[Drennan Whyte]

However, there are several hits on Bennet's recent "Forced Into Glory"

OK, so now we're supposed to take Lerone Bennett's word for it? Lerone Bennett believes that the white population of this country owes blacks trillions of dollars in reparations for slavery. You'll forgive me if I don't sign on to that scheme with you.

[Iris7]

Don't believe whatever you please. From all accounts Bennett's piece is seriously intended. The book I can't find is a collection of Lincoln's speeches and writings, which bears out Bennett's thesis.

My recollection is that Lincoln figured the Blacks to be eager to leave the USA. How much he would have embraced Bennett's "deportation" so obviously needed to move all Blacks out of the USA is open to question. Probably Lincoln saw this as a carrot and stick situation, and Bennett sees it as more a pure stick operation.

You asked me to provide some evidence for my statement, and I have. That you care to reject it out of hand is no concern of mine.

[Iris7]

Such bellicosity is unbecoming. If you had cared to read beyond the first two lines you would have noticed that the two review excerpts I quoted are critical of Bennett. What is being discussed are Bennett's claims, and discussed unsympathetically.

Reading Lincoln's materials, it is obvious that Lincoln hoped that the blacks would all want to leave the United States, in order that they could "live with their own kind." To what extent he would have been willing to encourage such leaving, by carrot and/or stick, is unknowable.