Question

Did Abe Lincoln ever own slaves?

Answer 1

Gerald J. Prokopowicz wrote a book named "Did Lincoln Own Slaves? And Other Frequently Asked Questions about Abraham Lincoln"

In the book, he clearly states that the answer is NO.

Here are some Q&A from an interview:

Q: Your title question—"Did Lincoln own slaves?"—is clearly absurd. Why did you choose it?

A: Because it's still frequently asked. Usually, it's raised as a way of attacking Lincoln, sort of like a historical push-poll.

Q: What motivates those attacks?

A: Some critics look at his careful and politically practical approach to ending slavery and mistake it for reluctance to help African-Americans. Others overlook slavery altogether and romanticize the Confederacy as a libertarian paradise crushed by the tyrant Lincoln.

But since even Lincoln's most extreme opponents can't deny that the end of slavery was a good thing, they have to try to disassociate Lincoln from emancipation, and that leads to the absurdity of implying that Lincoln must have been a slave owner.