Abraham Lincoln rejects black equality with white Americans.
"Mr. Lincoln's Reply," Chicago Tribune, Vol. 12, no. 144 (August 23, 1858): 1
I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects--certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man. [Great applause].