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Big Enough to Be Inconsistent: Abraham Lincoln Confronts Slavery and Race (W. E. B. Du Bois Lectures)

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Of the writing of books on Lincoln, there is, apparently, no end. Americans' fascination for the man seems to increase rather than diminish. But this fascination is rarely uninterested. Authors (and readers) on Lincoln tend to be hagiographers or debunkers, intent either on canonizing or damning him. As a consequence, it's frequently difficult to discover the real man underneath the legend.

In his Big Enough to Be Inconsistent, veteran Civil War scholar George Frederickson defends an interpretation of Lincoln's views on slavery and race that seeks a "middle ground" between the hagiographers who see the president as a proto-civil liberties advocate and the debunkers who see him as a hypocritical racist. Frederickson argues that Lincoln's views on both the institution of slavery and racial inequality changed over time, and that their fluidity suggests a position that's much more complex and ambiguous than hagiographers and debunkers allow. Like most of us, Lincoln's position on race wasn't entirely consistent. Moreover, Lincoln's ambivalence is complicated by the fact that he was a politician, and sometimes said things for public consumption that were more expedient than genuinely believed.

One thing is certain. Lincoln was never ambivalent in his moral opposition to slavery. But the racist assumptions he absorbed from his virulently Negrophobic home state of Illinois clustered to form views in the pre-war Lincoln that Frederickson doesn't hesitate to characterize as white supremicist, albeit a "relatively passive or reactive" sort (p. 84). Lincoln advocated a minimalist bestowal of free trade rights on blacks, but balked at defending full civil and moral equality. Moreover, his deep-seated Constitutional conservatism and his near-religious veneration of the Union made him a staunch advocate of gradual emancipation (a model defended by Henry Clay, one of Lincoln's heroes) and an equally staunch critic of abolitionists. Again like Clay, Lincoln was also a firm supporter of expatriation and colonization of freed blacks.

But the war experience began to change Lincoln's views. Gradually recognizing the value of using enslaved blacks against the Confederacy, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation primarily as a war effort. This reversed his position at war's beginning that "the Negro" shouldn't be "dragged" into the conflict (p. 90). Even after the Emancipation, Lincoln was reluctant to use blacks as soldiers, believing that they were fit only as laborers. But by August 1863, after witnessing the bravery and skill of "colored troops," Lincoln had changed his mind. This reversal also seems to have reconciled Lincoln to the possibility that free blacks had a legitimate place in American society, because he also dropped his insistence on colonization (much to the relief of his secretary John Hay, who always considered the strategy "a hideous and barbarous humbug" - p. 113). But Lincoln didn't reverse the conviction, born of his Constitutional conservatism, that civil liberties for blacks had to be determined by the states, not the federal government. Right up to the end of his life, then, the tension between his moral convictions and his political principles endured.

As Frederickson himself concedes, "none of this should be surprising to good historians" (p. xi). But the skill with which Frederickson makes his case for a "middle ground" between Lincoln-veneration and Lincoln-hatred, as well as the compact elegance of this little book, make it well worth reading. It would've been good had Frederickson reflected more on the curious tension between Lincoln's fidelity to the Constitution and his moral aversion to slavery. Is it appropriate, for example, that constitutionalism trumps immediate response to glaring moral wrongs? But Frederickson's reminder that inconsistency and ambiguity are almost always embedded in our ethical positions is a refreshing response to true believers of any stripe who insist that anything less than lockstep consistency is morally condemnable.

there is only one thing to say. He was big enough to be inconsistent. He was not going to be caught up in hobgoblins of little minds, apologies to RWE. It seems timely that we should consider this issue in our presidents when we are besieged by frightful scenarios of a president who might change his mind. How wonderful if we could have politicians who, regardless of what common sense, intelligence, and changing circumstances might indicate, hold true to their original engraved in stone views of the revealed truth. Perhaps reading and digesting this little book can put some of our fears to rest.

Unless you are a fan of George Fredrickson, an avid student of Lincoln's thoughts, and interested in projecting a true picture of 19th century America--I am guilty of all counts--you may hesitate to purchase this 126 page (text pages only) large print and small page book even for the fair price Amazon lists. Be assure, this book is valuable enough to make it worth more than the publisher's price. When we are faced with a barrage of anti-Lincoln literature compensated for by an equal barrage of myth making of our sixteenth president, an open, well researched, thoughtful book that does neither is of real value. Particularly now. The political threat to Lincoln's presidency was not whether he favored free choice on abortion, but something a bit more urgent to living individuals and those to be born--should slavery cease to exist through the mandate of government. Had Lincoln been faced with Roe v Wade he, like any other thinking person, probably would change his mind a few times before settling on a "final" stand.

