Chapter One Hundred and Forty Five
Guess Who’s Coming to Congress
Guess Who’s Coming to Congress
From “Emancipation” Paul Robeson White
Radical Press 1970
“William Lloyd Garrison, indefatigable enemy of slavery and advocate for racial equality in America, was not an early booster of Abraham Lincoln. When Lincoln ran for president, Garrison saw him, at best, as a politician with compromised antislavery credentials and, at worst, a common bigot full of "white-man-isms" in his speeches. After emancipation however Garrison's opinion of Lincoln improved significantly. He met with Lincoln early in 1864 and said afterwards he believed Lincoln would work to "uproot slavery, and give fair-play to the emancipated." Within a year Lincoln’s name would once again be mud with Garrison and all over one issue – colonization…”
William Lloyd Garrison
From "Lincoln - A Reassessment" by Dr. Lee M. King
Carlotta 1959
"Nearly all of Lincoln's early biographers saw in him an untainted goodwill towards the negro, and assumed that Lincoln's emancipation policies were indistinguishable from his overall sympathy for their plight and his foresight concerning race relations in the United States. They ignored or were ignorant of his comments about the negro race in general and their assessment cannot be reconciled with his views on colonization…
Lincoln’s views on the negro race were apparent for any who wished to look. If one takes those defining debates between Douglas and Lincoln in 1858 we can hear Lincoln in his own words set out his position on race...
"I am not, nor have I ever been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races";
“There is a physical difference [between blacks and whites] that will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality”;
"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.”
His views were not lost on his contemporaries. Indeed those abolitionists who knew him were not afraid to express their opinion "If there was any shadow of a hope that a man of a more decidedly anti-slavery conviction and policy could be elected, I was not for Mr. Lincoln" (Frederick Douglass)…
We should not forget that Lincoln's political hero was Henry Clay, the eminent American statesman. A slave owner himself, Clay was prominent in the campaign to resettle free blacks outside of the United States, and served as president of the American Colonization Society. In a speech given by Lincoln in 1858 he voiced his uncritical admiration for Clay. Lincoln described Clay as "my beau ideal of a statesman, the man for whom I fought all of my humble life." Indeed Lincoln's comments on Clay are very instructive. If we go back further to the eulogy for Clay that Lincoln delivered in 1852 in Springfield we hear Lincoln’s approval of the concept of colonization for, after praising Clay's lifelong devotion to the cause of black resettlement, Lincoln went on to say "There is a moral fitness in the idea of returning to Africa her children...If as the friends of colonization hope, the present and coming generations of our countrymen shall by any means succeed in freeing our land from the dangerous presence of slavery, and, at the same time, in restoring a captive people to their long-lost fatherland, with bright prospects for the future, and this too, so gradually, that neither races nor individuals shall have suffered by the change, it will indeed be a glorious consummation.”…
From “Lincoln’s Journey – The Evolution of a President’s Thinking on Race” from an article by Dr Murray Helm
North & South Magazine 2009
“Other historians outside the United States have taken a much harder line on Lincoln since the mid-1900s. They point out his life long opposition to inter-racial marriage and even to initial opposition to blacks serving as jurors. Historian Fernando McKendry of Carlotta University has called him a ‘recovering racist’…
There can be no denying Lincoln told racist jokes; he enjoyed black minstrel shows; and he had little time for the hardened abolitionists and their almost religious conviction that the races were equal under God. However the criticism that has most often been deployed to damn Lincoln is his support for ‘black colonization’. There is no question that Lincoln backed unsuccessful schemes to send willing freed slaves to new lives in countries such as Haiti, Panama, British Honduras and finally and most significantly in Africa…
These schemes primarily arose during two pivotal periods for race relations: the Emancipation Proclamation during his first term and at the time of the mid-term elections during his second term which returned the first African-Americans in large numbers to Congress...
In these arguments it is always a question of Lincoln, the saint, or Lincoln ,the sinner. What is not often considered is Lincoln the politician…"
South Carolina in 1866 elected the first Congressional Delegation to have a Black majority
From “The Rivals – Lincoln and his Cabinet” by Amelia Doggett
Grosvenor 2008
"At the time of the Emancipation Proclamation the question was often asked of Lincoln, what would become of the negro in a post-slavery United States. One of the solutions offered at this time by Lincoln was the old idea of colonization, a plan in which blacks would be asked to leave the United States. Many abolitionists saw this as evidence of Lincoln's refusal to countenance full equality for blacks in the post-war settlement. That was certainly an accusation Salmon Chase made on several occasions when trying to garner support to replace Lincoln on the Republican ticket…
The issue arose a second time during 1865 when Lincoln held several meetings with leading African-Americans, abolitionists, and missionaries with the avowed intention of exploring the mass migration of freedmen and women to Africa. These soundings outraged men like Garrison and Douglass and dramatically set back Lincoln's reputation among radicals and abolitionists alike...
