Lincoln considered repatriating former slaves, because he knew that after emancipation there would be a good deal of racial tension in this country.

He was hardly the first. The American Colonization Society founded Liberia in the 1830s as a haven for freed Blacks. Before that, the British sent some Blacks who had served with their army, in the revolutionary war to Africa.

There are few saints among us. Many of the leaders of the American Women's Suffrage movement were nativists and racists. While in England Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst thought World War I was a splendid idea, and disowned sister Sylvia for being a pacifist.

Last year the Western Band of the Cherokee announced that Blacks, descendants of slaves who had belonged to members of the tribe, were no longer to be considered Cherokee.

Lincoln was flawed, as are we all. But he did a great deal of good in this world, and he knew that ordinary people mattered, something modern Republicans seem to have forgotten.