Oath of Office as President of the United States: Lincoln v. Trump

[STS Lincolnite]

There was a question posed in post #4 of this thread:

Was Lincoln an abolitionist?

I felt that in order to effectively answer the question, the term “abolitionist” ought to be defined. I had my own idea of a definition of the term and an answer to the question came to me pretty quickly. But I didn’t think using my own definition was good enough. So before I shared my answer, I wanted to see what the historical community had to say related to the definition of this term. I did a little research and some leg work and was able to find some definitions from what I thought were credible sources that helped me clarify my own thoughts on the subject.

In their book on the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Rodney O. Davis and Douglas L. Wilson gave a somewhat broad, overview definition of “abolitionism” as “A belief that slavery should be ended by legal prohibition.” They did not discuss his time as President (only the period they were focused on, the time of the debates) but went on to say that Lincoln “…though antislavery, was not an abolitionist. He was distinguished from abolitionists in that he acknowledged slavery’s protected status under the Constitution, and the Constitution’s provision for a fugitive slave law.”

Pulitzer Prize winning historian James McPherson, in his book The Struggle for Equality, defined abolitionists as “…those Americans who before the Civil War agitated for immediate, unconditional, and universal abolition of slavery in the United States.” The descriptors used in this definition all become critical in my eyes when trying to determine if Lincoln was an abolitionist.

More recently I had the opportunity to listen to an excellent lecture presented by Dr. Manisha Sinha, author of the recent book The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition. Afterwards, I had a brief opportunity to speak with her. I asked her if she agreed with Dr. McPherson’s definition of “abolitionists”. She said that generally she did but that she felt it did not go quite far enough. She said that she would also add that an abolitionist was someone who publicly advocated or “agitated” for racial equality – not just an end to slavery.

I should also note that the lecture that Dr. Sinha presented was titled, “Allies for Emancipation: Lincoln and the Abolitionists.” From the title of her talk, there is right away a distinction made between Lincoln and the abolitionists. She discussed various points including the one Davis and Wilson stated above. She gave other examples of Lincoln’s deviation from the tenants of abolitionism from his time as President. My interpretation or take away from her lecture was that it was in fact important that Lincoln was not an abolitionist as it better positioned him to eventually contribute in a material way to ending slavery.

Though not exactly the same, my own definition was very similar to what this group of historians/authors (all of whom have studied the subject farm more extensively than I) have advanced.

Based on my own previous thoughts along with being further informed by the research I did and the definitions I found, my answer to the question is no. Lincoln was not an abolitionist. He was certainly anti-slavery (more so than the majority of his contemporaries), but not an abolitionist.