Author Phillip W. Magness has long harbored the view that Lincoln biographers had sanitized the history of “The Great Emancipator” to fit his modern popular image. Certainly, civil libertarians have long questioned Lincoln preeminence as a voice of freedom given his denial of habeas corpus and violations of constitutional rights and powers. Now, Magness is about to publish a book entitled “Colonization After Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement,” revealing research showing that Lincoln actively explored and planned for the relocation of freed slaves to British colonies.
The book details how, soon after issuing the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Lincoln authorized plans to pursue a freedmen’s settlement in present-day Belize and another in Guyana. Magness and his co-author, Sebastian N. Page, found the documents in British archives, including an order authorizing a British colonial agent to begin recruiting freed slaves to be sent to the Caribbean in June 1863.
Lincoln died a year later.
Other historians have questioned these conclusions and noted that Lincoln was against any compulsory deportation.
Source: Washington Times
Jonathan Turley
.
Vince your incoherent defence of lincoln is truly saddening.
“he freed the slaves”
Even though the emancipation proclamation only liberated slaves in confederate states and then only if they did not rejoin the union.
“He suspended habeus corpus… but thats ok because… rebellion?”
So its ok to violate some people’s rights because these other people were violating these other people’s rights? Not to mention detaining journalists for simply speaking out against his policies, enacting a draft, and the first income tax in american history.
Also if you do your history homework, youd know that america wasnt the only country with the institution of slavery, yet somehow every other country in history found a way to end that practice peacefully and without slaughtering over half a million people.
Also lyndon johnson may have signed those pieces of legislation designed to alleviate the suffering of segregation and jim crow laws, only to turn around and draft that generation of young black men most likely to enjoy its benefits into military service against their will and send them into the human meat grinder of the vietnam war. So no i dont see eliminating jim crow laws and then subjecting them to de facto military slavery as making life better for them.
Someone sure needs to take blinders off. Voice of freedom? Im sorry I couldnt hear it over the deafening hypocrisy
“Click the link for more information. and the deportation of all Blacks in a draft of a Constitutional Amendment.”
There is nothing at the link about deportation in any draft amendment.
Lincoln gave his public support to the proposed 13th Amendment during the 1864 Republican Convention. He campaigned for reelection supporting it. He pushed for its adoption by Congress in early 1865, and lived to see his own State of Illinois become the first state to ratify it. It was ratified after his death.
It never said anything about deportation.
Lincoln never supported deportation.
An awful lot of this anti-Lincoln mythology is being revive at the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.
As they say, myths die hard.
Vince,
Some folks still believe in the miracle of the trickle down theory and some still subscribe to Keynesian Economic….personally I think both are bunk… as well as a lot of other folks….
Just because you subscribe to a certain nomenclature does not necessarily mean yours is correct…..or mine….they are just opinions….
Suffice it to say not all of the assholes live in Texas….
Woosty, I am assuming you are suggesting Byrd as an example of growth.
According to wiki, he “filibustered against the 1964 Civil Rights Act and supported the Vietnam War, but later backed civil rights measures and criticized the Iraq War. He was briefly a member of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s, but later left the group and denounced racial intolerance.”
Vince,
What is written about LBJ and what he did for political expediency are most certainly separate acts pertaining to the same person. LBJ was a thief, a drunk, a womanizer that married well…..Maybe I should have just said politician…..
If you had any clue of any of the inside information from a former TDEC you’d just be amazed at how he stayed out of Prison….LBJ that is….
Lerone Bennett is not a serious historian, and his views have been refuted. His view of the Emancipation Proclamation is preposterous. It led to the enlistment of 180,000 freed slaves in the Union Army. His attacks on Lincoln actually mirror the attacks made for 150 years by southern white apologists for the rebels.
“Click the link for more information. and the deportation of all Blacks in a draft of a Constitutional Amendment.”
There is no information on forcible deportation of blacks in the draft of any amendment at the link. That is just misinformation. Maybe there is confusion with compensated emancipation or voluntary emigration and colonization.
