My Modest Effort to Challenge an Error About Abraham Lincoln and Slavery

From back in March, here is an article of mine from the site Emerging Civil War challenging a popular error about Abraham Lincoln’s first public battle against slavery. Many historians today understate the degree of disagreement Lincoln had with his colleagues in the Illinois legislature in 1837, when his fellow solons adopted an anti-abolitionist resolution. The resolution was softer on slavery than many historians are aware, and I go into the gritty details in the article.

Lincoln and a colleague made a formal protest against the resolution. Lincoln was opposed to the abolitionists, but he thought his colleagues, in denouncing the abolitionists, had gone too far in the proslavery direction by ruling out the possibility of eliminating slavery in the District of Columbia. Lincoln approved abolition in the District if the white residents approved. This caveat may seem fatal to any antislavery impulse, but later, as a Congressman, Lincoln proposed precisely such a reform, with a payoff to white slaveholders if they agreed to get rid of slavery. Lincoln even got some early support from the local whites until proslavery pressure throttled the idea.

Where some historians went wrong is in thinking that the Illinois legislature shared Lincoln’s willingness to get rid of slavery in the District if the whites approved. On the contrary, the legislative resolution declared without reservation that the lawmakers would “much regret to see this institution [slavery] abolished in” D. C. Lincoln, in contrast, denounced slavery and avowed the opinion (which he later acted on) that the consent of local whites could legitimately be sought to get rid of District of Columbia’s slavery incubus.

I think I actually made a modest contribution to correcting the record on this issue.