By The Numbers – Abraham Lincoln

“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, 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; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. 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.” – Abraham Lincoln, September 18, 1858

Abraham Lincoln – TBA
Elected 1861 -1865
HELL NO, HE’S NOT GETTING A “10”

Just after the end of the Civil War in 1865, there were two pictures that were most always adorning the walls of many black families. They were the pictures of Jesus Christ… and right next to him, Abraham Lincoln. For black people, he was the “physical” embodiment of our newfound freedom. As the years passed and the lynchings and killing of blacks increased by butt-naked racism, Lincoln’s picture was discarded. In its place pictures of black leaders were displayed. Men like Marcus Garvey, Frederick Douglas, and Booker T. Washington… still, later those were replaced by portraits of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and other black leaders during the Civil Rights Era.
So before we move on to determine how Lincoln fared in our examination of racism in the White House, let’s review our point system. They are as follows…
10 – You can sit next to the table and watch while we play a couple of hands of bid whisk.
9 – You are able to use the word “Bro” in front of us.”
8 – You can bring something to the barbecue and we’ll put it on the table with the other food.
7 – We will wave at you if we see you on the street.
6 – We won’t side-eye or sass if you bring a watermelon to our family dinner.
5 – You can leave with a little bit of your dignity after saying “My Nigga.”
4 – If we hear you calling for help, we will call the police after we have charged our phone.
3 – We will count to three before we let the dogs out if you come to our house.
2 – We won’t pee on your statue during daylight
 hours.
1 – Faque Off!!
With that said, let’s talk about Lincoln.

I started this article with an excerpt from the fourth Lincoln-Douglas debate held in Charleston, Illinois two years before Lincoln was to take office. Now he said some stuff in that address that makes you wonder why there weren’t any dangling bodies behind him as a backdrop. Stage Manager: “No! Pull that one up a little higher… We want the toes at eye level..” So yeah, at that point in his career, he was throwing us under a bus with flat tires. But you know something? Lincoln was not an abolitionist. Abolitionists believed that slavery should have been done away with and that freed blacks should have the same right as everyone else. Lincoln never thought of blacks as equal to whites at this point in his career. In his opinion, slavery was morally wrong, but the Constitution sanctioned it. Now when the Constitution was written, it didn’t say anything about black or white people, and the word slavery was not in it. Instead, when it talked about slavery, it used terms such as “anyone not free.. or people held legally to service or labor…” Yeah, it was kinda hard to start off your document with “all men are created equal”, and then a couple of paragraphs down state that slaves ain’t human and should only count as 3/5 a person… Anyway, Lincoln viewed the Constitution as sanctioning slavery. When I was doing my research for this article, I thought they may have not mentioned slavery because of France’s support for the colonist. France allowed slave trafficking in its colonies, but not in France. Later it was abolished in 1794 in its colonies. However, that small man named Napoleon revived it in 1801 and it went on for 13 years until his defeat and banishment to Alba. While trafficking in slavery was abolished in France, structural slavery still existed in its colonies until the middle of the 19th century. That’s a fancy way of saying they didn’t need to participate in slave trading because they practiced chattel slavery in the colonies… if your mother was a slave, then so are you. In any event, if things went south during the American Revolution, they were depending on France to help a fellow out.

Enslavia Gets A Letter…

Sargent: Enslavia your case is next. Judge Fifty Anaday will be hearing it. As soon as the jury comes back from the barbeque he’s throwing, they’ll sentence… I mean try you. By the way, a letter came for you…. here…
Enslavia: Who is it from?
Sergeant: It doesn’t have a name on it… but it smells like hell!! ( The sergeant throws the letter on the floor and leaves. Enslavia picks it up and opens it…)

