Posted on 09/27/2014 12:46:13 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Editor’s note: For those who are wondering about the retro title of this black-history series, please take a moment to learn about historian Joel A. Rogers, author of the 1934 book 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro With Complete Proof, to whom these “amazing facts” are an homage.
Amazing Fact About the Negro No. 92: When President Abraham Lincoln met with free black leaders in 1862, what did he propose?
Today marks the anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s “shot heard ’round the world.” I’m referring, of course, to the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation he fired off from the White House on Sept. 22, 1862, five days after the real bullets had been fired 70 miles outside of Washington, D.C., at the Battle of Antietam (then and now the bloodiest day in American history, with close to 23,000 casualties).
What little Union victory there was in Gen. Robert E. Lee’s withdrawal from Maryland gave Lincoln the opening he needed to issue the Confederacy his ultimatum: If it remained in a state of rebellion come Jan. 1, 1863, he would sign an executive order rendering “all” of its “slaves … then, thenceforward, and forever free.”
For any student of American history, this is well-trod ground. But here’s what you may not know about those crowded days of late summer 1862. While weighing emancipation, Lincoln also had a very different kind of ultimatum on his mind—for African Americans. For much of his first years in office, Lincoln was obsessed with solving America’s seemingly intractable race problem by persuading free blacks to lead the way for an exodus that would wash the United States of the original sin of slavery—without having to live alongside those it had enslaved....
(Excerpt) Read more at theroot.com ...
We should have picked our own cotton.
Reading this makes me want to verbally abuse a white police officer!
Far from uniquely "obsessed", Lincoln's views on this subject were well within the tradition of presidents' thinking going all the way back to at least Thomas Jefferson:
Former President Madison also contemplated sending freed slaves back to Africa:
President Monroe, as Virginia governor also considered returning freed slaves to Africa:
Even George Washington: "expressed moral support for plans by his friend the Marquis de Lafayette to emancipate slaves and resettle them elsewhere, but he did not assist him in the effort."
Point is: the question of resettling freed slaves was on the minds of our Founders, from the beginning.
What was unique and different about President Lincoln is that he actually invited former slaves to the White House, to express their own opinions on what they wanted.
So Lincoln was perhaps surprised to learn that returning to Africa was not their first choice.
Happy, happy, happy...
Only if we’d known then.
But, we should mow our own lawns and grow our own lettuce today.
Not a Lincoln fan. He was brilliant, but he oversaw events that led to the death of 500k+ Americans. This cannot be construed as a win.
Not necessarily Africa, but he did want to send them to Central America and colonize it.
http://www.nps.gov/liho/historyculture/debate4.htm
...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, [applause]-that 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; and 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. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied every thing.
I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. [Cheers and laughter.]...
Actually more than 600000, many of which were young boys that died a miserable death. The Lincoln war had brother killing brother and Americans butchering Americans. No good president would ever allow that to happen.
And allow Sherman to burn the South! Lincoln definitely became a puppet of the Whoremasters that Degraded and turned a flower into a burning replica of the Yankee culture! However we prevailed and kept our heritage the Yankee to this day tries to bring down with it’s influx of death and destruction! While destroying his own house in the same breath!
Lincoln played the cards that were dealt to him by southern slavers. The only thing he “oversaw” was the salvation of our nation.
About 2% of Americans died in “Lincoln’s War.”
But then about 1% died in “Washington’s War.” Was he also an evil man for allowing/causing that to happen?
Jeff Davis had a little to do with the deaths of these men. He should have known that the Yankees would never permit the South to go peaceably.
Takes two sides to make a war. And the South lacked strategic depth. Once they were unable to bring Kentucky and Missouri into the Confederacy, the advantage of being the defender was lost.
Actually, the south lacked the resources...not strategic depth.
I’m not aware of any single leader of the time who believed in equality as we understand it or in mixed marriage, so all you’re saying is that Lincoln was no different than everyone else.
Abraham Lincoln is an easy target for people like Gates who choose to judge him by 21st century standards. The fact is that his opinions were no worse, and in many ways far better, than his peers both North and South. Boiled down to the basics, Lincoln was wise enough to see that free blacks would not be welcomed by the average white person, that they would be met with racism and discrimination on a scale not imagined to date, and that carving out a life free from those conditions might not have been a bad thing. History has proven he was right in the acceptance area. Why couldn’t he have also been right in their ability to create their own society?
So you're saying that once the Confederacy started the war then Lincoln should have immediately surrendered? Would it have been better if Roosevelt had surrendered immediately after Pearl Harbor rather than sacrifice the several hundred thousand U.S. servicemen that World War II cost?
Yes because black people are so non racial. The Black Caucus, Eric Holder, Obamamnation, Ferguson, Detroit and thousands of other examples aside.
OK, look at race relations in this country and what blacks went through between 1865 and 1965 and get back to me.
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