Changing our minds about slavery and race

Eric Foner about Lincoln on MPR

The second thing I heard while driving today also recalled AmCon discussions, this time about the many small choices people made that added up to America's slave system and their ability to live with it and benefit from it.  Eric Foner (long a central author for AmCon) has a new book on Lincoln.  He talked with Kerri Miller about it.   You can listen to the pod-cast.

If you do, you'll hear him emphasizing the Lincoln changed his mind from his early views of slavery when he had little direct experience with the system or with African-Americans to his later views which still reflected the racial attitudes of most white Americans in the mid-19th century.  Foner stressed that Lincoln's encounter with real people, specifically those who visited him in the White House, goes a long way to accounting for his change.  He was careful not to overdraw this, but also offered a hopeful suggestion that people do learn.  We are not merely captive to the views we form early or to those of our contemporaries.

As we approach the 4th of July, Foner's comments about the nature of the Emancipation Proclamation are also of interest.  Comparing it to the Declaration of Independence,  he noted that the EP was a military order lacking eloquence or much in the way of principled reasoning.  Only at the very end is there a reference to justice.  Nonetheless, the order did its work in closing a door.  There is still work to do.