Dear Enslavia,
“I just wanted you to know it worked like a charm. After they put me in the bag and you asked to go to the bathroom, I climb out of the bag and stuffed it with the cotton and blankets from the mattress. I thought I would never be able to get out the bag with the Sargeant standing there while the Corporal escorted you to the bathroom. It’s a good thing you started yelling “Wait!! Wait!! Wait!!” It sounded like something else… I heard the Sargeant say… “That Idiot!! I don’t know why he doesn’t get it at home!!” When he left I did just as you said… I crawled out from under the bed and went to the janitor’s closet and got a mop and bucket. Then I went and filled up the bucket with toilet water. You were right, there were cops everywhere! I did exactly as you said… I went to the Sergeant’s office and begin mopping the floor. As soon as the Sargent got back to his office and smelled the toilet water that I was mopping his floor with, he went to Defcon 1!! “Nigra I ought to have you strung up from the tallest tree I can find!! You have got my office smelling like day-old crotch!! It smells so bad in here I can’t even see no more!!” Then he calls another corporal and tells him, “Take this nigra out of this building and to the County line!! I don’t ever want to see him in this city again!!” The corporal walked me passed all those cops, threw me in a car, and let me out at the County line. He said “Nigra if he wouldn’t have fired you, I would have!! Don’t you ever let me see you again… because if I do, that pigeon up there in that tree ain’t gonna be the only one with a birds-eye view!! Feel me?” I said “Yass suh boss..” So I just wanted to let you know it worked out fine.
Sincerely,
Arthur
Enslavia: (Enslavia folded the letter and put it in her pocket… She remembered thinking about how was she going to get the Sargeant out of the room too so Arthur could escape… It was a good thing the corporal started rushing her… “Come on out that bathroom negress!! You’ve been in there long enough!!”)

And you thought I was going to let the good guys lose… Anyway, so back to Lincoln. As I said earlier, Lincoln was not an abolitionist. He once said, “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 it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that; and if the rebel’s said the only way we are going to stop shooting is that you hang them all, then I would tell them there is a forest right outside of DC. I would do that also.” Okay.. he didn’t say anything about hanging everybody and a forest… but as you can see at this stage in his presidency everything was on the table. So the first quote at the beginning of this article was during the Lincoln-Douglas debates before the Civil War. The second quote was during the Civil War. So with regard to the first quote at the beginning of this article, where Lincoln basically said, that all a black person can do for me is shine my shoes, in those days that statement was considered moderate. He was debating Stephen Douglas for the Illinois Senate seat and Douglas was considered a progressive. He was like, “Nigras steal!! I’ll hang the first nigra that even looks at my shoes!!” Yes sir… Douglas wasn’t shy about defending white rights. He frequently called Lincoln an ” N-word lover, during the debates and famously said that the Declaration Of Independence was not made for non-whites, “This government was made by our fathers on the white basis … made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever… Yahoo!!” Yep, you’re right… I put “yahoo” in there because he was a little (men’s sex organ) (family member engaging in sex) racist ( female dog!!) Anywho, He got his in the end when they didn’t nominate him at the Democratic Convention in 1860 for president because one… President Buchannon hated his guts and would rather have his daughter marry an African Zulu warrior and have little Zulu warriors running around the White House than see Douglas in the big chair, and two… because of his support for something called the Freeport Doctrine that he whipped during the debates with Lincoln. So the Freeport Doctrine was meant to circumvent the Dred Scott decision. Remember Dred sued in federal court for his freedom because he had been living for a long time in a state in which slavery was illegal. Of course, the Supreme Court Justices laugh their asses off and told him “Nigra please… you have to be a U.S. citizen to sue in federal court… Nigra’s ain’t U.S. citizens… Bailiff take this boy back to his Massa and make sure to give him a couple of stripes for back sass… “ Anywho, the Freeport Doctrine said that local municipalities could refuse to enact laws that would protect slave property… ie African Americans. So it put the burden of enforcing Dred Scott on the federal government. He did this because most of his support was in the North. A lot of the Southern Democrats weren’t feeling it, so he lost their vote. It’s a good thing too because during the 1860 Democratic Convention, there was no clear winner. They ended up running three candidates. John Breckenridge, Stephen Douglas, and John Bell. Those three split the votes between them, leaving Lincoln with a 40% majority win. Douglas died the following year in June 1861, from typhoid fever. At his death War Secretary Simon Cameron sent a message to the Union armies, announcing “the death of a great statesman … a man who nobly discarded party for his country”. We are going to have to circle back to Cameron one day because he’s sending out thoughts and prayers to a known pro-slavery advocate while brave Union soldiers were being killed on the battlefields by Marse Lee’s (Hung Five Today) Confederates. I’m getting a little ahead of myself… Robert E. Lee wouldn’t take charge of the Confederate Army until June 1862. That’s right, Lee didn’t just jump out there with those hillbillies. The war had been going on for over a year when he took control of the Army Of Northern Virginia. That’s because Union headquarters ie Washington DC was just across the Potomac from his plantation… and he had a bad one… hundreds of slaves picking “teebakee,”… banjo strumming nigras sitting on the steps of the front porch, and black mammies holding massa’s “sweet lil chilin” in the softness of their large bosoms… anyway so yeah his plantation was right across from DC and for real they wish he would lead them hillbillies in an insurrection against the United States… because if you do, that plantation is ours!! On the other hand, the Confederates were like, “You don’t have to lead our army if you don’t want to… you and your wife can move over to DC and stay with them… cause you ain’t staying in Virginia on “our” plantation..” So I think that’s why, he came into the war so late. He had a decision to make. Fighting for the Confederacy meant that he could at least send troops now and again to protect his investment, but if he fought against them, the Confederates would burn his shat to the ground. However, as the war progressed and Grant chased him and his ragtag army all over the South, the outcome was virtually the same. It wasn’t burned down, but the Union eventually turned the plantation into a cemetery… known today as Arlington Cemetery.

