Benjamin F. Butler, Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin F. Butler: A Review of His Legal, Political, and Military Career (or, Butler’s Book) (Boston: A. M. Thayer & Co. Book Publishers, 1892), p. 903.
Thsis has no corroboration, and it is inconsistent with what both men said in the 1860s.
Walt
Benjamin F. Butler, Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin F. Butler: A Review of His Legal, Political, and Military Career (or, Butler’s Book) (Boston: A. M. Thayer & Co. Book Publishers, 1892), p. 903.
[Walt] Thsis has no corroboration, and it is inconsistent with what both men said in the 1860s.
What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery at any rate; yet the point is not clear enough to me to denounce people upon. What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not.
~ Honest Abe ~
Negro equality. Fudge! How long in the Government of a God great enough to make and maintain this Universe, shall there continue knaves to vend and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagoguism as this?
(The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler, Rutgers University Press, 1953, September 1859 (Vol. III p. 399))
~ Honest Abe ~
I think no wise man has perceived, how it [slavery] could be at once eradicated, without producing a greater evil, even to the cause of human liberty itself.
~ 37-year plan Abe ~
WHAT EXACTLY DID LINCOLN ENVISAGE AS A GREATER EVIL, EVEN TO THE CAUSE OF HUMAN LIBERTY ITSELF? [which could be caused by the eradication of slavery]
In the same speech from which I have quoted he [Clay] says: ``There is a moral fitness in the idea of returning to Africa her children, whose ancestors have been torn from her by the ruthless hand of fraud and violence. Transplanted in a foreign land, they will carry back to their native soil the rich fruits of religion, civilization, law and liberty. May it not be one of the great designs of the Ruler of the universe, (whose ways are often inscrutable by short-sighted mortals,) thus to transform an original crime, into a signal blessing to that most unfortunate portion of the globe?'' This suggestion of the possible ultimate redemption of the African race and African continent, was made twenty-five years ago. Every succeeding year has added strength to the hope of its realization. May it indeed be realized!
~ It's-a-blessing Abe ~
"A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as immediate separation is impossible the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. Such separation, if ever affected at all, must be effected by colonization The enterprise is a difficult one, but 'where there is a will there is a way:' and what colonization needs now is a hearty will. Will springs from the two elements of moral and self-interest. Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and at the same time, favorable to, or at least not against our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be."
~ Where there's a will there's a way Abe ~
"...So Englishmen saw it. Lincoln's insincerity was regarded as proven by two things: his earlier denial of any lawful right or wish to free the slaves; and, especially, his not freeing the slaves in 'loyal' Kentucky and other United States areas or even in Confederate areas occupied by United States troops, such as New Orleans."
The Glittering Illusion: English Sympathy for the Southern Confederacy, Sheldon Vanauken, 1989, Washington, DC: Regnery/Gateway.
"At another time, Mr. Lincoln publicly recommended Central America to a delegation of blacks who waited on him, as suited by climate and so forth to colonization by their people.
In the fall of 1862 there appeared in New York a certain Mr. Koch, with a queer story and a queer project...he had conceived the project of taking to Santo Domingo a colony of blacks from the United States, procuring a grant of land, and settling them on it, to raise cotton.
Mr. Lincoln was entirely captivated by it; ...The President made a contract with him (Koch) for the transportation of the first colony of blacks, four hundred in number, to his (Koch's) island of La Veche, at the price, I think, of $100 per head; to be paid, one half when the colonists had embarked, and the other half when they were safely landed on the island.
Before many months were over, the President was constrained as a matter of mere humanity to send a vessel of war after the poor fellows, and the remainder of them was brought back and landed in Boston.
The last thing I heard of them was a public meeting under violent antislavery auspices to denounce the brutal and inhuman conduct of President Lincoln, in sending these poor men into exile; and one or two of the negroes themselves appeared at the meeting in support of the resolutions!
John T. Doyle"
"Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men," Jeffrey Rogers Hummel; Laissez Faire Books