PAGE 10
THE EMANCIPATION OF
ABRAHAM
LINCOLN
strip away the few advances that were made half a century ago.
Martin Luther King Jr. said, 'The word Wait has almost always
meant Never "
DAVID LEVINE
BY MICHAEL McCUSKER
"The United States is guilty of Original Sin,
and that sin is slavery "
-H obie TucKER/et al
"There will be neither rest nor tranquility in
America until the Negro is granted his citizenship
rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake
the foundations of our nation until the bright day of
justice emerges. "
-M artin L uther K ing J r .
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United
States, is 191 years old on February 12. He was bom in 1809
and was murdered on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, at the age
of 56. He was shot in the back of the head while attending a
stage play by an embittered actor who thought his single bullet
would reverse the loss of a civil war just ended
For most of the world Lincoln is the symbol of the United
States For Americans his worn, gaunt and terribly sad face is
our conscience. He is revered as almost a saintly human being,
and with Karl Marx is probably the other most significant political
figure of the 19th century, and certainly the most compelling in
American history.
Lincoln grew to power from poverty and obscurity. He
was raised on the frontier and taught himself law He is probably
the nation's most successful politician. Just prior to his election
as President he was hardly known outside Illinois. At his inaugu
ration in 1861 he was the most reviled man in the country, yet
immediately after his death he was regarded the most beloved
He almost single-handedly held the sundered Union to its
successful and awesomely bloody purpose of defeating the
secession of the Confederacy. More than almost any man of
his era he grew to understand the importance of the unity of the
United States. Without unity the nation would be the victim of
other rapacious powers that wished to obliterate the fledgling
split democracy and expropriate its vast spaces and incredibly
rich resources. He passionately believed the doctrine of political
freedom would disappear from the world if the U.S dissolved
Ironically, his election as President severed the nation; and just
as ironically the division of the nation centered on the question
of political and individual freedom of black slaves. Although
Lincoln believed that the gradual abolition of slavery was an
historical inevitability and the intent of the majority of the
framers of the American Constitution, his dramatic act of
emancipation halfway through the Civil War more than any other
act made him one of the most memorable and important figures
in history.
Lincoln had very little personal acquaintance with
slavery, though he had witnessed it on the river landings of
Missouri and southern Illinois and in particular during his single
term in Congress in Washington, D C., wrfiich at that time, in
the 1840s, was a major warehouse for the slave trade, by then
illegal but not slavery itself. He thought slavery violated the
doctrine of equal rights but he never quite abandoned the idea
of white superiority. For most of his struggle against slavery he
did not believe that whites and blacks could coexist without
economic dislocation and violence, and he preferred establish
ing colonies of former slaves in South or Central AmericB in
much the manner as Liberia in Africa. He was opposed to
immediate emancipation and initially believed that slavery could
be slowly and patiently eradicated without disunion. He thought
a policy of containment by free states would eventually strangle
slavery. The secession of the Confederacy altered his hopes.
Though he still believed emancipation would lead to catastrophe
and initially resisted radical abolitionists, he needed a strong,
clear driving force to continue support for the war against the
southern states to justify the intensifying bloodiness and appal
ling Union losses. He also wanted to instill tenor in the South
which had always been haunted by the specter of a massive
slave uprising Yet he wished no revenge upon the South, unlike
many northern politicians and abolitionists, and his original plans
for Reconstruction following the war gave no political power to
the freed slaves in the defeated Confederacy, nor were they to
be allowed to vote Although he became convinced that blacks
and whites would have to remain together because separatism
was infeasible, he continued to believe the status quo had to
change gradually if change was to be successful. It was his feel
ing that several generations wuld have to pass before blacks
were capable and educated enough to assume political power.
