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By the end of it, he'd gone a long way. My feeling is that he would have pushed for full enfranchisement and handled things a LOT better than Johnson, although that kind of goes without saying.
An interesting marker is to watch Afro-American history writers doing the comments on Ken Burns' talking about Lincoln. You've got to be pretty non-racist for them to comment on how non-racist you were becoming.
I'd say Lincoln started out with a more benevolent view than average of the former slaves, and progressed from there, especially with everything that happened in the war, Black fighting units, contrabands, the Sea Islands, talking with Douglas...
Given the prevailing racism at the time, it's hard to say how a president could have been much more pro-African without damaging government support.
An interesting marker is to watch Afro-American history writers doing the comments on Ken Burns' talking about Lincoln. You've got to be pretty non-racist for them to comment on how non-racist you were becoming.
I'd say Lincoln started out with a more benevolent view than average of the former slaves, and progressed from there, especially with everything that happened in the war, Black fighting units, contrabands, the Sea Islands, talking with Douglas...
Given the prevailing racism at the time, it's hard to say how a president could have been much more pro-African without damaging government support.
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