CHICAGO - Sen. Barack Obama sees parallels between Abraham Lincoln's life and his own, but he says the nation's 16th president might not have envisioned a black man occupying the seat he now holds.

Obama, who occupies the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois that Lincoln lost to Stephen Douglas in 1858, wrote about how Lincoln shaped his life in a special issue of Time magazine.

"In Lincoln's rise from poverty, his ultimate mastery of language and law, his capacity to overcome personal loss and remain determined in the face of repeated defeat - in all this, he reminded me not just of my own struggles. He also reminded me of a larger, fundamental element of American life - the enduring belief that we can constantly remake ourselves to fit our larger dreams," Obama wrote in a package dubbed 'Uncovering the Real Abe Lincoln,' on newsstands Monday.

Obama, a Chicago Democrat who is just the fifth black senator in U.S. history, also raised questions about Lincoln's role in ending slavery.

"I cannot swallow whole the view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator," Obama said. "As a law professor and civil rights lawyer and as an African-American, I am fully aware of his limited views on race. Anyone who actually reads the Emancipation Proclamation knows it was more a military document than a clarion call for justice."

And as for what Lincoln may have thought about Obama's election to the Senate in 2004?

"He may not have dreamed of that exact outcome. But I like to believe he would have appreciated the irony," Obama said.

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A clarion call for justice?????? What did Obama want Lincoln to do? Maybe to murder all White Southerners as a punishment for slavery?????

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The United States Census of 1860 was the eighth Census conducted in the United States. It determined the population of the United States to be 31,443,321 — an increase of 35.4 percent over the 23,191,876 persons enumerated during the 1850 Census. The total population included 3,953,760 slaves; around 12% of the population.

Of all 1,515,605 families in the 15 slave states, 393,967 held slaves (roughly one in four),amounting to only 8% of all American families

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I repeat. A clarion call for justice????? Did he want the 8% of families who owned slaves to be executed by the government????? That is a very disturbing statement. Abraham Lincoln was a brutal asshole to both Southerners and to American Indians but Obama's fault with Lincoln is that Lincoln was not brutal enought!!!!

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Some people think the Civil War was about slavery while many others believe it had more to do with state rights. Regardless, Abraham Lincoln put the lives of 3 million soldiers at risk and caused the deaths of 600,000 soldiers to force the will of the North on the rest of the Nation. And Obama does not think that Lincoln was brutal enough.

Given Obama's past relations with a racist church, his association with the black moslem million man march, and his rhetoric on Lincoln; is this a man we should trust to be President?

I can't understand why any Southerner, white or black, would vote for Obama. Southerners, black and white, will suffer under an Obama Presidency. He is man who does not get Southern culture and if the truth were known he is probably a man who is embarrassed by black Southern Culture. Though he thinks Lincoln was not brutal enough, he identifies more with Abraham Lincoln than Martin Luther King Jr. or Ralph David Abernathy or Jesse Jackson.