Did Lincoln Really Want to Outlaw Slavery?
By Carole Hornsby Haynes June 19, 2024
Today is Juneteenth, a reference to June 19, 1865 when Union forces arrived in Galveston, Texas and informed the slaves of their freedom under Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Yet slavery did not legally end on June 19, 1865, but with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment on December 6, 1865. Talk show hosts and parade attendees parroted the leftwing narrative that all slaves in America were freed by Lincoln’s executive order. Implied was that Southerners were racists who did not want slaves to know they were free and the South remains guilty and racist.
In true Orwellian fashion, the far left has seized control of our past to control our future. Slavery and the War Between the States have been used to stir up hatred and violence. Marxist disciples, such as Eric Foner, establishment scholars and historians, and even some “conservative” think tanks hawk the leftist approved narrative that the South started the war to keep slavery, that the South was racist, and that Southern states were treasonous because they illegally seceded.
Using Marxist Critical Race Theory with the lens of race, American education is the vehicle for early indoctrination over slavery, white guilt, White Supremacy, and identity politics and pitting the races against each other. Slavery as the cause of slavery is pounded into students’ brains. Lincoln, the “Great Emancipator,” is portrayed as the nation’s savior and one of the greatest presidents in history while Confederate President Jefferson Davis and other leaders were racist traitors. Unable to justify Northern aggresion against the South to end slavery, Lincoln changed the pretext of the war "to preserve the union" (empire vs. states' rights to secede).
Students are not taught about Lincoln’s real attitude toward blacks and slavery. Was he as committed to abolishing the institution as history credits him? Let’s look at his own words.
Lincoln did not believe in racial equality. In a Springfield, Illinois speech, he explained: "My declarations upon this subject of Negro slavery may be misrepresented but cannot be misunderstood. I have said that I do not understand the Declaration (of Independence) to mean that all men were created equal in all respects."
Lincoln believed blacks to be an inferior race. Debating Senator Stephen Douglas in 1858, he said, "I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes nor of qualifying them to hold office nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality."
Lincoln did not believe the federal government had any constitutional authority over slavery. In an 1858 letter, he wrote, "I have declared a thousand times, and now repeat that, in my opinion neither the general government, nor any other power outside of the slave states, can constitutionally or rightfully interfere with slaves or slavery where it already exists."
Although he publicly supported the ending of slavery, Lincoln announced in his 1861 Inaugural Address, “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.”
In an 1862 letter to Horace Greeley on slavery and the Union Lincoln admitted, “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy Slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union, and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”
Convinced the two races could never live in harmony together, Lincoln’s solution was to deport slaves from the United States. After becoming president, Lincoln attempted to colonize freed slaves in Haiti, Liberia, and elsewhere. However, the man he appointed to lead the project embezzled much of the money appropriated by Congress. Still Lincoln pressed on and, just days before his death, told General Benjamin Butler, “I can hardly believe that the South and North can live in peace, unless we can get rid of the negroes…I believe that it would be better to export them all to some fertile country…”
Because it was becoming less profitable, slavery already was declining sharply in the border states and the upper South generally. Loyola University economics professor Thomas DiLorenzo (The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War) wrote that state legislatures would probably have outlawed slavery in border states altogether, making them a haven for runaway Southern slaves. DiLorenzo also noted that the industrial revolution in the South would have made slavery more and more uneconomical in comparison with manufacturing and capital-intensive agriculture. Since support for slavery was waning and slave labor is inherently less productive than free labor, along with the high cost to maintain and police slaves, slavery was likely to see its demise before the end of the 19th century.
Given these facts, why did Lincoln issue the Emancipation Proclamation? Lincoln acknowledged in a letter to Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase that the executive order was for political purposes – a political gimmick: “The original proclamation has no…legal justification, except as a military measure.” Only slaves in seceded states over which the U.S. government had no control were freed. Slavery remained in Northern states under Union control and Southern territories conquered by the Union after the executive order was issued. The 1860 census showed there were 1,387,000 slaves in the seceded states and 1,817,000 still in the Union, including nearly 3,700 in the District of Columbia and 18 in New Jersey. Fifty-six percent of the total slave population wasnot freed by the Emancipation Proclamation.