Enslavia Goes To Court…

Bailiff: Stand… Please state your name for the record…
Enslavia: Enslavia I’Amdeeaz… but you can call me Enslavia.
Judge: Be seated… Miss I’Amdeeaz…
Enslavia: Yes I know…
Judge: What?
Enslavia: Nothing your honor… you can call me Enslavia.
Judge: Uh… Enslavia, you are charged with assault and battery. How do you plead?
Enslavia: Well your honor, I usually get down on my hands and knees.. and do a whole lot of cryi…
Judge: No!! Are you guilty or innocent?
Enslavia: Guilty of what?
Judge: Miss I’Amdeeaz… for the last time…
Enslavia: I’m so happy for you…
Prosecutor: YOUR HONOR THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS!! MISS I’AMDEEAZ…
Enslavia: Oh my goodness… not you… you poor thing…
Judge: Bailiff take this woman back to her cell. The court will enter a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. The court will set a date for Obama, 12th… court dismissed…

So with 40% of the vote, Lincoln became president of the United States on March 4, 1861. Nowadays, the inaugural address and swearing-in are held on January 20th. That is because the date was changed in 1933 by a constitutional amendment. Before then, the 3-month time lag between the end of voting and swearing-in was needed by the president-elect in order to get his affairs in order and time to travel to Washington… or before that to Philadelphia. A rider in excellent shape on a horse in excellent shape can travel about 30 miles a day under good conditions. If you are riding in the freezing cold of winter, then you might make 10-15 miles per day. Back in those days, a trip between Philadelphia and Washington DC could take you two weeks. Suppose you were coming from say Boston, that could take you a month or more!! Another problem with the delay was that technically there was no president for 3 months. Anything could happen in that period. In Lincoln’s time, a couple of states seceded and a little closer to now, Roosevelt couldn’t start dealing with the Great Depression. So in 1933, the United States adopted the 20th Amendment which describes the term limits of the President, Vice President, and Congress. So Lincoln came into office on March 4, 1861, and the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, officially opening the Civil War. The first thing Lincoln did was call up 75,000 men to put down the rebellion. Now at this time black men were technically not allowed to join militias, but many served in other capacities such as cooks, laborers, and servants to officers. They were doing us so dirty then, I figure they weren’t about to give black folks any guns. “Yes suh, you go on ahead suh.. I’ll be right behind you…” Anyway, Lincoln’s stand on blacks in the military was, “That’s a big no for me..” He feared that allowing black men to fight, would antagonize the border states. The border states were slave states that did not secede from the Union. They were Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and West Virginia. I’m kinda surprised that Deleware was a slave state, given its small size and population. Hell, a few folks that were “bout it, bout it,” should have gone up there and whipped a little bit… straighten that stuff right out… Anyway, so yeah, he didn’t want these states turning against him. He also had to deal with some state legislators wanting the war to be fought by just white men. Still, black men organized themselves into militias, men like the Hannibal Guards from Pennsylvania, who wished a mfer would, drilled in anticipation of being called into military service. However, the Northern states spurned their offers, wanting to keep it a white mans war. As a matter of fact, they threatened violence against any black man shooting at any enemy participant in the war. Now remember when I was talking about folks that were “bout it, bout it “? Frederick Douglas was one of those men:
“We shall be fighting a double battle, against slavery at the South and against prejudice and proscription at the North. Whoever sees fifty thousand well-drilled colored soldiers in the United States, will see slavery abolished and the union of these States secured from rebel violence.” – Frederick Douglas 1861
