As I mentioned when I started working on this blog, one of the things that motivated me was a book that I had to read for work - Team of Rivals. It is a book about Abraham Lincoln and his three main rivals in their quest for the Republican presidential nomination of 1860. One of the best books I have ever read. ( an opinion not held by many of my fellow bankers that had to read it also - you have to like this stuff). At 750 pages, not a weekend read.
I was very fortunate to have just attended a business conference where the author, Doris Kearns Goodwin, was the featured speaker. She did a fantastic job of summarizing and discussing the themes of the book. The topic at the conference was leadership lessons that we could take away from the book about Lincoln, but it also went into the background of the lives of these three men and their beliefs on, among other things, slavery. This is the topic of today's article, and one which I have thought a lot about. Through the research I have done the last few years, I have come to contemplate my own family's past as slaveowners. Just about every branch of the family in the mid-19th century owned slaves, in part because many of them were landowners (no plantations - Maryland and Virginia ), but it does get you thinking about how our country got to where it is now. You can't change the past, but you can try to better understand it and take lessons away. It was particularly interesting for me to understand how Lincoln's views on the issue of slavery evolved over time. I must admit, there were more than a few things I did not know, or hadn't taken the time to study.
The book dealt with how the four men - Lincoln, Seward, Chase and Bates, developed their views on slavery and how that translated into actions. Seward and Chase were very vocal abolitionists, where Lincoln was more measured in his response. He did support the Wilmot Proviso, and positioned himself against the expansion of slavery. In contrast to Seward, Lincoln's opposition to slavery rested in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. He did not feel that you could go after the institution where it already existed, but instead should prevent it from expanding. He felt that it would ultimately die out in the South. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise made Lincoln realize that slavery was no longer on this course, and that the South was ultimately not going to relinquish in their quest to expand it into the territories.
Another illustration of Lincoln's Constitution approach to slavery is in how he supported the existing fugitive slave laws. The original Fugitive Slave Law in 1793 required the return of runaway slaves to their masters. The 1850 law made it illegal not to apprehend a slave, and one could face fines. Although Lincoln understood that the Fugitive Slave Law " offended the moral sense of many people in the North, he felt compelled, under the Constitution, to enforce it. " Lincoln's approach to the South was to remind them of the contradictions surrounding the legal status of blacks, i.e.. the declaration of the African slave trade as piracy in 1820. A stance both the North and the South had taken.
Lincoln's views on race were not the same as others. Salmon Chase felt that blacks and whites were equal. Lincoln did not. He favored compensated emancipation (pay the owners to free the slaves) and then colonization. Lincoln worried what the hint of direct emancipation would do to the border states. Remember that Maryland had a significant number of slave holders. Keeping Maryland and the other border states from going south was a balancing act that Lincoln struggled with in the early years of the war. Maryland did not outlaw slavery until 1864.
Timing was one of Lincoln's strengths. He had been considering the Emancipation Proclamation for a while, but waited the right time to introduce it. " Lincoln understood one of the principal stumbling blocks in the way of emancipation was the pervasive fear shared by whites in both the North and the South that the two races could never coexist peacefully in a free society." We tend to believe that the North was completely abolitionist and unified in their beliefs, but that was not so. As Lincoln got to know Frederick Douglass, he was persuaded that colonization was not an option freed slaves would welcome, and he also came to see that there was a future for blacks to participate in society.
If you like politics and how Lincoln handled the war, this is a very good book. Goodwin used diaries, letters and other correspondence to dig up the story. Coming soon, another book review. That one is called Confederates in the Attic. Another great book. Since the war hasn't really ramped up yet, I'm knocking out some of these now. Gives you some good background.
I was very fortunate to have just attended a business conference where the author, Doris Kearns Goodwin, was the featured speaker. She did a fantastic job of summarizing and discussing the themes of the book. The topic at the conference was leadership lessons that we could take away from the book about Lincoln, but it also went into the background of the lives of these three men and their beliefs on, among other things, slavery. This is the topic of today's article, and one which I have thought a lot about. Through the research I have done the last few years, I have come to contemplate my own family's past as slaveowners. Just about every branch of the family in the mid-19th century owned slaves, in part because many of them were landowners (no plantations - Maryland and Virginia ), but it does get you thinking about how our country got to where it is now. You can't change the past, but you can try to better understand it and take lessons away. It was particularly interesting for me to understand how Lincoln's views on the issue of slavery evolved over time. I must admit, there were more than a few things I did not know, or hadn't taken the time to study.
The book dealt with how the four men - Lincoln, Seward, Chase and Bates, developed their views on slavery and how that translated into actions. Seward and Chase were very vocal abolitionists, where Lincoln was more measured in his response. He did support the Wilmot Proviso, and positioned himself against the expansion of slavery. In contrast to Seward, Lincoln's opposition to slavery rested in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. He did not feel that you could go after the institution where it already existed, but instead should prevent it from expanding. He felt that it would ultimately die out in the South. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise made Lincoln realize that slavery was no longer on this course, and that the South was ultimately not going to relinquish in their quest to expand it into the territories.
Another illustration of Lincoln's Constitution approach to slavery is in how he supported the existing fugitive slave laws. The original Fugitive Slave Law in 1793 required the return of runaway slaves to their masters. The 1850 law made it illegal not to apprehend a slave, and one could face fines. Although Lincoln understood that the Fugitive Slave Law " offended the moral sense of many people in the North, he felt compelled, under the Constitution, to enforce it. " Lincoln's approach to the South was to remind them of the contradictions surrounding the legal status of blacks, i.e.. the declaration of the African slave trade as piracy in 1820. A stance both the North and the South had taken.
Lincoln's views on race were not the same as others. Salmon Chase felt that blacks and whites were equal. Lincoln did not. He favored compensated emancipation (pay the owners to free the slaves) and then colonization. Lincoln worried what the hint of direct emancipation would do to the border states. Remember that Maryland had a significant number of slave holders. Keeping Maryland and the other border states from going south was a balancing act that Lincoln struggled with in the early years of the war. Maryland did not outlaw slavery until 1864.
Timing was one of Lincoln's strengths. He had been considering the Emancipation Proclamation for a while, but waited the right time to introduce it. " Lincoln understood one of the principal stumbling blocks in the way of emancipation was the pervasive fear shared by whites in both the North and the South that the two races could never coexist peacefully in a free society." We tend to believe that the North was completely abolitionist and unified in their beliefs, but that was not so. As Lincoln got to know Frederick Douglass, he was persuaded that colonization was not an option freed slaves would welcome, and he also came to see that there was a future for blacks to participate in society.
If you like politics and how Lincoln handled the war, this is a very good book. Goodwin used diaries, letters and other correspondence to dig up the story. Coming soon, another book review. That one is called Confederates in the Attic. Another great book. Since the war hasn't really ramped up yet, I'm knocking out some of these now. Gives you some good background.
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