Foner, Eric

OUR SYNOPSIS: Eric Foner “traces the evolution of [Abraham] Lincoln’s ideas and policies about slavery from his early life through his career in the Illinois legislature in the 1830s, his term in Congress in the 1840s, his emergence as a leader of the new Republican party in the 1850s, and his presidency during the Civil War.” (xvi) He shows that while Lincoln became antislavery, he consistently made clear he was not an abolitionist. Indeed, “he would denounce slavery but not slaveholders.” (30) Foner argues that Lincoln’s outspokenness in favor of colonization by the late 1850s reflected his commitment to natural rights for Black people, who he thought would be free to exercise these rights outside the United States. Lincoln believed in the principle of equality granted by the Declaration of Independence but did not envision Black people as part of the American nation. When he became president in 1861, he reiterated his commitment to not disrupt slavery where it already existed but made clear his opposition to its expansion. During the early part of the Civil War, he employed a border state gradual compensated abolition strategy, worrying that any general emancipation order would cause the border states to join the Confederate cause. The war situation changed these views by July 22, 1862, when Lincoln first proposed uncompensated immediate abolition in Confederate-controlled areas. His border state policy would stay the same and border states did not fall under the eventual Emancipation Proclamation. Yet, this document addressed and freed enslaved people directly, a major shift.