Product Description

“Cruel, merciful; peace-loving, a fighter; despising Negroes and letting them fight and vote; protecting slavery and freeing slaves.” Abraham Lincoln was, W. E. B. Du Bois declared, “big enough to be inconsistent.” Big enough, indeed, for every generation to have its own Lincoln—unifier or emancipator, egalitarian or racist. In an effort to reconcile these views, and to offer a more complex and nuanced account of a figure so central to American history, this book focuses on the most controversial aspect of Lincoln’s thought and politics—his attitudes and actions regarding slavery and race. Drawing attention to the limitations of Lincoln’s judgment and policies without denying his magnitude, the book provides the most comprehensive and even-handed account available of Lincoln’s contradictory treatment of black Americans in matters of slavery in the South and basic civil rights in the North.

George Fredrickson shows how Lincoln’s antislavery convictions, however genuine and strong, were held in check by an equally strong commitment to the rights of the states and the limitations of federal power. He explores how Lincoln’s beliefs about racial equality in civil rights, stirred and strengthened by the African American contribution to the northern war effort, were countered by his conservative constitutional philosophy, which left this matter to the states. The Lincoln who emerges from these pages is far more comprehensible and credible in his inconsistencies, and in the abiding beliefs and evolving principles from which they arose. Deeply principled but nonetheless flawed, all-too-human yet undeniably heroic, he is a Lincoln for all generations.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #153670 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-28
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 168 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Based on his W.E.B. Du Bois lectures at Harvard, Stanford professor emeritus Fredrickson (Arrogance of Race) wades into a controversial arena: was Lincoln a heroic emancipator or a racist who didn't care about slaves at all? Stating that in between pathological racism and egalitarianism lies a spectrum of possibilities, Fredrickson says that Lincoln is not easily classified. After opening with a quick, useful survey of the relevant historiography, Fredrickson addresses Lincoln's thoughts about issues ranging from white supremacy to colonization and black military service. One question that looms large for Fredrickson is whether Lincoln meant the most racist comments he made during the 1850s. He hated slavery yet clearly... could not readily envision a society in which blacks and whites could live in harmony as... equals. Fredrickson suggests that Lincoln's public statements may have reflected both his real thoughts and the savvy political sensibility of an ambitious man who knew he couldn't get elected without invoking white supremacist shibboleths; furthermore, Lincoln's thoughts about blacks—especially about their capacity for citizenship—may have changed during the Civil War. This brief book will be widely discussed by historians and will provide nonacademic readers a lucid introduction to some of the most heated debates about the 16th president. (Feb.)
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Review
Fredrickson wades into a controversial arena: was Lincoln a heroic emancipator or a racist who didn't care about slaves at all?...This brief book will be widely discussed by historians and will provide nonacademic readers a lucid introduction to some of the most heated debates about the 16th president. (Publishers Weekly )

With graceful and efficient expertise, Fredrickson deconstructs our rigid castings of Lincoln as either savior or racist. This exceptional book has that rare ability to make the less informed feel wise and the wise feel all the more discerning and learned.
--Margaret Heilbrun (Library Journal (starred review) )

Offers a lucid analysis of scholarship on that topic over recent decades. Lincoln has been depicted as everything from a pragmatic racist to a prudential abolitionist.
--Carlin Romano (Philadelphia Inquirer )

Review
Like all of Fredrickson's work, Big Enough to Be Inconsistent is marked by meticulous scholarship and a fair-minded evaluation of differing interpretations and pieces of evidence. It is balanced and insightful throughout.
--Eric Foner (20071215)

Customer Reviews

Well written piece.
Big Enough to Be Inconsistent: Abraham Lincoln Confronts Slavery and Race (The W. E. B. Du Bois Lectures) This is a well written book looking at the aspects that influenced Lincoln in his life and how they affected his stand on slavery and race. You get a look at not only how he felt personally but also how his love of the U.S. Constitution led to how he made many of his decisions regarding slavery.

Moral ambiguity: Plumbing the complexity of Lincoln's attitudes on slavery and race
Of the writing of books on Lincoln, there is, apparently, no end. Americans' fascination for the man seems to increase rather than diminish. But this fascination is rarely uninterested. Authors (and readers) on Lincoln tend to be hagiographers or debunkers, intent either on canonizing or damning him. As a consequence, it's frequently difficult to discover the real man underneath the legend.

In his Big Enough to Be Inconsistent, veteran Civil War scholar George Frederickson defends an interpretation of Lincoln's views on slavery and race that seeks a "middle ground" between the hagiographers who see the president as a proto-civil liberties advocate and the debunkers who see him as a hypocritical racist. Frederickson argues that Lincoln's views on both the institution of slavery and racial inequality changed over time, and that their fluidity suggests a position that's much more complex and ambiguous than hagiographers and debunkers allow. Like most of us, Lincoln's position on race wasn't entirely consistent. Moreover, Lincoln's ambivalence is complicated by the fact that he was a politician, and sometimes said things for public consumption that were more expedient than genuinely believed.

One thing is certain. Lincoln was never ambivalent in his moral opposition to slavery. But the racist assumptions he absorbed from his virulently Negrophobic home state of Illinois clustered to form views in the pre-war Lincoln that Frederickson doesn't hesitate to characterize as white supremicist, albeit a "relatively passive or reactive" sort (p. 84). Lincoln advocated a minimalist bestowal of free trade rights on blacks, but balked at defending full civil and moral equality. Moreover, his deep-seated Constitutional conservatism and his near-religious veneration of the Union made him a staunch advocate of gradual emancipation (a model defended by Henry Clay, one of Lincoln's heroes) and an equally staunch critic of abolitionists. Again like Clay, Lincoln was also a firm supporter of expatriation and colonization of freed blacks.

But the war experience began to change Lincoln's views. Gradually recognizing the value of using enslaved blacks against the Confederacy, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation primarily as a war effort. This reversed his position at war's beginning that "the Negro" shouldn't be "dragged" into the conflict (p. 90). Even after the Emancipation, Lincoln was reluctant to use blacks as soldiers, believing that they were fit only as laborers. But by August 1863, after witnessing the bravery and skill of "colored troops," Lincoln had changed his mind. This reversal also seems to have reconciled Lincoln to the possibility that free blacks had a legitimate place in American society, because he also dropped his insistence on colonization (much to the relief of his secretary John Hay, who always considered the strategy "a hideous and barbarous humbug" - p. 113). But Lincoln didn't reverse the conviction, born of his Constitutional conservatism, that civil liberties for blacks had to be determined by the states, not the federal government. Right up to the end of his life, then, the tension between his moral convictions and his political principles endured.

As Frederickson himself concedes, "none of this should be surprising to good historians" (p. xi). But the skill with which Frederickson makes his case for a "middle ground" between Lincoln-veneration and Lincoln-hatred, as well as the compact elegance of this little book, make it well worth reading. It would've been good had Frederickson reflected more on the curious tension between Lincoln's fidelity to the Constitution and his moral aversion to slavery. Is it appropriate, for example, that constitutionalism trumps immediate response to glaring moral wrongs? But Frederickson's reminder that inconsistency and ambiguity are almost always embedded in our ethical positions is a refreshing response to true believers of any stripe who insist that anything less than lockstep consistency is morally condemnable.