Actually, yes he did. Unless you are trying to parse the part about it being his idea. But deportation was something he was looking at.
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.
And of course there is this:
“My declarations upon this subject of negro slavery may be misrepresented, but can not be misunderstood. I have said that I do not understand the Declaration (of Independence) to mean that all men were created equal in all respects.” Debating with Sen. Stephen Douglas, Lincoln said, “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of … making voters or jurors of Negroes nor of qualifying them to hold office nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”
And just for the fun of it, from Front Page Magazine:
Lincoln did articulate a view of secession that would have been welcomed in 1776: “Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. … Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit.” But that was Lincoln’s 1848 speech in the U.S. House of Representatives regarding the war with Mexico and the secession of Texas.
Why didn’t Lincoln feel the same about Southern secession? Following the money might help with an answer. Throughout most of our history, the only sources of federal revenue were excise taxes and tariffs. During the 1850s, tariffs amounted to 90 percent of federal revenue. Southern ports paid 75 percent of tariffs in 1859. What “responsible” politician would let that much revenue go?
I know you were trying for a grand and glorious gotcha but you fell short (again).
Thanks for the link to that book. I’ll look for it when it comes out. But I doubt that it will show anything new. Lincoln’s views on blacks were mainstream American for his time. Most people regretted ever introducing them onto our continent and were uncomfortable having them around. And his views on slavery were mainstream-northern - he favored the elimination of slavery and for blacks to just go away. There’s nothing unusual in any of that. That was the general sense of the times.
Unless you were a southern slaver that is. In that case you had no use for the darkies as humans but they made great pack mules. You owed your prosperity to their exploitation and weren’t about to allow anyone to futz with your investment.
Yes, it is true that Lincoln contemplated what to do with blacks in the eventuality of the elimination of the Particular Institution, and he explored to possibility of voluntary emigration. And you’re right in that it wasn’t an original idea but rather one that he read contemplated by Thomas Jefferson - only in Jefferson’s case it DID involve (involuntary) deportation.
Also, I see more than a few Lost Cause Losers toss off Lincoln’s quote regarding the right to revolution and, sure enough, you fail to understand its import.
Lincoln believed in the God-gifted right of self-determination. He understood (infinitely better than you) the process of soap box, ballot box, and ammo box. He knew that there must be a reservation for the pursuit of revolution - that it had to be for a moral purpose and by moral men. The southron slavers fit none of that description. Their motives were unjust, unholy, and depraved. Their methods were similarly contemptible. They exercised their right of revolution for a lost cause and mewling about tariffs or mis-applied “states rights” will never change that.