Here’s something Abraham Lincoln did say

Unlucky Scott Sales, speaker of the Montana House of Representatives, is reported to have used a completely spurious set of Abraham Lincoln quotes in his opening speech.

That’s what happens when you do your research on the internet of course. The “Ten cannots” - ''You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong,'' etc -  are apparently a famous trap for unwary speechmakers in search of an uplifting aphorism, as you can read in this excellent article by Thomas F. Schwartz: “Lincoln never said that”.   

I’ve been doing some research on the internet too, in The Times Archive, as it happens. Here is The Times (of London, of course) reprinting a letter printed in the Grant county (Wisconsin) Herald, “giving an account of a recent interview with Mr Lincoln” - so it’s third-hand at least and Dr Schwartz could reasonably take issue with my headline, but what the hell, it’s a great read.

Lincoln’s attitude to slavery has been much chewed over, and it can come as a bit of a surprise to read him taking such a pragmatic, politician’s line. The gist is similar to his famous letter responding to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, who had criticised him for slow-pedalling on emancipation. 

In The Times extract, the President is responding to a question about what would happen if the Democrats were to win the November 1864 election, and carry out their platform promise of ending the fighting and negotiating a settlement with the Confederacy. The Democrats had effectively shot themselves in the foot by appointing George B. McClellan as their presidential nominee, as he didn’t support the appeasement route, but Lincoln dismisses his influence. Extracts below, but you can read the whole thing here:

"But, Mr President, General McClellan is in favour of crushing out the rebellion by force. He will be the Chicago candidate." "Sir," said the President, "the slightest knowledge of arithmetic will prove to any man that the rebel armies cannot be destroyed by Democratic strategy. It would sacrifice all the white men of the North to do it. There are now in the service of the United States near 200,000 able-bodied coloured men, most of them under arms, defending and acquiring Union territory. The Democratic strategy demands that these forces be disbanded, and that the masters be conciliated by restoring them to slavery. The black men who now assist Union prisoners to escape, they are to be converted into our enemies in the vain hope of gaining the good-will of their masters. We shall have to fight two nations instead of one.

...

Abandon all the posts now garrisoned by black men, take 200,000 men from our side and put them in the battle-field, or corn-field, against us, and we would be compelled to abandon the war in three weeks. We have to hold territory in inclement and sickly places; where are the Democrats to do this?
…

My enemies pretend I am now carrying on this war for the sole purpose of abolition. So long as I am President, it shall be carried on for the sole purpose of restoring the Union. But no human power can subdue this rebellion without the use of the emancipation policy, and every other policy calculated to weaken the moral and physical forces of the rebellion. Freedom has given us 200,000 men raised on Southern soil. It will give us more yet.

…

Let my enemies prove to the country that the destruction of slavery is not necessary to a restoration of the Union. I will abide the issue."

Comments

mr.lincoln had said that slavery is not what we wanted and he fought and fought till slavery was no longer any where in the usa

[Carol Powell]

No doubt it was a strategem all along by a politician, not philanthropy that gave rise to Abolition. As though Presidents live on a higher moral plain.

Otherwise repatriation and compensation would have been a natural consequence, and still no sign of it today in this so-called democracy.