Questions About John Brown

[L Verge]

Please keep in mind that it was a reply to Stephens "If slavery were abolished, what are we to do? I know that negroes will not work, unless forced to it, and I tell you that we shall all starve together."

(It seems Stephens either didn't know of those "honest, hard-working Southern people who never owned a slave and tilled the soil", or he didn't have much faith in them. It was just a question that left IMO no other reply. Should Lincoln have expressed pity instead?)

By the time this conversation took place, I think the Lincoln that I recognize as a master politician would have had some conciliatory reply dealing with plans that he hoped he and Congress could put in place to alleviate some of the dire circumstances that were facing the freedmen as well as the whites who had had their lands destroyed or confiscated.

That's why I keep harping on what plans Lincoln had formulated before his death. Advanced planning means a lot to success in my way of thinking. I just can't believe that all he could come up with was "let 'em up easy," "root hog or die," or even giving certain freedmen the right to vote. Had the fight for the 13th Amendment kicked the strength out of him?