The Confrontation of Lincoln's Attitudes to Slavery

Slavery was once viewed as an unadulterated good by anybody who was anti slavery. Now there seems to be a modern critique which is that he may have emancipated the slaves but he didn't have exactly the views that we now have about racial issues. What is going on there? Well again a lot of that is rooted in a special reading of the historical record. Lincoln was a man of his time in many respects. And you can find in the record lots of disparaging things about black people. You can also find lots and lots of incidents and anecdotes and things that he's written that are quite the opposite of that. So when it comes to trying to appra