Posted on 02/10/2011 7:41:41 AM PST by Altura Ct.
The Great Emancipator was almost the Great Colonizer: Newly released documents show that to a greater degree than historians had previously known, President Lincoln laid the groundwork to ship freed slaves overseas to help prevent racial strife in the U.S.
Just after he issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Lincoln authorized plans to pursue a freedmen’s settlement in present-day Belize and another in Guyana, both colonial possessions of Great Britain at the time, said Phillip W. Magness, one of the researchers who uncovered the new documents.
Historians have debated how seriously Lincoln took colonization efforts, but Mr. Magness said the story he uncovered, to be published next week in a book, “Colonization After Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement,” shows the president didn’t just flirt with the idea, as historians had previously known, but that he personally pursued it for some time.
“The way that Lincoln historians have grappled with colonization has always been troublesome. It doesn’t mesh with the whole ‘emancipator,’ ” Mr. Magness said. “The revelation of this story changes the picture on that because a lot of historians have tended to downplay colonization. … What we know now is he did continue the effort for at least a year after the proclamation was signed.”
Mr. Magness said the key documents he and his co-author, Sebastian N. Page, a junior research fellow at Oxford, found were in British archives, and included an order authorizing a British colonial agent to begin recruiting freed slaves to be sent to the Caribbean in June 1863.
By early 1864, the scheme had fallen apart, with British officials fretting over the legality of the Emancipation Proclamation and the risk that the South could still win the war, and with the U.S. Congress questioning how the money was being spent.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
I wonder if Kunta Kinte would have wanted to return to Africa?
ping
Oh boy, a thread for the FR Lincoln haters.
Isn’t that how Liberia got started? I believe it was after Lincoln’s time though.
I could be wrong, it’s happened before.
They would have wound up as slaves back in Africa anyway.
Hopefully in before the Lincoln haters
What historians fail to mention is that most freed slaved stayed in their homes and continued to work for tha plantation owner as hired employees.
All the emancipation proclamation really did was change the relationship from owner/slave (THE NORM AT THE TIME) to Employee/worker for most of them.
100 years later,many blacks went right back to the plantation known as the modern day Democrat Party and don’t even know it.
Once this modern day plantation is eliminated, there will be many blacks and whites who will have to be taught all over again on how to be self reliant.
This is really no big revelation.
Liberia happened in 1821, it’s capital is “Monrovia”, named for President James Monroe who helped establish a new homeland in Africa for freed slaves.
The idea of re-colonization of freed slaves was not a revolutionary idea at the time of the Civil War, obviously, since it had already successfully happened a generation before.
That is absolutely not true.
In fact, in both Liberia and Sierra Leone, the freed "colonizers" immediately clashed with the natives because they thought, particularly in Liberia, that the natives were to become THEIR slaves. Still tension between the descendants of the freedmen and the descendants of the original inhabitants!
In neither case were the freedmen "dumped on the beach." Rather both of these places ... Liberia and Sierra Leone ... were well subsidized. ... and the "colonists" for the most part, were fairly well equipped and financed to begin their new lives.
Most of his fellow slaves and their descendents certainly wouldn’t want to, which is a significant reason why Lincoln’s scheme failed. It would also be too expensive as well, of course.
Liberia was founded by the British after the war of independence. Its first colonists were loyalist blacks who found that the liberty bell wasn’t sounding for them.
They’ll never top “Lincoln the Vampire Slayer” LOL
What doomed "Colonization," was the opposition of many Abolitionists and Negro leaders. Lincoln thought it was a great idea and thought that the leaders of the freed slaves would jump on it.
Instead they jumped on him. Astute politico that he was, he went on to the next problem. It is an interesting speculation as to whether or not he would have revived the idea after the Civil War was truly won.
In a way the opposition is logically explained. For example, those who benefit from the cheaper labor of illegal aliens don't want to see them deported. On a practical level, except for the brief period of Republican Reconstruction, freed slaves soon became easily exploited and very cheaply paid employees under the Democrat Party's segregation policies and laws.
Does no African Studies guru ever ask why African-Americans used to be solidly Republican?
Old stuff indeed.
I’ve read that Lincoln got the idea from Thomas Jefferson but, unlike Jefferson who contemplated forcible deportation, Lincoln favored voluntary colonization as one option to be explored.
This is just another feeble attempt at soft demonization.
Depends. The standard claim of Lincoln worshippers is that he dropped the idea by the end of his life and was “moving toward” pushing for equality for blacks in the U.S. If this shows, however, that he kept pushing the idea until the end it could be a big deal.
FYI: Kunta Kinte is in an Alabama jail
http://blog.al.com/live/2011/02/man_wanted_for_breaking_into_e.html
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