Lincoln - Part 94
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Part 94

165 "or to myself": CW, 2:82.

165 "are still aloft!": CW, 2:85.

165 "the world respectably": CW, 2.124.

165 "of his cause": CW, 2:126.

165 views on slavery: Mark E. Neely, Jr., "American Nationalism in the Image of Henry Clay: Abraham Lincoln's Eulogy on Henry Clay in Context," Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 73 (Jan. 1975): 3160.

165 "a greater evil": CW, 2:130.

165 knowledge of slavery: On his two flatboat trips down the Mississippi, Lincoln was more concerned with river currents than with social inst.i.tutions. But he did remember distinctly that on his first trip he was "attacked by seven negroes with intent to kill." CW, 4:62. William H. Townsend argued that on his visits to his father-in-law in Lexington, Kentucky, Lincoln "had an opportunity to study the inst.i.tution of slavery at close range," and he detailed a number of horrors and atrocities that Lincoln might have witnessed. Lincoln and the Bluegra.s.s: Slavery and Civil War in Kentucky (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1955), pp. 126132. Benjamin Quarles, Lincoln and the Negro (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), also says Lincoln "could not have missed" the whipping post, the slave pens, and the slave auctions in Lexington. But neither author gives any evidence that Lincoln did witness these scenes, and he never made any reference to them.

166 crucified his feelings: Compare Lincoln's letter of Sept. 27, 1841, to Mary Speed with that of Aug. 24, 1855, to Joshua F. Speed. CW, 1:260, 2:320.

166 "you owned slaves": Joseph Gillespie to WHH, Jan. 31, 1866, HWC.

166 it in colonization: The most perceptive account is Michael Vorenberg, "Abraham Lincoln and the Politics of Black Colonization," Journal of the Abraham Lincoln a.s.sociation 14 (Summer 1993): 2345. On the Colonization Society, see P. J. Staudenraus, The African Colonization Movement, 18161865 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961). For a thoughtful a.n.a.lysis, see George M. Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 18171914 (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), pp. 625.

166 "for the future": CW, 2:132.

167 "times ten days': CW, 2:255.

167 171 were blacks: The Seventh Census of the United States, 1850 (Washington, D.C.: Robert Armstrong, 1853), p. 715.

167 small legal problems: Lloyd Ostendorf, "A Monument for One of the Lincoln Maids," LH 66 (Winter 1964): 184186; John E. Washington, They Knew Lincoln (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1942), pp. 183202. See also Quarles, Lincoln and the Negro, pp. 2528.

167 "the existing inst.i.tution": CW, 2:255.

167 were "settled forever": CW, 2:232.

167 very useful escape: For this interpretation I am indebted to Gabor S. Boritt, "The Voyage to the Colony of Linconia: The Sixteenth President, Black Colonization, and the Defense Mechanism of Avoidance," Historian 37 (1975): 619632.

167 the Nebraska Territory: Potter and Fehrenbacher, The Impending Crisis, chap. 7, offers the most satisfactory account of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. For Douglas's motives, see Robert W. Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), chapters 16 -18 .

168 "thunderstruck and stunned": CW, 2:282.

168 "masters and slaves": David Herbert Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960), p. 252.

168 about them all: WHH to James H. Wilson, Aug. 18, 1889, copy, HWC; Herndon to Zebina Eastman, Feb. 6, 1866, Eastman MSS, Chicago Historical Society.

169 "perfect and uniform": CW, 2:282.

170 "or our forefathers": Matthew Pinsker, "If You Know Nothing: Abraham Lincoln and Political Nativism," unpublished essay, p. 6.

170 "G.o.d speed it!": CW, 2:229, 234.

170 whittling and listening: Townsend, Lincoln and the Bluegra.s.s, p. 213.