How do Leading Biographers and Civil War Historians Regard Lincoln's Motives on Emancipation?
Step 1: Watch Professor Matthew Pinsker's short video "Was Lincoln a racist?" to understand the historical context regarding mid 19th century views on race in America.
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Step 2: Read the two excerpts carefully. Record your answers to the provided "Short Answer Question: Historians' Perspectives" prompts using complete sentences: an outline or bulleted list alone is not sufficient or acceptable.
Excerpt 1: Lerone Bennett, Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream (Chicago: Johnson Pub., 2000), 9 - 10
“A growing body of evidence suggests Lincoln's Proclamation was a tactical move designed not to emancipate the slaves but to keep as many slaves as possible in slavery until Lincoln could mobilize his support for his conservative plan to free Blacks gradually and to ship them out of the country. What Lincoln was trying to do, then, from our standpoint, was to outmaneuver the real emancipators and to contain the emancipation tide, which had reached such a dangerous intensity that it threatened his ability to govern and to run the war machinery. This is no mere theory; there is indisputable evidence on this point in documents and in the testimony of reliable witnesses, including Lincoln himself. The most telling testimony comes not from twentieth-century critics but from cronies and confidantes who visited the White House and heard the words from Lincoln's mouth. There is, for example, the testimony of Judge David Davis, the three-hundred-plus pound Lincoln crony who visited the White House in 1862, some two months after Lincoln signed the Preliminary Proclamation, and found him working feverishly to subvert his announced plan in favor of his real plan. What was Lincoln's real plan? It was the only emancipation plan he ever had: gradual emancipation, the slower the better, with compensation to slaveowners and the deportation of the emancipated...."
Excerpt 2: Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Lincoln Studies Center, Volume 2, Chapter 27), 2993 - 2994
“To justify so momentous a step, Lincoln decided not to appeal to the idealism of the North by denouncing the immorality of slavery. He had already done that eloquently and repeatedly between 1854 and 1860. Instead, he chose to rely on practical and constitutional arguments which he assumed would be more palatable to Democrats and conservative Republicans, especially in the Border States. He knew full well that those elements would object to sudden, uncompensated emancipation, and that many men who were willing to fight for the Union would be reluctant to do so for the liberation of slaves. To minimize their discontent, he would argue that emancipation facilitated the war effort by depriving Confederates of valuable workers. Slaves might not be fighting in the Rebel army, but they grew the food and fiber that nourished and clothed it. If those slaves could be induced to abandon the plantations and head for Union lines, the Confederates’ ability to wage war would be greatly undermined. Military necessity, therefore, required the president to liberate the slaves, but not all of them. Residents of Slave States still loyal to the Union would have to be exempted, as well as those in areas of the Confederacy which the Union army had already pacified. Such restrictions might disappoint Radicals, but Lincoln was less worried about them than he was about Moderates and Conservatives.”
Extension: Read James Oakes' "Forever Free" and view the video by Professor Allen Guelzo, "Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation," for additional explanations of Lincoln's motivations.