Other scholars, such as Harvard expert Henry Louis Gates, Jr., have explored the complexities of Abraham Lincoln's views on race, raising awareness regarding the fallacy of those who view Lincoln as a great anti-racist.
Lincolns views on race and the equality of African Americans are the focus of a recent book on the subject, Colonization After Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement. Authored by George Mason University researchers Phillip W. Magness and Sebastian N. Page, the book examines numerous historical documents from the Library of Congress and British National Archives, and demonstrates that Lincoln possessed a strong commitment to the resettlement of African Americans on the African continent. Lincolns racial legacy is controversial, notes Magness, because of its complexity, a historical truth that forces the historical establishment and the American education system to reevaluate its presentation of Lincoln, who may not be the great anti-racist egalitarian historians previously made him out to be.
As reported by The Blaze, Lincolns views about colonization are well known among historians, even if they dont make it into most schoolbooks. Lincoln even referred to colonization in the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, his September 1862 warning to the South that he would free all slaves in Southern territory if the rebellion continued. Unlike some others, Lincoln always promoted a voluntary colonization, rather than forcing blacks to leave. But historians differ on whether Lincoln moved away from colonization after he issued the official Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, or whether he continued to support it.
Magness and Pages book offers evidence that Lincoln continued to support colonization, engaging in secret diplomacy with the British to establish a colony in British Honduras, now Belize. Among the records found at the British archives is an 1863 order from Lincoln granting a British agent permission to recruit volunteers for a Belize colony.
He didnt let colonization die off. He became very active in promoting it in the private sphere, through diplomatic channels, Magness said. He surmises that Lincoln grew weary of the controversy that surrounded colonization efforts, which had become enmeshed in scandal and were criticized by many abolitionists.
As late as 1864, Magness found a notation that Lincoln asked the attorney general whether he could continue to receive counsel from James Mitchell, his colonization commissioner, even after Congress had eliminated funding for Mitchells office.
While Magness and Pages book offers a unique insight into previously unknown and unreported historical documents adding to our understanding of Lincoln and his views on race, an entire
corpus of literature already exists which demonstrates that Lincolns considerations in fighting the Civil War were not motivated by a deep humanitarian sense of liberating African Americans from the cruel and bitter scourge of slavery, but instead by his desire to see the integrity of the Union preserved, as he opposed Southern secession, but nonetheless, did not share any profound commitment to abolitionism or to the equality and full inclusion and integration of blacks into American society.
Lincolns commitment to the resettlement of African Americans is particularly revealing because it demonstrates his belief that African Americans were incapable of being assimilated into white society, and that they were socially unequal to whites, thus requiring their forced resettlement to Africa or even Central America, in his view.
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It therefore comes as no surprise that Lincoln was a vociferous defender of racial segregation throughout his career he simply believed that racial integration was impossible, as evident in his comments at the first of the famous Lincoln-Douglas Debates, in August 1858:
I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position.
I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; 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.
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 inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
The phenomenon of Americans ignoring Lincolns segregationist views is best described by the late columnist Joseph Sobran, who bifurcates the fantasy Lincoln and the true, racist Lincoln:
When Lincoln finally did grab the slavery issue in 1854, he again followed (Henry) Clay in advocating gradual emancipation, combined with a program of colonization resettling former slaves outside of the United States. He expressly opposed political and social equality for Negroes in this country. They should be equal all right, but not here.... Lincoln's segregationist views are soft-peddled, shrugged off, explained away, or simply ignored ... the Fantasy Lincoln must be maintained at all costs." And this is exactly what many establishment scholars today do. They maintain the cottage industry that promotes the "Fantasy Lincoln" while conveniently ignoring his racist views views they seem to find abhorrent in anyone else yet perfectly alright in Mr. Lincoln.
