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“Alvan Stewart, a prolific writer and speaker against slavery from New York, developed the argument that the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, which barred depriving any person of “life, liberty, or property” without due process of law, made slavery unconstitutional. Slaves, said Stewart, should go to court and obtain writs of habeas corpus ordering their release from bondage.” (The Fiery Trial Quotes)
Eric Foner
The Fiery Trial
“As a Whig, Lincoln had seen the slavery question as a threat to party unity and economic policy as a source of party strength. Now, he realized, the situation was reversed. He worked to ensure that the new party with its heterogeneous membership ignored divisive issues like the Whig economic agenda, which he had strenuously advocated for two decades but which would alienate former Democrats.”
Eric Foner
The Fiery Trial
“Even this early in his career, Lincoln recognized slavery as the crucial question the founders had failed to resolve and the greatest threat to the survival of the republic.”
Eric Foner
The Fiery Trial
“History, it has been said, is what the present chooses to remember about the past.”
Eric Foner
The Fiery Trial
“Like his idol Henry Clay, Lincoln saw government as an active force promoting opportunity and advancement. Its “legitimate object,” he wrote in an undated memorandum, “is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but cannot do…for themselves.” He offered as examples building roads and public schools and providing relief to the poor. To Lincoln, Whig policies offered the surest means of creating economic opportunities for upwardly striving men like himself.”
Eric Foner
The Fiery Trial
“Lincoln spoke of slaveholders not as reprobates and sinners but as men and women enmeshed in a system from which they could not disentangle themselves. “They are just what we would be in their situation,” (The Fiery Trial Quotes)
Eric Foner
The Fiery Trial
“The problem is that we tend too often to read Lincoln’s growth backward, as an unproblematic trajectory toward a predetermined end. This enables scholars to ignore or downplay aspects of Lincoln’s beliefs with which they are uncomfortable.”
Eric Foner
The Fiery Trial
“These victories arose from the determined efforts of a group of lawyers who risked public odium by defending fugitive slaves in court and challenging the long-standing system of black indentured servitude. John M. Palmer, Gustave Koerner, and Orville H. Browning, all future Republican politicians, argued that blacks held to long-term indentures were free, and fought their cases in court without charge. In the 1850s, Lincoln’s law partner William Herndon represented fugitive slaves pro bono.”
Eric Foner
The Fiery Trial
