Big Enough to Be Inconsistent

By George M. Fredrickson

This book to give an overall sense was a general account of how Lincoln addressed slavery. What were his thoughts and stances throughout his political history? Did he really believe in emancipating slavery, or did was he a racist. Through the book you can see that Lincoln took a stance that tried to keep both sides of the argument happy. Lincoln was a man that came from the south, and he would identify his southern roots and his wife also came from the south. Lincoln in his bid for the Senate seat (which he eventually lost) presented his a nation divided speech. A prime example of his dilemma for a politician of his time, this speech encompassed that the nation cannot be divided. Lincoln noted that the Union eventually must be all slave or all free. Lincoln although did not have a definitive answer for his speech, he said that he did not have an answer whether the nation should be all slave or all free. Lincoln later on in the book is fed up with the South's inability  to cooperate with any plan to get rid of slavery, even with monetary compensation. Is Lincoln still a racist even though he enacts the emancipation proclamation, even when he said if slavery had to kept in order to keep the union?