People at times get Lincoln fever. With movies and the prevailing thought that he was a warrior against slavery distorting the truth. Abraham Lincoln did free the slaves; but not because he felt Blacks should be free. He freed slaves as a strategic move to weaken the South. Proof of this is in the fact that the slaves in Southern areas that remained loyal to the Union remained slaves even after emancipation. Lincoln said that he would keep slavery if it would preserve the Union; and that he would end slavery if it would preserve the Union. Abraham Lincoln was a champion of holding the United States together, not of racial equality.

On the issue of slavery, and on his personal feelings about African-Americans and their equality with Whites, Abraham Lincoln had this to say:

      "Now, gentlemen, I don't want to read at any greater length, but this is the true complexion of all I have ever said in regard to the institution of slavery and the black race. This is the whole of it, and anything that argues me into his idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro, is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a horse-chestnut to be a chestnut horse. [Laughter.] I will say here, while upon this subject, that 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. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary...I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment...." -- Excerpt from Abraham Lincoln's first debate with Stephen Douglas in Ottawa, Illinois (August 21, 1858)

In a letter to Horace Greeley, dated August 24, 1862, Lincoln stated:

     "My paramount object is to save the union...not to save or destroy slavery."

Yes Abraham Lincoln emancipated the slaves, but not because he loved African-Americans or thought that Black people were equal.  Know your history!  Lincoln idolization based on a flawed understanding of history reminds me of Bill Clinton's presidency. 

An African-American woman at a college, with a fanatical glare in her eyes, said to me that Bill Clinton was another John Kennedy.  I laughed because of the flawed view of both Kennedy and Clinton.  Kennedy stalled on civil rights legislation; and had Dr. Martin Luther King's phones bugged over a fear of communist infestation of the civil rights movement.  It also wasn't Kennedy who pushed the most important civil rights legislation in history through Congress, it was President Lyndon Johnson.  As for Clinton, he may maintain an office in Harlem, New York, and play a sax, but he was against affirmative action.  Additionally there's still the little thing of investments in South Africa during the Apartheid Era.  Sorry to burst bubbles but Bill Clinton WAS NOT the first Black President -- that honor goes to Barack Obama.

Know your history and choose your idols wisely! 

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