12-20-2004, 07:44 PM
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#14 (permalink)
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Easy Rider
Location: Moscow on the Ohio
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Mr Mephisto
I don't know. I've read quite a bit on the man and the war, and I wouldn't describe him as a racist.
Mr Mephisto
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I guess for his time he was considered progressive, but some like the following link disagree:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...16/ai_63323546
An excerpt:
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* Lincoln publicly referred to blacks by the most offensive racial slur. In one speech, Lincoln said he opposed the expansion of slavery into the territories because he didn't want the West "to become an asylum for slavery and n--s"
* Lincoln was, in the words of one friend, "especially fond of Negro minstrel shows," attending blackface performances in Chicago and Washington. At an 1860 performance of Rumsey and Newcomb's Minstrels, Lincoln "clapped his great hands, demanding an encore, louder than anyone" when the minstrels performed "Dixie." Lincoln was also fond of what he called "darky" jokes, Bennett documents.
* Lincoln envisioned and advocated an all-white West, declaring in Alton, Ill., in 1858 that he was "in favor of our new territories being in such a condition that white men may find a home ... as an outlet for free white people everywhere, the world over."
* Lincoln supported his home state's law, passed in 1853, forbidding blacks to move to Illinois. The Illinois Constitution, adopted in 1848, called for laws to "effectually prohibit free persons of color from immigrating to and settling in this state."
* Lincoln blamed blacks for the Civil War. "But for your race among us there could not be a war," he said, "although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or another."
* Lincoln claimed that Mexicans "are most decidedly a race of mongrels. I understand that there is not more than one person there out of eight who is pure white."
Repeatedly during the course of his career, Lincoln urged that American blacks be sent to Africa or elsewhere. In 1854, he declared his "first impulse would be to free all the slaves and send them to Liberia -- to their own native land." In 1860, he called for the "emancipation and deportation" of slaves. In his State of the Union addresses as president, he twice called for the deportation of blacks. In 1865, in the last days of his life, Lincoln said of blacks, "I believe it would be better to export them all to some fertile country with a good climate, which they could have to themselves."
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