to the people. It was Douglas’
suggestion that he did not care whether slavery was ‘voted up or down’ in Kansas that worried Lincoln, as a
‘care-not’ policy would allow the ‘proponents of slavery to push forward their programme of expansion without
effective opposition.’# Lincoln saw the act as a direct violation of the people’s wishes, asserting that ‘if the
matter had been put to vote before the people directly, whether [Kansas] should be made a slave territory,
they would have indignantly voted it down.’# Under the guise of ‘popular sovereignty’, Lincoln feared that
slaveholders would pour into the Kansas territory and declare slavery legal. His fears proved justified, as two
different assemblies in Kansas, each claiming to represent the people, proceeded to both allow, and prohibit
slavery in the state. This abuse of popular sovereignty showed Lincoln that slaveholders were keen only to
act in their own self-interest, perverting the idea of self-government by excluding blacks from participating
As a Republican, Lincoln tried to make assurances to the Southern people that his new party’s ‘doctrines and
declarations are accompanied with a continual protest against any interference whatever with your slaves, or
with you about your slaves.’# Lincoln’s own views played a role in the shaping of the Republican party.
Lincoln demonstrated a moderate position on slavery that was attractive, or at least acceptable to most
members of the party. This moderation and his eloquence at presenting the Republican platform were key
factors in his nomination to run for the Presidency. Yet Lincoln assured his supporters that opposition to
slavery, to a greater or lesser extent, was a defining part of the Republican platform. As he told Henry Pierce:
‘The democracy of today hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another
man’s right of property. Republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar; but in cases of
conflict, the man before the dollar.’# Following the disappearance of the Know-Nothing Party by 1857, the
Republicans were left to face down the Democrats in the 1860 election to determine the future of the
institution. Slavery played an increasingly significant role in Lincoln’s political life as he embroiled himself
with the most vexing question facing the Union.
Southerners and Slaveholders
With many Southern friends, including his wife’s family, Lincoln was generally tolerant of Southerners’ views
on slavery in their own states. He realised that the majority of white Southerners owned few slaves, or none at
all. Lincoln feared that the ‘slave power’ wished to strengthen the institution and sought its expansion to new
territories and even into the Northern free states. Lincoln accepted that most Southerners were victims of
circumstance, and conceded that ‘They are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist
among them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist among us, we should not instantly give it up.’#
Southerners of Lincoln’s era had inherited slavery from their forefathers, just as the North had inherited free
states. In Lincoln’s opinion this was not necessarily a desirable state of affairs, but should be endured while
the rights of slaveholders to their property were protected in law. Besides, in the mid-1850s, Lincoln could not
see what the South could do with their ‘virtual impotence in the face of an entrenched institution.’#
As the crisis of the Union began to intensify in 1860, Lincoln spoke to the Southern people, saying: ‘You
consider yourselves a reasonable and a just people; and I consider that in the general qualities of reason
and justice you are not inferior to any other people.’# This parity between the two sections was a reflection of
Lincoln’s belief in the fundamental similarities shared by all Americans: the Constitution, the national
government and the legal system. While he may have been ‘critical of the institution of slavery as an
institution’ he was never critical of ‘the South as a section.’ Lincoln argued in favour of the South in ‘its right to
slave property as long as that property were restricted to the Southern states.’# The right to property was
enshrined in the Constitution, and as long as slaves were included in the definition of ‘property’, then Lincoln
felt an obligation to respect Southerners’ rights.
Lincoln was not averse to defending the rights of slaveholders in court, as the Matson case demonstrated.
He did not support those who sought to circumvent the Fugitive Slave law of 1850, despite its harshness.
Lincoln suggested that even a bad law should be followed but could, if necessary, be overruled through the
proper constitutional means. In a letter to Joshua Speed, Lincoln demonstrated that his respect for the
Fugitive Slave law overrode his distaste for slavery itself: ‘I…acknowledge your rights and my obligations,
under the constitution, in regard to your slaves. I confess I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down, and
caught, and carried back to their stripes, and unrewarded toils; but I bite my lip and keep quiet.’# Lincoln
combined an acknowledgement of the moral injustice that slavery perpetrated with repeated assertions that
he would not interfere with the institution where it existed.
Leonard Richards has suggested that a ‘formidable combination’ of ‘regional unity, parity in the Senate, and
the three-fifths clause of the Constitution’ helped the South maintain their dominance of national affairs.# In
Lincoln’s opinion it was the slaveholding oligarchy of large plantation owners, using dozens or even
hundreds of slaves, who sought to use their political leverage in Congress to ensure the spread of slavery.
