Exploring Lincoln's Evolving Views of Citizenship At its most basic
level, citizenship is about who belongs to a political community,
and for Abraham Lincoln in nineteenth-century America, the answer
was in flux. The concept of 'fellow citizens,' for Lincoln,
encompassed different groups at different times. In this first book
focused on the topic, Mark E. Steiner analyzes and contextualizes
Lincoln's evolving views about citizenship over the course of his
political career. As an Illinois state legislator, Lincoln
subscribed to the by-then-outmoded belief that suffrage must be
limited to those who met certain obligations to the state. He
rejected the adherence to universal white male suffrage that had
existed in Illinois since statehood. In 1836 Lincoln called for
voting rights to be limited to white people who had served in the
militia or paid taxes. Surprisingly, Lincoln did not exclude women,
though later he did not advocate giving women the right to vote and
did not take women seriously as citizens. The women at his rallies,
he believed, served as decoration. For years Lincoln presumed that
only white men belonged in the political and civic community, and
he saw immigration through this lens. Because Lincoln believed that
white male European immigrants had a right to be part of the body
politic, he opposed measures to lengthen the time they would have
to wait to become a citizen or to be able to vote. Unlike many in
the antebellum north, Lincoln rejected xenophobia and nativism. He
opposed black citizenship, however, as he made clear in his debates
with Stephen Douglas. Lincoln supported Illinois's draconian Black
Laws, which prohibited free black men from voting and serving on
juries or in the militia. Further, Lincoln supported sending free
black Americans to Africa-the ultimate repudiation and an
antithesis of citizenship. Yet, as president, Lincoln came to
embrace a broader vision of citizenship for African Americans.
Steiner establishes how Lincoln's meetings at the White House with
Frederick Douglass and other black leaders influenced his beliefs
about colonization, which he ultimately disavowed, and citizenship
for African Americans, which he began to consider. Further, the
battlefield success of black Union soldiers revealed to Lincoln
that black men were worthy of citizenship. Lincoln publicly called
for limited suffrage among black men, including military veterans,
in his speech about Reconstruction on April 11, 1865. Ahead of most
others of his era, Lincoln showed just before his assassination
that he supported rights of citizenship for at least some African
Americans.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
