Did Black Lives Matter to Abraham Lincoln? It’s Complicated
15th March 2021
“I have never called Lincoln a racist,” says Eric Foner, one of the nation’s preeminent historians on Lincoln and the Civil War.
“He shared some of the prejudices of his time. Was Lincoln an anti-racist? No not really. Was he an egalitarian in the modern sense? No. Race was not a major concern of Lincoln. He didn’t think about race about very much. To ask if he’s a racist is the wrong question. And if you ask the wrong question, you’re going to get the wrong answer.”
As, indeed, they do.