What were Abraham Lincoln's views of African Americans?

[natasha]

I'm looking for a general overview of this topic. What Lincoln thought about African Americans in general.

Websites would be really helpful.
Like I said websites on this topic would be really helpful.

Like I said websites on this topic would be really helpful.

[Jim]

They shouldn't be slaves.

[pathlesstraveled]

Ken Burns' film The Civil War may appeal to your questioning because the film puts Abraham Lincoln in context of events during which many white people North and South were heavily tested.

But, it is this. Burn's film was conveyed still largely from an Anglo-American perspective. And so do yourself fairness: research as wide a swath of perspective as possible. Observe the biases therein.

The film was exceptionally well-done, in which credits for the production are a long list of knowledgeable people and archives with which you can access and compile the many takes on Lincoln by both white and black people then and now about his views on African Americans. I am sure from these credits you can extract websites as well.

Like then as now, racism has many strata. What differed most about the North and South was, the South was unequivocal about their repulsion -- their "in your face" attitude about African Americans except insofar as how the slave could serve an economy -- theirs -- that was founded on slavery; whereas the North was more akin to that of Lincoln's -- ambivalent at best. There were a relative number of Anglo-Americans who were quite sincere indeed of the Northern perspective. John Brown was among the zenith of these, yet he went too far out with it, going so far as becoming a yahoo.

Now, Lincoln's was an ambivalent one regarding African Americans. Like many, many white people of the time, his view was a jaded one. And one should realize that, specifically, his Emancipation Proclamation was in reality more ado about political expedience, not heart-felt point of view and effort.

Let his proclamation not have been at first better tested.

Lincoln held that 'in principle' all "man is created equal," yes -- but this only in principle and he did, of all people, at one point during the Civil War on the "slave question," to resolve so far as to suggest and contemplate enacting a law, which purpose intended that the slave is better accorded a 'colony', one established unto itself, set 'outside' the United States.

In other words it says -- 'If you can't go back to Africa, above all don't endeavor to believe you should remain here in America.'

Was Lincoln a racist? Well, he was in the very least a politician of the times -- 'that' we can say. Who among the many today would dare say openly in public that Lincoln was indeed a racist. Do we not prefer our idols to be without clay feet and thus build great allegories and proud statues to contravert anyone who would speak in another wise?

Some of the greatest rhetoricians and orators and writers have spoken so ideally on well-founded principles but as quickly falter when the "rubber meets the road," whereupon actions are brought to bear, tested for how much louder will these prove to be than mere words fancy.

You would do well to go to the university departments of history, talk to those professors and lecturers who specialize in antebellum America and the Civil War itself, and you will get a good view of this: you can note how Anglo-American historians frame Lincoln sometimes wholly differently in terms of the "slave question" and the "Indian question"; whereas you many then note how African American historians and Native American historians frame Lincoln in mark contrast.

I believe you would find this fascinating, interesting in that in a subtle or not so subtle way, you perceive just how near we still are to times when slavery was the norm of society.