Translation: We ain’t gonna be “flocking” around… Give us 50,000 guns and we will go down there and make it happen…
By 1862 Union generals were using black troops against the enemy without authorization from Washington, especially down south… Captain: “Boy is that somebody’s head!! Put it back!! That’s why they don’t want ya’ll fighting!!” Still, the Union commanders were against using black soldiers and berated their subordinates when they were found using black soldiers. There is one particular case in Louisiana that I find surprising in the fact that it dealt with a general named Benjamin F. Butler. Butler was one of the most hated Union generals in the South. I mean his name was right under William Tecumseh Sherman. Sherman was the man that burned the city of Atlanta, among a slew of others down to a burned-out cinder. They wanted Sherman tried for war crimes when the fighting was over. They wanted Butler because he put out General Order #28 calling the women of New Orleans… excuse my French, “Hoes.” Yep, and they were pissed. He was known as the Beast of New Orleans and southern men from all across the country were putting bounties of $10,000 and more on his head. They wanted him! You can read about it a little more here. Anyway, it surprised me that with that much violence aimed at him, he would object to having black troops down there. But I kinda get it. Although I applaud Butler for the way he handled how his men were being treated by the citizens of New Orleans, he wasn’t an abolitionist either. Butler’s orders exclude blacks from his lines and he had grown to fear a slave insurrection. On the other side of the coin, you had commanders like General David Hunter, a Union general who was headquartered in South Carolina. Now Hunter took recruiting black men into his ranks to a new level. After he was ordered to fill up his regiment, he saw that there were very few freedmen volunteering. He started sending armed white troops to the cotton fields to drag black men back to his headquarters, often without telling what they were being summoned for. The plantation owners had gotten folks a little nervous because they were telling them that the Union soldiers were rounding up blacks and selling them to Cuba to help pay for the war. Nonetheless, although blacks were fleeing into the swamps and woods to escape the draft, Hunter’s men would go in there and march their asses back at bayonet point. When word got to Lincoln that his order not to enlist blacks was being disobeyed by Hunter, he had to explain to the border states why nigras down south were being given guns to shoot white folks? Lincoln was in it up to his neck. He told them he was dissatisfied with Hunter, but that the war could not be prosecuted with the support of men like him. Lincoln held this stance about not enlisting black men until around 1863. For a year from 1862 to 1863, Marse Lee aka Robert E. Lee was kicking a whole lot of Union azz and taking names. People were getting fed up with losing to a smaller and inferior force led by someone who looked like their picture should be on a chicken bucket. Although Congress had passed the Militia Act by the middle of 1862, barely 5000 black troops were mustered in because Lincoln still was against letting black troops fight and had ordered field commanders to arm them at their discretion. Only with the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, did the barriers to black enlistment begin to fall. Although the North’s population vastly outnumbered the Southern population, it was getting harder and harder to replace the casualties. I mean you had Union commanders ordering troops to march headfirst into cannon fire for the “honor” of it. So I have only touched on this aspect of Lincoln with regard to black troops fighting in the Civil War. He had an evolving position as the war continued. I think it was because of the number of Union soldiers being killed and the fatigue of the American people seeing no end to a costly war, that he finally relented and allowed black troops into the fight.

