Posted on 03/05/2011 4:17:47 PM PST by FatherofFive
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
"I tell [Douglas] very frankly that I am not in favor of negro citizenship."
Lincoln - douglas debates
A few years back when Curtis Granderson played baseball for the Detroit Tigers he had an official photo of himself taken with the statue of Ty Cobb outside Comerica park.
When asked why he wanted his photo taken with someone perceived as a racist, Granderson gave a great answer. He said that racism is more of a perception of past attitudes vs current attitudes. He went on to say that Cobb was one of the greatest players ever to play the game and for his time showed a great deal more tolerance than many big league players did. Granderson laughed and said that Cobb was well known for being an ass but he was an equal opportunity ass.
What a foolish notion in light of how easily we have integrated.
< /SARC>
That quote was from the Lincoln - Douglas debates btw. :-)
What is enough to make it fair?
They already have “Liberias” in Africa. Sudan, Somalia, Kenya ... how has American racism hurt those people?
Oh boy! We haven’t had a good FR Civil War dustup for a while. This should be good.
The south has “Lost Causers,” the north has “Lincoln Sainthood.” He did not fight the Civil War to free the slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation was a military document, intended to spur insurrection in the south and the south alone, as it did not free slaves in States outside the Confederacy. Lincoln held blacks to be inferior to whites. He was not at all alone in this belief, particularly among his Union compatriots, contrary to the popular public school mythology that places this belief solely at the feet of southerners.
Tell the true history, I say. All of it. Don’t be afraid of it. The States that comprised the former Confederacy believed themselves to possess a Constitutional right to dissolve their association with other States, for any reason. So did several others, notably in New England, that threatened secession several decades prior.
Regarding the speech to free blacks in the excerpt, where does anybody think Liberia came from, and how do they believe Liberia to have been established?
Oh noes! And this changes what? (Not asking you FOF, just generally.)
When are people going to wake up and realize that it’s the year 2011? Now they’re going back to find racists? Shall we dig him up and question him? Letterman apology show? Rev. Al and Jackson going to ‘have a talk’ with him through seance? Geez. I’m betting that most of the Northern army had the same thoughts.
Of course the Democrats (which included ALL of the Confederacy) of the time were arguing blacks were subhuman--and they were doing them a favor to enslave them...
Two events riled anti-slavery forces in America: 1) The Kansas-Nebraska Act, which negated the Compromise of 1820 and said that slavery could be wherever the State wanted it, rather than keeping it below a certain latitude (Mason-Dixon Line?). This caused violent men from both sides to fight in Kansas and Nebraska. The belief was that slavery, far from slowly dying out, would flourish in new Southern States (Cuba and Northern Mexico was seriously considered for annexation to the US)....for example, today Migrant workers work the orchards in florida and california....if the Kansas-Nebraska Act were present today, you might see slaves working those field today.
2)The publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin. This book stoked the abolitionist fires in the North, and a savage reaction in the South.
I honestly don't know how we could've avoided a Civil War. Southern Democrat slaveholders were too entrenched in their way of life, while northern Republican abolitionists were too angered by the idea of one man owning another.
As for "States Rights" and seceding because of economic issues, why didn't the Midwestern States secede as well (they were under the same restrictions Southern states were), and why was slavery forbidden to be outlawed in the Confederate Constitution?
With all due respect to you for your post I am weary of racial discussions.
Racial discrimination has become the reason for much bad behavior and I’m tired of it,really tired. The word “racist” has lost all meaning it is so overused.
Who cares if Lincoln was racist? That was approximately 150 years ago.
We also know that Lincoln took hid inspiration from Thomas Jefferson who envisioned involuntary deportation of blacks. And shared the idea of voluntary emigration and resettlement with Robert E. Lee.
In other words, there ain’t no news like old news...
hid=his
Lincoln’s views of blacks and slavery have been known and published for years so there’s hardly anything new here and certainly no “new light”.
Most of the Lincoln worshippers simply ignore his views on race or excuse them so what’s new?
I agree with you. We have a black president. Oprah is a billionaire. So many black millionaire athletes cheered on by "racist" white folks in the stands.
Yet the democRATS continually play the race card, as if slavery still exists.
“What is enough to make it fair?”
***
Restitution of course. It’s all about that free Obama money.
At the time there was likely hardly any white person who did not agree with this, including the abolitionists. Equality was not even an issue until after the war, and physical and intellectual equality was not an issue until well into the twentieth century.
The issue was the spread of human slavery, and then became the end of slavery where it existed.
Lincoln was properly concerned with his oath to ‘preserve and protect’ the Constitution, and this had become understood, after Andrew Jackson, to include preserving the federal union.
I’ve been reading much of this history again, just today, in fact.
As usual, the Lincoln-haters on FR are once again making their attacks on an almost identical basis as Stephen A. Douglas. Same words, almost verbatim.
It’s ironic how many Stephen A. Douglas Democrats today call themselves Republicans, and “federalists.” It’s a hoot.
But what isn’t funny is that they’re treating unborn children, no matter their race, exactly the same way Douglas treated blacks.
Forgot to mention that Jackson’s position was not a partisan position, see my new tagline, from the great spokesman for the Whigs.
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