For President's Day, it seemed an appropriate time to post on something I've been thinking about recently. Last month, I read the brief but very informative Antislavery Origins of the Civil War in the United States (1939) by Dwight Lowell Dumond for the first time. One of the themes he emphasizes is the ways in which Abraham Lincoln reflected the basic Abolitionist line of thought, though he may have differed with them on some issues.
But given our current understanding of race, Lincoln's attitudes can look jarring to present-day eyes. Especially his unfortunate opening to his speech in the fourth of the famous debate series with Stephen Douglas. This debate took place in Charleston, Illinois, on Sept. 18, 1858:
... 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, [applause] - 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 idfference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbig the two races living together on 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, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
The occasion of the Lincoln-Douglas debates was the 1858 Senate campaign in Illinois.
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