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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JF Quinnelly who wrote (58481)	2/11/2001 3:12:17 AM
From: nihil	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

You miss the point of Lincoln's political growth. As far as morality goes, as an adult he always opposed slavery. He thought it was wrong, but he never considered himself an abolitionist. He repeatedly stated that if he could preserve the union without disturbing slavery, he would do so, and if he could only preserve the union by destroying slavery he would do so. Of course, after his election, he urged the Republicans in Congress not to support the Crittenden compromise (which would have made slavery permanent). I think it is possible that had he strongly supported the compromise, secession might have been delayed. It is also clear that in his correspondence with Winfield Scott (Buchanan's general-in-chief) he told him either to keep the forts in the south or be prepared to seize them after Lincoln became president. It seems quite clear that Lincoln never concealed his commitment to use force to preserve the union, and yet the fireeaters were so foolish as to fire on the flag first and thereby to lose an important moral point. It is also clear that Lincoln never planned to initiate the issue of emancipation until the summer of 1862. He opposed the extension of slavery into the territories and the idea of squatter sovereignty. It is hard to say what Congress would have done had the Southerners remained in Congress after Lincoln took office. There was never an abolitionist majority in Congress, even after secession. Congress did not abolish slavery by passing the 13th amendment until almost the end of the war -- and it was close. Some democrats, see that abolition would occur someday, switched and voted for the amendment. Lincoln pushed emancipation on a reluctant cabinet, and an uninterested Congress. He acted exclusively as Commander-in-Chief and justified his action purely as a military act. He doubted the constitutionality of extended emancipation beyond the rebellious territories, and refused to attempt it. He did try to persuade the slave states in the Union to participate in deferred, compensated emancipation (with colonization of the ex-slaves). I believe that if the South had taken advantage of their legal position, and had acted at all reasonably, that the war could have been avoided. Had conservative people, believing in the rightness and necessity of slavery, accepted the Crittenden compromise, then no restriction of the extension of slavery would have been possible. As it was, under the Fugitive Slave Act, a slave could be taken into any part of the Union and recovered whenever the master wished. Lincoln himself was willing to strengthen the FSA in order to reduce friction with the South. Had the greedy but intelligent southerners (there must have been some such) used their vaunted political ability, the U.S. could have become a great slave power. Lincoln never confounded morality and politics. I believe that had the war ended in a quick Union victory, that slavery would not have been disturbed. The military failures of McClellan, Pope, Burnsides, and Hooker by lengthening the war, made it both militarily necessary and politically possible for Lincoln to adopt a policy of emancipation. He never had an emotional attachment to the radical abolitionist cause. He never thought that abolition would be easily tolerated by the American people. He freed the slaves because he believed he had to in order to preserve the union. He free the slaves because he was politically strong enough to do so, and because he was militarily too weak not to.