Why Lincoln Kept Slavery Out of the Territories

By Rob O’Barr, From FaceBook Post

In the popular “Righteous Cause” narrative, Lincoln’s stand against slavery in the territories is presented as a great moral line in the sand beyond which slavery was not to go. This is a myth. 

While it is true Lincoln expressed a lot of abstract moralizing about slavery as a violation of natural law, most all Americans  North and South believed slavery in the abstract a violation of natural law. As Lee stated in a letter to his wife in 1856, “There are few I believe in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery is a moral and political evil.” 

But as Aristotle pointed out, morality applies not just to what you believe but what you do and why you do it. Was Lincoln’s motive for keeping slavery out of the territories a moral humanitarian concern for the well being of the slave? Hear Lincoln’s reason for no slavery in the territories:

“There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation (mixing) of the white and black races.  A Separation of the races is the only perfect preventative of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas…”

In an 1860 campaign speech Lincoln’s future Secretary of State, William Seward, made it clear what motivated Northern “anti-slavery.” And it was far from a moral humanitarian concern:

“How natural has it been to assume that the motive of those who have protested against the extension of slavery, was an unnatural sympathy with the negro instead of what it always has really been, concern for the welfare of the white man.”

The greatest error of modern historians is to read into 19th century Northern “anti-slavery” a moral meaning that for the most part simply did not exist. When it did not proceed from a rabid racism its motivation was political. 

On the other the other hand, the same error of presentism is made in regard to the meaning of Southern “pro-slavery.” More often then not it proceeded from a concern for the wellbeing of the black folk Southern whites had grown up with. Given the anti-black attitudes of the North which sought to separate the races and deport all blacks from the country, is it any wonder that the Mississippi Declaration of Secession laments:

“It (the North) seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.”

General Lee echoed the same concern:

 “The best men in the South have long desired to do away with the institution of slavery, and were quite willing to see it abolished.  But, unless some humane course, based on wisdom and Christian principles, was adopted, you do them great injustice in setting them free.”

Racism was a fact of life in both the North and South, but how that attitude played out was very different in both sections. Northerners did not live in close proximity to large numbers of black people, and that segregated society informed their “anti-slavery” attitudes. They did not want to live with blacks. While there was subordination in the South, there was not segregation, and living in close proximity to large numbers of black folk led to close bonds across racial lines that informed Southern “pro-slavery” attitudes. Reading “anti-slavery” and “pro-slavery” with a 21st century understanding of these terms causes us to miss the vastly different meaning of these terms in their 19th century context, and we badly misunderstand the motives informing these causes.