this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2024
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"I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. " -- Abraham Lincoln
He literally could not have possibly been more clear about this.
You are completely misrepresenting that quotation. That is his statement, in an attempt to dissuade secession, that he personally as president will not interfere with slavery unilaterally. That the president does not have the power to end slavery in any state through Fiat. Which you'll note he maintained while President because he did not outlaw slavery in any state. This quote however does not in any way indicate his own personal feelings, which he made clear multiple times throughout his life.
"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong," he stated. "I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel."
"I can not but hate [the declared indifference for slavery's spread]. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world -- enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites -- causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty -- criticising [sic] the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest."
"I have always hated slavery, I think as much as any Abolitionist. I have been an Old Line Whig. I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began. I always believed that everybody was against it, and that it was in course of ultimate extinction."
"I have said a hundred times, and I have now no inclination to take it back, that I believe there is no right, and ought to be no inclination in the people of the free States to enter into the slave States, and interfere with the question of slavery at all."
https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/slavery.htm
There are many many more. Your argument is one you see very often among those that espouse the lost cause narrative. So let me just say unequivocally that no the South will not rise again.
I will admit to misinterpreting a speech, but do not accuse me of that. Thinking Lincoln was not necessarily against slavery does not mean I am pro slavery.
I was unaware Lincoln held such strong abolitionist beliefs, he isn't lying that he was quiet about it for a long time. Rereading the quote, it does seem clear he is carefully trying to avoid mentioning his actual attitudes on the subject while negotiating with the south.
I clearly haven't done enough research into that part of Lincoln's life. I apologize for acting like I have, that quote seemed very much like it was said by someone indifferent to slavery. And the initial use of abolitionism as a tool to help the north in the civil war lined up with that interpretation.