Was there something ambiguous in those quotes? Pretty plain talk for a politician
damn phone
I'm not saying his words were ambiguous. I'm saying most of the statements used don't support the conclusion that Dr. Williams thinks they do. He seems to think he's showing that Lincoln was a racist, with a callous indifference to the suffering of slaves, and motivated only by base politics and greed. And he apparently thinks that the evidence shows that so plainly, he doesn't even have to draw the conclusion himself.
So Lincoln was a racist. He didn't believe blacks were equal to whites. Oh, I guess that means he didn't want to abolish slavery, right? No, that doesn't follow. But it at least means that he didn't care about what happened to black people, right? No, that doesn't follow, either. Lincoln was as much a racist as his Republican colleagues, who completely and permanently banned slavery just a few years later. Racist =/= pro-slavery. It is also entirely possible that a person could view another race as inferior, yet still have pity on that other race, and want to better their condition. So the quotations show some warts on Lincoln, but they don't show that he was indifferent to, or approving of, slavery.
Pretty much the same thing goes for the quotation about the pragmatic nature of the Emancipation Proclamation. He felt he had to view the question of emancipating slaves in terms of its usefulness for the war effort. Does that mean he didn't care about people languishing under the "peculiar institution"? No, it does not. It just means that he was not a fool-hardy, short-sighted idealist, like John Brown. Or Scott Roeder. Specifically, he was writing to some religious anti-slavery types, and providing a number of reasons why he thought emancipation might actually aid the Southern war effort. (Which would do no favors for the millions of slaves in the CSA.) You can read the full letter here:
http://www.classicreader.com/book/3767/173/ Ironically, when speaking of the "hypocrisy of the Emancipation Proclamation," Williams ignores his first quotation from Lincoln, which explains precisely why the Proclamation did not apply to states loyal to the Union. But if I could digress from Williams' article for a minute, I'd like to address the point that "if Lincoln could rape the Constitution for this over here, then he should have had no qualms about raping the Constitution to free some slaves." This argument does not really work. Firstly, because it presumes that Lincoln saw himself as raping the Constitution, and felt free to do so. In the real world, just because you think someone is violating the Constitution doesn't mean they think they are. Or at least, they may not admit it to themselves. It doesn't mean they will do things they clearly believe to be violations of the Constitution, especially if they have said as much in public. I don't know where Lincoln was on (or off of) that continuum, but Williams has shown that he did recognize that slavery within the states was beyond the reach of the U.S. government, as constituted. And if the 13th Amendment is any indication, the rest of the country also believed it was outside the purview of the national government. So, secondly, the non-working argument above fails to take into account that a President can only get away with those violations of law that he can, er, get away with. And if the country doesn't think a President can outlaw slavery at whim (and they apparently did not), he probably won't get away with such.
Lastly, the conspiracy theory about the Civil War being a bid for excise tax money. Meh. Never heard that one. Sounds a little thin. If we're taking a cynical view of the whole thing, what's wrong with the lust for power explanation? The desire to retain power over half your territory?
Slightly edited for greater clarity and make-sensey-ness.