Everybody, I have already quoted Burlingame in support of the fact that Lincoln never supported anything but voluntary emigration. The inflammatory use of “deportation,” which can only apply to mandatory expulsion, is just false.
Those are the facts.
Read my post about growth.
Some grow, others just change. We have all lived through similar changes in our own lifetimes, so we should have some perspective.
Lyndon Johnson grew up in a racist society and obstructed civil rights through most of his career. But he grew in his Presidency, and wound up signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Leaving other aspects of his career aside, when it comes to civil rights he is correctly judged on his actions in signing the two most important pieces of civil rights legislation in our times.
So, too, with Lincoln.
Supposedly, “civil libertarians have long questioned Lincoln preeminence as a voice of freedom….”
Well, maybe those civil libertarians should drop the blinkers and view Lincoln in perspective.
He freed the slaves. With law, proclamation, and constitutional amendment, he freed every single one of them. That is an achievement unparalleled in American history.
The “civil libertarians” complain of suspension of habeas corpus. Well, the Constitution does NOT prohibit suspension. Suspension is expressly authorized in cases of rebellion or invasion.
There was a rebellion.
So suspension of habeas corpus was not a violation of the Constitution.
They claim that only Congress can suspend it.
Well, again, the Constitution does not say that. The Supreme Court has never ruled that it says that. It is only their interpretation. They ignore the fact that Congress promptly ratified all of Lincoln’s actions, and that he acted legally under the militia acts.
There was a war on. The opposition was trying to destroy the United States. Lincoln was sworn to defend the Constitution, and he did so.
So Lincoln was truly a voice for freedom.
Senator Byrd comes to mind…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84VJvWjINr4&w=480&h=390]
Was Lincoln a Racist?
Silly me. I had naively assumed that when a writer as well known and respected as Lerone Bennett Jr. came out with a provocative book arguing that Abraham Lincoln was a racist who kept more blacks in bondage than he ever emancipated, it would kick up a stir. After all, Bennett, the executive editor of Ebony and the author of such works of black history as Before the Mayflower (1962), has long been one of America’s most eloquent voices on racial issues. And the target of his furious screed is perhaps the most revered figure in American history. Putting the two together seemed like a surefire recipe for controversy.
True to its billing, there is hardly a page in Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream (Johnson Publishing Co.; 652 pages; $35) that won’t rile Lincoln’s defenders. To start with, says Bennett, Lincoln was a crude bigot who habitually used the N word and had an unquenchable thirst for blackface-minstrel shows and demeaning “darky” jokes. He supported the noxious pre-Civil War “Black Laws,” which stripped African Americans of their basic rights in his native Illinois, as well as the Fugitive Slave Act, which compelled the return to their masters of those who had escaped to free soil in the North. But Bennett’s main theme is that Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was only “a ploy” designed to keep as many slaves in bondage as possible until Lincoln could build support for his plan for ending slavery: “colonization,” a preposterous scheme to ship the black population either to Africa or South America. His fondest dream, Bennett writes, was of a “lily-white America without Native Americans, African Americans and Martin Luther Kings.”
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,996904,00.html#ixzz1DfX1FWSP
Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream
Lerone Bennett, Jr., Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream. Chicago: Johnson Publishing The Johnson Publishing Company is an American publishing company owned and managed by the family of John H. Johnson. It is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Snubbed by advertisers when he founded his company in November 1942, John H.
