Just cause paperwork and other things was destroyed doesn't mean he did not dable in slavery. Elites or aspiring elites of that time period owned directly or indirectly:
"Lincoln always aspired to the upper class, which meant owning slaves. “He said explicitly that people who don’t have slaves are nobody,” Johnson says. “And he married Mary Todd, the daughter of Kentucky’s largest slaveholder.” Through that marriage, Lincoln came to own his slaves, whom he sold soon after his father-in-law’s death."
You are doubling down on a bad example all for the sake of defending Russell. You were supposed to use a better example aside from the 'Lincoln had slaves' argument but instead you doubled down.
But you done goofed
Kevin Orlin Johnson is your source based on a book that was published in 2022. You posted an article with inserts to said book but you didn't post the actual insert from the book which I read 2 years ago. Unlike you I'm actually going to post the source:
The Preacher Who Stole Lincoln’s Past–By the Carload – Abbeville Institute
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The most damning blow to Johnson's claims is no physical evidence of said documents he claims exists
"Lincoln's order to sell should have been in the archived records of the Todd estate, but the files were docketed but empty, or just gone.
So it's really just an assumption that these missing documents contained evidence of slave owning and trading but that's still just speculation. There's no evidence. Now is it possible said documents once existed? Maybe. But the one issue that interferes with that theory is this from the insert:
And since 1860 people really had been searching. Beating back a tide of campaign diatribes about how Lincoln was the son of a Black woman, or of Jefferson Davis, or of Jefferson Davis and a Black woman..... the Party was frantic to find documentary proof of his legitimacy. They’d all come up empty.
This is where the theory has flaws. If people were looking for any type of evidence against Lincoln since 1860 then Lincoln owning and selling slaves would have been a big speculation back in the day and in American history because it would have been used against his stance against the confederacy as him being a hypocrite. But this theory popped up in 2022.
What if Johnson is wrong about what was in those missing dockets? Your source is based on speculation not actual proof or real documented evidence. So you made a claim with no real evidence just speculation. That's why Johnson's book hasn't made any real noise because at the end of the day your source falls into the category of being a "conspiracy theory."
Also....You added that Lincoln might have raped Black slaves. That's you just making more speculation with no proof or evidence. You took Johnson's words and sensationalized them with the idea of Lincoln being a rapist to defend Russel Simmons. SMDH
You would have had a good argument just using Johnson's "conspiracy theory" but you destroyed the credibility of your words by adding speculations of raping slaves with zero evidence. Bottom line, you should have used a better example to defend Russell instead of the "but but but Lincoln raped the slaves he owned" angle.