Lincoln’s Whig Credo

Abraham Lincoln, portrait photograph from April 10, 1865

You enquire where I now stand. That is a disputed point. I think I am a whig; but others say there are no whigs, and that I am an abolitionist. When I was at Washington I voted for the Wilmot Proviso as good as forty times, and I never heard of any one attempting to unwhig me for that. I now do more than oppose the extension of slavery.

I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.” When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

–Abraham Lincoln, letter to Joshua F. Speed, Aug. 24, 1855, in: Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 1, p. 218 (J.G. Nicolay ed. 1907)(Speed was a slaveholder, and Lincoln loved to upbraid him for that. The Wilmot Proviso related to an 1846 appropriation for implementation of the peace treaty following the War with Mexico, it forbade the introduction of slavery into any of the territories acquired from Mexico.)