The Fiery Trial_ Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery - Eric Foner [4]
Much of Lincoln’s career can fruitfully be seen as a search for a reconciliation of means and ends, an attempt to identify a viable mode of antislavery action in a political and constitutional system that erected seemingly impregnable barriers to effective steps toward abolition. For most of his career, Lincoln had no real idea how to rid the United States of slavery, although he announced many times his desire to see it end. But in this he was no different from virtually every other antislavery American of his era. No one before the war anticipated its outbreak or what Lincoln, in his second inaugural, would call its “astounding” result, the emancipation of the slaves. As late as 1858, the Chicago Tribune, a strong voice of antislavery radicalism, stated flatly that “no man living” would witness the death of American slavery.10
I admire Lincoln very much. But simply to anoint him as “a model of greatness for succeeding generations to follow”11 or to see the task of the scholar as mounting a defense of Lincoln against his critics, then and now, does both Lincoln and the influences on him a disservice. If Lincoln achieved greatness, he grew into it. Not every individual possesses the capacity for growth; some, like Lincoln’s successor as president, Andrew Johnson, seem to shrink, not grow, in the face of crisis. But to rise to the occasion requires not only an inner compass but also a willingness to listen to criticism, to seek out new ideas. Lincoln’s career was a process of moral and political education and deepening antislavery conviction. He started out as a local politician in central Illinois, became a statewide public figure, and finally a national or at least a northern statesman. As his stage expanded, so did his experience. He came into contact with new people, new ideas, and a totally unprecedented situation, and was able to make the most of these encounters. He had to take into account the actions of groups with which he had previously had virtually no contact. Most notable among these groups were the slaves themselves, who seized the opportunity offered by the Civil War to strike for their freedom and who overwhelmingly rejected Lincoln’s hope that many of them would agree to emigrate to some other country. Their actions forced the questions of slavery and the future place of blacks in American society onto the wartime agenda.
My aim then is to take Lincoln whole, incorporating his strengths and shortcomings, his insights and misjudgments. I want to show Lincoln in motion, tracking the development of his ideas and beliefs, his political abilities and strategies, as they engaged the issues of slavery and emancipation, the most critical in our nation’s history.
THE FIERY TRIAL
1
“I Am Naturally Anti-Slavery”: Young Abraham Lincoln and Slavery
“I AM NATURALLY ANTI-SLAVERY. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel.” There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of Abraham Lincoln’s emphatic declaration, written in April 1864, three years into the American Civil War. But as with so much of his early life, the origins of his thoughts and feelings about slavery remain shrouded in mystery.1 Lincoln grew up in a world in which slavery was a living presence and where both deeply entrenched racism and various kinds of antislavery sentiment flourished. Until well into his life, he had only sporadic contact with black people, slave