Was Abraham Lincoln an abolitionist?

Answer 1

One hundred thirty-six years after General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Americans are still fascinated with the War for Southern Independence. Indeed, many Northerners are "still fighting the war" in that they organize a political mob whenever anyone attempts to display a Confederate heritage symbol in any public place. Lincoln’s war established myriad precedents that have shaped the course of American government and society ever since: the centralization of governmental power, central banking, income taxation, protectionism, military conscription, the suspension of constitutional liberties, the "rewriting" of the Constitution by federal judges, "total war," the quest for a worldwide empire, and the notion that government is one big "problem solver." Perhaps the most hideous precedent established by Lincoln’s war, however, was the intentional targeting of defenseless civilians. Human beings did not always engage in such barbaric acts as we have all watched in horror in recent days. Targeting civilians has been a common practice ever since World War II, but its roots lie in Lincoln’s war. In 1863, there was an international convention in Geneva, Switzerland, that sought to codify international law with regard to the conduct of war. What the convention sought to do was to take the principles of "civilized" warfare that had evolved over the previous century, and declare them to be a part of international law that should be obeyed by all civilized societies. Essentially, the convention concluded that it should be considered to be a war crime, punishable by imprisonment or death, for armies to attack defenseless citizens and towns; plunder civilian property; or take from the civilian population more than what was necessary to feed and sustain an occupying army.
The Swiss jurist Emmerich de Vattel (1714-67, author of The Law of Nations, was the world’s expert on the proper conduct of war at the time. "The people, the peasants, the citizens, take no part in it, and generally have nothing to fear from the sword of the enemy," Vattel wrote. As long as they refrain from hostilities themselves, they "live in as perfect safety as if they were friends.” Occupying soldiers who would destroy private property should be regard as "savage barbarians”. In 1861, the leading American expert in international law as it relates to the proper conduct of war was the San Francisco attorney Henry Halleck, a former army officer and West Point instructor whom Abraham Lincoln appointed General-in-Chief of the federal armies in July of 1862. Halleck was the author of the book, International Law, which was used as a text at West Point and essentially echoed Vattel’s writing. On April 24, 1863, the Lincoln administration seemed to adopt the precepts of international law as expressed by the Geneva Convention, Vattel, and Halleck, when it issued General Order No. 100, known as the "Lieber Code.” The Code’s author was the German legal scholar Francis Leiber, an advisor to Otto von Bismarck and a staunch advocate of centralized governmental power. In his writings, Lieber denounced the federal system of government created by the American founding fathers as having created "confederacies of petty sovereigns" and dismissed the Jeffersonian philosophy of government as a collection of "obsolete ideas. Federal commanders were permitted to completely ignore the Code if, "in their discretion," the events of the war would warrant that they do so. In other words, the Lieber Code was purely propaganda. The fact is, the Lincoln government intentionally targeted civilians from the very beginning of the war. The administration’s battle plan was known as the "Anaconda Plan" because it sought to blockade all Southern ports and inland waterways and starving the Southern civilian economy. Even drugs and medicines were on the government’s list of items that were to be kept out of the hands of Southerners, as far as possible. As early as the first major battle of the war, the Battle of First Manassas in July of 1861, federal soldiers were plundering and burning private homes in the Northern Virginia countryside. Such behavior quickly became so pervasive that on June 20, 1862 – one year into the war – General George McClellan, the commanding general of the Army of the Potomac, wrote Lincoln a letter imploring him to see to it that the war was conducted according to "the highest principles known to Christian civilization" and to avoid targeting the civilian population to the extent that that was possible. Lincoln replaced McClellan a few months later and ignored his letter. Most Americans are familiar with General William Tecumseh Sherman’s "march to the sea" in which his army pillaged, plundered, raped, and murdered civilians as it marched through Georgia in the face of scant military opposition. However, such atrocities had been occurring for the duration of the war; Sherman’s March was nothing new. In 1862 Sherman was having difficulty subduing Confederate sharpshooters who were harassing federal gunboats on the Mississippi River near Memphis. He then adopted the theory of "collective responsibility" to "justify" attacking innocent civilians in retaliation for such attacks. He burned the entire town of Randolph, Tennessee, to the ground. He also began taking civilian hostages and either trading them for federal prisoners of war or executing them.
Jackson and Meridian, Mississippi, were also burned to the ground by Sherman’s troops even though there was no Confederate army there to oppose them. After the burnings, his soldiers sacked the town, stealing anything of value and destroying the rest. As Sherman biographer John Marzalek writes, his soldiers "entered residences, appropriating whatever appeared to be of value . . . those articles which they could not carry they broke."
