Lincoln Wanted Blacks to Find Other Places to Live

choi

David Von Drehle, The Emancipation Proclamation and the 'Right to Rise;' Liberty of all kinds, Abraham Lincoln believed, began with economic freedom. Wall Street Journal, Dec 29, 2012 (opinon).
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 97613213918112.html

two consecutive paragraphs:

"Though his views on race were more humane and enlightened than those of most Americans in the mid-19th century, Lincoln harbored scant hope that whites and blacks could live happily in an integrated society.

"'You and we are different races,' he told a group of Washington's black leaders during a meeting on Aug. 14, 1862. This difference, he asserted, was the cause of the Civil War: 'But for your race among us, there could not be war.' With that introduction, he proposed that his guests lead a mass exodus of freed blacks to distant colonies, leaving America to the whites.

Note:
(a) Gettysburg college
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_College
(a private, four-year liberal arts college founded in 1832, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania)
(b) Mr Lincoln said, "But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he [a black] is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man."

leave (n): "permission to do something"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/leave
(c) George Fitzhugh
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Fitzhugh
(1806-1881; His first book, Sociology for the South (1854) was not as widely known as his second book, Cannibals All! (1857))

* "The name was formed by the addition of the Anglo-Norman French prefix fi(t)z ‘son of’ (Latin filius) to the personal name."
Dictionary of American Family Names, by Oxford University Press.

choi

Eric Foner, The Emancipation of Abe Lincoln; How the president decided to issue his famous proclamation. New York Times, Jan 1, 2012 (op-ed).
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/0 ... of-abe-lincoln.html

Quote:

"During the first two years of the Civil War, despite insisting that the conflict’s aim was preservation of the Union, he devoted considerable energy to a plan for ending slavery inherited from prewar years. Emancipation would be undertaken by state governments, with national financing. It would be gradual, owners would receive monetary compensation and emancipated slaves would be encouraged to find a homeland outside the United States — this last idea known as 'colonization.'

"In August 1862, he [Lincoln] met with a group of black leaders from Washington. He seemed to blame the presence of blacks in America for the conflict: 'but for your race among us there could not be war.'  He issued a powerful indictment of slavery — 'the greatest wrong inflicted on any people' — but added that, because of racism, blacks would never achieve equality in America. 'It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated,' he said. But most blacks refused to contemplate emigration from the land of their birth.

"The Army had long refused to accept black volunteers, but the reservoir of black manpower could no longer be ignored. In response, Congress moved ahead of Lincoln, abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, authorizing the president to enroll blacks in the Army and freeing the slaves of pro-Confederate owners in areas under military control. Lincoln signed all these measures that summer [of 1862].

"In it [Proclamation], Lincoln addressed blacks directly, not as property subject to the will of others but as men and women whose loyalty the Union must earn. For the first time, he welcomed black soldiers into the Union Army; over the next two years some 200,000 black men would serve in the Army and Navy, playing a critical role in achieving Union victory. And Lincoln urged freed slaves to go to work for “reasonable wages” — in the United States. He never again mentioned colonization in public.


My comment: There is no need to read the rest of this long essay. Regarding quotation 1, Emancipation Proclamation did none of Lincoln's earlier thinking: for instance, slave owners were not compensated.