"The first public statement of [the disapproval of slavery] came when Lincoln was serving his first term in the Illinois state legislature in 1837: he voted against a resolution condemning the abolitionists and their doctrines and affirming the right under the Constitution to hold slaves where permitted by state law. It is unclear why Lincoln voted against the resolution; for the next twenty-five years he would maintain that the Constitution protected slavery in the states and that abolitionists did more harm than good (pp. 43-44)." The turning point for Lincoln seems to have been the Kansas-Nebraska Act which opened the door for the spread of the peculiar institution. Fredrickson points out that the Lincoln family left Kentucky for Illinois because free farmers could not compete with slaveholders. There is nothing to show Lincoln did not abhor the practice of slavery on moral grounds, but as a politician he fought against it on a practical level. The war experience during his presidency, a period when many men alter or reverse their previous thinking, showed him the value of using the slaves against the Confederacy. That the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation was a tactical move rather than a humanitarian move does not make the president less courageous. He was an extraordinary man of his time. One who had the courage to "flip-flop" on his original views and rethink the meaning of the Constitution on the question of state rights and slavery. And he still pushed for colonization of the freed blacks. Yet again he submitted no to the pressures of his constituents but to political reality of the 1860's.


The author concludes his work with a quotation from Frederick Douglass, not one known for mincing words. Douglass's evaluation was "Viewed from genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical and determined."

Big Enough to Be Inconsistent: Abraham Lincoln Confronts Slavery and Race (The W. E. B. Du Bois Lectures) This is a well written book looking at the aspects that influenced Lincoln in his life and how they affected his stand on slavery and race. You get a look at not only how he felt personally but also how his love of the U.S. Constitution led to how he made many of his decisions regarding slavery.

Great was perfect just in time for my second class! Didn't miss a beat, and the product was in perfect condition!

So said the great black abolitionist Frederick Douglass, about Lincoln, in 1865. The conventional PC view of Lincoln would deny him his rightful place in the struggle for freedom and equality. Lincoln's claim to being the Great Emancipator lies not just with his Emancipation Proclamation, but also with the 13th Amendment, which he insisted on & sheparded through Congress. Those who feel Lincoln was insincere about freedom and equality would do well to read LaWanda Cox's Lincoln and Black Freedom: A Study in Presidential Leadership; Richard Striner's Father Abraham: Lincoln's Relentless Struggle To End Slavery; and Harry Jaffa's Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates; as well as Allen Guelzo's Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America; and James Oakes's The Radical and the Republican. Lincoln felt that politics was the art of the possible. His political artistry included an acute knowledge of public opinion(and prejudices), a finely-honed sense of timing, and political discretion. Lincoln never retreated from emancipation once it was decided upon, just as he never affirmed black inferiority to be inherent. During his debates with Stephen Douglas he never said that he would never(in future) support equality. He didn't put stock in physical differences. In a well-known private memoranda he mused how anyone could be enslaved if the criterion was to have darker skin, or lesser intellect, because everyone was lighter or darker, or of varing degrees of smartness. In Chicago, in July 1858, he implored people to "discard" all their "quibbling" about supposed inferiority, and unite around the equality of the Declaration of Independence. However, a race-baiting Stephen Douglas forced him to subsequently in those debates down-play the full implications of his anti-slavery position. Again, he was a politician seeking an anti-slavery victory in a racist state[Illinois]. But, during his presidency he approved of bills abolishing segregation on horse-drawn streetcars in D.C., for equal pay for black troops, for black witnesses in federal courts, for equal penalties for the same crimes, for the Freedmen's Bureau. He supported education for the freedmen. He had African-Americans picnic on the White House lawn, bowed publicly to a black gentleman in Richmond, welcomed(for the first time) an ambassador from Haiti, and met African-American leaders in the White House for discussions. Any colonization was to be voluntary and was later dropped, whites and blacks having to "live out of the old relation and into the new." Sojourner Truth said that she had never been treated with more "kindness and cordiality" by anyone. Lincoln called for the vote for educated blacks and soldiers[a first step]. John Wilkes Booth was in the audience, and told a companion that that meant "N-- citizenship" and vowed it would be Lincoln's last speech. He was assassinated 3 days later. Frederick Douglass noted Lincoln's "entire freedom from popular prejudice against the colored race."