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There's no way you read Lincoln's correspondence and speeches prior to his presidency and come away not recognizing that he was an abolitionist. He was a moderate abolitionist, for sure. He was a politician in a slavery border state with proslavery sentiments on the border with Kentucky. He was not Garrison or even Seward. It was precisely because he saw slavery as a moral issue that he moved how he did to end it. He had to root his decisions in the existing law and ensure it would be accepted by Unionists who were not morally opposed to slavery. He was a consummate politician. He knew he couldn't just up end the economic and political system of the United States without more substantial support that just the often hated extreme abolitionists. You should read about his 1864 meeting with Frederick Douglass. He feared he was going to lose reelection and wanted to ensure the destruction of slavery in the South. His plan was to move as many slaves as possible out of the South before the new administration ended the war. There was no reason to do this if he didn't actually care about abolition.

Lee had no problems using the slaves provided to him. He made no attempt to stop his army from kidnapping free blacks in Maryland and Pennsylvania. He didn't stop students at Washington College from forming a Klan chapter. His writings talking about moral values and slavery were not written with any apparent genuine concern about the enslaved.

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I figured we needed to get this discussion off the thread dedicated to dates not debates.

100% agree that Lincoln was a master politician. But the genuine concern of Lee you think is missing was just as missing from Lincoln's writings and speeches. Lincoln was most concerned on containing political power of the southern slaveocracy and the threat it posed to the free soil movement he championed as a Henry Clay Whig disciple. He had no problem isolating it in the south just keep it out of the west. Lincoln would be at home on F 16 saying let the coasts abort their progeny but keep it out of middle America.

He never wavered from preserving the union over the plight of slaves. His words and writings during the Lincoln Douglas debates are classic white supremacy. Historians like Harold Holzer, who seeks to make Lincoln the patron saint of US history, write this off as the master politician saying what he needs to to get elected but I think he was being honest Abe. Before the war, he took a client who was trying to reclaim a run away slave, not even a lukewarm abolitionist would take that case. Sumner and Frederick Douglas both thought poorly of Lincoln as he acted as a governor to their ambitions for emancipation. Holzer would say master political move of a closet abolitionist. Or was it master politician preserving power?

I think you will find more sympathy of the plight of the enslaved from Lee, than Lincoln. Lee regularly asked about the family slaves by name and was very concerned about them as individuals. His providing for their Christian education would have been, in his view, the greatest thing he could do for slaves under his purview. But his relationship to slavery was quite complex and at times contradictory. Your Jefferson comparison was quite apt. But in no way, did slavery provide Lee's motivation to fight. In 1861.

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I think you will find more sympathy of the plight of the enslaved from Lee, than Lincoln. Lee regularly asked about the family slaves by name and was very concerned about them as individuals.

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He allowed his army to kidnap free Blacks when they campaigned. There's a certain sense of condescension (in the old sense of the term) and an expected paternalism with Southern planters towards slaves who filled specific roles, but that did not extend to all slaves or slavery as an institution. Lee is certainly in this mold. You say Lee did not join the Confederacy over slavery, but he was very much aware that slavery was the cause of secession and that its protection motivated Virginia's decision. The best you can say for Lee on the matter is that slavery did not bother him to any action against it and he was perfectly willing to profit from it. His words in condemnation mimicked what you saw from a very large number of educated individuals who recognized the moral hypocrisy of the practice but had no desire to inconvenience themselves or upset the society they enjoyed.

It's hard to understand where you get the idea that Lincoln was not an abolitionist. He's quite open about it in personal correspondence. The difference between him and someone like Seward or Garrison was that it didn't outweigh his concerns about other political and social matters to the extent that it became the only salient issue. If you had a list of most morally consistent abolitionists, Lincoln wouldn't rank super high. But he was the only one of them who saw a legal and socially acceptable way to destroy slavery. He was also a man willing to take in new information and inform his politics through that. I don't think you can argue that he didn't become more radical on the issue of abolition and the rights of freed slaves over the course of his presidency.

