Thread:198.70.165.252/@comment-92.15.133.41-20140727194436

He told African-American United States soldiers in one of his speeches, "Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally."

President Lincoln, in his final speech, said that he planned to give African-American soldiers the right to vote, President Lincoln also signed a law giving equal pay to African-American soldiers. He also signed a law to not discriminate on skin color on who can carry the mail, and he desegregated Washington D.C. Plus, his valet William Johnson, who was African-American, got a job in the treasury and when Mr. Johnson died, President Lincoln paid for his grave, and had the tombstone say "Citizen". Would a racist do any of these things?

President Lincoln was a pragmatist, trying to steer a predominantly racist country that was either reluctant or opposed to change. He could not have spoken out so strongly against slavery had he been a racist. His vocal stance against slavery cost him the Senate seat in Illinois. He learned from this failure that he would have to tread carefully on the prejudices and apathy of the people he was trying to lead in a new direction.

"I have always hated slavery, I think as much as any abolitionist." "Speech at Chicago, Illinois" (July 10, 1858)

"I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world... and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest. "Speech at Peoria, Illinois" (October 16, 1854)

"We were proclaiming ourselves political hypocrites before the world, by thus fostering Human Slavery and proclaiming ourselves, at the same time, the sole friends of Human Freedom." "Speech at Springfield, Illinois" (October 4, 1854)

"Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature - opposition to it, is his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks, and throes, and convulsions must ceaselessly follow." "Speech at Peoria, Illinois" (October 16, 1854)

"Free labor has the inspiration of hope; pure slavery has no hope." "Fragment on Free Labor" (September 17, 1859?)

"In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip, on a Steam Boat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there were, on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons. That sight was a continual torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border." "Letter to Joshua F. Speed" (August 24, 1855)

"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel." "Letter to Albert G. Hodges" (April 4, 1864)

"In the first place, I insist that our fathers did not make this nation half slave and half free, or part slave and part free. I insist that they found the institution of slavery existing here. They did not make it so, but they left it so because they knew of no way to get rid of it at that time." "Lincoln-Douglas Debate at Quincy" (October 13, 1858)

"In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free - honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just - a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless." Lincoln's Second Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862.

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume II, (August 1, 1858?), p. 532

"So plain that no one, high or low, ever does mistake it, except in a plainly selfish way; for although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself." "Fragment on Slavery" (April 1, 1854?), p. 222

President Lincoln had great empathy for African-Americans who were slaves. Perhaps because he considered himself a slave while working for his Father as a farm hand, being lent out to other farmers, having to turn over his pay to his Father until he was twenty-one. He yearned to be free as much as any African-American who had been enslaved, and he felt deeply moved by the fact that for many of our African-American sisters and brothers in the United States of America at one time, slavery was a life sentence.

No, President Lincoln was not a racist. <ac_metadata title="Abraham Lincoln was &quot;Not&quot; a racist!"> </ac_metadata>