You Better Ask Somebody…

Doctor: Hold still while they put this jacket on you! The judge has ordered a mental evaluation!!
Enslavia: No!! Hell No!! It doesn’t go with my shoes!!
Doctor: ORDERLY… HAND ME THAT SYRINGE!! NO…!! THE BIG ONE!!!
Enslavia: You know something…? Now that I look at it… this jacket is kinda cute…
Doctor: That’s what I thought! Now I have a few questions for you. First, tell me about your childhood… Were you happy?
Enslavia: No, I’ve always been Enslavia…
Doctor: No… I’m not talking about your name smarty pants… I want to know your state of mind… Where was your mind when you were younger?
Enslavia: In Marlend in my head… It ain’t neva been no place else…
Doctor: Orderly move that tray with the syringes closer to me and prepare one…
Enslavia: OH…!!! Now I know what you are talking about… Yes, I was happy.
Doctor: It says here you have attacked 3 other men before this one… were they all white? Tell me about it.
Enslavia: Well actually I’ve attacked 4 men. Of course you know about the one who asked me to do it. He said the only way he was going to leave was in the back of an ambulance… Then there was the guy at Negrilla’s Mart, I asked him to swipe me a roasting chicken, and when we got outside he wanted to charge me for it. I told him I didn’t have any money and he tried to leave with my chicken!! So then I had to mess up his day… The third guy I was kinda sweet on and that’s the reason I wanted to get the chicken… so I could cook it for him… After all the work I put in cooking that bird and all… he said it was the nastiest chicken he had ever tasted!! I took my rolling pin and went to work on that sucker… He started yelling “Help!! Help! Help!” I told him “Shut Up!!” and I took a big piece of chicken and stuffed it down his throat! Well, just as I was stuffing the last piece down his throat, a real big fellow broke into the room and grabbed me. He said that’s my friend that you are stuffing chicken down his throat!
Doctor: So was he the fourth man you attacked because he was trying to help his friend?
Enslavia: Oh gawd no! He was big and mean and ugly! I had to make a deal… I told him if he let me go, I would come to his job later on and give him some money and he could split it with that unappreciative sucker I got tied up to my stove.
Doctor: Okay I see… So he would have been the fourth man you would have attacked… but you got arrested and ended up here?
Enslavia: Not exactly… that’s him by the tray with the syringe in his hand… WHIP!! WHIP!! WHIP!! SMACK!! SMACK!! SMACK! WHIP!! WHIP!! WHIP!!

Lincoln was for sending African Americans to Central America. He hosted a delegation of freed Black men and women at the White House in the hopes of getting their support on a plan for colonization in Central America. Given the “differences” between the two races and the hostile attitudes of white people towards Black people, Lincoln argued, it would be “better for us both, therefore, to be separated.” Of course, black leaders tore him a new one… a brand new shiny one! They told him we were citizens of the United States and if anyone was going to leave they better start asking the people that were using Brylcreem and Old Spice. Okay, they didn’t say that, but they did tell him we weren’t going anywhere and that we were citizens too. Lastly, emancipation didn’t free all the slaves. It was more of a military measure. It did two major things. One it weakened the Confederacy’s labor force and disrupted its economy, by inspiring enslaved people to flee to Union lines, and two because of the poor morale due to the great losses the Union was suffering on the battlefield against Lee, it help galvanize the military toward a more concrete goal, win this war and set a people free. The emancipation didn’t apply to border slave states like Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, all of which were loyal to the Union. It also didn’t apply to some areas in the confederacy which were under Union control. Yep, you had slaves walking around down south in towns where Union soldiers were fighting against it. Jeb went right on lynching black folks right in front of them. Lincoln didn’t want to “upset” the whites in those areas and hoped to gain their loyalty. In any event, the proclamation did mark a turn in Lincoln’s thinking on slavery as well as encouraged more than 200,000 black men to take up arms in the fight for our freedom.
So what is the final score… He didn’t think blacks and whites were equal at one time. He was okay with white dominance over people of color and for a time declared that the Civil War was a white man’s war, preventing blacks from fighting in it. He let slavery continue in the border states and in some Confederate areas where he had troops. He didn’t fight the Civil War to free us, but to keep the Union intact. He didn’t “evolve” until the Union started winning. Up until then, he was ready to throw us under the bus and forget about it if it meant an end to war.
Still without Lincoln at the helm, the plight of African Americans would have been far worse. The three Democrats that he defeated were all pro-slavery candidates. If they would have won, we would have been shucking and jiving for at least another hundred years. I probably would have been born a slave. So with that in mind, I’m going to give him a weak 8: You can bring something to the barbecue and we’ll put it on the table with the other food.
Without Abraham Lincoln, we wouldn’t even have a table… and if we did… we probably would be on the menu.

Next week: By The Numbers – Reconstruction

Thanks for reading ©Hill1News















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