The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foder

We have just passed the 150th anniversary of the presidential election of 1860, which brought Abraham Lincoln to the presidency. It was an election to be remembered. It drew the largest turnout of eligible voters—more than 80 percent—in our history. It pitted four serious candidates against each other, one of whom (Abraham Lincoln) was not even on the ballot in most of the Southern states, and two of whom (John C. Breckinridge and John Bell) won only a handful of votes in the Northern states. Which shows just how divided the country was on the eve of the Civil War. It gave the victory to a candidate who won less than a majority of the popular vote (about 40 percent) though unquestionably a majority of the electoral vote.
So begins this excellent account of Lincoln and his evolving views on slavery, emancipation, and the integration of former slaves into American society. Feelings ran high on both sides of the slavery issue. Initially, Lincoln steered a middle course. He believed slavery violated America’s basic principles — a view he expressed forcefully and frequently. Still, he was reluctant to take dramatic action against it. He remained so devoted to the American Constitution, with its protections of slavery, that he supported (albeit with reluctance) the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which imposed stiff penalties on Northerners who assisted runaway slaves. At the same time, he never faltered in his effort to prevent slavery’s western expansion, and he refused to follow party conservatives who were overly conciliatory to the South. When the Republican Party formed in the 1850s, Foner explains, it was Lincoln’s middling position that made him the North’s most attractive presidential candidate in 1860 and helped him keep his wits about him during the tumultuous war years. So dexterously did he navigate the political waters that he could rightly claim credit for bringing about slavery’s abolition.
He initially had a great deal of trouble imagining what pot-slavery America would look like--so thoroughly was slavery embedded in the country, both north and south, what would former slaves do? What would their rights be? What would be their opportunities? Over the course of his presidency, he saw increasingly that former slaves needed to be identified as any other citizen of the United States. he incorporated them as soldiers into the northern army, against some significant resistance, and was impressed with their performance.
Lincoln was gradually developing a vision for integrating former slaves, and soon after the end of the war all that was put to a stop by his assassination--he was not firmly aligned with his fellow Republicans views on freed slaves, and it is unfortunate that we did not get an opportunity to see how he would have done it.