The best American president for advancing the policy agenda of the African Americans was Abraham Lincoln. It is important to note from the outset that the majority, if not all, slaves were African Americans. Long before his ascension to presidency and despite marrying a daughter of a slave-owning family in 1842, Lincoln became a leading opponent of slavery joining other abolitionists who deemed the practice as the worst form of bondage for any human being. It is important to note that president Lincoln’s initial objective was to eradicate slavery gradually by ensuring there was no expansion of the practice in the western regions and using diplomacy rather than force to compel the slave holding southern states to abandon the practice. During the 1860 presidential campaigns, Lincoln expressed his and the Republican Party’s desire to prevent any further expansion of slavery in the southern and western lands because he believed that the continued expansion of the practice would be a great obstacle to free labor in a free nation. He also wanted to introduce the aspect of compensated emancipation, a situation that was considered by the Congress during his early years of presidency.
His diplomacy regarding the issue is evidenced by his frequent public and private expressions revealing his moral opposition to the practice of slavery. Aware that Lincoln was determined to abolish the practice of slavery, some southern states sought to secede from the Union fearing that their economies that depended heavily on cotton and slaves who were working in the cotton plantations would collapse. However, buoyed by the Black and White abolitionists, Lincoln played an important part in leading the emancipation movement by using his war powers as the president to issue the emancipation proclamation. More African American slaves were freed in the course of the Civil war as confederacy states came under the control of the Union. After the Union party nominated Lincoln for president in 1864, he called for the passage of Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that abolished slavery as well as involuntary servitude, except for cases where a person is being punished for a crime.
After playing a crucial role in abolishing slavery in the United States, Lincoln began to sympathize with the situation where African American soldiers who had fought on behalf of the union could not become American citizens. As such, he started to support calls to reconsider the position of all African American soldiers who had supported the Union. This position was influenced by the republican principles that a person deserves to be accorded citizenship status after performing duties of citizenship. Consequently, the politically active African Americans in New Orleans requested the military governor to allow them to vote. President Lincoln readily accepted to engage the two representatives of the black soldiers, Arnold Bertonneau and Jean Baptiste Roudanez, after which he wrote a letter to the Louisiana’s Governor Michael Hahn that suggested he gives the black soldiers who were intelligent and those that had fought gallantly for the Union the chance to take part in the election. Lincoln’s changing beliefs regarding the rights and freedoms of African Americans caused John Wilkes Booth to assassinate him in 1865. Ultimately, Lincoln’s legacy and his views regarding slavery as well as universal suffrage have an inextricable connection with the African American struggle for freedom and equality.
References
Foner, Eric. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. W.W. Norton, 2010, pp.
299, 312–313.
Hamner, Christopher. Booth's Reason for Assassination. Center for History and New Media,
2010. https://web.archive.org/web/20101202112805/http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/24242
Richard, Striner. Father Abraham: Lincoln's Relentless Struggle to End Slavery. Oxford
Rodriguez, Junius. Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia,
VoL. 1. ABC-CLIO, 2007, 239.
Sinha, Manisha. Allies for Emancipation? Black Abolitionists and Abraham Lincoln. The Gilder
Lehrman Institute of American History, 2016. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/african-americans-and-emancipation/essays/allies-for-emancipation-black-abolitionists
