The Black Man's President

October 18, 2021
Historian Burlingame (Abraham Lincoln: A Life) defends Abraham Lincoln against charges of racism in this provocative and extensively documented account. Marshaling a wealth of primary sources, Burlingame argues that Lincoln, while at times a pragmatic politician who paid “lip service” to notions of white supremacy, was at heart a racial egalitarian. He documents Lincoln’s friendly relations with Blacks in Illinois and Washington, D.C., and notes that Lincoln’s “unfailing cordiality to African Americans in general” was witnessed and written about countless times in a “Negrophobic” country. According to Burlingame, Lincoln’s support for resettling free Blacks in Liberia was “rather lukewarm” and only taken up “to provide a refuge for Black pessimists who feared that they would never attain full citizenship status in the U.S.” Evidence of Lincoln’s commitment to racial equality is also found in his endorsement of voting rights for “very intelligent” Blacks and those who served in the Union Army. Burlingame’s assertion that Lincoln would have eventually called for the enfranchisement of all Black men is mere conjecture, however, and he cherry-picks Frederick Douglass’s praise for Lincoln while dismissing his criticisms as hyperbolic. Still, this is a resolute and well-researched vindication of Lincoln’s progressive credentials.