Lincoln's views on slavery and Black people evolved over time, ultimately leading him to become an abolitionist. While his early views on race would now be considered white supremacist, they were not controversial for his time, as they reflected the prevailing beliefs of that era. Over time, however, Lincoln began to move away from these views. It would have been fascinating to see how his beliefs might have further developed had he lived through the 1870s.

Many who attempt to knock Lincoln down a peg love to quote his letter to Horace Greely. I think they purposely ignore Lincoln's distinction between his personal views and his official duty.

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I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.

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Lincoln isn't a saint but I think he managed the situation about as well as anyone could, especially with the motives of the North being all over the place.

I'm not as familiar with Lee but didn't he fight a legal will that required him to free his slaves? He's not the devil by any means but his views on slavery would have probably been in line with those of other Virginia plantation owners, although they are not a monolith either.

The letter to Greeley was pure political theater. He had already written the provisional Emancipation Proclamation and was waiting for the right moment to issue it. Greeley provided an absolutely perfect opportunity for Lincoln to publicly stake out a moderate position on slavery and help make his argument about the necessity of ending slavery. It should also be said, though I now forget which historian called attention to it, that Lincoln's reply to Greeley was the first time any politician of Lincoln's stature had publicly stated that they would willingly free every slave if they could. Actually pretty radical and if something like that happened today, the other side would pick that one line and go absolutely ballistic.

BQ78 said:

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Do you see the Emancipation Proclamation as a moral stance or one of political expediency? If moral wouldn't it make more sense to apply it to at least any state that seceded, instead of limiting it to territory the Federal government had no primacy?

Plus how do you explain Lincoln's reaction to Fremont keeping run away slaves under the auspices of the Confiscation Act? No one was pressuring Lincoln about this but Lincoln ordered Fremont to stop. An abolitionist might let this play out more before putting the kabosh on it.

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Why does it have to be one or the other?

The motive goes to Lincoln's thoughts.

BQ78 said:

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Exactly pragmatic, master politician, not one to stand on morality (not saying he didn't have any morals or didn't think slavery was abhorrent) and not an abolitionist (someone who sought to wipe out slavery completely on moral grounds).

Both Lee and Lincoln in the Whig tradition, thought slavery was immoral but both were willing to tolerate it. Lincoln would have been happy to isolate it in the south and believed it would eventually die a natural death. Lee living in the midst of slavery and struggling financially at times, used slavery to his benefit.

Both extraordinary men but men nonetheless.

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One can be pragmatic and also moral. Lincoln could have wanted to abolish slavery early on in his life but realized that the stronger and more likely position was to limit it to where it existed. When the opportunity presented itself, he pushed for its demise. Maybe I'm giving him too much credit.

I know that this is fiction but I think it serves the purpose.

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A compass, I learnt when I was surveying, it'll… it'll point you True North from where you're standing, but it's got no advice about the swamps and dessert and chasm that you'll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination, you plunge ahead, heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp… What's the use of knowing True North?

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I don't see Lee as being the man you described in the OP. I do think you are being too generous in that respect.

That is fair assessment of Lincoln, I'd only add that when the time came to end slavery he was more motivated by ending the source of national friction, than any sense of concern for slaves themselves. Lincoln died at just the right time. He had no real plan for the freedmen and dealing with that might have damaged his legacy as it did Johnson. I think he would have done better than Johnson though. As evidence of my belief, he did little to relieve the misery of contraband camps other than offering jobs as Soldiers or laborers for the army, his assistance to the freedman was abysmal.

Not sure what you don't like about what I wrote about Lee, it is based on historical facts. Do you think Lee chose to fight to preserve an institution he thought was immoral? What evidence is there that he ever stated that?

BQ78 said:

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That is fair assessment of Lincoln, I'd only add that when the time came to end slavery he was more motivated by ending the source of national friction, than any sense of concern for slaves themselves. Lincoln died at just the right time. He had no real plan for the freedmen and dealing with that might have damaged his legacy as it did Johnson. I think he would have done better than Johnson though. As evidence of my belief, he did little to relieve the misery of contraband camps other than offering jobs as Soldiers or laborers for the army, his assistance to the freedman was abysmal.

