Incident at an Antique Store

[David Lockmiller]

(08-12-2014 08:07 PM)LincolnToddFan Wrote:  Abraham Lincoln's Reconstruction was going to be a Reconstruction "of the White man, by the White man, and for White man."

I agree 100% with David Lockmiller...the South has John Wilkes Booth to thank for the (admittedly harsh) Reconstruction that was imposed upon them.

I disagree with the first statement regarding the purpose of Lincoln's Reconstruction policy to create a "White Man Only" government in each of the states in the South. In his Reconstruction Policy speech that night, Lincoln called for the granting of the elective franchise to educated blacks and former black soldiers, where possible, and this would be the beginning of the long process to create state governments in all of the South of the People, by the People, and for the People.I quote at length from Professor Burlingame's analysis of President Lincoln's April 11, 1865 Reconstruction speech:

To strengthen this rhetorical apeal for Republican unity, Lincoln offered the Radicals an important substantive concession. Hitherto he had expressed support for black suffrage only in private. Now, fatefully, he made that support public: "It is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those wo serve our cause as soldiers." To be sure, he acknowledged, the Louisiana Legislature had not availed itself of the opportunity afforded it by the new state constitution to enfranchise blacks, but "the question is not whether the Louisiana government, as it stands, is quite all that is desirable. The question is 'Will it be wiser to take it as it is, and help to improve it; or to reject, and disperse it?' 'Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relation with the Union sooner by sustaining, or by discarding her new State Government?'" Putting it another way, he asked: "Concede that the new governmentof Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl, shall we sooner have the fowl by hatchng the egg than by smashing it?"

Months later Frederick Douglass acknowledged that though Lincoln's call for black suffrage "seemed to mean but little" at the time, it actually "meant a great deal. It was just like Abraham Lincoln. He never shocked prejudices unnecessarily. Having learned statemanship while splitting rails, he always used the thin edge of the wedge first--and the fact that he used it at all meant that he would if need be, use the thick as well as the thin."

In 1864, Lincoln had privately urged Governor Hahn to enfranchise at least some blacks in Louisiana. In 1865, he publicly endorsed the same policy. To be sure, Louisiana was a special case, for a number of educated blacks lived in New Orleans. Possibly Lincoln did not mean to extend suffrage to uneducated blacks in other states, but that seems unlikely, for if he wanted to enfranchise only educated blacks, he would not have suggested that black soldiers, regardless of educational background, be granted voting rights.