Talk:Abraham Lincoln/quotes

Controversy over what Lincoln's views were on slavery and its abolition

That he owned slaves himself

That he favored slavery

That he opposed slavery:
 * 1852: ...freeing our land from the dangerous presence of slavery
 * 1854: "You know I dislike slavery; and you fully admit the abstract wrong of it."
 * 1854: Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature -- opposition to it in his love of justice.
 * 1864: "I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel." Letter to A.G. Hodges
 * The question here is whether he was reporting his own views accurately.

That he did not oppose slavery:
 * William Lloyd Garrison, the most prominent of all abolitionists, concluded that Lincoln "had not a drop of anti-slavery blood in his veins." (Lew Rockwell)
 * According to Roy Basler, the editor of Lincoln’s Collected Works, Lincoln never even mentioned slavery in a speech until 1854, and even then, says Basler, he was not sincere. (Lew Rockwell)

That he supported abolition

That he did oppose slavery, but at same time did NOT support abolition:
 * 1837: "the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy; but that the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than to abate its evils."
 * 1855: "I confess I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down, and caught, and carried back to their stripes, and unrewarded toils; but I bite my lip and keep quiet."
 * Abraham Lincoln's views on slavery, which were complex and evolved greatly over the course of his private and public life, got their earliest formulation in the strongly anti-slavery household of his parents. Yet for a time he did not make the issue a major concern. Robert B. Bruce, Sam Houston State University