E.J. Dionne Jr. - Washington Post on Lincoln

[David Lockmiller]

On Presidents Day 2022, E.J. Dionne Jr. wrote of Lincoln:

We should not deny that Lincoln — especially during his 1858 Senate campaign, when he was pursuing his era’s swing voters, who were racist — declared himself opposed to “bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races” and spoke of “a physical difference” between them.

But Lincoln said this in the course of arguing against the far more racist position of his opponent, Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln was speaking against the spread of slavery and in defense of common humanity across racial lines. “In the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anyone else, which his own hand earns,” he said of Black Americans, “he is my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.”

Yes, Lincoln pandered to and in some ways partook in the racism of his time. We can recognize this and still honor him for saving the Union, ending slavery and cleansing its stain on our Constitution — even if the embarrassed Founders omitted the actual word — by pushing through the 13th Amendment.