Edward H Udell

Three Riddles Around Lincoln Edward H Udell

This short work, in its pursuit of solutions to three riddles around Lincoln, offers a clear, evidence-based, original defense of his motives and takes into account a wide range of top scholarship on the questions considered.

The first riddle concerns whether Abraham Lincoln was in any sense a racist.

The second riddle queries what Lincoln's highest priority was during his presidency. Some historians have argued that he cared most about saving the Union. Others have made the case that ending slavery was his main motive. But were those two goals in fact utterly integral to each other in Lincoln's mind?

The third riddle arises from two policies that have appeared contradictory to some historians. On the one hand, by publicly supporting black suffrage, Lincoln moved toward a united multiracial future for the U. S. At the same time, however, he explored colonization proposals he thought might enable large numbers of African Americans to leave the U. S. How is the seeming contradiction to be understood?