Page type: Viewpoint | Topic: abraham-lincoln-racial-attitudes | Canonical slug: abraham-lincoln-racial-attitudes-white-supremacist-viewpoint

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White supremacists and white nationalists hold that Abraham Lincoln's racial views were, at their core, aligned with a belief in white racial superiority and the permanent incompatibility of black and white Americans as co-citizens - and that mainstream historiography has systematically obscured this record in order to conscript Lincoln into a usable myth of racial egalitarianism. Proponents of this viewpoint argue that Lincoln's own words, his policy record, and his sustained advocacy for colonization of black Americans outside the United States reveal a man who never believed in racial equality and who fought the Civil War for political and constitutional reasons unrelated to any genuine commitment to black freedom or dignity.

Advocates of this viewpoint begin with Lincoln's own public statements, which they regard as dispositive. In his 1858 debates with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln stated plainly:

“I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.”¹⁾

He continued: “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races… and inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the 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.”²⁾

White supremacist commentators argue these statements were not tactical concessions to a hostile audience but sincere expressions of his worldview - consistent with his lifelong behavior and not repudiated in any contemporaneous private correspondence.

A central pillar of this viewpoint is Lincoln's decades-long, active advocacy for colonization - the removal of black Americans to Africa, Central America, or the Caribbean. Proponents argue this position is irreconcilable with any genuine belief in black civic equality. Lincoln promoted colonization publicly and privately, met with black leaders in 1862 to urge them to support emigration, and included colonization funding in his early emancipation planning.³⁾ Magness and Page's archival research argues that Lincoln pursued colonization schemes well into 1864 - later than the “evolution” narrative typically acknowledges.

White nationalist commentators treat the colonization record as the clearest window into Lincoln's authentic views: he did not believe blacks and whites could or should share a common political community, and he devoted considerable presidential energy to making separation a reality.

This viewpoint holds that Lincoln prosecuted the Civil War as a war for union and constitutional order, not for black liberation. Proponents cite Lincoln's August 1862 letter to Horace Greeley:

“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do that; what I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.”⁴⁾

The Emancipation Proclamation itself, on this reading, is evidence of the same logic: it freed slaves only in Confederate-held territory where Lincoln had no enforcement authority, while explicitly exempting Union-controlled slaveholding areas. Advocates argue this was a war measure, not a moral declaration, and that interpreting it otherwise requires ignoring its plain text.

A significant portion of white nationalist Lincoln commentary is devoted to debunking what proponents call the “evolution” interpretation - the mainstream scholarly view that Lincoln genuinely developed toward racial egalitarianism by the end of his life, evidenced by his support for limited black suffrage in his final speech (April 11, 1865).⁵⁾ White supremacist commentators argue this reading over-weights a single speech and ignores the overwhelming contrary weight of Lincoln's career. They contend that Lincoln's late-war gestures toward limited black suffrage (restricted to veterans and the educated) were political calculations - not evidence of a changed inner conviction - and that no credible evidence of a wholesale change in his racial philosophy exists.

This interpretation of Lincoln has roots in two distinct intellectual traditions that partially overlap in contemporary white nationalism.

The older strand is the Lost Cause revisionism of the post-Civil War South, which sought to portray Lincoln as a hypocrite whose emancipationism was cynical and whose true goal was Northern economic and political domination rather than black freedom. This tradition produced a Lincoln who was useful to Southern apologists: a man who never really cared about black people and whose war aims had nothing to do with the justice of slavery.

The second strand is more recent and draws on academic revisionist scholarship - particularly the work of historians like Lerone Bennett Jr., whose Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream (2000)⁶⁾ argued from an Afrocentric perspective that Lincoln was a white supremacist whose heroic image was a myth constructed for political purposes. White nationalist commentators have selectively appropriated Bennett's evidence-marshaling - though not his politics - to construct their own version of the argument. The colonization scholarship of Magness and Page has similarly been absorbed into this literature, stripped of its authors' own interpretive frameworks.

Contemporary white nationalists use the Lincoln argument rhetorically: if even the “Great Emancipator” believed in racial hierarchy and black removal, they argue, then the entire postwar civil rights edifice rests on a falsified founding myth.

No credentialed mainstream historians hold this viewpoint in the form presented here, though elements of it draw on work by scholars who do not share its conclusions. Within white nationalist and white supremacist publishing:

* Jared Taylor and writers at American Renaissance have repeatedly cited Lincoln's 1858 debate statements and colonization record to argue that Lincoln shared core premises of racial separatism.⁷⁾ * Sam Francis, the paleoconservative journalist and white nationalist theorist, incorporated the “Lincoln as racial realist” argument into his broader critique of the post-civil rights American order. * The broader neo-Confederate and League of the South intellectual tradition has long maintained a variant of this view, though their emphasis falls more on states' rights constitutionalism than on racial theory per se.

On the academic margin, Lerone Bennett Jr. made many of the same evidentiary arguments from a Black Power perspective, and Phillip Magness (a libertarian economic historian, not a white nationalist) has documented the colonization record in ways white nationalists have cited, though Magness himself explicitly rejects their conclusions.

Proponents of this viewpoint disagree on several secondary questions:

* How cynical was Lincoln? Some hold that Lincoln was a sincere racial paternalist who genuinely believed blacks were inferior but not malicious toward them. Others argue Lincoln was primarily a political opportunist whose racial statements tracked whatever was electorally useful at a given moment. * Does the colonization record prove separatism or something weaker? Some argue Lincoln's colonization advocacy reflects a full separatist philosophy; others treat it as evidence primarily of his belief that black and white Americans could not coexist - a necessary premise of white nationalism but not identical to it. * How to assess the late Lincoln? Some within this tradition acknowledge that Lincoln showed signs of shifting in 1864-1865 but argue the shift was too late, too thin, and too politically motivated to revise the larger verdict. Others maintain the late Lincoln is simply irrelevant given the weight of his prior record.

* abraham-lincoln-racial-attitudes - Main Topic * Abraham Lincoln - Racial Attitudes Evolution Viewpoint - Evolution Viewpoint * abraham-lincoln-racial-attitudes-history - History * abraham-lincoln-colonization-controversy - Colonization Controversy * Civil War - Causes Debate - Civil War Causes Debate * Civil War - Lost Cause Viewpoint - Lost Cause Viewpoint * lincoln-emancipation-proclamation-controversy - Emancipation Proclamation Controversy