Not sure what you don't like about what I wrote about Lee, it is based on historical facts. Do you think Lee chose to fight to preserve an institution he thought was immoral? What evidence is there that he ever stated that?

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Full disclosure, I'm not as familiar with Lee as I am with Lincoln. I'm not sure what his motives were but I do know that he fought on behalf of a government built primarily with protecting the institution of slavery.

Lee had enslaved people beaten, forced into slavery, and runaways returned to slavery. I don't see much sympathy in those actions. Lincoln was no saint but just because Lee asked about the well-being of a few slaves doesn't make him more sympathetic to the plight of the individual slave either.

Lincoln did sign the law that established the Freedman's Bureau, so I don't get why you think he had no plan. He had been working on one for quite some time, hence the meeting with Black leaders at the White House to discuss his colonization plan. He changed his mind after listening to these men but it's not accurate to say he had no plan.

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Do you think Lee chose to fight to preserve an institution he thought was immoral? What evidence is there that he ever stated that?

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Again, he allowed his army to kidnap free Blacks in the North and take them back South to slavery. Preserving and defending the institution didn't really seem to cause him pause. When communicating with Grant about the resumption of prisoner exchanges, he noted that he would not treat former slaves serving in the USCT as prisoners of war. This was a way to get manpower back, to make prisoner exchanges. Lee refused on the basis of maintaining the property interests of slave owners.

Not so much an argument as a discussion. The title of the thread covers it. I don't think Lincoln was an abolitionist and Lee was not pro-slavery. Lincoln abolished slavery as more of a political move than as a deep believer in abolition and Lee was not pro-slavery but accepted it as too ingrained in society and fought for a cause to preserve it. The counters are Lincoln was deeply abolitionist his whole life but could only exercise it when politically expedient and Lee fought because the upheaval of slaveocracy would destroy the fabric of southern society.

Any discussion of Robert E. Lee's motives for taking up arms against the United States is not complete without reading

Robert E. Lee and Me. by BGen. Ty Seidule (US Army Ret.)

Seidule was born and raised in the South. Attended Washington and Lee. Was a Historian on the Faculty at West Point.

It was a game changer for me.

Also need to read Lee: The Last Years by Charles Bracelen Flood.

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was Lincoln an abolitionist and Lee pro-slavery?

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Lincoln... Emancipation Proclamation and 13th amendment.

Lee .. Owned at least one slave

"In 1852, there is evidence Lee still owned an enslaved man, Philip Meriday (or Minday) whom he rents out in Washington, DC. This is the last direct evidence that Lee still owned enslaved people."

Before 1852 he "managed" many slaves...

We can discuss whether Lee was pro-slave or Lincoln anti-slave, but to me the proof is in their deeds and actions.

https://www.nps.gov/arho/learn/historyculture/robert-e-lee-and-slavery.htm

Using that logic, Trump is the most pro-life president ever but he is not pro-life.

BQ78 said:

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Using that logic, Trump is the most pro-life president ever but he is not pro-life.

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I do not understand your logic. Deeds and actions can be documented, on the other hand "For what person knows the thoughts and motives of a man except the man's spirit within him?" Corinthians 2:11

I take him at his word that he is pro-abortion in certain circumstances. Perhaps he is lying but I doubt it.

BQ78 said:

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Not so much an argument as a discussion. The title of the thread covers it. I don't think Lincoln was an abolitionist and Lee was not pro-slavery. Lincoln abolished slavery as more of a political move than as a deep believer in abolition and Lee was not pro-slavery but accepted it as too ingrained in society and fought for a cause to preserve it. The counters are Lincoln was deeply abolitionist his whole life but could only exercise it when politically expedient and Lee fought because the upheaval of slaveocracy would destroy the fabric of southern society.

