Hello Cypress,
A positive move forward.
And everything ever named after him should be renamed.
All the schools, highways, parks, etc.
We won.
Rebels lost.
Their heroes require no recognition.
Put up a statue of Lincoln instead.
BUT Lincoln wanted to deport all Blacks from America after emancipation. He even did actually manage to deport an initial few thousand. He was assassinated in 1865 in the midst of working on the extension of his deportation program.
Lincoln believed that Blacks had the Right to liberty because that was a NATURAL, Divinely-ordained, innate unalienable Right possessed by all human beings - this is why he was an abolitionist. However, he also believed than on average the Blacks were "socially and politically" inferior to White Americans ,and he was correct because we now know for a concrete, incontrovertible, scientific fact that the average White American's IQ is 15 points higher than the average Black American's IQ (in Lincoln's time the disparity would have even greater) Therefore Lincoln argued that they were not entitled to equal Civil Rights. Civil right were entitlements granted by man-made( positive) Law/s - NOT by Divine Law (like Natural Rights) That is why Lincoln said that he did not agree with Blacks having the right to vote, to be jurors, to be jurists, to inter-marry with whites and so on. These were Civil Rights given by (positive) law to whites because they had historically demonstrated that generally speaking they possessed sufficient intelligence/wisdom to handle the duties that they entailed responsibly. Blacks, Lincoln rightly argued did not.
In short, in The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson lists THREE (3) Divinely-ordained, universal, unalienable
NATURAL RIGHTS that all human beings inherently possessed; the NATURAL RIGHTS to (A) Life; (B) Liberty and (C) the pursuit of happiness.
Jefferson plagiarised this statement from the work of the 17th-century, English, Enlightenment political philosopher, John Locke, who listed the three NATURAL RIGHTS as: (A) Life; (B) Liberty and (C) possession of (private) Property. For Locke "property" did not only refer to the possession physical/material things such as goods and land that could be sold or given away or even confiscated by the government (under certain circumstances). Property also referred to ownership of one's SELF, which included one's body and one;s personal well-being/welfare. Jefferson changed Locke's Natural Right to "PROPERTY" to the Natural Right to "THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS."
Natural Rights are a corollary of the Divinely- ordained, Natural (MORAL) Law The Natural (MORAL) Law is the set of laws that God Himself provided for man. It decrees what is
RIGHT and what is WRONGThus, the Natural (MORAL) Law: "Do not kill", entails the Natural Right to life. It is ALWAYS AND FOREVER IN ANY PLACE/TIME WRONG to intentionally take the life of another man by murder. Likewise, it is ALWAYS AND FOREVER IN ANY PLACE/TIME WRONG to enslave another human being.
Natural Rights are NOT NEGOTIABLE. They are fully possessed by all human beings. Period.
Civil Rights and other man-made (positive) Laws can create Legal Rights. So Legal Rights are bestowed on a person BY A GIVEN LEGAL SYSTEM and the prevailing culture, customs, traditions, moral codes of the society in which it exists, for example the America of Abraham Lincoln's era (they can be modified, repealed, restrained by human laws)
