Abraham Lincoln Quotes
It was not only the negro that I freed, but the white man no less.
After signing the Emancipation Proclamation:
Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865, 16th President of the United States (Republican, IL), Remark to John A. Bingham and Simon Wolf, September 1862
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
These lines were quoted by W. E. B. Dubois in his The Souls of Black Folk, 1905
The Quakers were in the forefront of not only the abolition of slavery but of the integration of the races.
As enlightened and progressive that his views on Blacks were, he was amazingly racist when it came to Native Americans. See {588991}.
As the slavery debate in America became more bitter abolitionists were physically attacked and sometimes killed for their views, 1840 & 1844.
Throughout the Jim Crowe era of the South, the Southern whites were the poorest Americans with the exception of the Blacks, with few economic and cultural opportunities compared with the rest of the nation, the schools were the weakest of any area of the nation, the universities behind, and politically even whites had few choices with single party (Democratic Party) rule. While desegregation was fought tooth and nail by most white Southerners, it had the effect of elevating all phases of Southern life go that the gap between the South and the rest of the country diminished considerably. But the Blacks were also freed from the evil system and that was the “price” to the whites to which Baldwin referred.
Taft, very progressive on racial matters, was a little too optimistic. The “intelligent” Southerners were in the small minority. Only a week after Taft made this statement, Joseph Gorden, a Negro, was lynched outside Greenwood, Mississippi.
The power structure of England and the English administrators of South Africa were strong advocates of racial equality at the beginning of the 19th century. They insisted on equal administration of law. However the Boer white population could think of nothing more absurd. In a sense the Boers were much like the Southern Whites at the same time. The South African government however could not enforce its equality policies in the rural area – the majority of South Africa at the time. When democracy and self rule came to South Africa, the racially moderating force of the English was minimized and the majority of South Africans wanted a racially segregated society. Apartheid resulted.
Abraham Lincoln was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the United States through its Civil War—its bloodiest war and its greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis. In doing so, he preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the economy.