Lincoln wrote to Speed that ‘the slave-breeders and slave-traders, are a small, odious and detested class,
among you; and yet in politics, they dictate the course of all of you, and are as completely your masters, as
you are the masters of your own Negroes.’# Lincoln suggested that most Southerners were only roused to
defend slavery by those who profited most from it, men who stood to lose the most if it was not allowed to
expand. The impressionable Southern youth, however, was at risk from being seduced by the prospect of
owning slaves. Lincoln warned that ‘thoughtless and giddy-headed young men’ could act in defence of the
institution as slaves were ‘the most glittering ostentatious and displaying property in the world.’# Lincoln did
not doubt the determination of the slaveholding elite, and only the complete capitulation of slavery’s
opponents would resolve the crisis. Lincoln sought to lay responsibility for the burgeoning sectional
difficulties upon the Southern elites, who had ‘indoctrinated the people with arguments for state sovereignty,
issued warnings about hostile sectional majorities, and argued for the necessity of perpetuating and
protecting slavery.’# While men like Speed who owned a handful of slaves would probably not have suffered
greatly from slavery’s extinction, Southern leaders depicted Republicans as threatening the very foundation of
the Southern way of life. This encouraged Southerners to see slavery as an institution that needed to be
defended against Northern aggression. Fear of a ‘slavocracy’ prompted Lincoln and the Republicans to seek
a new president who could keep slavery out of the new territories.#
In Lincoln’s opinion, there existed a significant measure of collusion between the Democratic party and the
slaveholding elite. This association, according to Lincoln, was intent on spreading slavery throughout the
nation and constituted the greatest threat to the Union’s survival. Lincoln referred to a conspiracy in his
debates with Stephen Douglas, attacking the Northern Democrats for their complicity with the slaveholding
South. Later Lincoln would soften his remarks, suggesting that Douglas had acted as more of a dupe than
conspirator, and that evidence of a slave power plot was circumstantial.# Lincoln showed considerable
hostility towards those politicians, from either section, who wished to see slavery expanded. Lincoln noted
that Democratic supporters of slavery threatened the Union’s stability, as politicians who opposed slavery
could get ‘no votes in slave states, while their opponents get all, or nearly so, in the slave states, and also, a
large number in the free states.’# Some historians have contended that Northern politicians such as Lincoln
attacked slavery ‘not because it gave pain to the slave but because it gave pleasure to the slave owners.’#
There is some truth in this idea, for at times Lincoln expressed a profound distaste for the actions of the
slaveholding elite, without outright condemnation of the slaves’ conditions. Yet, as the letter to Speed referred
to above demonstrates, Lincoln could also feel a profound pity for the circumstances of the slaves
themselves. Overall, Lincoln accepted that the Southern people’s right to non-interference with their slaves
was protected by the law. Lincoln saw little fundamental difference between Northerners and Southerners,
aside from the presence of slavery in the latter’s section. He was mostly concerned with the nefarious
influence of a handful of rich and powerful slaveholders, whose goal was the nationalisation of slavery.
Hence it was the Southern slaveholding elite who were the focus of Lincoln’s condemnation of slavery.
Tackling Slavery
Lincoln’s ideas for tackling slavery further illustrate the limits of his opposition to the institution. Lincoln
repeatedly asserted that he was not in favour of the immediate or even gradual emancipation of slaves, and
made efforts to distance himself from abolitionists and radical antislavery Republicans. Rather, Lincoln’s
efforts were focused on ensuring the non-extension of slavery, which in his opinion would lead to the eventual
demise of slavery by natural means. As president, Lincoln would come to accept the idea of gradual,
compensated emancipation, but in the years prior to his election, a suggestion he seemed to favour was the
policy endorsed by Henry Clay: colonisation of slaves in Africa. Lincoln assured his audiences that returning
‘the African to his native clime’ was ‘morally right’ while at the same time, favourable to the interest of white
Americans.#
Non-extension of slavery was a key plank in Lincoln’s political argument against the institution, one he
repeatedly used during his debates with Stephen Douglas. Lincoln sought to reassure his listeners that
while he had no intention of interfering with slavery where it existed, he was adamant that ‘in legislating for
new countries, where it does not exist, there is no just rule other than that of moral and abstract right.’# In
opposing the Kansas-Nebraska act, Lincoln declared his position concerning slavery’s expansion, and it
was a stance he never deviated from. He compared the extension of slavery into new territories with the slave
trade, which had already been made illegal throughout the entire United States. Lincoln noted that these two
practices were ‘identical rights or identical wrongs - and the argument which establishes one will establish
the other.’# Speaking against Douglas, Lincoln declared that the Republicans did not wish to infringe upon
the rights of slaveholders to own their slaves in states already open to slavery, but insisted upon following
‘the policy that shall restrict it to its present limits.’# Lincoln’s theory was that if slavery was not allowed to
expand, it would become economically unviable, and would eventually be abandoned. During his
congressional career, Lincoln admitted that Congress had no jurisdiction over a state’s right to be free or
slave. New territories, however, fell under Congressional jurisdiction and therefore slavery could be excluded.