Their chances for economic freedom were nil, and it is probable
he was also aware that sudden enfranchisement of power and
wealth would result in a brutal backlash against blacks in both
North and South
Lincoln might not have been able to prevent the oppor
tunistic revenge upon the South, but his death ensured it. Its
result was a counter-revenge, not upon the white 'carpetbaggers'
who infested the South at the end of the Civil War. but upon
freed slaves who were terronzed and murdered White suprem
acy groups grew up on the fringes of southern anger, the most
dominant and ruthless the nightriders of the Ku Klux Klan
Lynchings of blacks were commonplace following the Civil War
and lasted until the sixth decade of the 20th century. After more
than a century of emancipation American blacks are still without
position or power at the beginning of the 21st century, and
although the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s
dramatized and somewhat improved black prospects, the
pervasive racism that saturates American society continues to
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American history is taught from primarily a white
perspective, which is only a portion of our history, and without
integrating it with black American history it is irrelevant, and
worse, it is a lie that perpetuates the racism that underlies and
embitters our truly pluralistic history.
African blacks and European whites were parallel
colonizers of the western hemisphere and together they built
the civilizations that currently exist in North and South America.
The primary difference is that black immigration was a forced
migration. Millions of blacks were brought in chains from Africa
as slaves for 400 years. Slavery evolved as the result of the
need for an abundant and relatively cheap supply of labor in the
American colonies, and the traffic in slaves was itself probably
the most profitable international trade in history. Entire industries
were built on the commerce of human slaves, and as cruel as it
was (which induced an opaqueness to the torment inflicted by
the trade), the extent and profitability of slavery built cities and
helped raise the capital that started the industrial revolution in
England.
Much of Africa was emptied to provide slaves for the
European colonies in the Americas, and most of Africa was
colonized by European nations. Africans who were not sent
across the oceans as slaves were enslaved at home. No one wll
ever know precisely how many millions of blacks were killed in
their villages in four centuries of slave raids, but it is estimated
that about one-third of those captured died enroute to the coasts
or while imprisoned awaiting embarkation and another third
aboard ships in which they were chained and stacked like cords
of wood in overcrowded, filthy holds, and during the 'seasoning'
process of slavery, worked to death in stifling climates, beaten
and murdered if they were slow to obey or attempted to escape.
When the slave trade was finally declared illegal at the
end of the 18th century its illicitness made it even more profit
able in much the manner as the current international drug trade,
and as with illegal drugs when capture is imminent, uncounted
thousands of black men, women and children were thrown
overboard to drown in the ocean (chained together) whenever
a naval patrol caught up with a slave ship
The trade was also profitable because it was easier to
work a slave to death and buy a new one than it was to breed
and feed newer generations, although that of course was also
done
Slavery in the Americas took two separate directions.
In the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in South and Central
America, slavery continued the long tradition of Mediterranean
slavery, practiced most famously in classical times, and was
incorporated in the Iberian Catholic religious doctrine which
claimed that although slaves were of the lowest social order,
both masters and slaves possessed souls that were regarded
as equal by God The tendency, therefore, was that slaves were
human beings with some rights and some legal means by which
they might achieve freedom * The legal structures of the North
American colonies and the British West Indies, and later the
United States, did not recognize slaves as human beings
entitled to human rights. The ancient and medieval experiences
with slavery had been forgotten and northern Europe did not
have a comparable tradition with the Iberian nations. There
was no slave law and no concern for blacks in their religious
doctrines. More problematic for the future was the tendency
of northern Europeans and Americans to identify blacks with
slavery. The mere fact of being black was presumptive of slave
status Slavery was considered perpetual and chances of work-
mg toward freedom were few. To be black was to be a slave,
without rights to marriage, children (whose value was only as
prospective slaves), property or to the product of their work.
Yet despite the differences of the slave systems of
South and North America, they were only differences of degree.
Wherever there was slavery there was a slave society, not
merely for blacks but for whites also Blacks and whites were
bound together in cruel and bitter antagonism but also in a
complex relationship that could not express itself without refer
ence to each other. It was a class relationship that became ever
more defined as a racial one North American southern society
NORTH COAST
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