of the white and black races; I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people... I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." I've seen that quote in early biographies of Lincoln, and it looks accurate. He once said that just because he didn't want a Negro woman as a slave, it didn't mean he would want her as a wife. Lincoln believed that slavery was wrong, but should be permitted to continue in areas where it had existed historically (i.e. the South). He thought that if confined to those areas it would eventually die out. He opposed slavery's expansion to new territories and states and that was enough for the South to paint him as a radical abolitionist. He wasn't. In fact he was elected because he could unite the various anti-slavery factions -- those who hated blacks, those who thought slavery dragged down wages, and those who thought slavery immoral. Among the last were the relatively few