Abraham Lincoln and the Complex, Convoluted Path to Emancipation

In a talk honoring the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth, Mohr detailed these and numerous other ways the Lincoln administration wrestled with the issue of slavery. Congressional, military and public pressures eventually set the stage for the President's Emancipation Proclamation on New Year's Day, 1863, and the constitutional amendment that followed, said Mohr, College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of History and Knight Professor of Social Science.

Like many commemorations, Mohr's lecture focused on Lincoln's own role in ending slavery. Though the nation long revered Lincoln as "The Great Emancipator," recent scholars have advanced competing views of Lincoln's legacy -- some going so far as to label him simply another "white racist" (because he did not end slavery as quickly as he might have). Mohr rejected the extremes and argued for an understanding of Lincoln as "an institutionalist" -- a man who genuinely abhorred slavery but insisted on constitutional procedures -- especially the Thirteenth Amendment -- that would ensure "a more perfect union" in the long run.

- Lisa Raleigh