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 ...
Got it. Thanks. Now about Rudolh Friml....
Rightly, listen to this man. I apologize for cyber mis-information. Forgive me
"Moreover, by decoupling emancipation from colonization, Lincoln in effect launched the process known as Reconstruction--the remaking of Southern society, politics and race relations. Lincoln did not live to see it implemented and eventually abandoned. But in the last two years of the war he came to recognize that if emancipation settled one question, the fate of slavery, it opened another: what was to be the role of emancipated slaves in postwar American life? The "new birth of freedom" ushered in by the war was one in which blacks for the first time would share. During Reconstruction this would entail a redefinition of American nationality--the rewriting of the laws and Constitution to embrace the abolitionist vision of a society that had advanced beyond the tyranny of race."
"Amidst this prospect of evil, I am glad to see one good effect. It has brought the necessity of some plan of general emancipation & deportation more home to the minds of our people than it has ever been before. Insomuch, that our Governor has ventured to propose one to the legislature. This will probably not be acted on at this time. Nor would it be effectual; for while it proposes to devote to that object one third of the revenue of the State, it would not reach one tenth of the annual increase. My proposition would be that the holders should give up all born after a certain day, past, present, or to come, that these should be placed under the guardianship of the State, and sent at a proper age to S. Domingo. There they are willing to recieve them, & the shortness of the passage brings the deportation within the possible means of taxation aided by charitable contributions. In this I think Europe, which has forced this evil on us, and the Eastern states who have been it's chief instruments of importation, would be bound to give largely. But the proceeds of the land office, if appropriated, would be quite sufficient." -- Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, December 26, 1820
Everything I’ve read either says that he abandoned the concept of voluntary emigration when it failed to gain traction or said nothing specific at all (like your reference).
Please show me a copy of plans that were on his desk at the time of his assassination and I am open to changing my opinion.
Exactly. I don't know what they think they have discovered, but Lincoln's support for colonization for freed slaves is very well documented. Here's a very good review of his feeling and actions throughout his career regarding colonization and his belief that blacks and whites would find it difficult to live together as equals in this country.
150 years have passed, and we're still struggling with those questions.
As a practical matter, I would have to agree. However, this was well within memory of the living at the time, and the war-time expediencies of Lincoln were an apt model for Progressive co-optation of Federalist theory.
as for After the war, with the exception of Reconstruction, the relationship between the states and the federal government returned to pretty much where it had been before. ...IMHO, that is one massive exception that may well have set many patterns for rule from Washington.
TR didn't dream up abusive Federalism and its uses of power all by himself. Yes, a bit of post hoc propter hoc, sed hoc est punctum quod inter gentes ferro et ignis dividitur.
As I recall reading, the biggest issue was the money; who would pay to send the slaves back?
Thanks for the quote.
It was a thorny subject and I don’t mention Jefferson in order to vilify him for his attitude or attempt. An entire nation struggled with the dilemma (some more forthrightly than others).
If you look at the issue dispassionately, given the horrendous racism that blacks faced in the country, both north and south, then where is the sugggestion that they might be better off building a life for themselves free from that hatred all that evil? Jefferson no doubt knew that Southern society would not accept a large population of freed slaves in its midst. Lincoln knew that U.S. society was not willing to do the same. Both no doubt believed that they were helping blacks to a better life. Yet those who hate both men will no doubt use it against them.
No it wasn't. It was founded by the American Colonization Society in 1822.
Most of the black loyalists after the Revolution were taken to Nova Scotia and a few years later, about half of them went to Sierra Leone, a British colony.
I just went back and looked at my reply.......I know you aint gonna believe this but I meant to say “before Lincoln’s time”. I don’t know why I typed the word “after”.
Consider please, I was born only 80 years after Lincoln’s death.
Sorry.
Just another history buff pouncing on a factiod.
Very few 150 year old individual ideas are a big deal.
But there's a difference between voluntary resettlement and forcible deportation, and there's no evidence that I've ever seen that Lincoln favored forcibly deporting millions of blacks.
