EVIL vs. GOOD
"The true rule, in determining to embrace or reject anything, is not whether it has any evil in it, but whether it has more evil than good. There are few things wholly evil or wholly good. Almost everything, especially of government policy, is an inseparable compound of the two."
RACE
"Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man, this race and that race, and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position.... Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal."
-- Lincoln in debate with Stephen A. Douglas Quincy, Illinois. Oct. 13, 1858. (p. 209)
IMMIGRATION
Abraham Lincoln guided through Congress the first major federal immigration law in American history (creating the U.S. Immigration Bureau and the Office of the Commissioner of Immigration). He entitled it "An Act to Encourage Immigration," termed it a great policy, and said it would give America's immigrants "effective national protection." Lincoln often referred to immigrants as " one of the principal of replenishing streams." America, he said, has a system that allows people to prosper, to rise, and to get rich. But when that system is successful, it creates a shortage of affordable labor. New immigrants fill that void. (p. 222)
Source:
Phillips, DonaldLincoln on Leadership for Today -- Abraham Lincoln's Approach to 21st-Century Issues. (New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017)