# Ten years later Lincoln still proclaimed the inherent wrongs in extending slavery as a threat to the liberty of
all. In the final debate with Douglas, he asked rhetorically:
What is it that we hold most dear amongst us? Our own liberty and prosperity. What has ever threatened our
liberty and prosperity save and except this institution of Slavery? If this is true, how do you propose to improve
the condition of things by enlarging Slavery - by spreading it out and making it bigger?#
Lincoln was confident that in calling for the non-extension of slavery, he was acting in line with the Founders’
intentions. He reminded listeners that when faced with the question of what policy to follow with regard to the
western territories, the Founding Fathers had argued for the policy of restricting slavery.# It was a simple
choice in Lincoln’s mind: allow the spread of slavery to continue unchecked, and eventually all the states and
territories would be open to slavery, or ensure the non-extension of slavery and thus put the institution on the
path to ultimate extinction. The latter option would allow free labour to flourish, and give all Americans the
prospect of enjoying the rewards of their own industry. Lincoln was concerned that following Kansas-
Nebraska, the scales between slavery and freedom had been dangerously tipped, and he was keen to return
to the balance that was found in the Missouri Compromise.
With regard to abolitionists and their doctrines, Lincoln appeared wary and suggested that extremists on
either side of the slavery divide were pushing the two sections further apart. Lincoln was in favour of a policy
of non-interference with slavery combined with non-extension. Abolitionist Republicans, in Lincoln’s view,
threatened the moderate position by casting an extremist shadow on the whole party. Southerners were less
likely to hear the conciliatory tones in Lincoln’s addresses when confronted with raging fire-brands and
abolition activists like John Brown. By 1858 Lincoln was asserting his opposition to the idea of emancipation,
gradual or immediate, as well as those who sought to contradict the Fugitive Slave law.# These proposals
were too radical for Lincoln, who suggested such actions would promote resentment in the slaveholding
states. This helps to explain why Lincoln was most supportive of the non-extension of slavery: ‘If slavery could
not grow, he argued, it would eventually wither and die a natural death. During the interim years, as the
institution declined in social health, plans could be worked out for its orderly demise.’# Lincoln was unsure
whether the immediate emancipation of all black slaves would accomplish any real good. Emancipated
slaves would be thrown into competition with free white labour, and the situation for both peoples would
deteriorate further.
In Lincoln’s opinion, abolitionist activities were in violation of the principles that he had striven to uphold while
practising the law: ‘separation of intent and action, motive and appearance, private and public.’# He felt that if
abolitionists took the law into their own hands while opposing slavery they were acting against the
foundations of the Union. Respect for the law and American institutions was at the heart of Lincoln’s
philosophy, and if slavery was a violation of the principle of liberty, then abolitionists were guilty of abusing the
legal system and degenerating into mob rule. Distrust of abolitionists may stem from Lincoln associating
their activities with Henry Clay’s defeat in the 1844 election. He was of the firm opinion that had Clay won that
election, Whig principles would have been ‘in the ascendant, and Texas not annexed.’# Therefore, through
their overzealous opposition to slavery, the abolitionists had actually helped to perpetuate it. Following the
disastrous conclusion to John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, Lincoln declared that while John Brown
‘agreed with us in thinking slavery wrong,’ his beliefs could not ‘excuse violence, bloodshed and treason.’#
There was some degree of political calculation behind Lincoln’s condemnation, as he realised that a large
proportion of whites in his state of Illinois and the North in general saw the abolitionists as advocates of
immediate racial equality. Lincoln was keen to emphasise that the Republicans were ‘dedicated to free-
soilism rather than abolitionism’ and sought to ‘marginalize the fugitive slave issue, which was closely
associated in the public mind with abolitionist sympathies.’# While some Northern leaders remained
confused over Lincoln’s apparent opposition to both slavery and abolitionism, the pragmatic amongst them
realised that it was the best compromise they could hope for if they were to have a legitimate chance of
offering effective opposition to the supporters of slavery. Hence the reason Abraham Lincoln was chosen to
be the Republican candidate in the 1860 election, as he could appeal to most ideological bases within the
party.
