This is a series of posts from the cited paper, I will try to divide it into many parts, put titles, and some illustration to fit in blogger and this Blog.
From The Journal of Historical Review, Sept.-Oct. 1993 (Vol. 13, No. 5), pages 4-25. By Robert Morgan
Candidate for President
Though he failed in his bid for the Senate seat, the Lincoln-Douglas debates thrust "Honest Abe" into the national spotlight. In 1860, the Republican Party passed over prominent abolitionists such as William H. Seward and Salmon P. Chase to nominate Lincoln as its presidential candidate.
In those days, presidential contenders did not make public speeches after their nomination. In the most widely reprinted of his pre-nomination speeches, delivered at Cooper Union in New York City on February 27, 1860, Lincoln expressed his agreement with the leaders of the infant American republic that slavery is "an evil not be extended, but to be tolerated and protected" where it already exists. "This is all Republicans ask -- all Republicans desire -- in relation to slavery," he emphasized, underscoring the words in his prepared text. After stating that any emancipation should be gradual and carried out in conjunction with a program of scheduled deportation, he went on to cite Thomas Jefferson.
Lincoln plans for Deportation of Negroes:
In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, "It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation, and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly; and in their places be, pari passu [on an equal basis], filled up by free white laborers."
On the critical question of slavery, the Republican party platform was not altogether clear. Like most documents of its kind, it included sections designed to appeal to a wide variety of voters. One plank, meant to appease radicals and abolitionists, quoted the "all men are created equal" passage of the Declaration of Independence, though without directly mentioning either the Declaration or non-whites. Another section, designed to attract conservative voters, recognized the right of each state to conduct "its own domestic institutions" as it pleased -- "domestic institutions" being an euphemism for slavery. Still another, somewhat equivocally worded, plank, upheld the right and duty of Congress to legislate slavery in the territories "when necessary."
Electing Lincoln: MAFA (Make America Free Again)
On election night, November 7, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was the choice of 39 percent of the voters, with no support from the Deep South. The remainder had cast ballots either for Stephen A. Douglas of the Northern Democratic Party, John C. Breckinridge of the Southern Democratic Party, or John Bell of the Constitutional Union Party. Still, Lincoln won a decisive majority in the electoral college.
By election day, six southern Governors and virtually every Senator and Representative from the seven states of the lower South had gone on record as favoring secession if Lincoln were elected. In December, Congress met in a final attempt to reach a compromise on the slavery question. Senator John H. Crittenden of Kentucky proposed an amendment to the Constitution that would guarantee the institution of slavery against federal interference in those places where it was already established. A more controversial provision would extend the old Missouri compromise line to the west coast, thereby permitting slavery in the southwest territories.
On December 20, the day South Carolina voted to secede from the Union, Lincoln told a major Republican party figure, Thurlow Weed, that he had no qualms about endorsing the Crittenden amendment if it would restrict slavery to the states where it was already established, and that Congress should recommend to the Northern states that they repeal their "personal liberty" laws that hampered the return of fugitive slaves. However, Lincoln said, he would not support any proposal to extend slavery into the western territories. The Crittenden Amendment failed.
Southern Fears
Less than one-third of the white families in the South had any direct connection with slavery, either as owners or as persons who hired slave labor from others. Moreover, fewer than 2,300 of the one and a half million white families in the South owned 50 or more slaves, and could therefore be regarded as slave-holding magnates.
Incompatibility of Blacks
The vast majority of Southerners thus had no vested interest in retaining or extending slavery. But incitement by Northern abolitionists, where fewer than 500,000 blacks lived, provoked fears in the South, where the black population was concentrated, of a violent black uprising against whites. (In South Carolina, the majority of the population was black.) Concerns that the writings and speeches of white radicals might incite blacks to anti-white rampage, rape and murder were not entirely groundless. Southerners were mindful of the black riots in New York City of 1712 and 1741, the French experience in Haiti (where insurgent blacks had driven out or massacred almost the entire white population), and the bungled effort by religious fanatic John Brown in 1859 to organize an uprising of black slaves.
When Slavery means discipline: Slaves lives Matter(SLM)
What worried Southerners most about the prospect of an end to slavery was fear of what the newly-freed blacks might do. Southern dread of Lincoln was inflamed by the region's newspapers and slave-owning politicians, who portrayed the President-elect as a pawn of radical abolitionists. Much was made of Lincoln's widely-quoted words from a June 1858 speech.
A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free ... I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.
During the critical four-month period between election and inauguration days, Southern Unionists strongly urged the President-elect to issue a definitive public statement on the slavery issue that would calm rapidly-growing Southern fears. Mindful of the way that newspapers in the slave-holding states had either ignored or twisted his earlier public statements on this issue.
Fake News: Got deep roots in History
Lincoln chose to express himself cautiously. To the editor of the Missouri Republican, for example, he wrote:
I could say nothing which I have not already said, and which is in print and accessible to the public.
Please pardon me for suggesting that if the papers like yours, which heretofore have persistently garbled and misrepresented what I have said, will now fully and fairly place it before their readers, there can be no further misunderstanding. I beg you to believe me sincere, when ... I urge it as the true cure for real uneasiness in the country ...
The Republican newspapers now, and for some time past, are and have been republishing copious extracts from my many published speeches, which would at once reach the whole public if your class of papers would also publish them. I am not at liberty to shift my ground -- that is out of the question. If I thought a repetition would do any good, I would make it. But my judgment is it would do positive harm. The secessionists, per se believing they had alarmed me, would clamor all the louder.
Lincoln also addressed the decisive issue in correspondence with Alexander H. Stephens, who would soon become Vice President of the Confederacy. Stephens was an old and much-admired acquaintance of Lincoln's, a one-time fellow Whig and Congressman. Having seen reports of a pro-Union speech in Georgia by Stephens, Lincoln wrote to express his thanks. Stephens responded with a request that the President-elect strike a blow on behalf of Southern Unionists by clearly expressing his views. In a private letter of December 22, 1860, Lincoln replied:
Do the people of the south really entertain fears that a Republican administration would, directly or indirectly, interfere with their slaves, or with them, about their slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, there is no cause for such fears.
Lincoln went on to sum up the issue as he saw it: "You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us."
CNN reporting: it existed a long time ago:
To Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, who had passed along a report of a rabid anti-Lincoln harangue in the Mississippi legislature, Lincoln wrote that "madman" there had quite misrepresented his views. He stated he was not "pledged to the ultimate extinction of slavery," and that he did not "hold the black man to be the equal of the white."
When a Mississippian appeared at a reception for Lincoln in the Illinois statehouse, and boldly announced he was a secessionist, Lincoln responded by saying that he was opposed to any interference with slavery where it existed. He gave the same sort of general assurance to a number of callers and correspondents. He also wrote a few anonymous editorials for the Illinois State Journal, the Republican newspaper of Springfield. Additionally, he composed a few lines for a speech delivered by Senator Trumball at the Republican victory celebration in Springfield on November 20. In those lines Lincoln pledged that "each and all" of the states would be "left in as complete control of their own affairs" as ever.
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