The opening paragraph of Lincoln's speech 4th Lincoln-Douglass debate is stunning. I'd never read it before:
teachingamericanhistory.org/library/docume
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Lincoln: While [we] do remain together there must be a position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
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I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife.
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10 yrs earlier, he strongly opposed the Mexican American War as being all about adding slave states & killing a lot of Mexicans and Americans in the process. So, he wasn’t even renominated for his Congress seat. By 1858, he was using a lot more finesse.
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Just wait till you get to his speech that slave owners deserve contempt kicking and death.
Or that slavery had to die.
Or why he had to kill slavery carefully.
And that's tame compared to kicking slavery to death.


