We've discussed a lot in class that suggests that Lincoln, as a good Whig party member, thought that slavery could be extinguished simply by containing it, and letting it die out. Obviously, the science of fertilizers could have proved Lincoln very wrong.
Nonetheless, I got the feeling from the packet by Gopnik that he personally thought that Lincoln would have been able to deal with slavery using legal strategy, if the Union stayed together- this idea is clearly a little different than the Whig party's more indirect way of extinction- could both factors have been possible ways that Lincoln planned on dealing with slavery, had the country stayed intact?
Clearly, the Whig extinction theory would still have needed to involve legal theory, but once again, (to me) it seems that Gopnik was trying to say that Lincoln could've (eventually) ended slavery by actually living up to the phrase 'equality under the law,' and not by implementing a strategic and indirect plan which the Whigs had championed at the time. Thoughts?
I think so too to an extent. It may have taken a long time but public pressure from world governments can force change on a lot of things. Seeing as a lot of the European world had stated to see slavery as wrong, and many New Englanders as well, the pressure of world opinion could have forced and end to slavery
ReplyDeleteChris is right about the pressure of international opinion, and you are right that Lincoln's long-term project of reviving the Declaration's notion of human equality and enshrining it as a quasi-constitutional principle might have had effects in the long run. It is very hard to imagine, however, a straightforward legal strategy for ending slavery without the upheaval of the war. Unless perhaps the European powers who had become so dependent on slave-processed cotton were to take a principled stand against their financial interests. Then perhaps Lincoln could have effected compensated, gradual emancipation.
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