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Lincoln and the “Necessity” of Tolerating Slavery before the Civil War
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2015
Abstract
In an unsent 1860 letter, Abraham Lincoln mocked Sidney Fisher's claim that the “institution [of slavery] is a necessity imposed on us by the negro race.” And yet, Lincoln himself had often said that while slavery was an evil, the founders had to tolerate it where it existed owing to “necessity.” This raises the questions: What kinds of arguments about slavery and “necessity” did Lincoln find legitimate, and what kinds did he find to be illegitimate? In Lincoln's view, what exactly was it that necessitated the toleration of slavery where it existed at the time of the founding and into the 1850s? Lincoln's answers to these questions depart from the answers offered by Fisher, Thomas Jefferson, and Henry Clay; this departure helped pave the way not only to Lincoln's later embrace of emancipation, but also his eventual movement toward the position that African-Americans would and should be full citizens.
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- Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2015
References
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2 See, for example, Lincoln, Speech at Peoria, 16 October 1854, in CW, 2:274.
3 Lincoln, Emancipation Proclamation, 1 January 1863, in CW, 6:30.
4 Lincoln to Albert G. Hodges, 4 April 1864, in CW, 7:282.
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11 Lincoln to Fisher, in CW, 4:101 (emphases in the original).
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27 Lincoln, Speech at Springfield, Illinois, 17 July 1858, in CW, 2:520–21.
28 Fisher, “Mr. Dallas,” 70.
29 Ibid., 58.
30 Ibid., 57 (emphasis added).
31 Ibid., 56 (emphasis added).
32 Ibid., 57 (emphasis added).
33 Lincoln, Speech at Peoria, in CW, 2:271.
34 Lincoln, Speech at New Haven, 6 March 1860, in CW, 4:16.
35 Lincoln, Fragment on Pro-slavery Theology, [1 October 1858?], in CW, 3:204. For an illuminating discussion of Lincoln's critique of biblical justifications for slavery, see Fornieri, Joseph, Abraham Lincoln's Political Faith (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003)Google Scholar, chap. 3.
36 Fisher, Law of the Territories (Philadelphia: C. Sherman, 1859)Google Scholar, xiii.
37 Fisher, “Mr. Dallas,” 66. Aristotle maintained that for those who “are by nature slaves . . . it is better for them. . . to be ruled by a master.” See Aristotle, The Politics of Aristotle, ed. Barker, Ernest (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958)Google Scholar, 13.
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39 Fisher, “Mr. Dallas,” 68 (emphasis added).
40 Lincoln, First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois, 21 August 1858, in CW, 3:16.
41 Jefferson claims that whites possess “superior beauty” and that this is a matter of “importance” in Query XIV, 264–65.
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47 Ibid., xvi.
48 Ibid., xiii.
49 Lincoln, Address at Cooper Institute, New York, 27 February 1860, in CW, 3:542, 539.
50 Fisher, diary entry of 27 October 1860, in Civil War Diary, 54.
51 Fisher, Law of the Territories, xxiv.
52 Fisher, diary entry of 6 November 1860, in Civil War Diary, 56–67 (emphasis added).
53 The fact that Lincoln was somewhat reticent regarding why the founders had to tolerate slavery was, no doubt, a deliberate choice on Lincoln's part, for as Smith has noted, “Lincoln's statesmanship consisted in a carefully modulated sense of what to say but also of what should be left unsaid.” See Steven B. Smith, introduction to Writings of Abraham Lincoln, xxiii. According to Smith, Lincoln refrained from calling attention to the ways in which his return to the principles of the founders—and especially the principles of the Declaration of Independence—actually involved a crucial reformulation of those principles (xx–xxiii). Similarly, I want to suggest that even as Lincoln departed from the specific arguments that Jefferson and Clay made about the necessity of tolerating slavery, Lincoln found it prudent not to call attention to that departure.
54 Lincoln, Speech at Chicago, 10 July 1858, in CW, 2:501 (emphasis added).
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57 Lincoln, Annual Message to Congress, 1 December 1862, in CW, 5:537.
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76 Lincoln, Speech at Springfield, Illinois, 26 June 1857, in CW, 2:408–9.
77 Ibid., 405.
78 Ibid., 407.
79 Ibid., 405.
80 Ibid., 408.
81 Lincoln to Edwin M. Stanton, 8 February 1865, in CW, 8:272–73. Delany's meeting with Lincoln is discussed in Levine, Martin Delany, 221–23.
82 See Martin R. Delany: A Documentary Reader, ed. Levine, Robert (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003)Google Scholar, 378.
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84 Lincoln to James C. Conkling, 26 August 1863, in CW, 6:409.
85 In making the claim that despite his use of the language of “necessity,” Lincoln never abdicated the careful making of choices, I agree with—and seek to build on—Smith's claim that “Lincoln's appeal to necessity was not a general fatalism, much less quietism.” See Smith, “Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address,” 484.
86 See, for example, Machiavelli, Niccolò, Discourses on Livy, trans. Mansfield, Harvey and Tarcov, Nathan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996)Google Scholar, bk. 3, chap. 41.
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89 See Lincoln, “Response to a Serenade,” 10 November 1864, in CW, 8:101.
90 David Donald writes that his biography of Lincoln “highlights a basic trait of character evident throughout Lincoln's life: the essential passivity of his nature.” For critiques of Donald, see James McPherson, “A Passive President?,” Atlantic Monthly, November 1995, 134–40, and Smith, “Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address,” 488–89.
91 Lincoln, Speech in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, 22 February 1861, in CW, 4:240.
92 Fisher, “Race,” in Laws of Race, 11–12.
93 In his diary entry of 10 December 1869, Fisher writes that he arranged for The Trial of the Constitution to be sent to Gobineau, “as in it, his great work on Race was frequently quoted.” Fisher notes that he received from Gobineau a “very cordial & gracious” reply which “approves the Trial & proposes a correspondence with the author. This is of course all very pleasant, tho I rather shrink from a correspondence with a person so gifted & learned and famous.” See Diary of Sidney George Fisher Covering the Years 1834–1871, 555. Fisher also cited Gobineau's Essay on the Inequality of Human Races, as well as other works by the scientific racists Robert Knox, Josiah Nott, and George Gliddon, in Fisher, Laws of Race, 10.
94 Tocqueville to Gobineau, 17 November 1853 and 20 December 1853, in de Tocqueville, Alexis, Selected Letters on Politics and Society, ed. Boesche, Roger (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 297–301Google Scholar and 302–5.
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96 According to James Oakes, Lincoln may have supported the idea of colonization during the first two years of his presidency in part because it made the prospect of emancipation seem “more palatable” to racist whites. See Oakes, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861–1865 (New York: Norton, 2013)Google Scholar, 310. Oakes notes that after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, “he stopped advocating” colonization, as it had “served whatever purpose it ever had” (282).
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98 Ibid.
99 Ibid., 335.
100 Ibid., xiii.