"Armies of scholars, meticulously investigating
every aspect of [Lincolns] life, have failed
to find a single act of racial bigotry on his part."
~ Doris Kearns-Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, p. 207.
"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have
been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality
of the white and black races, that 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 . . . . I as much as any man am in favor
of the superior position assigned to the white race."
~ Abraham Lincoln, First Lincoln-Douglas Debate, Ottawa,
Illinois, Sept. 18, 1858, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln vol.3, pp. 145-146.
Steven Spielbergs new movie, Lincoln,
is said to be based on several chapters of the book Team of Rivals by
Doris Kearns-Goodwin, who was a consultant to Spielberg. The main theme of
the movie is how clever, manipulative, conniving, scheming, lying, and underhanded
Lincoln supposedly was in using his "political skills" to get the
Thirteenth Amendment that legally ended slavery through the U.S. House of
Representatives in the last months of his life. This entire story is what
Lerone Bennett, Jr. the longtime executive editor of Ebony magazine
and author of Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincolns White
Dream, calls a
"pleasant fiction." It never happened.
It never happened according to the foremost authority on
Lincoln among mainstream Lincoln scholars, Harvard University Professor David
H. Donald, the recipient of several Pulitzer prizes for his historical
writings, including a biography of Lincoln. David Donald is the preeminent
Lincoln scholar of our time who began writing award-winning books on the
subject in the early 1960s. On page 545 of his magnus opus, Lincoln,
Donald notes that Lincoln did discuss the Thirteenth Amendment with two
members of Congress – James M. Ashley of Ohio and James S. Rollins of
Missouri. But if he used "means of persuading congressmen to vote for
the Thirteeth Amendment," the theme of the Spielberg movie, "his
actions are not recorded. Conclusions about the Presidents role rested on gossip . . ."
Moreover, there is not a shred of evidence that even one
Democratic member of Congress changed his vote on the Thirteenth Amendment
(which had previously been defeated) because of Lincolns actions. Donald documents that Lincoln was told that some New
Jersey Democrats could possibly be persuaded to vote for the amendment
"if he could persuade [Senator] Charles Sumner to drop a bill to
regulate the Camden & Amboy [New Jersey] Railroad, but he declined to
intervene" (emphasis added). "One New Jersey Democrat,"
writes David Donald, "well known as a lobbyist for the Camden &
Amboy, who had voted against the amendment in July, did abstain in the final
vote, but it cannot be proved that Lincoln influenced his change"
(emphasis added). Thus, according to the foremost authority on Lincoln, there
is no evidence at all that Lincoln influenced even a single vote in the U.S.
House of Representatives, in complete contradiction of the writings of the
confessed plagiarist Doris Kearns-Goodwin and Steven Spielbergs movie (See my review of Goodwins book,
entitled "A Plagiarists Contribution to Lincoln
Idolatry").
Lincolns First
Thirteenth Amendment Gambit
There is no evidence that Lincoln provided any significant assistance in
the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in the House of Representatives in
1865, but there is evidence of his effectiveness in getting an earlier
Thirteenth Amendment through the House and the Senate in 1861.
This proposed amendment was known as the "Corwin Amendment," named
after Ohio Republican Congressman Thomas Corwin. It had passed both the
Republican-controlled House and the Republican-dominated U.S. Senate on March
2, 1861, two days before Lincolns inauguration, and was sent to the states
for ratification by Lincoln himself.
The Corwin Amendment would have prohibited the federal government from ever
interfering with Southern slavery. It read as follows:
"No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize
or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State,,
with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to
labor or service by the laws of said State."
"Person held to service" is how the Constitutional Convention
referred to slaves, and "domestic institutions" referred to
slavery. Lincoln announced to the world that he endorsed the Corwin Amendment
in his first inaugural address:
"I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution which
amendment, however, I have not seen has passed Congress to the effect that
the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions
of the States, including that of persons held to service . . . . [H]olding
such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection
to its being made express and irrevocable" (emphasis added).
Believing that slavery was already constitutional, Lincoln had "no
objection" to enshrining it explicitly in the text of the U.S.
Constitution on the day that he took office. He then sent a letter to the
governor of each state transmitting the approved amendment for what he hoped
would be ratification and noting that his predecessor, President James
Buchanan, had also endorsed it.
Lincoln played a much larger role in getting this first Thirteenth
Amendment through Congress than merely endorsing it in his first inaugural
address and in his letter to the governors. Even Doris Kearns-Goodwin knows
this! On page 296 of Team of Rivals she explained how it was Lincoln
who, after being elected but before the inauguration, instructed New York
Senator William Seward, who would become his secretary of state, to get the
amendment through the U.S. Senate. He also instructed Seward to get a federal
law passed that would repeal the personal liberty laws in some of the
Northern states that were used by those states to nullify the federal
Fugitive Slave Act, which Lincoln strongly supported. (The Fugitive Slave Act
forced Northerners to hunt down runaway slaves and return them to their
owners).
As Goodwin writes: "He [Lincoln] instructed Seward to introduce these
proposals in the Senate Committee of Thirteen without indicating they issued
from Springfield [Illinois]. The first resolved that the Constitution should
never be altered so as to authorize Congress to abolish or interfere with
slavery in the states." The second proposal was that "All state
personal liberty laws in opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law be
repealed."
So, go and see Spielbergs Lincoln movie if you must, but keep in mind
that it is just another left-wing Hollywood fantasy.
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