John Burt

Of course, nobody really knows, and there are many reasons why. In the first place, nobody knows how Lincoln would have understood the century and half of political and social change since his own day. In the second place, Lincoln’s values could have played out in very different ways, since, like all people’s values, they were layered and frequently in tension with each other. Further, Lincoln tended to keep opposing options alive in his mind until the last moment, for instance asking both moderates and radicals to serve in his cabinet and leaving it an open question with which side his loyalties ultimately lay, knowing that whatever his values and inclinations were, he could not afford to make commitments he might have to renege, and that he would have to practice the art of the possible to put any of those values into practical effect. Finally, since Lincoln’s thinking changed continuously and deeply over the course of his life, we do not know whether the transformation of his views about racial inequality that occurred during the Civil War would have continued in the postwar era, or whether he, like so many other white Americans at the end of the Reconstruction era, would have lost his nerve. Nevertheless, Lincoln’s example does offer some lessons for this moment.