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Lincoln's Racial Views


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New book sheds new light on Lincoln's racial views

 

 

By MATTHEW BARAKAT, Associated Press Matthew Barakat, Associated Press – Fri Mar 4, 4:04 pm ET

 

McLEAN, Va. – Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address has inspired Americans for generations, but consider his jarring remarks in 1862 to a White House audience of free blacks, urging them to leave the U.S. and settle in Central America.

 

"For the sake of your race, you should sacrifice something of your present comfort for the purpose of being as grand in that respect as the white people," Lincoln said, promoting his idea of colonization: resettling blacks in foreign countries on the belief that whites and blacks could not coexist in the same nation.

 

Lincoln went on to say that free blacks who envisioned a permanent life in the United States were being "selfish" and he promoted Central America as an ideal location "especially because of the similarity of climate with your native land — thus being suited to your physical condition."

 

As the nation celebrates the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's first inauguration Friday, a new book by a researcher at George Mason University in Fairfax makes the case that Lincoln was even more committed to colonizing blacks than previously known. The book, "Colonization After Emancipation," is based in part on newly uncovered documents that authors Philip Magness and Sebastian Page found at the British National Archives outside London and in the U.S. National Archives.

 

In an interview, Magness said he thinks the documents he uncovered reveal Lincoln's complexity.

 

"It makes his life more interesting, his racial legacy more controversial," said Magness, who is also an adjuct professor at American University.

 

Lincoln's views about colonization are well known among historians, even if they don't make it into most schoolbooks. Lincoln even referred to colonization in the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, his September 1862 warning to the South that he would free all slaves in Southern territory if the rebellion continued. Unlike some others, Lincoln always promoted a voluntary colonization, rather than forcing blacks to leave.

 

But historians differ on whether Lincoln moved away from colonization after he issued the official Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, or whether he continued to support it.

 

Magness and Page's book offers evidence that Lincoln continued to support colonization, engaging in secret diplomacy with the British to establish a colony in British Honduras, now Belize.

 

Among the records found at the British archives is an 1863 order from Lincoln granting a British agent permission to recruit volunteers for a Belize colony.

 

"He didn't let colonization die off. He became very active in promoting it in the private sphere, through diplomatic channels," Magness said. He surmises that Lincoln grew weary of the controversy that surrounded colonization efforts, which had become enmeshed in scandal and were criticized by many abolitionists.

 

As late as 1864, Magness found a notation that Lincoln asked the attorney general whether he could continue to receive counsel from James Mitchell, his colonization commissioner, even after Congress had eliminated funding for Mitchell's office.

 

Illinois' state historian, Tom Schwartz, who is also a research director at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Ill., said that while historians differ, there is ample evidence that Lincoln's views evolved away from colonization in the final two years of the Civil War.

 

Lincoln gave several speeches referring to the rights blacks had earned as they enlisted in the Union Army, for instance. And presidential secretary John Hay wrote in July 1864 that Lincoln had "sloughed off" colonization.

 

"Most of the evidence points to the idea that Lincoln is looking at other ways" to resolve the transition from slavery besides colonization at the end of his presidency, Schwartz said.

 

Lincoln is the not the only president whose views on race relations and slavery were more complex and less idealistic than children's storybook histories suggest. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were both slaveholders despite misgivings. Washington freed his slaves when he died.

 

"Washington, because he wanted to keep the union, knew he had to ignore the slavery problem because it would have torn the country apart, said James Rees, director of Washington's Mount Vernon estate.

 

"It's tempting to wish he had tried. The nation had more chance of dealing with slavery with Washington than with anyone else," Rees said, noting the esteem in which Washington was held in both the North and the South.

 

Magness said views on Lincoln can be strongly held and often divergent. He noted that people have sought to use Lincoln's legacy to support all manner of political policy agendas since the day he was assassinated. And nobody can claim definitive knowledge of Lincoln's own views, especially on a topic as complex as race relations.

 

"He never had a chance to complete his vision. Lincoln's racial views were evolving at the time of his death," Magness said.

 

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Thanks, DieHard. That's an interesting article.

 

I wonder: should we teach our children about Lincoln's racial views, or is it better for them to see him as a great hero? It's a tough question, and no doubt one that the liberal fascists would like to avoid.

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It's an honest question, unless used by liberal leftists to discredit any and all Founders in one fashion or another.

 

But, Lincoln was just being honest about what he thought at the time. He saw the attitudes and/or hostility about blacks back in that day.

 

Here is really an excellent article on the subject by an expert:

 

http://illinoisissues.uis.edu/features/2004Feb/lincoln.html

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Paxton, The kids today are taught to question American history and our heros as if they never existed.

 

 

So what point is this article making. Lincoln was for Union first and Emancipation second, yet for his time was considered a crazed abolitionist by the south and they immediately succeeded upon his election. he was for the colonization back to Africa and many slaves did leave and founded the country Liberia and they themselves OWNED SLAVES. While I never heard of any American settlement of slaves it does not cloud that for his time Lincoln saw that Emancipation made the conflict of the civil war into the cause that would inhibit France and England from recognizing the south. he saw how bravely black troops fought in battle and his opinion took on a transformation.

 

Applying todays codes on yesterday is done so for what reason? Society was so racist that a huge majority did not even question the right of ownership

of another person. Blacks were recognized by the vast majority as property and many supreme court rulings backed this attitude. It was not until the hated Dredd Scott decision that forced Northerners to aid in the capture of runaway slaves in the North did the cry of abolitionists get loud. John brown tried to start a slave rebellion yet even in death brought attention to the depravity of slavery and converted many to his belief. Lincoln, while a sympathizer of abolition did not actively promote the freedom of slaves until the proclamation.

 

Considering the racial animosity that still exists among both sides was Lincoln that far off that we would have problems getting along? "History" such as this seems more of a muck raking variety. Lincoln was great for his time. He made the recognition of a race no longer as animal, no longer as property, but deserving all the benefits of any white man. Women were not even recognized as full citizens allowed to vote.

 

Crap like this ":history" smears without really owning the mud you want to smear someone with. Lincoln was a great president and a man of conviction who stood for a moral stance that made him hated by all the south and many in the north who did not want to fight to set the expletive free. that was the mentality of the 1860s and Lincoln was a man way ahead of his times yet he had to slowly pull away from the mindset of any politician who wanted to be elected. His "moderate" views transformed once he took upon his shoulders the moral authority for freeing and recognizing the human rights of a people here to for thought of as nothing more than cattle to be used, to be bred, to be sold, and to be victim of any treatment an owner decided.

 

look at what happened to the black man upon Lincoln's DEATH to see the difference this man made. Reconstruction quickly was abandoned, the blacks soon lost their rights to vote and the birth of night riders who lynched blacks and bullied them into perhaps a worse state of affairs. the black man was free on paper, yet could not vote,was a sharecropper and tied to the onwers land he tended and given a pittance for his labors and in ever deepening debt was enslaved once more. had Lincoln lived, the blcks who ran for congress, who voted, who were free and proud would not have been bullied and beaten. there is no way after the bloody civil war do i believe Lincoln would have stood for what happened to the black race.

 

I would not wipe my behind with this thome.

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