Lincoln, the "Great Emancipator"?

Source: Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Peoria, Illinois, October 16, 1854

If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, ---to their own native land. But a moment's reflection would convince me, that whatever of high hope, (as I think there is) there may be in this, in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible. . . What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? . . . Free them, and make them politically and socially, our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not.

Source: Abraham Lincoln, Address at Cooper Institute, New York City, 1860

Mr. Jefferson did not mean to say, nor do I, that the power of emancipation is in the Federal Government. He spoke of Virginia; and, as to the power of emancipation, I speak of the slaveholding States only. The Federal Government, however, as we insist, has the power of restraining the extension of the institution - the power to insure that a slave insurrection shall never occur on any American soil which is now free from slavery.

Source: Horace Greeley to Abraham Lincoln, August 1, 1862

II. We think you are strangely and disastrously remiss in the discharge of your official and imperative duty with regard to the emancipating provisions of the new Confiscation Act. Those provisions were designed to fight Slavery with Liberty. They prescribe that men loyal to the Union, and willing to shed their blood in her behalf, shall no longer be held, with the Nation's consent, in bondage to persistent, malignant traitors, who for twenty years have been plotting and for sixteen months have been fighting to divide and destroy our county. Why these traitors should be treated with tenderness by you, to the prejudice of the dearest rights of loyal men, we cannot conceive.

Source: Abraham Lincoln, Remarks on Colonization, August 14, 1862

Perhaps you have long been free, or all your lives. Your race are suffering, in my judgment, the greatest wrong inflicted on any people. But even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race. You are cut off from many advantages which the other race enjoy. The aspiration of men is to enjoy equality with the best when free, but on this broad continent, not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of ours. Go where you are treated the best, and the ban is still upon you.

Source: Resolution of African Americans in Newtown, New York, August 20, 1862

We, THE COLORED CITIZENS of Queens County, N.Y., having met in mass meeting . . . to consider the speech of Abraham Lincoln, . . . [wish] to express our views on the subject of being colonized in Central America or some other country . . .

While bleeding and struggling for life against slaveholding traitors, and, at this very time, when our country is struggling for life and 1 mission freemen are believed to be scarcely sufficient to meet the foe, we are called upon by the President of the United States to leave this land and go to another country, to carry out his favorite scheme of colonization. But at this crisis, we feel disposed to refuse the offers of the President, since the call of our suffering country is too loud and imperative to be unheeded.

To what extent does Abraham Lincoln deserve the title of "Great Emancipator"?

Tempie Cummins

Read Tempie Cummins' narrative at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snvoices06.html

The Emancipation Proclamation

http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/sites/lincoln/emancipation-proclamation-january-1-1863/

Lincoln, the "Great Emancipator"?

An analysis of primary resources

Tamara Korth

Understanding Lincoln

Final Project

Source: Harpers Weekly, December 20, 1862