Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, elected in 1860, and is argued by many as the ‘Great Emancipator’ of 3.1 million of the US’s 4 million black slaves. There is no doubt that Lincoln was morally opposed the enslavement of African Americans at the expense of their basic human rights under the US Constitution; however the extent to which he expressed his anti-slavery views was often limited and left much to the imagination regarding his actual feelings towards the profitable American Institution. One stance on the Lincoln debate is that Lincoln was a hero and the ‘Great Emancipator’, the contrasting view is that Lincoln was simply a white racist. As a solution to the problem of slavery Lincoln was strongly in favour of the policy of Colonisation, which involved moving free African Americans to North-West Africa instead of their remaining in the United States. Lincoln was not the ‘Great Emancipator’ that many have argued; his role in the emancipation of slaves in America is clearly very crucial, but the legislation emerges as a military tactic to win the Civil War and keep America united under the control of the Union. Therefore he receives too much credit for being the sole guarantor for granting the freedom of America’s slaves.
Lincoln emerged as a prominent politician in the state of Illinois in the 1830s; during the earlier years he often described himself as an ‘occasional critic of slavery.’ In the year 1854 Lincoln expressed his feelings towards the institution of slavery, stating that he could not contemplate the political and social equality of blacks – this was due to his intense belief in the Declaration of Independence, framed by Thomas Jefferson and ratified in 1776. The Declaration ‘allowed one man to govern another man, without that other’s consent’ but it did not mention that white and black Americans had political and civil equality. Historian Eric Foner has used this argument of the Declaration of Independence as to why Lincoln opposed slavery, saying that it was due to the violation of republican beliefs and principles. The 1850s marked a more open approach by Lincoln in his views on slavery, he now began to describe a slave worker as being denied the reward for their own labour, which was theft. Lincoln believed that slavery was morally wrong, but it was too imbedded as an institution into the American mindset, especially that of the southerners, that changing this idea through political policies, for example the abolitionism movement, was too problematic and unstable to force onto society. The Southern states were agriculturally orientated and their entire system of economic wealth was based on slave labour, the Northern states on the other hand had began to abolish slavery after the American Revolution 1775-1783, but racism still remained a prominent undertone within society. Tensions surrounding slavery and race reached a peak with the Dred Scott v. Sandford case in 1857; Dred Scott was a slave that had sued for his and his family’s freedom after they had been taken to a state where slavery was illegal. The outcome of the case was determined by Chief Justice Roger Taney who made slavery legal in all territories, this essentially rendered the Missouri Compromise of 1820 useless and the US was now a slave nation in its entirety. Taney was strongly of the opinion that African Americans were an inferior race, and he thought that court rulings would help restore harmony within the slavery controversy. Lincoln stated that the Dred Scott ruling was ‘a burlesque upon judicial decisions.’ By implying the ruling was a joke, Lincoln is displaying his anti-slavery views, which illustrates how his opinions became stronger as he became a more established politician. Many of Lincoln’s supporters have defended his ambiguity over slavery, stating it was due to him ‘just being a politician’ and the need to present and public and political face.
In 1858, Lincoln stated that there was a ‘physical difference between the two races, which in my judgement will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality.’ This judgement fuelled the policy of Colonisation which he adopted under the inspiration of Henry Clay, a Whig politician and one of the founders of the American Colonization Society in 1816. The idea behind the policy was to relocate free blacks to Africa on a voluntary basis; land was purchased on the continent and the colony of ‘Liberia’ in north-west Africa was founded. Although Colonisation was supported by notable public figures, it never became a popular movement due to its complex and costly requirements. Lincoln continued to advocate the policy however and in 1862 he invited African Americans to the White House to encourage interest in Colonisation, pushing the flaw that complete racial equality could never be achieved in America; if they emigrated they could rule themselves and by free from white interference. His 1854 Peoria Speech argued that the only way to rid the US of slavery was emancipation in partnership with Colonisation. Although his intentions are to free slaves, illustrating Lincoln as an Emancipator, he is attempting to remove them from the US showing his inherent racist thoughts, so in which case he can’t be a true ‘Great Emancipator’. Frederick Douglass, ex-slave and anti-slavery activist, recognised this and, in an 1876 speech, described Lincoln as ‘preeminently the white man’s president, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men.’
Lincoln was heavily criticised because of his moderate stance on slavery in the United States, but this ultimately resulted in his being named a candidate for the Presidency, representing the Republican Party. He was picked because he had avoided the Abolitionist ideal of ‘racial utopianism’, instead opting for the more moderate approach that would win him, and the party, public support. As a result of the focus on the gradual abolition of slavery, Lincoln, unsurprisingly, did not win a single slave state in the election. Lincoln often had to compromise his beliefs in order to achieve his final outcome, he practiced ‘ethics of responsibility’, a term used by Max Weber, a German sociologist. The American concept of Manifest Destiny resulted in the debate of whether the institution of slavery should be extended to the new western states; the Republican Party’s platform for the 1860 presidential election was centred around opposition to slavery in these new territories, but ensured that slavery in states where it already existed would remain untouched. In Lincoln’s Inaugural Address, on March 4th 1861, he explicitly states ‘I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.’ This provides a strong argument in that Lincoln could not have been the ‘Great Emancipator’ that some have argued; even after he has been sworn in as President of the United States, he states that his attempts to abolish slavery will be limited to Northern states where slavery had been declining since the American Revolution, nearly 100 years previous. The Republican Party used the economic superiority of the North in contrast with the South and stated that is was as result of this free labour, rather than slave labour, as to why the North was industrialising, compared to the agriculturally focused South. Lincoln would never have been nominated as a candidate for the presidency if he had actively supported the Abolitionist movement, this meant he avoided developing a radical reputation and therefore gain enough votes to become the US’s 16th President.
