Jamelle Bouie points out how Lincoln took a strong moral position while also being a pragmatic politican:
Also, and i will scream this until i lose my voice, Lincoln’s “house divided” speech WAS NOT ABOUT CIVILITY
if anything this was a speech about heightening the contradictions
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — 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.
Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.
There is a reason why the planter elite lost their minds when this guy got elected. he routinely said stuff like this: “To meet and overthrow the power of [slave power], is the work now before all those who would prevent that consummation.”
lincoln spent his early years on the national stage essentially warning that the united states was in the grip of a conspiracy to extend slavery across the entire nation & that americans had a duty to reject those institutions (like the supreme court) that would try to advance it
lincoln was not a saint but one thing you can say is he was a vociferous opponent of slavery with a deep-seated hatred of the institution. you can’t really understand his political trajectory without this basic fact in mind.
lincoln was anti-slavery — meaning he supported a politics aimed at ending slavery — but, at least before the war, was not an abolitionist, meaning he did not support the immediate end of slavery with no compensation.
and lincoln was sincerely anti-slavery. you see that in his rhetoric and you see it in the fact that he rejected the 11th-hour compromises to preserve the union by enshrining federal protection of slavery into the constitution.
Originally tweeted by b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) on May 6, 2022.
Lincoln also understood that he was dealing with a radical faction that was unappeasable and he spoke openly and directly about it in public. That to me is the fundamental understanding that Democrats today don’t have (or are willing to accept) about the Republican Party.