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At issue is your claim that Lincoln "passionately wanted to free the slaves".

In the Matson case, Illinois law was that anyone who lived in the state for two years was a legal resident and could not be a slave. Lincoln argued that even after two years of living in Illinois, Anthony Bryant's wife and children were still in transit and therefore were still owned by Mr. Matson. Someone who "passionately wanted to free the slaves" would never have tried to illegally enslave a mother and her children. Fortunately for the Bryant family, the court declared them to be free despite Lincoln's best efforts to send them back into slavery. Even more telling is the fact that Lincoln became a slave owner himself and did not free his own slaves. Lincoln sold his three slaves for $1900. Gold was legal tender in 1850 at $20.67 an ounce, so he received 1920.67 ounces of gold. The federal government did not issue paper money, in 1850. An ounce of gold today is $2,669.50 an ounce. That means Lincoln made $5,127,228.57 in today's dollars from selling his three slaves. Perhaps Lincoln, who grew up in a log cabin with a dirt floor, was more passionate about making mone than he was about freedom for black folks.

There is no record of Lincoln criticizing the slave owning Henry Clay, his political hero and mentor. Lincoln effusively praised Clay in the eulogy he gave at Clay's funeral. He apparently had no conflict with the fact that his father in law Robert Todd was a prominent Kentucky slave owner. He appears to have no problem being friends with one of his supporters named John Crenshaw or staying at his house, called the "Old Slave House".

https://www.prweb.com/releases/lincoln-s-ownership-of-slaves-confirmed-in-new-book-by-kevin-orlin-johnson-from-pangaeus-press-851882325.html

The document confirms Lincoln's ownership beyond question, but that fact was never in dispute. "We all know that Lincoln married Mary Todd, the daughter of Robert Todd, Kentucky's largest slaveholder," Johnson says. The law at that time assigned a woman's property to her husband; so when his father-in-law died Lincoln inherited the slaves who were part of her share of the estate.

"He could have emancipated the slaves whom he inherited, as many of his Todd in-laws did," Johnson says, "but he didn't. As you see, he ordered them sold." Lincoln's own cousins refused to accept slaves who came to them in the same way. Mordecai Lincoln's son James Lincoln received a slave from his father-in-law, too, but left Kentucky because the slave "was mortal flish and he never would not sell mortal flish and took him and give him Back to his farther in Law and moved to the Illinois," as a friend of the family wrote to Lincoln's law partner William H. Herndon.

But marrying into the Todds brought Lincoln into daily contact with slaves in Illinois, where slavery was universal, often frankly but often under cover of indenture. Ninian Edwards, Mary Todd's brother-in-law, joined Lincoln in writing up the order to sell. Edwards had also held a cook named Maria, nominally indentured to the family for 45 years ― effectively, for life. He promised to release her when the indenture of her husband, the slave Charles Adams, expired in 1834, but common practice was to sell bondservants just before the indenture expired.

So Edwards sold Maria and Charles to a salt manufacturer in Gallatin County, Illinois. That man sold them to the notorious John Crenshaw, master of the "Old Slave House" outside of Equality, Illinois, where Lincoln stayed during his political campaigns in the area.

Crenshaw was another of Lincoln's friends and political backers whose houses and businesses were staffed exclusively by slaves, one of the few who made their fortunes by selling slaves and breeding children for sale. "Lincoln himself said explicitly that people who don't own slaves are nobody," Johnson says. "As a lawyer, he consistently helped slaveowners reclaim runaway slaves, but he never helped a runaway establish freedom."

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That was in 1850. It was a very different Lincoln from the one who was running for President in the late 1850s.

You seem to be more interested in reading and citing from a book about the 1847-1850 Lincoln that was written by a supporter of the Confederacy than an 1858 speech from a speech by Lincoln running for the U.S. Senate. So, since you are quoting from that book, I shall quote from that speech:

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I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. …

Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new-North as well as South. …

The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection with Senator Douglas' "care not" policy, constitute the piece of machinery, in its present state of advancement.

The working points of that machinery are:

First, that no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant of such slave can ever be a citizen of any State, in the sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the United States.

This point is made in order to deprive the negro, in every possible event, of the benefit of that provision of the United States Constitution, which declares that -

"The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States."

Secondly, that "subject to the Constitution of the United States," neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature can exclude slavery from any United States Territory.

This point is made in order that individual men may fill up the territories with slaves, without danger of losing them as property, and thus enhance the chances of permanency to the institution through all the future. …

While the opinion of the Court, by Chief Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the separate opinions of all the concurring Judges, expressly declare that the Constitution of the United States neither permits Congress nor a territorial legislature to exclude slavery from any United States territory, they all omit to declare whether or not the same Constitution permits a state, or the people of a State to exclude it. ...

Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the States. …

We shall awake to the reality ... that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State.

To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty, is the work now before all those who would prevent that consummation.

That is what we have to do.

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Nov 20·edited Nov 20

It appears that you are a propagandist posing as a historian. Please prove me wrong.

Lincoln defended slavery in the Matson case, arguing that Robert Matson's runaway slaves should be forcibly returned to his Kentucky plantation. When his wife inherited three slaves, Lincoln became their owner and he ordered them sold for $1900. As James Buchanon said in his December 3, 1860 fourth State of the Union letter to Congress, the Constitution does not authorize any part of the federal government to wage war on the states. Waging war on the states is the exact and narrow Constitutional definition of treason. Secession is Constitutional under the 10th Amendment.

When Lincoln came to office the federal budget was about 2% of GDP. That was the natural result of states exercising their reserve powers under Jeffersonian views of the Constitution. That was what powers the states agreed to delegate to the feds in the Constitutional Convention.

Lincoln pionererd suspending the Constitution through citing war time emergencies. His Whig agenda was based on Alexander Hamilton's American Plan. Hamilton is the father of American fascism.

Our current federal government is Lincoln's legacy. It is also FDR's legacy. The New Deal brain trust were big fans on Mussilinni, the man who kept the trains running on time. Our federal government is a fascist oligarchy with a budgent of about 35% of GDP. It's legal basis is McCulloch vs Maryland, which made Hamilton's implied powers lies Supreme Court precedent. 205 years later, it is the legal basis for the Federal Reserve and the alphabet agencies, that great network of corporate whorehouses.

You are idolizing the men who helped creat this fascist monstrosity. You are clearly on the wrong side of history.

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The Matson case was in 1847, when slavery was the law. The Southern states were not part of the U.S. -- they had seceded. Lincoln did not declare war on the Confederacy. Instead, he declared to be in rebellion the southern slave holding states that had seceded and that had fired against the Union when Fort Sumter was fired upon. So, it was already a war, by the seceded states. He then called for volunteers to aid the US Army in putting down the rebellion. And you obviously haven't read Lincoln's campaign speeches, which passionately condemned slavery and promised to allow slavery where it existed but to make it illegal throughout the rest of the country. But he also said that slavery is an evil and must ultimately end. For example, see this speech https://archive.is/hfAPQ in 1858.

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Nov 19·edited Nov 20

"The two greatest-ever American Presidents, in the view of most historians including myself, are Abraham Lincoln, who passionately wanted to free the slaves"

Your ignorance knows no bounds.

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