I had made several replies and didn't notice until people started flooding me with responses about me making comments concerning "my wife". I had some tall 'splainin' to do.
ping
|
|
|
| Secession Timeline various sources |
|
|
|
|
| [Although very late in the war Lee wanted freedom offered to any of the slaves who would agree to fight for the Confederacy, practically no one was stupid enough to fall for that. In any case, Lee was definitely not fighting to end slavery, instead writing that black folks are better off in bondage than they were free in Africa, and regardless, slavery will be around until Providence decides, and who are we to second guess that? And the only reason the masters beat their slaves is because of the abolitionists.] Robert E. Lee letter -- "...There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy. This influence, though slow, is sure. The doctrines and miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small portion of the human race, and even among Christian nations what gross errors still exist! While we see the course of the final abolition of human slavery is still onward, and give it the aid of our prayers, let us leave the progress as well as the results in the hands of Him who, chooses to work by slow influences, and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day. Although the abolitionist must know this, must know that he has neither the right not the power of operating, except by moral means; that to benefit the slave he must not excite angry feelings in the master..." |
December 27, 1856 |
|
|
|
| Platform of the Alabama Democracy -- the first Dixiecrats wanted to be able to expand slavery into the territories. It was precisely the issue of slavery that drove secession -- and talk about "sovereignty" pertained to restrictions on slavery's expansion into the territories. | January 1860 |
|
|
|
| Abraham Lincoln nominated by Republican Party | May 18, 1860 |
|
|
|
| Abraham Lincoln elected | November 6, 1860 |
|
|
|
| Robert Toombs, Speech to the Georgia Legislature -- "...In 1790 we had less than eight hundred thousand slaves. Under our mild and humane administration of the system they have increased above four millions. The country has expanded to meet this growing want, and Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, have received this increasing tide of African labor; before the end of this century, at precisely the same rate of increase, the Africans among us in a subordinate condition will amount to eleven millions of persons. What shall be done with them? We must expand or perish. We are constrained by an inexorable necessity to accept expansion or extermination. Those who tell you that the territorial question is an abstraction, that you can never colonize another territory without the African slavetrade, are both deaf and blind to the history of the last sixty years. All just reasoning, all past history, condemn the fallacy. The North understand it better - they have told us for twenty years that their object was to pen up slavery within its present limits - surround it with a border of free States, and like the scorpion surrounded with fire, they will make it sting itself to death." | November 13, 1860 |
|
|
|
| Alexander H. Stephens -- "...The first question that presents itself is, shall the people of Georgia secede from the Union in consequence of the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States? My countrymen, I tell you frankly, candidly, and earnestly, that I do not think that they ought. In my judgment, the election of no man, constitutionally chosen to that high office, is sufficient cause to justify any State to separate from the Union. It ought to stand by and aid still in maintaining the Constitution of the country. To make a point of resistance to the Government, to withdraw from it because any man has been elected, would put us in the wrong. We are pledged to maintain the Constitution." | November 14, 1860 |
|
|
|
| South Carolina | December 20, 1860 |
|
|
|
| Mississippi | January 9, 1861 |
|
|
|
| Florida | January 10, 1861 |
|
|
|
| Alabama | January 11, 1861 |
|
|
|
| Georgia | January 19, 1861 |
|
|
|
| Louisiana | January 26, 1861 |
|
|
|
| Texas | February 23, 1861 |
|
|
|
| Abraham Lincoln sworn in as President of the United States |
March 4, 1861 |
|
|
|
| Arizona territory | March 16, 1861 |
|
|
|
| CSA Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, Cornerstone speech -- "...last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution -- African slavery as it exists amongst us -- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the 'rock upon which the old Union would split.' He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact." | March 21, 1861 |
|
|
|
| Virginia | adopted April 17,1861 ratified by voters May 23, 1861 |
|
|
|
| Arkansas | May 6, 1861 |
|
|
|
| North Carolina | May 20, 1861 |
|
|
|
| Tennessee | adopted May 6, 1861 ratified June 8, 1861 |
|
|
|
| West Virginia declares for the Union | June 19, 1861 |
|
|
|
| Missouri | October 31, 1861 |
|
|
|
| "Convention of the People of Kentucky" | November 20, 1861 |
|
|
|
02/27/2011 4:41:41 PM PST · 86 of 101
K-Stater to mojitojoe
...you would have to stay off the CW threads...
You mean Civil War threads like this one?
______________________
Like this one right here non-squirter.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.