Thought-provoking article: "What 'Lincoln' misses and another Civil War film gets right"....

[JDPriestly]

35. That Lincoln's views on race prior to becoming president were typical of his time

is evident from the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

I don't know how much of the following Lincoln speech I can quote. I think it is in the public domain, but I want to be careful so I suggest that everyone who is interested in this go to the website and read this and other of Lincoln's speeches on the matter.

Lincoln's views on slavery appear to have changed over time so people can make different claims about what he thought and all could be right depending on the period of Lincoln's life they are talking about.

"Although I have ever been opposed to slavery, so far I rested in the hope and belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. For that reason, it had been a minor question with me. I might have been mistaken; but I had believed, and now believe, that the whole public mind, that is, the mind of the great majority, had rested in that belief up to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. But upon that event, I became convinced that either I had been resting in a delusion, or the institution was being placed on a new basis,—a basis for making it perpetual, national and universal. Subsequent events have greatly confirmed me in that belief. I believe that bill to be the beginning of a conspiracy for that purpose. So believing, I have since then considered that question a paramount one. So believing, I thought the public mind will never rest till the power of Congress to restrict the spread of it shall again be acknowledged and exercised on the one hand, or, on the other, all resistance be entirely crushed out. I have expressed that opinion, and I entertain it to-night. It is denied that there is any tendency to the nationalization of slavery in these States. 25
Mr. Brooks, of South Carolina, in one of his speeches, when they were presenting him canes, silver plate, gold pitchers and the like, for assaulting Senator Sumner, distinctly affirmed his opinion that when this Constitution was formed, it was the belief of no man that slavery would last to the present day. 26
He said, what I think, that the framers of our Constitution placed the institution of slavery where the public mind rested in the hope that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. But he went on to say that the men of the present age, by their experience, have become wiser than the framers of the Constitution, and the invention of the cotton gin had made the perpetuity of slavery a necessity in this country. 27
As another piece of evidence tending to this same point: Quite recently in Virginia, a man—the owner of slaves—made a will providing that after his death certain of his slaves should have their freedom if they should so choose, and go to Liberia, rather than remain in slavery. They chose to be liberated. But the persons to whom they would descend as property, claimed them as slaves. A suit was instituted, which finally came to the Supreme Court of Virginia, and was therein decided against the slaves, upon the ground that a negro cannot make a choice—that they had no legal power to choose—could not perform the condition upon which their freedom depended." 28

http://www.bartleby.com/251/1006.html

At this point in Lincoln's life, the issue was not racial equality but slavery, specifically whether the territories newly opened up in the West would be slave or free and whether Dred Scott should be accepted or not.

Like Lincoln, we all live within our present. History always leaves us behind. Today's arguments between conservatives and liberals are probably as shockingly lacking in the moral values that will be commonly accepted by our great-great-grandchildren as are Lincoln's and Douglas's today.

I recommend reading these debates and other Lincoln speeches. I am no expert on this and have not read them all myself, but I have found what I have read to be very different from what I expected.