After the destruction of Meridian Sherman boasted that "for five days, ten thousand of our men worked hard and with a will, in that work of destruction, with axes, sledges, crowbars, clawbars, and with fire.... Meridian no longer exists." In The Hard Hand of War historian Mark Grimsley argues that Sherman has been unfairly criticized as the "father" of waging war on civilians because he "pursued a policy quite in keeping with that of other Union commanders from Missouri to Virginia.” Fair enough. Why blame just Sherman when such practices were an essential part of Lincoln’s entire war plan and were routinely practiced by all federal commanders? In his First Inaugural Address Jefferson said that any secessionists should be allowed to "stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.” However, by 1864 Sherman would announce that "to the petulant and persistent secessionists, why, death is mercy.” In 1862 Sherman wrote his wife that his purpose in the war would be "extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least of the trouble, but the people" of the South. His loving and gentle wife wrote back that her wish was for "a war of extermination and that all [Southerners] would be driven like swine into the sea. May we carry fire and sword into their states till not one habitation is left standing." The Geneva Convention of 1863 condemned the bombardment of cities occupied by civilians, but Lincoln ignored all such restrictions on his behavior. The bombardment of Atlanta destroyed 90 percent of the city, after which the remaining civilian residents were forced to depopulate the city just as winter was approaching and the Georgia countryside had been stripped of food by the federal army. In his memoirs, Sherman boasted that his army destroyed more than $100 million in private property and carried home $20 million more during his "march to the sea”. Sherman was not above randomly executing innocent civilians as part of his (and Lincoln’s) terror campaign. In October of 1864 he ordered a subordinate, General Louis Watkins, to go to Fairmount, Georgia, "burn ten or twelve houses" and "kill a few at random," and "let them know that it will be repeated every time a train is fired upon." Another Sherman biographer, Lee Kennett, found that in Sherman’s army "the New York regiments were . . . filled with big city criminals and foreigners fresh from the jails of the Old World.” Although it is rarely mentioned by "mainstream" historians, many acts of rape were committed by these federal soldiers. The University of South Carolina’s library contains a large collection of thousands diaries and letters of Southern women that mention these unspeakable atrocities.
Shermans’ band of criminal looters (known as "bummers") sacked the slave cabins as well as the plantation houses. As Grimsley describes it, "With the utter disregard for blacks that was the norm among Union troops; the soldiers ransacked the slave cabins, taking whatever they liked.” A routine procedure would be to hang a slave by his neck until he told federal soldiers where the plantation owners’ valuables were hidden.
General Philip Sheridan is another celebrated "war hero" who followed in Sherman’s footsteps in attacking defenseless civilians. After the Confederate army had finally evacuated the Shenandoah Valley in the autumn of 1864 Sheridan’s 35,000 infantry troops essentially burned the entire valley to the ground. As Sheridan described it in a letter to General Grant, in the first few days he "destroyed over 2200 barns . . . over 70 mills . . . have driven in front of the army over 4000 head of stock, and have killed . . . not less than 3000 sheep. . . . Tomorrow I will continue the destruction."
In letters home, Sheridan’s troops described themselves as "barn burners" and "destroyers of homes.” One soldier wrote home that he had personally set 60 private homes on fire and opined "it was a hard looking sight to see the women and children turned out of doors at this season of the year.” A Sergeant William T. Patterson wrote that "the whole country around is wrapped in flames, the heavens are aglow with the light thereof . . . such mourning, such lamentations, such crying and pleading for mercy [by defenseless women]... I never saw or want to see again." As horrific as the burning of the Shenandoah Valley was, Grimsley concluded that it was actually "one of the more controlled acts of destruction during the war’s final year.” After it was all over, Lincoln personally conveyed to Sheridan "the thanks of the Nation". Just recently, he published an article in the Atlanta Constitution arguing that Sherman wasn’t such a bad guy after all and should not be reviled by Georgians as much as he been portrayed. Had the Confederates somehow won, had their victory put them in position to bring their chief opponents before some sort of tribunal, they would have found themselves justified...in stringing up President Lincoln and the entire Union high command for violations of the laws of war, specifically for waging war against noncombatants. Sherman himself admitted after the war that he was taught at West Point that he could be hanged for the things he did. However, in war the victors always write the history and are never punished for war crimes, no matter how heinous. Only the defeated suffer that fate. That is why very few Americans are aware of the fact that the unspeakable atrocities of war committed against civilians, from the firebombing of Dresden, the rape of Nanking, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the World Trade Center bombings, had their origins in Lincoln’s war. This is yet another reason why Americans will continue their fascination with the War for Southern Independence.