Aside from a non-extension doctrine, Lincoln’s other policy towards tackling slavery involved support for
colonisation. He seemed to have been converted to this proposal by Henry Clay, who as a member of the
Colonisation Society, had promoted the idea for more than twenty years. Lincoln himself was a manager of
the Illinois State Colonisation society and addressed the annual meetings in 1853 and 1855, as well as
contributing money to the organisation.# Giving Clay’s eulogy, Lincoln made reference to Clay’s suggestion
of colonisation as the ‘possible ultimate redemption of the African race and African continent.’# Perhaps
strangely, Lincoln seemed convinced that the resettlement of blacks in Africa would be acceptable to all
parties, even though leading Northern blacks were resolutely opposed to the plan. Two years after this
eulogy, it appeared Lincoln’s belief in the scheme was wavering. During his speech on Kansas-Nebraska,
Lincoln admitted:
If all earthly power were given to 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…whatever of high
hope, (as I think there is) there may be in this, in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible.#
Historians have wondered why Lincoln would take ‘refuge, politically and psychologically’ in such an
unrealistic programme. William Gienapp suggested Lincoln took this stance so as to ‘avoid confronting the
consequences of emancipation, for which he had no solution.’# It has also been suggested that Lincoln saw
the moral argument in colonisation, that he ‘chose to emphasise the moral grandeur of the scheme and its
potential for redeeming a guilty nation, an affronted race and the African continent.’# There was little support
for colonisation among Northern whites, slaveholders or blacks themselves, yet still Lincoln saw it as a
potential solution for the slavery crisis. He even enacted a limited version by sending a shipload of blacks to
Haiti in 1863.# Lincoln’s apparent wish to see all blacks shipped to Africa where they could reclaim their
freedom was doomed to failure. When he did have the power to enforce the policy as president, he realised it
was not going to ameliorate the situation. It is difficult to find a place for colonisation in Lincoln’s views on
slavery, other than to cite it as an example of Lincoln’s reluctance to advocate emancipation. His distrust of
abolitionist doctrines led him to see any plans for immediate emancipation of slaves as a threat to the
stability of the Union. Therefore it is perhaps natural that a man who was also opposed to slavery should
seek to find a compromise that would allow the slaves to be free, but not place the burden of their need for
work upon white America. Ultimately, Lincoln realised colonisation was never going to be feasible, and
focused on advocating a policy of non-extension of slavery. This may not have immediately alleviated the
suffering of the Southern slaves, but it was the only way to bring about the demise of slavery without
shattering the Union in the process.
If Lincoln’s opposition to the institution of slavery was at times muted, he always vociferously opposed any
suggestion of it spreading. Again, Douglas was a target for his criticism, with Lincoln claiming that ‘Douglas’
s policy which rigorously excludes all idea of there being any wrong in slavery, does lead inevitably to the
nationalisation of the Institution; and all who deprecate that consummation, and yet are seduced into his
support, do but cut their own throats.’# Lincoln was concerned that the precedent set in Kansas would lead to
further territories being opened up to slavery, to the point where the free states would be vastly outnumbered
in Congress by the proslavery Southerners and Democrats. When Douglas claimed that anyone who wants
slaves has a right to hold them, Lincoln retorted that the senator was ‘blowing out the moral lights’ around the
nation, while ‘preparing the public mind, by his vast influence, for making the institution of slavery perpetual
and national.’# In his 1854 speech on the Kansas-Nebraska act, Lincoln declared that the existence of
slavery:
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 - criticising the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is
no right principle of action but self-interest.#
Lincoln could not accept the presence of an institution that deprived so many people of their right to live free
from the dominion of others. Lincoln asserted that ‘no matter in what shape it comes, whether from the
mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labour, or from
one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.’# Allowing
slavery to remain unchecked in the Union was to clear a path for a return to tyranny.
| | | | |
