Lincoln was a lawyer in Illinois, what characteristic was he NOT known for?

Question:His Practical common sense
His utter honesty
His invariable fairness
His opposition to slavery

I think its his invariable fairness or common sense, but I am ABSOLUTELY unsure.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: His Practical common sense
His utter honesty
His invariable fairness
His opposition to slavery

I think its his invariable fairness or common sense, but I am ABSOLUTELY unsure.

Lincoln was a lawyer in Illinois, what characteristic was he NOT known for?

Seems clear to me. Remember it is "NOT" known for.

"His opposition to slavery"

Lincoln would have been quite happy to free NO slaves if the Civil War could have been averted. He thought the slavery issue was divisive and harmful to the country, but he would have preserved the Union by continuing slavery if the South would have believed him. Lincoln's Republican platform wanted to limit the spread of slavery rather than simply abolish it outright where it already existed. Lincoln would have preferred that slavery died of natural causes such as occurred elsewhere in the world. Lincoln was not the rabid abolitionist that many think.

I have seen people here on yahoo debate his opposition to slavery. He seem to give mixed messages. I think that he was more concerned about its effect upon the country than its moral issue.

~Again, Lincoln was human and subject to human frailties. If alive today, he could not live up to his myth.

He was known for his common sense. On the other hand, he selected a long string of obvious losers as General-in-Chief of the Army throughout the first couple years of the Civil War until he stumbled upon Hiram Grant. Common Sense should have told him to put Billy Sherman in charge as early as the fall of 1862, and common sense should have told him that the Emancipation Proclamation was not only illegal and unconstitutional and illegal but a practical mistake (which he acknowledged when he called it "my greatest folly".)

He was basically honest, but he was a railroad lawyer and a politician. He was less than honest with himself and with his constituents on more than one occasion. Compare his First Inaugural Address to the Emancipation Proclamation.

Fairness? He suspended Habeas Corpus, not to mention his vindictiveness towards his second echelon generals.

He acknowledged repeatedly that the right to own slaves was protected by the constitution and he readily agreed that he would support slavery if it would end the way and keep the union together. On the other hand, he was personally opposed to slavery.

Once again, the correct answer (if one deals with the man and not the myth) is 'None of the above'. Then you have to ask: "Known by home"? A citizen of Mississippi would have a fair different perception of Lincoln than would one of Illinois. I am not trying to knock him off his pedestal. I am just trying to put him back on the ground where he himself would agree he belongs.

Lincoln and abolitionist are contradictory terms but not in the way that the two have nothing to do with each other. Lincoln had inherent commitments to liberty and to the rule of law and to humanity as affirmed in the Declaration of Independence ("all" created equal with inalienable rights of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness); Abolitionists ran the gamut of radicality and approaches from John Brown to Frederick Douglass to Wendell Phillips to William Lloyd Garrison: some were violent / some were anti-Constitutionalist in rhetoric and ready for Secession and break-up of the then "United States" / some were working through civil disobedience and the Underground Railroad / some cooperated with the recruitment for "Lincoln's Army" once the Confederacy broke away. If you look at the Lincoln - Douglas debates, you see that the Republican would-be candidate for President is NOT advocating a general emancipation while neither was the incumbent Senator (who won in 1858) Douglas all-out pro-slavery and its continued expansion. There were political compromises (infernal ones, no doubt) being made to keep the Southern elites in the political process during the 1850s. Lincoln's election in Nov. 1860 threw that calculus out the window but in his First Inaugural (1861 before the Ft. Sumter shots and take-over) we can hardly detect an all-abolitionist manifesto. Those influencing Lincoln in the Cabinet from 1861 onwards deserve credit for directing the 16th President toward sigining the Emancipation Proclamation (limited as it was to freeing all enslaved in the U.S.).

This question may be asking what characteristic Lincoln was not known for as a lawyer in Illinois. It may be a way of teaching that as a lawyer slavery did not really come up as his cases dealt with civil actions and railroad law. However, there is plenty of evidence that Lincoln was always personally opposed to slavery, and in 1854, while still a lawyer, seven years before becoming president, he very eloquently spoke against the Kansas-Nebraska Act, presenting “thorough moral, legal and economic arguments against slavery.” I would say that at least after 1854 lawyer Lincoln would have been know to be opposed to slavery.

All the other choices seem consistent with Lincoln’s known character.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas-Nebr...