French students have some questions

[My Name Is Kate]

I agree that Lincoln was much freer of alot of the prejudices that people of his time usually had, and I don't fault him for not having 21st-century attitudes on human rights, racism, slavery, etc. What I object to is his using the issue of slavery to further his political agenda, and that that strategy cost so many people their lives, and their families so much pain. Good riddance to slavery, but the end of slavery was certainly not the end of the freed slaves' misery, and that was in no small part because so many of the people claiming to be outraged by the injustice of slavery, soon tired of helping the former slaves once their primary political agenda had come to fruition. I wonder how far Lincoln would have been willing to go to help them during Reconstruction and afterwards.

Today, there is a repetition of the same hypocritical strategy of using accusations of racism to further political agendas. That is not to say that there is no racism anymore (by any and all races), just that the people doing the accusing are not nearly so free themselves of racism, as they imagine they are.