"Shortly before the 1860 election, Frederick Douglass offered a succinct summary of the dilemma confronting opponents of slavery like Lincoln, who worked within the political system rather than outside it. Abstractly, Douglass wrote, most northerners would agree that slavery was wrong. The challenge was to find a way of 'translating antislavery sentiment into antislavery action'. The constitution barred interference with slavery in the states where it already existed. For Lincoln, as for most Republicans, antislavery action meant not attacking slavery where it was but working to prevent slavery's westward expansion. Lincoln, however, did talk about a future without slavery. The aim of the Republican Party, he insisted, was to put the institution on the road to "ultimate extinction", a phrase he borrowed from Henry Clay. Ultimate extinction could take a long time. Lincoln once said that slavery might survive for another hundred years. But to the South, Lincoln seemed as dangerous as an abolitionist, because he was committed to the eventual end of slavery. This was why his election in 1860 led inexorably to secession and civil war."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
"Our Lincoln" (26 January 2009), The Nation
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eric_Foner
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Eric Foner
26 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Eric Foner →
Related Quotes
"The United States was not the only nation to experience emancipation in the nineteenth century. Neither plantation sl…"
"Alone among the societies that abolished slavery in the nineteenth century, the United States, for a moment, offered …"
"The more fiercely the Confederacy fought for its independence, the more bitterly divided it became."
"Slavery, Confederate Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens proudly affirmed, was the cornerstone of the Confederacy. A…"
"In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party, the planter class, and all th…"
"Slavery was a byproduct of the quest for profit—economic actors were the architects of the slave plantation sys…"
"Now, as then, commerce unrestrained by social control ends up stripping economic relations of all moral content, whil…"
"American ideas about freedom certainly resonate abroad. Eastern Europeans embraced them after the collapse of Communi…"
"The collapse of communism as an ideology and of the Soviet Union as a world power has made possible an unprecedented …"
"The Confederate government increasingly molded its policies in the interest of the planter class."