One explanation offered sees Lincoln for the masterful politician he was. In an 1865 letter to Isaac Stevens, John J. Peck, then head of the Freedmen’s Bureau, suggests Lincoln’s support of colonization was, in large part, pure political strategy. Just as Lincoln’s suggestion of colonization in 1862/63 had sought to ease conservative Northern fears of the consequences of emancipation, so the colonization discussions in 1865 were designed to alleviate conservative Republican and War Democrat concerns about the imminent elections in the southern states. Proscription had left several of these states with a black majority and voluntary immigration amongst unreconciled white southerners (both internally between states and externally to Mexico, Brazil etc) was further enhancing the imbalance. It was clear to even the most ill informed observer that the 1866 midterm elections, which would see a full slate of representatives elected from each of the southern states, would return many black legislators to Congress. The very idea set most conservative Northerners on edge…
They were a large and significant portion of the Northern population, though they are often ignored because they were not as loud or colorful as the radicals (and indeed are ignored for being on the ‘wrong side of history’). Yet they were an important counterweight to the radicals in Congress and their support on several issues was vital to Lincoln’s ability to shape legislation. Lincoln’s ability to play conservative against radical was key to maintaining a degree of control over Reconstruction…
Presumably those who feared that the freed slaves would flock to the North were pacified by a proposal to resettle blacks elsewhere. It is no coincidence that both before issuing the Emancipation Proclamation and the 1866 midterms, Lincoln "made a great fuss about colonization—a ritual he must enact every time he contemplates some new move for the benefit of the negro."(Peck)
For Lincoln, the idea of colonization served a purpose; it helped to allay his own uncertainties, but more importantly the fears of a vast section of northern whites. After the 1866 midterms however, when it was clear that the blacks in Congress could and would make common cause with the conservatives just as often as they would with radicals, Lincoln could abandon the concept entirely...
Frederick Douglass acknowledged many years later that, while from the standpoint of the abolitionists “Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent” he was considerably ahead of the general northern populace on the slavery question. “Measure him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, [and Lincoln] was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.”. If Peck is right then Lincoln becomes a master of political misdirection; of appearing to appease conservatives while manipulating them toward acceptance of radical policies. Douglass and many other contemporaries failed to appreciate or even to understand Lincoln’s political legerdemain. Many revisionist historians of the 1940s,50s and 60s have similarly failed...”
Reverend Alexander Crummell
From “The King and his Heir – Lincoln and Kearny in the Civil War” by Robert Todd Lincoln II
Grafton Press 1939
"On May 18 the President, ignoring the majority opinion in the cabinet, invited a delegation of freedmen to the White House. There he urged them to consider emigration to Africa. Frederick Douglass was outraged by Lincoln’s proposal. He publicly rebuked the President for his “pride of race and blood, his contempt for Negroes and his canting hypocrisy”...
Taken aback by the opposition to African emigration Lincoln questioned the opposition. Oliver O. Howard responded that "the freedman knows as little of Africa as he does of Thucydides"...
Howard facilitated the introduction of Reverend Alexander Crummell to President Lincoln as an expert on Africa. Crummell was born free in New York. His grandfather however had been of the Temne people of Sierra Leone, borne into slavery at 13. Crummell was an ardent 'Pan-African' firmly believing that the emigration of American blacks to Africa would uplift both American and African alike. He had returned to America in 1865, from a religious mission in Liberia, to seek funds for further missions to Africa. He believed that only by educating America's freedmen about Africa could they be induced to move there...
The introduction to Lincoln opened doors for Crummell and with the support of Howard, and an inconsistent mix of conservative republicans and religious abolitionists, he founded the African-American Missionary Society. The AAMS would, by the end of the year, launch new missions to Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Liberia and most quixotically smaller missions to both East Africa (with a view to opposing Arab slavers there) and Abyssinia, after Liberia, the only independent Christian country in Africa..."
From “Lincoln’s Journey – The Evolution of a President’s Thinking on Race” from an article by Dr Murray Helm
North & South Magazine 2009
"As we continue to study Lincoln we continue to define ourselves. Most historians have discarded the myth of the saintly Great Emancipator, but they have also rejected the counter myth of Lincoln as a hopeless racist. Perhaps we should settle for Lincoln, the master political strategist?"
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