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To: capitan_refugio; lentulusgracchus
The point remains, and one can argue the hypothetical about the application of slavery to mining

Lincoln certainly didn't. One of the schemes he was cooking up in 1862 involved shipping all the blacks down to Panama for use in a coal mine that supposedly existed there but turned out to be too poor in quality for use. Of course he didn't call it "slavery" - he dressed it up with better sounding names like "colonization" and "emigration," but the effect was similarly coercive. The contract he signed (which is in the national archives today) even stipulates that the blacks would be given into the custody of an overseer who was contracted for the project and that he could punish them as he saw fit - in short, treating them like children with no real freedom.

Article 9th - To provide against the United States being compromised by this contract in any manner in its treaty stipulations with New Granada or the U.S. of Colombia it is agreed that the said Thompson is to be responsible for the good behavior of persons of color whom he may recieve from the United States upon his lands, or employ in his mines, or in works of improvement, and if any of said persons become (illegible) by reason of bad behavior or refuse to obey the laws and authorities, they are to be restrained or removed by said Thompson.

- Signed by Abraham Lincoln, September 11, 1862

Imagine that, capitan. Sending blacks to Panama and into the custody of a private individual for the explicit purpose of working on that private individual's lands and in his mines and also giving that same private individual full private control over the punishment, restraint, and removal of his recieved "workers" while they are there.

510 posted on 11/20/2004 10:39:03 AM PST by GOPcapitalist ("Marxism finds it easy to ally with Islamic zealotism" - Ludwig von Mises)
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To: GOPcapitalist; lentulusgracchus; fortheDeclaration
There is no doubt that Lincoln favored colonization and/or re-immigration of Africans to Africa (at least into 1862). It was certainly not a new idea, inasmuch as the American Colonization Society had begun to re-settle Negro freemen to Liberia as early as 1820.

Lincoln, like most people of the time, was opposed to race-mixing. There is nothing new here, either.

The key point of difference is that Lincoln and the abolitionists believed in the fundamental humanity of the black man and the founding principles of the nation. Many southerners of the slave-power conspiracy believed in the racist ideas that Negroes were sub-human and biblically condemned to slavery. By the 1860's the south had denied the vision of Jefferson and Madison, in favor of the heresy of Calhoun. If you don't believe me, read CSA Vice President Stephens' "Cornerstone Speech" sometime. Speech"

525 posted on 11/20/2004 9:02:31 PM PST by capitan_refugio
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