ABSTRACT
We begin this chapter with the famous quotation from Abraham Lincoln’s letter to newspaper editor Horace Greeley. We do so first because Lincoln was the first American president to deal in a positive, antiracist way with the African American quest for universal freedom. Second, in his timid, cautious, moderate approach to dealing with the freedom of African Americans, Abraham Lincoln
is the paradigmatic president, setting an example-a pattern or model-for the handful of other American presidents who have dealt in a positive way with the African American freedom quest.2
