The Fiery Trial
As Foner points out, "Lincoln has been described as a consummate moralist and a shrewd political operative, a lifelong foe of slavery and an inveterate racist. Politicians from conservatives to communists, civil rights activists to segregationists, and members of every Protestant denomination as well as nonbelievers, have claimed him as their own."
However, Foner also points out: "Lincoln was strongly antislavery, but he was not an abolitionist or a Radical Republican and never claimed to be one. He made a sharp distinction between his frequently reiterated personal wish that 'all men everywhere could be free' and his official duties as a legislator, congressman, and president in a legal and constitutional system that recognized the South's right to property in slaves."
The book is structured as biography, with Lincoln's beliefs and attitudes about slavery and race at its core. As a young man he grew up in a society that did not believe in the equality of blacks. Kentucky the state of his birth, was a slave state, and though Illinois had outlawed slavery it was a deeply racist state. Lincoln's grandfather had been murdered by a black man, and prejudice ran deep. But he had always believed slavery was wrong, if not only for the inhumanity, but because it was "both injustice and bad policy." He also wrote, "I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is wrong, nothing is wrong." But he also believed in the rule of law, and during his early political career he fully recognized the rights of slave-owners. The Republican Party grew out of a combination of abolitionists, who would have freed slaves immediately, and the more conservative, who wanted to stop its expansion into territories.
When Lincoln became president and the Civil War began, Lincoln began to evolve. He is famously quoted as writing, "I would save the Union. I would save it in the shortest way under the Constitution...My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery." But by September 1862 he had decided to emancipate the slaves, and he stated clearly by the end of war that it was about slavery.
Two intertwined themes best display Lincoln's evolution of thought: colonization and black troops. Initially Lincoln was for one and against the other. Colonization was a hot topic early in the war, as many thought slaves should be freed, but then what to do with them? Many ideas of relocation were hatched, including an island off Haiti and a coal-mining area of Colombia. Most black leaders were against it, including Frederick Douglass, who rightly stated that slaves were Americans. Lincoln was worried, also rightly so, that freed blacks would endure horrible and racist recriminations, and would be better off leaving.
As for the recruitment of black troops, Lincoln was against this, but eventually relented. The valor of black troops during the Civil War is well-documented, and afterward Lincoln completely dropped the idea of colonization. One seemed to eliminate the other--accepting that a man can fight for his country is in itself a statement that he is a citizen. In his last speech, Lincoln spoke of allowing certain blacks, namely the "intelligent" and servicemen, the right to vote. It is thought that this was what put John Wilkes Booth, who was in the audience that night, over the edge.
Foner also closely and fascinatingly documents the development of the Emancipation Proclamation, which is widely misunderstood. It only freed slaves in the the Confederate states that were not under Union control. Thus, slaves in the border states that did not secede (Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware) and states and portions of states that were under Union control, such as Tennessee and parts of Louisiana, were not freed. But it signaled another remarkable change in Lincoln. He had talked of gradual emancipation, and compensation to slave owners. But the Proclamation was immediate and without compensation, like a band-aid being ripped off.
The book is full of little tidbits that bear repeating, such as the accidental good fortune of George McClellan's incompetence as a general. McClellan, of course, was reticent about attacking, and dithered so much that he was eventually replaced (he would run against Lincoln for president in 1864 and lose). Foner points out, perceptively, that had McClellan succeeded and the war shortened, the Emancipation Proclamation may have never come, and a different, gradual emancipation may have been the result. It's not often that a black man can be grateful to George McClellan.
Andrew Johnson comes in for some harsh treatment, too. Foner's tone is so heartbreaking when he discusses how Johnson was the complete opposite of Lincoln, and a horrible president. Of course, no one can say for sure how Lincoln would have handled reconstruction, but it's not a stretch to think he would have handled it better than Johnson, who was openly racist.
Every book I read about Lincoln I admire him more. He is no saint (he commonly used the word "nigger" in conversation, a result of his upbringing). He had little contact with educated blacks before the war, but after meeting with Douglass and others he came to believe that they were equal with whites. As Foner puts it, "Lincoln did not enter the White House expecting to preside over the destruction of slavery. A powerful combination of events...propelled him down the road to emancipation and then to a reconsideration of the place blacks would occupy in a post-slavery America...as the presidency of his successor demonstrated, not all men placed in a similar situation possessed the capacity for growth, the essence of Lincoln's greatness."
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