So that he could finally realize his dream of being a member of the wealthy, successful, slave-owning political class, just like his idol and role model, slave plantation owner Henry Clay. And like his late father-in-law, the largest slave owner in Kentucky, from whom he inherited the slaves. Kevin Orlin Johnson, author of The Lincolns in the White House, explains.
The real Lincoln owned and sold slaves; was the chairman of the Illinois Colonization Society that used tax dollars to deport free blacks out of the state; worked diligently as president to plan the deportation of all blacks (see Colonization after Emancipation by Phil Magness and Sebastian Page); supported the 1848 amendment to the Illinois constitution that prohibited blacks from migrating into the state; enjoyed nothing more than black-face minstrel shows; represented slave owners in court seeking to retrieve their runaway slaves but never a slave; supported the Illinois constitution that deprived the small number of free blacks in the state of any civil rights including the right to vote; and understood more than anyone that no abolitionist could ever have been elected to anything in Illinois in the first half of the nineteenth century. But then you would know all of this if you had read my book The Problem with Lincoln.
Is anything Americans have been taught about Lincoln NOT a lie?
6:56 am on March 8, 2022
