Analysis Of Lincoln A White Supremacists

Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, won the Election of 1860 with approximately forty percent of the popular vote and a majority of the electoral votes. Lincoln grasped the attention of the nation with his Cooper Union Speech which opposed the expansion of slavery but not slavery itself. Lincoln embraced a more popular free soil opposition to the expansion of slavery. This caused the Republican Party to become a supporter of free soil but not abolition. Soon after Lincoln was elected as the 16th President of the United States, South Carolina seceded from the Union. South Carolina claimed that its state rights had been violated by the Northern states who failed to uphold their federal obligation to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. Shortly

article, Lincoln, a White Supremacist, fails to mention the actions Lincoln took to prevent the expansion of slavery, he still argues that Lincoln was a white supremacist. Bennett, Jr. mentions Lincoln’s feeling about slavery in the slave states. In the article Bennett, Jr. states that Lincoln “was not prepared to do anything to remove that injustice where it existed” (131). Bennett, Jr. is saying that Lincoln did not try to free the slaves in the slave states. The article does not mention the actions that Lincoln took to prevent the spread of slavery; therefore, Bennett’s, Jr. argument presents obvious bias that makes the information less reputable. Since Bennett, Jr. fails to directly mention that Lincoln tried to prevent the spread of slavery it causes the audience to assume that Lincoln also supported the expansion of slavery. Lincoln did not support the expansion of slavery; however, Lincoln did not take initiative to end slavery where it already existed. On the other hand, Gettysburg College Professor, Allen C. Guelzo’s article, Lincoln, Race, and Slavery: A Biographical Overview, argues that Lincoln was against the expansion of slavery in the new territories acquired by the United States. In the article, Guelzo states that Lincoln voted in favor of the Wilmot Proviso which banned slavery in the new territories from the Mexican- American War. Lincoln also supported a bill that was supposed to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, but the

argues that all of Lincoln’s actions were in favor of the white population of the United States and that Lincoln believed that the black and the white populations would be better off segregated. In the article, Bennett, Jr. states that Lincoln was for the white men of the nation and that he would do whatever he could to satisfy the white population. When Bennett, Jr. recognizes that Lincoln was against the expansion of slavery he argues, “Lincoln was opposed to the extension of slavery out of devotion to the interests of white people, not out of compassion for the suffering blacks” (131). This supports Bennett’s, Jr. argument that Lincoln only cared about the satisfaction of the white population. Lincoln also claimed that it was his duty to tolerate and give practical support to slavery which he describes as an evil that is supported by the Constitution. Bennett, Jr. argues further that Lincoln believed that immediate emancipation would be a greater evil than slavery. Since immediate emancipation was not and option and blacks and whites living together was not an option, Lincoln’s idea of colonization spread throughout the nation. Lincoln believed that black people and white people would be much better off with an ocean separating them. In Lincoln’s speech at Charleston, Illinois in September 1858 he mentions, “I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black