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Of course Lincoln was an abolitionist. It's disingenuous to think otherwise. Your definition of what you think it means above is an opinion and not actually factual. an abolitionist is one who advocates for the stoppage of slavery, in this context. Period. This is what Lincoln did. Morality need not apply to that term. Just a nitpick. The most base starting point for any conversation like this is having an agreed set of terms and understandings and I don't believe we have that here.

If you wish to argue that he did not truly believe that freeing blacks in the United States was a cause he felt personally and deeply, sure. It's honestly a pretty interesting conversation and I myself tend to lean towards it being largely a pragmatic approach of political origins in order to keep as much peace moving forward after the ACW was over. I believe he was forward thinking and realized slavery was simply a nonstarter for a unified USA, ever. As far as his personal convictions on the matter, I have no problems imagining them growing and becoming strong towards the end of the war and his death. I also see no way we are going to be able to prove either way correct without some new bombshell historical findings sometime. What we know, is what we know for now. It's mainly just interpretation and fulfilling one's own biases at this point IMO.

BQ78 said:

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Lee stated several times that slavery was immoral. I think if he had a magic wand or could travel back to 1620 he would have stopped it. But since it existed and was governed by law it was, as he said, the best condition that could exist between the two races in one society. White supremacist, certainly; pro-slavery, perhaps like Lincoln was an abolitionist (and as I've stated, I don't think that motivated him either). The best thing slavery bought in his view was to introduce slaves to Christ. He absolutely cared about the souls of the slaves and maybe you don't see that as caring today but it absolutely was in Lee's mind.

But Christianity carried a duty and as a military man duty and discipline were paramount to Lee. The Bible instructed slaves to be true to their masters and masters to be just to their slaves. A failure to do your duty as a man or servant, deserved punishment. Lee only punished his slaves that did not perform their biblical duty. He never mistreated slaves without cause. May seem odd to us today but it is sincerely what he believed and how he lived.

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I'm not seeing the argument that Lee was not pro slavery in anything you have written in this entire thread. Please dumb it down for me if it is obvious and I am not picking it up. Promise I'm not being facetious.

I think we are in violent agreement about Lincoln, both he and Lee as Whigs felt it was a moral evil. But it existed when both were born. Lee felt that since it was a fait acompli it was the best condition for a mixed society. Lincoln shared this view in that until mid-war he was thinking the best thing to do with the freedman was to send them out of the country.

My point on Lincoln is that despite his moral objection to slavery, he only did something about it when it was politically expedient. Not something a Sumner like abolitionist would wait for. Before the war, his concern was strictly political. Expansion of slavery meant expansion of southern political power. He had less concern for the slaves themselves, than what a true abolitionist would have.

Simply my point, modern perception is that one man was the great emancipator and the other needs to be vilified. I say both were great but flawed men with very similar views but also inaction in their morals outlook.

BQ78 said:

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I think we are in violent agreement about Lincoln, both he and Lee as Whigs felt it was a moral evil. But it existed when both were born. Lee felt that since it was a fait acompli it was the best condition for a mixed society. Lincoln shared this view in that until mid-war he was thinking the best thing to do with the freedman was to send them out of the country.

My point on Lincoln is that despite his moral objection to slavery, he only did something about it when it was politically expedient. Not something a Sumner like abolitionist would wait for. Before the war, his concern was strictly political. Expansion of slavery meant expansion of southern political power. He had less concern for the slaves themselves, than what a true abolitionist would have.

Simply my point, modern perception is that one man was the great emancipator and the other needs to be vilified. I say both were great but flawed men with very similar views but also inaction in their morals outlook.

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My apologies for not being clear earlier. I had meant that Lincoln's approach could be viewed as pragmatic during the war because that is when he had the power to actually do push such a thing. I do not pretend to be a scholar of his life or those particular years in history in general, but from my understanding, he WAS a staunch supporter of all black men being free all the way back to his time as a Representative. Culminating in his speech where he mentioned the famous "House Divided" bible reference with regard to slavery in the United States. That's what I also meant by my statement of him having the view of slavery being a nonstarter for a unified USA.