God Bless You and Our Southron People.

Answer 2

No. Abraham Lincoln was not an abolitionist. Before the Republican Party was created he was a Whig and Whig philosophy was to contain slavery and let it die away gradually over time. While he detested slavery, he did not think it was politically or economically feasible to abolish it all at once. Once the Civil War started his views changed a bit and he realized that it would not make sense for the country to go through a terrible war like that and come out the other side with the institution of slavery still in place. Plus, there were strategic and political advantages to issuing the Emancipation Proclomation. Lincoln was a realist and a pragmatist, but I would not call him an abolitionist.

Answer 3

No. Abraham Lincoln actually had no interest in freeing slaves until 2 years into the Civil War, and even then not because he wanted to end slavery on any moral grounds, but because freed blacks had volunteered for the Union army in such numbers that their plight had to be considered. Even after he (reluctantly) emancipated the slaves, he was a definite seperatist and supported blacks emmigrating to Africa. He was decidedly assured that black and white people were not equal and did not need to live/exist together in the same spaces.

The exact conditions of the Emancipation Proclamation were that the rebellious (Confederate) states had an ultimatum: they could return to the Union and all would be forgiven by midnight on Jan 1, 1863. If not, at 12:01 the Union had a right to seize their property, i.e. their slaves. The South held out and thus slaves in the Confederate states were freed. ***The Emancipation Proclamation did not free slaves in the North or in the border states.*** If Abraham Lincoln was an "abolitionist" that would not have been the case. The Emancipation Proclamation was his solution to solving a problem of _property rights_ which is what the Civil War was initially about anyway.

Answer 4

Lincoln ALWAYS hated slavery, but politically he was too smart to be labeled as an abolitionist in the way that others of his party, such as Chase, were. He made his stand on extending slavery in the territories, and was for the gradual abolition of slavery in the states where it already existed. When the Civil War started, he made the issue union, not slavery. In one of his more famous quotes during the war, he said that if he could preserve the Union by freeing some of the slaves, he would do it. If he could preserve it by freeing none of the slaves, he would do it, and if he could preserve it by freeing all of the slaves, he would do it. He waited until the time was right before issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, and he was careful to limit it to freeing the slaves in the states that were in open rebellion against the Union, not the border states. Ultimately, though, the result of his uncompromising stand on union was freeing the slaves, and he recognized, as most people did at the time, that the Civil War was really all about slavery. (Read his Second Inaugural Address.) So at the end of the day, you would have to call Lincoln an abolitionist of the most effective possible kind.

Answer 5

"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.

"Whenever I hear any one arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume VIII, "Speech to One Hundred Fortieth Indiana Regiment" (March 17, 1865), p. 361.

"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 races - that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the ***** should be denied everything." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume III, "Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois" (September 18, 1858), pp. 145-146.

"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."
Abraham Lincoln
Source: December 1, 1862 - Lincoln's Second Annual Message to Congress

"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. And yet I have never
understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to
act officially upon this judgment and feeling."
Abraham Lincoln
Source: April 4, 1864 - Letter to Albert Hodges

Lincoln was anti-slavery but he was more interested in just ending the war first.

Answer 6

Lincoln was not an abolitionist. What he wanted was to contain slavery to certain states and not allow it in the new territories. The whole issue of containment actually had to do with voting blocks on other issues in Congress rather than moral issues anyway. THe "slave" states voted against tariffs, whereas the industrial North voted for them in order to increase their profits.,

Answer 7

Yeeup abolitionists fought to end slavery in the USA and Lincoln did just that, so that would make him an abolitionist.

Answer 8

For a long time he was a centrist on the slavery issue, then the Civil War started, by this point he was leaning against slavery, as was the North..he was a northerner, thus he went with the north (Not bashing the north, I'm a Wisconsinite myself, its just basically what happened to my knowlage)

Answer 9

Abolitionists as a movement refer to "right-wing Northern puritans circa 1850 on". They correctly thought that slavery was un-American, but incorrectly based their objection on pseudo-religious grounds.

Abraham Lincoln favored sending black slaves back to Africa because if they had been hijacked here, then having them have their own country--such as Liberia, in Africa-- was supposed to be and seemed a good idea. He also said, in effect, one neither had to hate nor marry a black woman, for instance, that as a citizen of the US one could just "leave her alone". presumably one could do the same with a black male--just leave him alone and let him have his rights as much as anyone else.

But he knew that any individual's right to associate with every single citizen in liberty, prior to making preferences, would never be possible so long as the United States was "half slave, half free"--not merely in its racial populations but in its laws.

In saying, "It must either become all one thing or all the other", he told the simple truth. But he did not want the ending of slavery by force; he expected the institution to be abandoned by Southerners as their economic position relative to Northerners became worse and worse.

Yes; he was an abolitionist in principle; no--he was not a member of that rabid and extremist movement who based ther ideas, as our present government of republicans does, on impractical pseudo-religious arguments...

Answer 10

he was both actually...but ended up an abolitionist. the gettysburg address is a prime example, where in the closing sentence he speaks of a "new freedom."

he kinda contradicted himself, earlier he was a racist. but then he changed.

Answer 11

Yes. He took the preamble to the Declaration of Independence as his source for a legal and moral stand against slavery, which he managed to abolish, on paper anyway.