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Powell's Staff:
Five Book Friday: In Memoriam
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Every year, the booksellers at Powell’s submit their Top Fives: their five favorite books that were released in 2023. It’s a list that, when put together, shows just how varied and interesting the book tastes of Powell’s booksellers are. I highly recommend digging into the recommendations — we would never lead you astray — but today...
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Brontez Purnell:
Powell’s Q&A: Brontez Purnell, author of ‘Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt’
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Rachael P.:
Starter Pack: Where to Begin with Ursula K. Le Guin
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3javids has commented on (2) products
Lincoln & the Abolitionists John Quincy Adams Slavery & the Civil War
by
Fred Kaplan
3javids
, May 29, 2017
"Entire Freedom from Popular Prejudice." Kaplan does not give Lincoln his due as being a politician, from a racist state whose southern half was settled mainly by Southerners (unlike J.Q. Adams's Massachusetts) and who believed that public opinion must be taken into account when seeking change. "A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded can not be safely disregarded." At the outset of the Illinois senatorial campaign of 1858, Abraham Lincoln pleaded with his audience, "let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man; this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position; discarding our standard that we have left us. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal...I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal." In an 1855 private letter to his best friend Lincoln had written that he "abhors" "the oppression of Negroes," as he does the "degrading" of white immigrants and Catholics, and yet he and other Northerners "crucify" their feelings for the sake of Union. As is implied from this, and from a private memoranda of how pro-slavery arguments could also be used to justify white enslavement, Lincoln in using the word "oppression" was not just referring to slavery (Know-Nothings were not proposing to physically enslave either group, immigrant or Catholic). Yet, Lincoln in 1858 was running against the territorial expansion of slavery, opposing the increasingly race-baiting incumbent Senator Stephen A. Douglas, and before racist voters in Illinois. Lincoln never said blacks were inherently inferior. But, if he had advocated, or left unanswered charges of being for, full equality in 1858, he would most certainly have committed political suicide. Lincoln did state that the purpose of the Declaration of Independence is to "augment the happiness and value of life to all people, of all colors, everywhere." Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as a war measure and applied it only to areas still in rebellion against the national authority, because such was the only way to present it as constitutional. The loyal slave-holding Border states also were crucial to the Union cause and couldn't be alienated. As Union forces advanced and conquered the rebellious areas more and more African-Americans became free. Nonetheless, Lincoln was so concerned that the Proclamation would be ruled unconstitutional that he insisted the 13th Amendment be a part of the 1864 Republican Platform; made sure an unprecedented enforcement clause was added; used all his powers of persuasion and patronage to get it through Congress; and signed the Amendment though his signature was not needed. Lincoln had said the treatment of blacks in the US did not "accord with justice." Colonization was always to be voluntary; Lincoln felt white prejudice so intractable that as President he urged black leaders to consider it. Colonization was abandoned as ventures failed, and African-Americans rejected it. It is not inconceivable that Lincoln still wished to afford those blacks who wished to escape white racism the choice, even as he was working to include blacks in the American polity. As president, Lincoln approved of bills abolishing segregation on omnibuses in D.C.; for allowing black witnesses in federal courts; for equalizing penalties for the same crime; for equal pay for black soldiers; and outlawing discrimination on the basis of color in the carrying of the US mail. He welcomed, for the first time, an ambassador from Haiti; African-Americans picnicked on the White House grounds. He supported the activities of the Freedmen's Bureau. Frederick Douglass was "impressed with his entire freedom from popular prejudice against the colored race" after meeting with Lincoln three times in the White House, and in 1865 called him "emphatically the black man's president." On January 16, 1865, General Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15, subsequent to a meeting, called by Lincoln's Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, to ascertain from a group of African-American leaders of Savannah, Georgia, the needs of the community of the newly freed. The leaders mentioned land, and in an unprecedented and revolutionary action, the order confiscated 400,000 acres of coastal land in South Carolina and Florida, including Georgia's Sea Islands, for the use of families of freedmen. Lincoln had sent Stanton to Savannah to meet with Sherman over the issue of the planters' lands, and Lincoln approved S. F. #15 before it's issuance. (President Andrew Johnson overturned #15 in the fall of 1865, and the new occupants of the lands were dispossessed. The Freedmen's Bureau, the creation of which Lincoln had supported, was given an extension by Congress in 1866, overriding Johnson's veto). When he visited occupied Richmond, President Lincoln took off his hat and returned the bow of an elderly black man--an act of equality and respect noted by sullen white onlookers and the press alike. In what was to be his last public address, Lincoln called for public schooling for blacks, and for the vote for black soldiers and the well educated. John Wilkes Booth, in the crowd, seethed "that means n-- citizenship", and vowed that the speech would be Lincoln's last.
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Forced Into Glory Abraham Lincolns White Dream
by
Lerone Jr Bennett
3javids
, July 03, 2006
Lincoln never retreated from emancipation once it was decided upon, just as he NEVER affirmed black inferiority to be INHERENT. During his debates with Stephen Douglas he NEVER said that he would never(in future) support equality. He didn't put stock in physical differences. In a well-known private note to himself he mused how anyone could be enslaved if the criterion was to have darker skin, or lesser intellect, because EVERYONE was lighter or darker, or of varing degrees of smartness. He, in Chicago in July 1858, implored people to "discard" all their "quibbling" about supposed inferiority, and unite around the equality of the Declaration of Independence. However, a race-baiting Stephen Douglas forced him to subsequently in those debates down-play the full implications of his anti-slavery position. Again, he was a politician seeking an anti-slavery victory in a racist state. But, during his presidency he supported bills abolishing segregation on horse-drawn streetcars in D.C., for equal pay for black troops, for black witnesses in federal courts, for equal penalties for the same crimes, for the Freedmen's Bureau. Lincoln not only issued the Emancipation Proclamation, but also insisted on and pushed through Congress the 13th Amendment. He supported education for the freedmen. He had African-Americans picnic on the White House lawn, bowed publicly to a black gentleman in Richmond, welcomed(for the first time) an ambassador from Haiti, and met African-American leaders in the White House for discussions. Any colonization was to be VOLUNTARY and was later dropped, whites and blacks having to "live out of the old relation and into the new." He called for the vote for educated blacks and soldiers[a first step]. John Wilkes Booth was in the audience, and told a companion that that meant "N-- citizenship" and vowed it would be Lincoln's last speech. He was assassinated 3 days later. Frederick Douglass noted Lincoln's "entire freedom from popular prejudice against the colored race." Bennett's book, in being untrue to the historical record, is a read better not had, when such other better books abound.
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