Abraham Lincoln died on April 15, 1865, the morning after he was shot in the back of the head while attending a play at Ford’s theater in Washington D.C. Many believe the popular lie, out of foolishness and ignorance, that Lincoln was killed by a lone assassin. In fact, anyone willing to do a little research on the subject will soon learn that 15 people were tried for conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln; 14 were convicted; 5 were hanged, and 9 were imprisoned on the island of Dry Tortugas, Florida. The conspiracy was hatched in the British Empire, in the British Army-occupied colony of Canada, by the Canadian based Anglo-Confederate secret service, of which, the triggerman, John Wilkes Boothe, was an agent. Those who are not willing to do this sort of simple research might choose to believe the official lie, out of foolishness and ignorance, that President Kennedy was also killed by a lone assassin 98 years later. In any event, Abraham Lincoln’s noble bones rest in state in Springfield Illinois, but many today would murder President Lincoln again by lying that he somehow supported slavery. Nay, this lie is so much in vogue, that some believe the lie that Lincoln actually owned slaves! The same persons probably also believe the lie that the Founding Fathers were pro-slavery, but let us not get too far ahead of ourselves.

The first slave arrived in what is now the United States in 1619. For many decades, slavery remained very limited in the colonies, even in comparison to indentured servitude of Europeans, and slavery had begun to vanish until the introduction of cotton to the colonies in the late 1700s. In 1681, for example, Virginia had 2,000 Negro slaves as compared to 6,000 indentured European servants. Moreover, it is well known that slavery was overwhelmingly confined to the South. It was virtually non-existent in such places as the Massachusetts Bay Colony, whose founders sought to realize the ideals of the Golden Renaissance by establishing a nation-state committed to the General Welfare.

With the introduction of the cotton gin in 1793, slavery grew until it reached the figure of 4,000,000 on the eve of the Civil War. Most slaves arrived on British ships as part of a "triangular" trade that began in England. First, shiploads of primarily cotton goods, rum made from molasses, and firearms were traded on the West African coast for slaves. Second, the slaves were brought to the Americas in exchange for primarily cotton and molasses. Third, the ships returned to England, and the process was repeated. It should also be noted that Perfidious Albion conducted a similar triangular trade with China and India. Cotton goods from England were traded in India in exchange for opium, which the people of India were forced to grow instead of food. (This resulted in repeated mass starvation in India throughout the 18^th and 19^th centuries.) The opium was then sold to the Chinese in exchange for silver, which was brought back to England to finance the production of cotton goods, and the process was repeated. Each transaction netted wild profits. When the Chinese leadership attempted to stop the importation of opium, the British attacked the Chinese as violators of "free trade," and forced the importation of opium at the point of a gun, resulting in the so-called "Opium Wars," which began in 1839, and 1856. As a result, millions of Chinese lives were destroyed by opium addiction.

In any event, resistance to the British-led slave trade in the American colonies was strong. For example, in 1774, the Continental Congress voted for a resolution of "non-intercourse" with Great Britain, which included the following provision: "We will neither import nor purchase any slave imported after the first day of December next; after which time, we will wholly discontinue the slave trade, and will neither be concerned in it ourselves, nor will we hire our vessels, nor sell our commodities of manufactures to those who are concerned in it." This resolution was a prelude the 1776 Declaration of Independence, the original draft of which contained language denouncing the slave trade as a perverse British plot designed to contaminate the English colonies.

As Abraham Lincoln pointed out in his 1860 Cooper Institute Address, the 39 signers of the 1787 United States Constitution were overwhelmingly anti-slavery. Lincoln painstakingly went through, case by case, each of the signer’s voting records in various governing bodies to show that, "The sum of the whole is, that of the thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution, twenty-one—a clear majority of the whole—certainly understood that no proper division of local authority, nor any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control slavery in the federal territories; while all the rest [including known anti-slavery advocates such as Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton] probably had the same understanding of our fathers who framed the original Constitution; and the text affirms that they understood the question 'better than we.'" This begs the question: If Lincoln were pro-slavery, why would he bother to build such an argument?

Already, by 1784, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Connecticut had outlawed slavery. Moreover, the chief source of conflict at the 1787 Constitutional Convention was the issue of slavery. Southern states were so fearful that slavery would be outlawed in the United States, that the Founding Fathers were compelled to include in the Constitution (Article I, Section 9, paragraph I), "The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred eight." In other words, in exchange for ratification of the Constitution, slave states were given a twenty-year period of grace. Unfortunately, this issue was not resolved until 600,000 Americans gave their lives in the 1861-1865 Civil War.

Those who slander Lincoln, often site the fact that Lincoln fought the Civil War primarily to save the Union. On this point, they are right. In fact, Lincoln wrote the following in a letter to Horace Greeley on August 22, 1862: "My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others, I would also do that." Lincoln’s slanderers, however, will not site the conclusion of the same letter, which reads, "I have here stated my purpose according to my official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free. Yours, A. Lincoln."

In fact, as early as 1837, as an Illinois State legislator, Lincoln had officially expressed his belief that "the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy." To make the point as clearly as possible, let us simply site the Republican Party Platform of 1860 upon which Lincoln was elected President.

1. That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom; That as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained that "no person should be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law," it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it; and we deny the authority of Congress, of a territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to Slavery in any Territory of the United States.

2. That we brand the recent re-opening of the African slave-trade, under the cover of our national flag, aided by perversions of judicial power, as a crime against humanity and a burning shame to our country and age; and we call upon congress to take prompt and efficient measures for the total and final suppression of that execrable traffic.

Lincoln’s position on slavery is repeatedly expressed throughout his writings and speeches, and it is clearly, overwhelmingly, anti-slavery in word and deed. As for his position on preserving the Union vs. abolishing slavery, Lincoln’s slanderers fail to understand Lincoln when he said, "I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free." Lincoln clearly understood that in order to end slavery, it would be absolutely necessary to preserve the Union. An independent empire of slaveholders on the southern borders of a Constitutional Republic committed to the General Welfare of its entire population would be like a malignant disease growing in the sewer, threatening to infect the whole.

One might conclude these short comments with the observation that there are at least two kinds of slavery in human history. The first, and most easily recognized, is the involuntary sort—the sort of slavery that Abraham Lincoln, and hundreds of thousands of Union soldiers died on the battlefields of America to end. The second, and not as easily recognized, is the sort of slavery that is voluntary. The voluntary sort of slavery comes from the willful ignorance, illiteracy, and slavish stupidity which typifies the typical brain-dead fool who slanders, in any way, President Abraham Lincoln. Therefore, if we be not slaves, let us let the dead bury the dead, but let the memory of great men, and just men, live in praise forever, "that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion."