"Honest" Abe?

How honest was "honest" Abe  Was he a racist? Did he speak with a forked tongue?

The answer is in the excerpt below from America's Oldest Professions: Warring and Spying. The Kindle version will be offered free on Amzaon Kindle books Sept. 8-Sept. 12.

Civil War is the most deadly for Americans of any military interventions launched by a U.S. president.  Zinn makes it clear in his writings that President Lincoln provoked the attack on Fort Sumter that launched the Civil War not with the primary purpose of freeing the slaves but to make sure to maintain the ability to expand the nations territory and with it greater markets and resources. Lincoln, in other words, was an early practitioner of imperialism by deadly military means.  He was also, I was astonished to learn, a racist if one can take these own remarks of his at face value that he made in a speech he gave in Charleston? "---I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races---and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." [4] Whatever his motives might have been, and whether he spoke with a forked tongue depending on the audience, his decision to start the Civil War was deadly, unnecessary, and morally outrageous. In saying that, I want to make it perfectly clear that I have never in my life been a racist.

If Lincoln had allowed the Confederacy to become a separate nation, slavery would have ended because tenancy was becoming a more practical means of managing agricultural labor, resentment and continued racial discrimination and hatred from forced “emancipation” would have eventually ceased, and there would be two Americas, not one mighty one continuously threatening the world.   

 4. Zinn, H. A People’s History of the United States.  Harper Perennial, 2005.