Outstanding! This book outlines the evolution of Lincoln's views on slavery, emancipation, and full rights for Blacks. To some degree, it is almost like an intellectual biography, focussing on Lincoln's speeches, writings, and statements as well as his actions. It is a remarkable work of scholarship, but well-organized, lucid and highly readable.

This rigorous academic work explores the political, religious, and public attitudes about race and slavery and how it affected Lincoln’s ideas during his entire adult life. During his life, the vast majority of white Americans, both in the north and in the south, were highly racist and highly ignorant of the lives of Black people, whether they were slaves or freedmen. While Lincoln abhorred slavery, he did believe that states had the rights to allow slavery and for much of his life, he believed that eventually slavery should end and that Blacks should be shipped out of the country and sent to colonies in Central America or Africa. As Lincoln feared, once slavery was ended, the southern whites soon took governance over their territory and they set about exploiting the cheap labor of freedmen as much as the laws would allow. At the same time, the North discriminated over the Black populace as much as their customs would allow.