Abraham Lincoln is often admired for being the very model of the progressive politician, a crusading visionary who sealed his place in history with his farsighted, morally righteous decision to emancipate the slaves during the Civil War.
The truth, historians say, is more complicated. Lincoln certainly deserves credit for signing the Emancipation Proclamation and for throwing his weight behind the 13th Amendment, banning slavery, but many historians are quick to point out that the Great Emancipator's civil rights achievements weren't entirely of his own volition. In a series of recent books and essays, scholars argue that Lincoln, like most presidents, had to be pushedâ??in his case, by black abolitionists and "radical" Republicansâ??to listen to his own "better angels" and took action only when it became politically feasible.
There is no doubt, of course, that Lincoln hated the institution of slavery. "A blind man can see where the president's heart is," Douglass said. But when Lincoln took office, he was no abolitionist, a position that was considered radical at the time. Lincoln had campaigned against the expansion of slavery into new states and territories, but he didn't believe the Constitution allowed the federal government to eliminate it outright.
Through his first year as president, he stood the same ground, steering a centrist course between slaveholding Southerners and their opponents in the North. In his first inaugural, in which he offered a delicately worded olive branch to the seven Southern states that had seceded from the Union, he made no mention of the issue. "We are not enemies, but friends," Lincoln said. "We must not be enemies."
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