Patience Over Desire

The talk about Lincoln tonight was a very interesting commentary on possibly the greatest president in our nation's history. While I agreed with almost all of his statements and points, one struck odd to me, and this was the fact that he stated that Lincoln was not an abolitionist. I do not contend that the goals of his presidency were based entirely around the goal of extinguishing slavery, I do contend that it was a major part of his plans. I believe that Lincoln was in fact the greatest politician in the history of the nation and was able to lay his foundations for his goal while not blatantly ostracizing any of his supporters. Hunter S. Thompson once wrote that "politics is the art of controlling one's environment." Lincoln exemplifies this theory to a tee. One of the chief arguments against Lincoln's "abolitionism" was the fact that Lincoln proclaimed John Brown and his supporters were "radicals". There is a flaw in this logic in two ways. First, John Brown proposed to murder innocents as means to meet his ends. Lincoln, as a politician, could not be viewed as a blood monger of anytime, especially at a time of such great tension in the country. Second, which is partly driven from the first though not entirely, is that Lincoln was running for president. I was fortunate enough to have been raised half in the north and half in the south. Therefore, I have learned the two views when regarding these issues first hand. In the north, he was regarded as a sort of martyr for his sacrifice for the slaves. In the south, he was viewed as a monster who murdered an innocent prairie family. These views still hold true today. Lincoln was campaigning for president in 1859 and 1860, a year before the Confederacy ultimately seceded. When on the campaign trail, he was a third party candidate, running under the newly formed Republican party. He, therefore, could talk of the evils of slavery and what not to those who would listen in the north and south. He could not, however, advocate the actions of John Brown or his means anywhere, no matter if he believed in his goal or not. This is because though this select group of Southerners may not have agreed with slavery, the attitude of the south has always been extremely neighbor oriented, much more so than the north. I know for a fact that they would never have stood for anyone, especially a Yankee, murdering their fellow good ole' boys.That is why he referred to John Brown as a radical, he dared not ostracize even the tiny amount of southerners that would vote his way. This was also to not motivate the South to secede, which was a real possibility at the time. It was a political maneuver. When he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, he did not free the slaves in the Union's border states as not to turn them away from the Union, even though they would all be freed sooner rather than later. He was at heart an abolitionist, but knew his duty to the nation to keep it together, even if he had to put his goals of destroying slavery to the side. So perhaps the speaker and I merely differ in our definition of abolitionist. But through all the indications brought up, Lincoln's "anti abolitionist" behaviors can be explained as reasonable political maneuvers, which in the end resulted in slvery's elimination. The fact remains that there is no question Lincoln wished slavery to be abolished, just not through murderous means or at the expense of the Union. Therefore, in my mind, he was an abolitionist. There are many more examples, but I can not go into them based on the assignments length. This would make a great paper topic.