Named on the 2013 list of University Press Books for Public and Secondary Schools
Abraham Lincoln is known as the Great Emancipator, yet his personal views on race have long been debated. Since his death, his legend has been shadowed by the mystery of his true stance toward non-whites. While Lincoln took many actions to fight slavery throughout his political career, his famously crafted speeches can be interpreted in different ways: at times his words suggest personal bigotry, but at other times he sounds like an enemy of racists. In Lincoln and Race, Richard Striner takes on one of the most sensitive subjects of Abraham Lincoln’s legacy, exploring in depth Lincoln’s mixed record and writings on the issue of race.
Striner gives fair hearing to two prevailing theories about Lincoln’s seemingly contradictory words and actions: Did Lincoln fight a long-term struggle to overcome his personal racism? Or were his racist comments a calculated act of political deception? Beginning with an exploration of the historical context of Lincoln’s attitudes toward race in the years before his presidency, Striner details the ambiguity surrounding the politician’s participation in the Free Soil Movement and his fight to keep slavery from expanding into the West. He explores Lincoln’s espousal of colonization—the controversial idea that freed slaves should be resettled in a foreign land—as a voluntary measure for black people who found the prospect attractive. The author analyzes some of Lincoln’s most racially charged speeches and details Lincoln’s presidential words and policies on race and the hotbed issue of voting rights for African Americans during the last years of the president’s life.
A brief but comprehensive look into one of the most contentious quandaries about Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln and Race invites readers to delve into the mind, heart, and motives of one of America’s most fascinating and complex leaders.
University Press Books for Public and Secondary Schools 2013 edition
“With lawyerly precision, Richard Striner mines the speeches and writing of our sixteenth president to make a compelling case for a President Lincoln who, contrary to contemporary belief, had a long and abiding commitment not just to the end of slavery but also to equality before the law for all men, whatever the color of their skin.”—Clay Risen, staff editor at the New York Times
“Terse, unflinching, and cogent. Striner forthrightly vindicates Lincoln from the stigma of racism through a close textual analysis of his most controversial speeches and by careful attention to their political context. He persuasively shows how Lincoln consistently employed evasive and conditional language to disarm the racial pandering of his opponent and the recalcitrant fears of his audience. While making seemingly important concessions to the inflexible racial prejudice of his audience, Lincoln nonetheless subtly upheld core egalitarian principles. As a lawyer, Lincoln used this strategy of conceding a narrow point while upholding a more fundamental principle to great effect. As a statesman, his use of this same strategy was at once necessary and masterful: it enabled him to survive politically while maintaining the viability of the antislavery cause in the racist state of Illinois and throughout the Union. Far from being a white supremacist, then, Lincoln was a master politician whose political craft was indispensable in advancing equality and black freedom against the prevailing climate of white supremacy. This book is a must read for anyone interested in the provocative yet perilous question of Lincoln and race.” —Joseph R. Fornieri, author of Lincoln's Political Faith
“Abraham Lincoln was both a pragmatic politician seeking office and the most profound moral philosopher ever to occupy the presidency. The contradictions between the two roles were enormous, leaving in their wake apparently irreconcilable statements about the most emotional issue of his day, racial equality. Richard Striner’s impressive exercise in decoding Lincoln’s rhetoric takes us as far as one can go in discovering the Great Emancipator’s bedrock opinion.”—Alonzo L. Hamby, Distinguished Professor of History, Ohio University
