Underlying these fears was the deeper dread that newly emancipated Blacks would take their place beside whites at all social levels, or even supplant them, perhaps even marry their daughters, the maximally feared “amalgamation.” That Lincoln himself never actually envisioned or encouraged racial equality, let alone intermarriage, became irrelevant. The South had reached a point where its suspicions alone confirmed these as his foremost goals and the primary objectives of the Republican Party.