The debate regarding Lincoln as a ‘Great Emancipator’ can be seen with his approach to the Civil War, 1861-1865, and the reunion of the Union and the Confederacy. At the beginning of the War, bringing the Southern Confederate States back under Union control was Lincoln’s main objective; the issue of slavery remained as stated in his inaugural address, that it needed to be contained in the states in which it already exists. His moderate stance meant that he received criticism from more radical members of the Republican Party who wanted to announce that the main, and only, war objective was emancipation of slaves. Rodriquez argued that although Lincoln wanted to end slavery, it was not as important to him as the reunification of the United States; she states this is clear through a private letter that Lincoln had sent to the Georgian Senator Alexander Stephens, which said that the South had no reason to worry because the Republican Party had no interest in intervening in the institution of slavery. As the War continued on, military defeats were becoming increasingly common for the Northern states in late 1862, and the emancipation of slaves was being encouraged as a military tactic by many. The defeats experienced by the Union in 1862 meant there was a need for more soldiers, and African Americans were used to fill these roles, this lead to Lincoln changing his stance towards them as he realised how valuable they were to the preservation of the Union. Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation as a military aim in a time when the Union was improving their position. It was perceived that Lincoln claimed the unification of the United States as the aim of the Civil War because he knew that many within the Union States, including the border slave states, would not support emancipation of slaves as the purpose of the Civil War. The Civil War never intended to end slavery, Lincoln would sometimes even argue that ‘it wasn’t even a war.’ Lincoln’s initial reluctance to acknowledge the emancipation of slaves as a Civil War aim means that some historians, like Todd Brewster and Richard Carwardine have argued that Lincoln was an ‘evolving Emancipator’; thus one could not argue he was the ‘Great Emancipator’ because emancipation was never part of his original agenda. Even Frederick Douglass, who admittedly had contradictory views on President Lincoln, that during the Civil War, Lincoln seemed ultimately preoccupied with the preservation of the Union and was ‘hesitant about making antislavery a part of his agenda.’
The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, announced in September 1862, declared slaves in enemy territory as free, but not those who resided in the Union; it was essentially used as a warning to the Confederacy to surrender. The official Emancipation Proclamation was enacted in January 1863 and enabled 184,000 black soldiers to fight on behalf of the Union in the Civil War, and were crucial to the victory of the North. Prior to the Proclamation, slaves found many ways to escape the shackles of slavery through Confiscation Acts and special Articles of War, as a result the government had already freed many slaves before the significant legislation. However the crucial aspect was whether freedom for slaves would be able to maintain its strength throughout the Reconstruction period after the Civil War, however Nagler argues that the proclamation ‘weighed too much on legal grounds to outlast the war’, let alone last the period of Reconstruction at the end of the 19th century. By 1865, Lincoln had thrown away his concept of Colonisation and openly declared, in his second Inaugural speech, that slavery was the main cause of the Civil War. As Lincoln was reelected for a second term, the Proclamation was hence seen as his form of immorality. Guelzo is one of the historians who believe that Lincoln had the intention to emancipate slaves from the beginning; Louis Masur would also agree that Lincoln was a ‘Great Emancipator.’ A contrasting argument is proposed by Barbara Fields who argues that Lincoln had little to do with Emancipation, and slaves actually ‘emancipated themselves’ because they provided the momentum for the Emancipation Proclamation.
Overall, Lincoln can not be argued as the ‘Great Emancipator’ because it is clear to see that his main intentions for the Civil War was the preservation of the Union. The freedom of the 4 million slaves in the United States became a priority when Lincoln became aware of the military benefits of this legislation and how it could be used against the South. The Emancipation Proclamation did not technically free any slaves, but marked a point in the War where they were now seemingly fighting to defend basic human rights that had been guaranteed in the US Constitution rather than for a unified America. The argument of Lincoln being an ‘evolving emancipator’ is very interesting and provides the best explanation for his actions over the course of his political life; it is clear that he is morally against slavery but you can’t argue that he was a ‘great emancipator’ due to his moderate stance he publicly maintained on the subject. As he stated in his first inaugural address, he had ‘no purpose, directly or indirectly to interfere with slavery in the states where it exists’; Lincoln was aware of the economic importance of the slavery institution in the South and therefore any attempt to abolish it would lead to a Civil War, which clearly became inevitable and led to the deaths of 750,000 soldiers and sailors.
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