The Fiery Trial_ Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery - Eric Foner [22]
As the temperance speech suggests, Lincoln disliked the intemperate language of evangelical reformers. This is one reason why he never identified himself with the abolitionists. In his own later speeches, he would denounce slavery but not slaveholders. He made it perfectly clear in the Lyceum speech that he preferred to appeal to the reason of his listeners rather than to their emotions. Nevertheless, Lincoln’s critique came from a man who shared the goals of the temperance movement, and, implicitly, of abolitionism, if not their approach to achieving them. He embraced their understanding of genuine freedom as arising from self-discipline rather than self-indulgence—something violated by both drinkers and slaveholders, who allegedly lived according to their passions. Lincoln closed the temperance speech by looking forward to the “happy day” when reason would rule the world: “all appetites controlled, all passions subdued,” and “when there shall be neither a drunkard nor a slave on the earth.” Only then, he added, would the promise of the American Revolution, the triumph of mankind’s “political and moral freedom,” be fulfilled.68
But as with virtually every critic of slavery in the Upper South where Lincoln had been born and the Lower North where he lived, hope for an eventual end to slavery did not translate into a vision of a future American society where race no longer defined the rights of citizens. Lincoln may have differed from his legislative colleagues about slavery, but during his first term in the House, he voted in favor of a resolution, which passed 35 to 16, stating that all male citizens age twenty-one and over should enjoy the right to vote regardless of whether or not they owned real estate, but adding that “the elective franchise should be kept pure from contamination by the admission of colored voters.”69
Lincoln said almost nothing about the rights of black Americans during the first part of his career, but he was not above appealing to prevailing racial prejudices for political purposes. During the 1836 and 1840 presidential campaigns, he and other Whigs seized on Democrat Martin Van Buren’s support at the 1821 New York constitutional convention for a provision allowing blacks to vote if they owned $250 worth of property. This actually represented a severe restriction on the political rights of blacks in New York, previously the same as those of whites, since hardly any of the state’s African-American population could meet the new qualification. Nonetheless, Whigs in Illinois and elsewhere accused Van Buren of favoring black suffrage. Lincoln repeated the charge in speeches and anonymous newspaper articles. In one 1840 debate, Stephen A. Douglas vehemently denied Lincoln’s accusation. At their next encounter, Lincoln read from a campaign biography of Van Buren to substantiate the charge, whereupon Douglas declared the book a forgery, grabbed it from Lincoln’s hands, and threw it into the crowd. The Old Soldier, a campaign newspaper edited by Lincoln and a group of other Whigs, also chastised Van Buren for allowing two blacks to testify in court against a white naval officer during his presidency. Clearly, whatever his beliefs about slavery, Lincoln shared his state’s prevailing view that blacks did not belong to the “political nation.”70
Eventually, Lincoln would come to see the abolitionists and himself as part of a common antislavery struggle. Many ideas first advanced by abolitionists found their way into his speeches. Without a direct personal connection to the abolitionist