….. Click the link for more information. Company, 2000. 652 pages, $35.00
I would urge all who have enjoyed Lerone Bennett’s masterful text, Before the Mayflower Mayflower, ship
Mayflower, ship that in 1620 brought the Pilgrims from England to New England. She set out from Southampton in company with the Speedwell, , to read his new book, Forced Into Glory, which deals with the presidency and life of the “Great Emancipator”, Abraham Lincoln. Forced Into Glory is a work of true scholarship which exposes a myth which has been cleverly concealed by well-meaning white scholars over the past century. Bennett reveals another side of one of America’s most revered Presidents. He describes Lincoln’s continuing support of “Black Codes” during Lincoln’s legislative career in Illinois and the path he took, beginning in 1836, when he gave his support to the taxation of Blacks to pay for White schools, until 1855 when he led a movement to start a Black separate school in Springfield. Bennett points out that in 1849 Lincoln voted against an anti-slave trade resolution in the Congress and notes Lincoln’s active support of the oppressive 1850 Fugitive Slave In the history of slavery in the United States, a fugitive slave was a slave who had escaped his or her enslaver often with the intention of traveling to a place where the state of his or her enslavement was either illegal or not enforced. Law. Bennett also tells of Lincoln’s call, in 1852, for compensated emancipation Compensated emancipation was a method of ending slavery in countries where slavery was legal. This involved the person who was recognized as the owner of a slave being paid for releasing the slave.
….. Click the link for more information. and the deportation of all Blacks in a draft of a Constitutional Amendment.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Forced+Into+Glory%3A+Abraham+Lincoln%27s+White+Dream.-a0128705074
I suppose taking the works of an educated blackman with a grudge to grind is too much discussion for some folks….Both black and white…..
But then again, you get more insight from a Jewish person who had family die in Germany during WWI, than from a guard at one of the concentrations camps……
The book is available on line free and at amazon for about 26 dollars…
Thanks again, Vince.
Mike, Thanks for your views. Lincoln grew in office.
In his very last speech in April 1865, at the White House, he gave initial support to black suffrage, suggesting that some African American veterans might vote.
It cost him his life.
One of the listeners swore that Lincoln intended Negro citizenship.
He swore to kill Lincoln.
His name was John Wilkes Booth.
Evolution does not happen without change, Mike S.
The trick is to make sure the change is beneficial as Lincoln and Twain did.
Vince,
Thank you once again for bringing reason and facts to the discussion. How come I was taught this about Lincoln in high school and today almost 50 years later i’m hearing it brought up as if this was a new insight? Lincoln was indeed one of our greatest (if not the greatest)Presidents, but he was a man of his time. Just like Mark Twain, who originally joined a Rebel regiment only to quickly get out and later to become one of the most significant anti-racists of his time. Lincoln’s racial views evolved and if he was not cut down, would probably have evolved further. That is the true sign of an intelligent human being.
The post repeats the canard that “civil libertarians have long questioned Lincoln preeminence as a voice of freedom given his denial of habeas corpus….”
On this point, I will repost my comments and link from Sept. 24, 2010:
JT: “Lincoln showed his gift as a litigator in the July 4th address, though it should be noted that his scruples did not stop him from clearly violating the Constitution when he suspended habeas corpus in 1861 and 1862.”
Lincoln did not “clearly” violate anything in the Constitution when he suspended habeas corpus.
I do not think he violated the Constitution at all.
As he said at the time, the Constitution is silent on whether the President or the Congress may suspend the writ.
Although the limitation on suspension appears in Article I of the Constitution relating to Congress, the inference that this limits the suspension power to Congress is very weak.
Section 9, which sets forth the limitation, also provides that no money may be drawn from the Treasury except by appropriation made by law. That limitation applies only to the Executive, although it is set out in Article I. The draft of the clause at one point provided expressly that the legislature could not suspend the writ, but the legislature was dropped from the final version.
The question has never been resolved by the Supreme Court. Taney’s opinion in Merryman was one-sided and tendentious, and was only the view of one Justice.
It is open question of constitutional law. Scholarly opinion has been divided down through the years. See “The Field Theory: Martial Law, the Suspension Power, and the Insurrection Act,” by Stephen I. Vladeck, American University, Washington College of Law, [80 Temp. L. Rev. 391 (2007)]. The footnotes give citations to numerous articles on both sides of the issue.
So there is no justification in saying that Lincoln, who swore to uphold the Constitution, had in any way “clearly” violated the Constitution. It may be “arguable,” but it is not clear.
I think that Lincoln was justified under the Constitution in suspending the writ at a time when organized mobs sought to prevent Congress itself from meeting in order to consider a suspension of the writ.
