Ol Abe was among those in a movement for colonization in part on the belief that the blacks would not assimilate into the society.
These are not my words, they are that of those who lived it before, during and after the Civil War.
My GG Grandparents on two sides of the family owned plantations. One in Elora TN, the other in LA.
Stories I heard as a child were of mammys takin care of the children. They'd sing to them before bedtime...they were a part of the family. When the war of Northern aggression ended, the black folk did not want to leave their home, which happened to be the plantation.
This is where they lived, worked, raised their children. Slavery was a black eye on this nation, wrong to the core. I must say, I never ever heard of any stories of blacks being abused on these family plantations. Not one.
We must look at all the facts, not just the facts that give us warm fuzzies about how the North went to war to free the slave from the evil Southern plantation owners.
African natives were initially sold into slavery by....oh my gosh, African natives. One tribe or another would concur in battle, they'd put into slavery those men from the other tribe that were useful to their purposes. The rest, they sold into slavery to the white man. These ARE the facts.
Black men were just as guilty of slavery as the white man, only on a different continent. Black Africans were the original owner/sellers of Black Africans. At that point, in an odd way, the slaves were very lucky to still be alive and walking. Often times when one tribe defeated another, the losing side would be decimated.
This doesn't excuse slavery in America by no means, but what it does is lay out the truth. It is time to end this attack on Southern pride, Southern way of life and Southern history.
The race baiters have gone too far. By in large, the black communities problems are caused primarily by the black community. It is time for blacks to stand up and take responsibility and stop blaming everyone else for their failures.
It's always easier to blame someone else that to pull up your boot straps and get on about the job of fixin the issues.
Damn spell check....lol
Couple minor points:
Lincoln served one term in the House during the Mexican War. He was never in the Senate.
AFAIK, Lincoln while in the House did not submit any bill regarding colonization. If you have evidence to the contrary, I'd be interested in seeing it.
It would not be surprising if you had never heard stories of blacks abused on your family's plantations. Even before the war, such abuse was not widely publicized, if only because slaveowners knew it would be used to attack the institution.
After the war, former slaveowners had every reason in the world to minimize the brutality of slavery and its importance to the Lost Cause. They even developed the theory that secession and the War hadn't been about slavery at all, the exact opposite of what the same people said before and during the war.
Colonization was widely popular, including in the Upper South in early 1800s, among people who considered slavery an evil but didn't know how to safely get rid of it.
It was essentially a way for people who wanted to get rid of slavery to avoid the issue of how black and white people could live together in peace and equality after emancipation. Give the problems we're still having 150 years later, they appear to have had a point.
I think it is also relevant to point out that Lincoln, when discussing colonization, always made it clear he was talking about voluntary emigration, possibly with financial incentives.
Not all colonization proponents were so inhibited, some proposed deportation. Or, as we call it today, ethnic cleansing.