Resistance to Public School Desegregation: Little Rock, Arkansas, and Beyond Book

The title derives from a quote by W. E. B. Du Bois, who, after comparing Lincoln's often contradictory attitudes and actions on race declared that Lincoln was "big enough to be inconsistent." Fittingly for a book so titled, it consists of three chapters each of which began as a lecture delivered in November 2006 as part of the W. E. B Du Bois series of lectures given at Harvard University.

The first lecture considers the historiography of Lincoln's views on race. Specifically, Fredrickson contrasts the views of those who consider Lincoln as very much a part of the white supremacist culture in which he grew up to those who see him as an exponent of racial equality. Historians of the white supremacist school, most notably (and most outspokenly), Lerone Bennett, Jr., argue that Lincoln both reflected the white supremacist ideas and attitudes of the culture in which he was born into and gave forceful expression to them, particularly in his famous debates with Stephen A. Douglas. Bennett even goes so far as to deny that Lincoln ever genuinely opposed slavery. Bennett's argument, as Frederickson notes, is heavily ideological. He believes that blacks in the United States have never been and never can be accorded equal treatment. Emancipation and the Civil Rights movement were but snares convincing black people that it would be easy. Lincoln deserves to be attacked because he contributed to this false consciousness. On the other side of the argument are historians such as Gary Wills and Allen C. Guelzo. Wills saw Lincoln as a great constitutional innovator; a president who took the Constitution of 1787 with its concern for the rights of individuals and converted it into the Constitution of the Gettysburg address in which the national government had the power to intervene to protect the rights of individuals. Guelzo believes that Lincoln intended to free the slaves from the moment that he took office and that any statement or action that he took (such as extolling colonization) were just expedient shifts in a long campaign to reach that goal. Frederickson advocates looking at Lincoln in the context of his times and circumstances, which he does in the next two chapters--the first devoted to the Illinois years and the second to the years of the presidency.

Fredrickson finds no reason to doubt that Lincoln was opposed to slavery from an early age. In 1837 as a first-term member of the Illinois State Legislature Lincoln publicly affirmed that slavery was founded on "both injustice and bad policy" but then condemned abolitionism as it tended, he argued, to increase rather than decrease the evils of the system. While the Constitution protected slavery in the states, but it had the power to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. Lincoln, however, believed that Congress should only act if a majority of the inhabitants petitioned for its removal. While a member of Congress he sponsored legislation to abolish slavery in the District provided with the consent of a majority of the free inhabitants. The legislation went nowhere. After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, he opposed the expansion of slavery to territories where it had been prohibited Lincoln was a believer that all men--black as well as white--should have the freedom to better their condition in life. He was thus antislavery, but his legal and constitutional views gave him very limited scope in which to push for antislavery measures.

Fredrickson argues that Lincoln saw moral leadership in antebellum America as a contest between lawyers on one hand and ministers on the other. The law--and lawyers--represented "reason, moderation, and the resolution of disputes through calm deliberation and judicious compromise." Religion--and clergymen--stood for "emotionalism, perfectionism, and an uncompromising commitment to absolute truths and ideal solutions to complex problems." (p. 52) He obviously equated abolitionists with ministers.