All of Lincoln’s actions in suspending the writ were ratified by Congress.
As said many years later, the Constitution is not a suicide pact.
http://jonathanturley.org/2010/09/24/uncivil-action-was-lincoln-wrong-on-secession/#comment-161384
This is an inflammatory posting about Lincoln that gives a false and incomplete impression of his record on slavery.
Lincoln did in fact favor a program of colonization, and his has in fact been documented by historians, but it was a policy of voluntary emigration, not forced deportation. He was moved in part by the vicious and deadly racism that was rampant in society at the time, and feared that white racists would never tolerate free black citizens. The history of Jim Crow for over 100 years shows how right he was.
The post ignores the historical fact that Lincoln favored only VOLUNTARY colonization. He did NOT favor compulsory deportation and colonization.
As a matter of fact, Jefferson did favor compulsory deportation. Lincoln described Jefferson’s position at Cooper Union: “In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, ‘It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation, and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly; and their places be, pari passu, filled up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up.'”
Some incompetent anti-Lincoln historians, like DiLorenzo, have confused this statement and have attributed Jefferson’s views to Lincoln, but that is untrue. Jefferson was the true supporter of compulsory deportation. Lincoln did meet with black leaders and asked them to consider emigration. They declined.
The proposal for voluntary emigration and colonization was overtaken by events — and history. After the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln dropped it and in 1864 urged adoption and ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.
I am really sad to see this creeping revisionism popping up here. Lincoln was no saint, but he did grow in office. He drafted an emancipation bill for the District of Columbia as a Congressman. He ALWAYS opposed expansion of slavery into the territories. He signed EVERY anti-slavery measure in his time in office, including (1) a law freeing slaves in D.C., (2) a law eliminating slavery in the territories, and (3) the first and second confiscation acts. He signed the Emancipation Proclamation. He signed ceremonial copies of the Thirteenth Amendment that were sent to the States for ratification (even though a President’s signature is not needed on a proposed amendment; copies are online at the Library of Congress site). The historical fact is that every measure that abolished slavery in American history bears Lincoln’s signature.
Let’s repeat. Every proclamation, law, and proposed amendment dealing with the abolition of slave has Lincoln’s signature on it. How about mentioning that fact for “balance.”
The voluntary colonization proposal was one of the moderate measures that Lincoln used to try for a peaceful resolution of the slavery issue. I have seen other posts at this site that described his offers of compensated gradual emancipation to slaveowners. The pro-slaveowner posters refused ever to even acknowledge that the offers had been made.
So the title “the great colonizer” is false and pejorative. Lincoln offered voluntary emigration, repeat voluntary, to African-Americans. When they politely declined, he dropped the plan.
The distinguished biographer of Lincoln, Michael Burlingame, is quoted in the Washington Times article, but not in this posting; here it is for all readers: “’So many people in the North said we will not accept emancipation unless it is accompanied by colonization,’ said Mr. Burlingame, adding that Lincoln himself had always made clear colonization would be voluntary and nobody would be forced out of the United States.”
So there is support from a nationally recognized scholar. The program, which never went into effect was voluntary.
We can all be proud of Lincoln as President: he saved the Union and freed the slaves.
The post describes “an order authorizing a British colonial agent to begin recruiting freed slaves to be sent to the Caribbean in June 1863.
“Lincoln died a year later.”
Lincoln did not die a year after June 1863. It is well know that he died on Good Friday, April 14,1864.
Now, now Blouise….
Good Morning…..there are still some that will defend Lincoln as the great freedom maker….somehow or another history tends to rewrite itself… I am not saying that this story is credible but there are a number of sources that actually claim that this president was a racist and spiritualist….ie….he consulted a mystic at the behest of Mary Todd….Not that I know anything….it is based upon reading….not a spiritual experience…
Bush … Obama … take heed … eventually your legacy reaches out and grabs ya’
Can we infer from this that maybe he was a racist? Maybe some history mighta been rewritten to fit the times…..who knows….