Meme Suggesting Abraham Lincoln would not have freed slaves if he had the option. He understood his position and limitations because of how the constitution was written at the time. The meme is false because it takes a small segment of what he wrote “said” and takes it out of context. It creates a false truth to fit into someones’ agenda to stir shit up again, rewrite history, and spawn more hate through ignorance. Abraham Lincoln was human and by no means perfect, just like the rest of us, but he personally believed slavery was wrong, and his actions would end up costing him his life.
Abraham Lincoln was an important step in American history that would lead to the ending of American slavery. This would begin the road for blacks to become free and powerful people who have and still are shaping our country. So much progress has been made to the point that we have lawyers, doctors, congressmen, attorney generals, mayors, governors, and yes, even a Black President (elected twice) and Vice President. ALL of which were NOT possible, NOT that long ago. Many more people, black and white, would come after Abraham Lincoln to build on what is clearly the RIGHT thing to do, and that is to fight for all of us to be free. But yet some chose to embrace the very same vomit and hate that was brought upon our fellow human beings.
Together we can continue to build on the success of those that fought for freedom, fighting for it now, and have stood up and died to make sure we are all treated as equals. The enslavement of human beings goes back a long way, and together we make sure those atrocities NEVER HAPPEN again in OUR country!
Added Note: In the last speech of his life, delivered on April 11, 1865, he argued for limited Black suffrage, saying that any Black man who had served the Union during the Civil War should have the right to vote.
** Slavery develops under conditions of social stratification. Slavery operated in the first civilizations (such as Sumer in Mesopotamia, which dates back to 3500 BC. Slavery was widely practiced in Egypt, ancient China, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, ancient Greece, ancient India, the Roman Empire, the Arab Islamic Caliphate, and Sultanate Nubia, to name a few. If you need a time reference, historians can trace the roots of this inhumane practice back roughly 11,000 years!
If you think white people loved Abraham Lincoln – think again. As Martha Hodes recounts in her book “Mourning Lincoln,” some Northerners who thought Lincoln too dictatorial and some Radical Republicans who thought him too lenient toward the Confederacy welcomed news of his assassination. After a meeting of Radical Republicans hours after the shooting, Indiana Congressman George Julian recorded in his diary that the “universal feeling among radical men here is that his death is a godsend.” Michigan Senator Zachariah Chandler wrote to his wife that God had permitted Lincoln to live only “as long as he was useful and then substituted a better man (Johnson) to finish the work.”
The assassination was a much larger plan, Booth and his conspirators plotted to not only kill Lincoln, but Grant, Secretary of State William Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson. Grant’s unexpected departure removed him as a target, and George Atzerodt lost his nerve and failed to follow through on his assignment to slay Johnson at his residence in the Kirkwood House hotel. At the same time Booth shot Lincoln, Lewis Powell stormed Seward’s house and repeatedly stabbed the cabinet member, who was bedridden after a near-fatal carriage accident. Seward somehow survived the savage attack.
For the record, personally, I’m not too fond of this statue (shown below) and feel it would represent what Abraham Lincoln’s actions eventually lead to if the shackled slave was standing upright next to him; the Emancipation was not immediate for all enslaved people, but it did lead to 200,000 black people serving for the Union army, and this changed the course of our nation and kept it together. It would take many others after Abraham Lincoln to continue to fight for equality because it is the right thing to do.
The full comment (letter) made by Abraham Lincoln.
“I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune … As to the policy I “seem to be pursuing” as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.
I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.” If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.” -1862 New York Tribune Abraham Lincoln
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