Perhaps no one has described it better than black author Lenore Bennett, Jr. No conservative nor friend of the Confederacy, Bennett wrote in his massive chronicle Forced Into Glory, Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream:
What Lincoln proposed officially and publicly was that the United States government buy the slaves and deport them to Africa or South America. This was not a passing whim. In five major policy declarations, including two State of the Union addresses and the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, the sixteenth president of the United States publicly and officially called for the deportation of blacks. On countless other occasions, in conferences with cronies, Democratic and Republican leaders, and high government officials, he called for colonization of blacks or aggressively promoted colonization by private and official acts.
Lincoln’s own words, and those of his colleagues, left abundant evidence of his views. Following are a few of the many examples.
"Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and, at the same time, favorable to, or, at least, not against, our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be. The children of Israel, to such numbers as to include four hundred thousand fighting men, went out of Egyptian bondage in a body."
~ Lincoln, 1857
"It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation, and deportation, peaceably, and in such degrees, as the evil will wear off insensibly; and their places be . . . filled up by free white laborers."
~ Lincoln, February 27, 1860, New York City
"But if gradual emancipation and deportation be adopted, they will have neither to flee from . . . till new homes can be found for them, in congenial climes, and with people of their own blood and race."
~ Lincoln’s 1862 State of the Union Address
"(It) might well be well to consider, too, whether the free colored people already in the United States could not, so far as individuals may desire, be included in such colonization."
~ Lincoln’s 1862 State of the Union Address,
regarding already-free blacks and the American Colonization Society
He asked Congress to pass a constitutional amendment:
"colonizing free colored persons, with their own consent, at any place or places without the United States."
What if Congress refused to grant Lincoln’s desire for this sprawling, whites-only enclave, which included states and western territories alike?
"We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth."
"Almost from the commencement of this administration, the subject of deporting the colored race has been discussed . . . As early as May 1861, a great pressure was made upon me to enter into a coal contract with (a) company. The President was in earnest in the matter, wished to send the Negroes out of the country."
~ Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles
"(President Lincoln) zealously and persistently devised schemes for the deportation of the Negroes, which the latter deemed cruel and atrocious in the extreme . . . "
~ Close friend and Federal Marshal Ward Hill Lamon
Until Americans – especially conservatives and Christians – begin to appreciate how misguided was Lincoln in so many ways, how many lives his actions destroyed or ruined, and how unlike conservative and Christian principles were those actions, we will be frustrated in our efforts to elect wise statesmen to lead us, and to support and require statesmanlike conduct from them.
Misconceptions About Lincoln by John J. Dwyer