I do not know if he was a street preacher type of fiery message deliverer admonishing the evil of slavery (highly doubt actually), but I am fairly certain he was definitely an advocate for abolishing slavery long before his Presidency and the outbreak of the ACW. The thing is though, is that one man can only do so much. So when he had the reigns of the nation, that is when he could act in the way that he did. In your eyes, what would it take to reach that bar you have set for him? Genuinely curious.

As far as Lee goes, I cannot accept a simple fait accompli quiet acceptance (at best, in my eyes) as being enough to absolve him of being labeled as pro slavery. Should he be vilified for that? I feel that that is such a personal decision and shouldn't be commanded to by another. Despite the best efforts of our society today and our braindead public who only know how to follow commands... Lee and his entire situation is a very complex equation that just isn't slavery bad or good IMO when discussing him while trying to maintain a big picture view. The final summation of his character should reflect that.

This is a great brain bender of a conversation for someone who has only brushed against it a few times in their life and I clearly need to read up more around this time period.

I have just read that the Brits actually paid off slave owners as part of abolition in their country. They incurred massive debt to do so and that debt was only just recently paid off.

My question is whether serious consideration was ever given to a similar action here in the US? Although slavery is abhorrent, thinking that slave owners would simply abandon their most valuable asset was an obvious non-starter.

DC slave owners were compensated but no others, even though it was considered for Kentucky, Delaware and other border states.

There was an attempt to encourage emancipation in Delaware through compensation and it made absolutely no difference. The state legislature refused to pass the bill. Delaware had fewer than 2000 slaves and seemed like an ideal laboratory for compensated emancipation. Lincoln himself helped write the bill. The simple fact is that slaveowners had zero interest in any form of emancipation in the 1850s and 1860s. It was their wealth and no amount of monetary compensation would cover the loss of that wealth.

Sapper Redux said:

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There was an attempt to encourage emancipation in Delaware through compensation and it made absolutely no difference. The state legislature refused to pass the bill. Delaware had fewer than 2000 slaves and seemed like an ideal laboratory for compensated emancipation. Lincoln himself helped write the bill. The simple fact is that slaveowners had zero interest in any form of emancipation in the 1850s and 1860s. It was their wealth and no amount of monetary compensation would cover the loss of that wealth.

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Maryland did end slavery almost a year before the 13th amendment passed the House of Reps.

The writing was on the wall at that point.

Sapper Redux said:

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It was their wealth and no amount of monetary compensation would cover the loss of that wealth.

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So your position is that they were entirely irrational about their wealth. Got it. That is clarifying.

Slavery did not start in the America's, nor did it end here, fwiw. Muslim conquests and slavery far outweigh it, down through this very day.

Quad post

Not what he said, he is correct. Slavery in Delaware was almost confined to one county in that state and even with the lure of compensation and delayed emancipation to 1872, it got shot down by people no longer dependent on slavery. Lincoln really wanted that to work as he thought it could be easily spread to the other border states. He even had naive hopes that it could spread to the Deep South and end the war. Which I believe was Lincoln's true motivation and fit his criteria for emancipation: 1) gradual, 2) compensation, 3) vote of the people and if practical, 4) resettlement. Nothing an abolitionist stood for and why Lincoln caught heat from all sides.

Just to clarify my opinion on this, the camp I put both Lee and Lincoln into is the anti-slavery camp. Neither were abolitionist or a pro-slavery. And to further clarify Lee's view that slavery was morally wrong but could not be changed now was a common belief among anti-slavery citizens in the north. They abhorred slavery but did not want slaves suddenly freed and introduced to white society and stealing jobs from poor whites. Lincoln shared this opinion to a degree and why for many years he advocated resettlement in Liberia or Latin America.

Lincoln never said it but I suspect he would have regretted the suddenness of emancipation but he had to strike while it was possible but the suddenness of it all probably caused the issues and length it took for integration in America