The executive order came under heavy fire with Lincoln’s Secretary of State William Seward sarcastically pointing out the hypocrisy, "We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free."
When Lincoln first drafted the proclamation, war was going badly for the Union. France and England were considering recognizing the Confederacy and assisting it in its war against the Union. Lincoln wanted to provide moral justification for France and Great Britain to ignore the blatant war of aggression against the South and to continue to deal primarily with the North because of their strong economic ties.
Clear thinkers would ask: If the war was waged to end slavery, why was the Emancipation Proclamation issued a year and a half into the war? Since 95 percent of Southerners did not own slaves, why would hundreds of thousands of Confederate soldiers risk their lives to end slavery? Why did the Union army invade only those slave holding states that seceded from the Union but not those slave holding states that did not secede from the Union? Why did Lincoln send 75,000 volunteers to take control of Fort Sumter, a tariff collection point in Charleston Harbor, yet did not call for an invasion of the South to free any slaves? Why was a costly war fought to end slavery when dozens of other Western countries, including the territorial possessions of the British, French, Portuguese, and Spanish, ended slavery peacefully during the 18th and 19th centuries?
Following the money provides the answer as to why the executive order was issued. Throughout most of our nation's history, the only sources of federal revenue were excise taxes and tariffs. During the 1850s, tariffs on imported good amounted to 90 percent of federal revenue. Southern ports paid in excess of 80 percent of tariffs in 1860 (DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln). Eighty percent of the tax revenues were spent on Northern public works and industrialized subsidies. If Southern states seceded, that revenue would be lost and the federal government would become drastically smaller. With the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln did not intend to free slaves but rather to force the South to remain in the Union so their tariff revenue could be collected even at gunpoint.
George Orwell in his novel, 1984, wrote, “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” This has what is happening in America. Once the older generation dies, the younger ones will have only the left’s version of our history and culture.
Readers often ask me what can we do to save our nation and move it back toward its own founding principles. My answer is always the same. We must aggressively re-educate our adults and return our public schools to classical education that is free of ideology. Our population now is so dumbed down and spineless that we are ripe for a communist takeover. We have to stop apologizing and fearing criticism by others. We must stop caving to the left’s demands and allowing them to be our speech police. As the incredibly talented and internationally renowned black opera singer, Leontyne Price, advised aspiring vocalists – “cut out the noise.” She was referring to ignoring criticism, advice, or slander by critics, friends, family, or anyone else tht could be an impediment to one’s goals in life.
Many of the older TV sitcoms and actors, such as Andy Griffith, as well as the old Westerns have great moral and history lessons for our children and grandchildren. Earlier generations were strong supporrters of the Second Amendment and guns in their homes to defend themselves.
We must be aware of leftist messages hidden in “conservative” documents and films. Neoconservative Dinesh D’Souza’s film, “Death of a Nation: Can We Save America a Second Time,” is one example. In the film, he compares Trump to Lincoln – a blatant lie. Historically ignorant D’Souza omitted Lincoln’s repeated wish that blacks be sent back to Africa. He also omitted Lincoln’s letter to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley on slavery and the union that was written just three months before the formal issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Even the film’s title is a lie. Lincoln did not save this nation. He subverted the Constitution with its limited and highly decentralized government and triggered an uncontrollable burgeoning of big government that continues today. He noted the new type of government in the Gettysburg Address, “...that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.”
All Americans must get engaged if we are to stop a communist takeover by being highly informed and publicly standing up to the enemy. It has become highly risky to thwart the left but moving forward against them in lockstep is the only way we will be able to have a future of freedom.