And the article continues, as if anticipating this isolated quotation:
It would be easy, comments Oakes, “to string such quotations together and show up Lincoln as a run-of-the-mill white supremacist.” But in private, Lincoln was much less racist than most whites of his time. He was “disgusted by the race-baiting of the Douglas Democrats” and he “made the humanity of blacks central to his antislavery argument.” In a speech at Chicago in 1858, Lincoln pleaded: “Let us discard all this quibbling about…this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position,” and instead “once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.”7
Lincoln’s statements expressing opposition to social and political equality, Oakes maintains, were in fact part of his antislavery strategy. Extreme racism was at the core of the proslavery argument: if the slaves were freed they would aspire to equality with whites, therefore slavery was the only bulwark of white supremacy and racial purity. Lincoln “wanted questions about race moved off the table,” writes Oakes, and “the strategy he chose was to agree with the Democrats” in opposition to social equality. Lincoln understood that most Americans—including most Northerners—believed in white supremacy, “and in a democratic society such deeply held prejudices cannot be easily disregarded.” Thus the most effective way to convert whites to an antislavery position, Lincoln believed, was to separate the issue of bondage from that of race.
It would be easy, comments Oakes, “to string such quotations together and show up Lincoln as a run-of-the-mill white supremacist.” But in private, Lincoln was much less racist than most whites of his time. He was “disgusted by the race-baiting of the Douglas Democrats” and he “made the humanity of blacks central to his antislavery argument.” In a speech at Chicago in 1858, Lincoln pleaded: “Let us discard all this quibbling about…this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position,” and instead “once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.”7
Lincoln’s statements expressing opposition to social and political equality, Oakes maintains, were in fact part of his antislavery strategy. Extreme racism was at the core of the proslavery argument: if the slaves were freed they would aspire to equality with whites, therefore slavery was the only bulwark of white supremacy and racial purity. Lincoln “wanted questions about race moved off the table,” writes Oakes, and “the strategy he chose was to agree with the Democrats” in opposition to social equality. Lincoln understood that most Americans—including most Northerners—believed in white supremacy, “and in a democratic society such deeply held prejudices cannot be easily disregarded.” Thus the most effective way to convert whites to an antislavery position, Lincoln believed, was to separate the issue of bondage from that of race.