Why did Lincoln try to separate some aspects of equality and civil rights issues from emancipation policy and his opposition to slavery?<\/a> \u00a0Was he evolving on these issues?\u00a0 Does the tension suggest that he should not be remembered as a Great Emancipator?<\/p>\nYou can view (and vote) on all of the answers to this question at Quora, which is a free site but one that requires registration. Or you can see excerpts from some of the most thought-provoking answers below:<\/p>\n
Jimmy Grant<\/h3>\n
I think the Constitution and Lincoln\u2019s law background best explains his separation between equality and emancipation.\u00a0 I believe Lincoln was opposed to slavery however; his most important goal was to preserve the union.\u00a0 As it became more obvious that this was going to take place, I believe Lincoln seized the opportunity to end slavery which was as Oakes put it, consistent with his views on natural rights.\u00a0 On the other hand, Lincoln was a lawyer and \u201claw and order type\u201d thus his view that although he may not have liked the state laws that promoted discrimination they simply were not \u201chis issue\u201d.\u00a0 Honestly, could Lincoln have taken up this cause anyway?\u00a0 He fought a war to preserve the Union and defend the Constitution.\u00a0 Could he have in turn circumvented that very document by intervening in the laws of individual states?<\/p>\n
Brian Harding<\/h3>\n
The best answer to this question, in my opinion, is that Lincoln hoped to win elections.\u00a0 Phillip Shaw Paludan cites some remarkable statistics on the pathetic electoral returns of antislavery parties in Illinois.\u00a0 Lincoln\u2019s district gave the Liberty party exactly zero votes in the 1840 presidential election, out of 98,000 ballots cast.\u00a0 I agree with Paludan\u2019s assessment: \u201cLincoln fell short of full heartfelt egalitarianism for pragmatic, political reasons.\u00a0 Politically ambitious as he was, Lincoln had to skirt very carefully accusations that he was an abolitionist.\u00a0 His constituents would punish him for abolition views.<\/i>\u201d Though Lincoln was debating a race-bating Democrat in Stephen Douglas before an audience devoted to white supremacy, I believe Lincoln nonetheless revealed his true sentiments when he declared, \u201cA universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, cannot be safely disregarded.\u00a0 We cannot, then make them equals<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\nAna Kean<\/h3>\n
Lincoln never hid his opposition to slavery.\u00a0 However, his thinking on rights and equality for African Americans was much more muddled.\u00a0 On the one hand he believed that African Americans as fellow humans deserved the natural rights guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence, and to be paid for their labor.\u00a0 On the other hand, he wasn\u2019t quite sure if African Americans were his moral, intellectual, or social equals.\u00a0 In his first debate with Stephen A. Douglass he said he had no plans for political and social equality between blacks and whites. In hisfourth debate he said he that \u201cI as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race\u201d, and arguably racist statement.\u00a0 On this point Lincoln did not see any inconsistency between the evil of slavery, the entitlement to natural rights and a lack of full equality.\u00a0 It is our mind that makes the distinction between natural rights and civil and social rights.\u00a0 In other words perception depends on context.<\/p>\n
Brenda Klawonn<\/h3>\n
Lincoln separated equality from emancipation out of necessity.\u00a0 He needed to circumvent the abolitionists who he believed undermined self-government and he needed to keep any legal actions out of the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.\u00a0 He put aside the emotional side of the issue to focus on the legal side.\u00a0 In reverence to the law, Lincoln believed that we must obey a bad law until the law is changed, so he worked hard to change the law about slavery.\u00a0 His hard work can be divided into three monumental tasks: convincing people that slavery is a violation of natural rights, keeping the economy from collapsing, and changing the laws.<\/p>\n
Susan Segal<\/h3>\n
I think Lincoln shifted away from his previous positions on such matters as colonization for practical, as well as philosophical reasons.\u00a0 The Lincoln we knew in 1863 was not the Lincoln of the 1850s.\u00a0 He had evolved in his views to come to the point that he advocated emancipation without conditions\u2014no requirement of consent of slave owners, no compensation to the slave owners, no emigration of black slaves to distant lands.\u00a0\u00a0 Although Lincoln was not \u201cborn with a pen in his hand ready to sign the Emancipation Proclamation [nor did he enter] the White House with a fixed determination to preside over the end of slavery,\u201d he eventually got there (Foner 2010, p. xix).\u00a0 Over time, Lincoln changed his mind and views\u2014not simply for political expediency, but also because, through his on-going learning, experience, and exposure to divergent views, he came to believe in principles of equality and civil rights that made him a \u201cGreat Emancipator.\u201d<\/p>\n
John Sheridan<\/h3>\n
Lincoln\u2019s commitment to the 13TH Amendment in 1865, shortly before his death, is the greatest justification for his being labeled the Great Emancipator, as his role in this process was Herculean! However, Lincoln\u2019s premature death left the march toward equality far from the finish line.\u00a0 So in a broader sense, can you label someone who served a critical but limited role in this multi-generational story, the pinnacle position?<\/p>\n
Andrew Villwock<\/h3>\n
I believe the answer to the question of why Lincoln separated African-American civil rights from the issue of emancipation is to be found, like many of his distinctions, in his training within the law.\u00a0 In\u00a0Angels and Ages: A Short Book on Darwin, Lincoln and Modern Life<\/em>, his study of the two titans of 19th-century thought, Adam Gopnik offers as a paradigm the idea that \u201cWhen Lincoln proposed a cult of the law, he meant it, and we miss the thread of continuity in his life if we miss the passion of his belief in dispassion\u201d (Gopnik 58).\u00a0 He continues later to suggest that \u201cFor Lincoln, the language of legal argument\u00a0was<\/i>the true language of liberal eloquence\u201d (Gopnik 59).<\/p>\nRhonda Webb<\/h3>\n
In terms of emancipation, one is either legally held as a slave or he is not.\u00a0 Equality is a more elusive concept.\u00a0 Are people equal in terms of property rights, voting rights, natural rights, or social rights?\u00a0 The 1960s saw this same ambiguous understanding play out in the fight against Jim Crow oppression in the South.\u00a0 The 1964 Civil Rights Act had to be followed up with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.\u00a0 These historic measures came a full decade after the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision requiring equal access to education through the\u00a0Brown v Board of Education<\/i>\u00a0case of 1954.\u00a0 These rights were achieved piecemeal but would have faced great difficulty if enveloped in an intact package.\u00a0 Lincoln faced similar hurdles.\u00a0 The one true understanding of equality held by Lincoln was that of natural rights being essential for all human beings.<\/p>\nWoody Woodruff<\/span><\/h3>\n50 years ago, Martin Luther King gave his \u201cI have a dream\u201d speech on President Lincoln\u2019s very doorstep, and a whole generation grew up thinking Lincoln was our nation\u2019s first great civil rights leader.\u00a0But to Lincoln and his contemporaries, emancipating slaves and finding their rightful place in white America were almost totally separate issues. Frederick Douglass nailed it in a single sentence: \u201cThough Mr. Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white fellow-countrymen against the Negro, it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At Quora, the social question & answer website, we have posted the following essential question to help teachers and students organize their thoughts on some of the documents within the Father Abraham theme: Why did Lincoln try to separate some aspects of equality and civil rights issues from emancipation policy and his opposition to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2528","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2528"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4081,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2528\/revisions\/4081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}