Posted on 01/07/2004 2:58:42 PM PST by quidnunc
2003 was a big year for Civil War movies. Gods and Generals, based on Jeff Shaara's novel of the same name hit theaters in the spring. Gods and Generals was a paean to the Old Confederacy, reflecting the "Lost Cause" interpretation of the war. This school of Civil War historiography received its name from an 1867 book by Edward A. Pollard, who wrote that defeat on the battlefield left the south with nothing but "the war of ideas."
I know from the Lost Cause school of the Civil War. I grew up in a Lost Cause household. I took it for gospel truth that the Civil War was a noble enterprise undertaken in defense of southern rights, not slavery, that accordingly the Confederates were the legitimate heirs of the American Revolutionaries and the spirit of '76, and that resistance to the Lincoln government was no different than the Revolutionary generation's resistance to the depredations of George III. The Lost Cause school was neatly summarized in an 1893 speech by a former Confederate officer, Col. Richard Henry Lee: "As a Confederate soldier and as a Virginian, I deny the charge [that the Confederates were rebels] and denounce it as a calumny. We were not rebels, we did not fight to perpetuate human slavery, but for our rights and privileges under a government established over us by our fathers and in defense of our homes."
Cold Mountain, based on Charles Frazier's historical novel, was released on Christmas Day. It too is about the Civil War but Cold Mountain is a far cry from Gods and Generals. This is the "other war," one in which war has lost its nobility and those on the Confederate home front are in as much danger from other southerners as they are from Yankee marauders. Indeed, Cold Mountain can be viewed as the anti-Gods and Generals.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Well, there are some extremely ugly and never-spoken of examples out there.
For instance, white men when imprisoned are often singled out for rape by the black men who are the majority in the prison. There is considerable evidence that such experiences was instrumental in the horrific Jeffrey Daumer and James Byrd (Jasper, TX) murders. In each case the white perps were apparently raped repeatedly by blacks in prison and retaliated against innocent blacks after their release.
Not that you would have heard about this in the regular press. As opposed to a similar situation where the races were reversed.
This is also the main reason the famous Aryan Brotherhood thrives in prisons. Non-members of this awful group are at the mercy of black and hispanic gangs. White prisoners have very strong incentive to join the AB.
Have you followed the mau-mauing of the police in Cincinnatti? No other word for this than black racism.
I believe, as you do, that racism among ordinary Americans is disappearing. But there are large numbers of people whose entire emotional and financial basis would disappear if this becomes generally recognized. Many of these are tragically found among those who are now called "civil rights" leaders.
When a problem begins to go away, those who have invested their lives in that problem begin to focus more and more energy on inflating the few examples still remaining. This may be one reason why many of the recent examples of "anti-black racism" have been proven to be self-inflicted. If your whole sense of self comes from being a victim of racism, you have strong incentive to invent some if others don't oblige you.
Because you obsess over reading white liberal B.S. about Lincoln and do not read Lincoln. Thereby you shield yourself from such Lincoln quotes as:
"People often ask, why make such a fuss about a few niggers?"
- Abraham Lincoln CW 3:495
He said he did not want "the Territories transformed into asylums for slavery and niggers."
- Abraham Lincoln CW 3:487
Duhhh. Wake up! Lincoln was speaking in 1852, eulogizing Henry Clay, and affirming the life-long held beliefs of Clay. It had nothing to do with Civil War. The great fear of these racists was almagamation. The greatest threat was mixing of the races.
SOURCE: Forced Into Glory, Lerone Bennett, Jr., pp. 267-270
This much is clear: What Lincoln said was one thing, and what he did was another. From first to last, in war and in peace, his approach to slavery was based on five paradoxes, and all the problems of his interpreters can be traced to their attempts to ignore one or more of these paradoxes.
The first paradox -- to repeat-is that the man who said that America could not endure half slave and half free did everything he could for fifty-four of his fifty-six years to ensure that America remained half slave and half free.
The second paradox is that Lincoln believed White freedom was a unction of Black unfreedom and that the continued freedom and prosperity of Whites in the South and the North depended on the continued enslavement and debasement of Blacks in the South. Lincoln didn't hide it; he didn't whisper it; he said out loud that the constitutional compromise of 1787 between White freedom and Black slavery ensured the White Constitution and White liberty that enslaving Blacks and keeping them subordinate was a White necessity. "We had slavery among us," Lincoln said, "we could not get our constitution unless we permitted them to remain in slavery, we could not secure the good we did secure if we grasped for more..." (CW 2:501, italics added).
Never before had the truth appeared so clearly:
White good was a function of Black bad.
Whites were up because Blacks were down.
Whites were rich because Blacks were poor.
Whites were free because Blacks were slaves.
By announcing that shameful secret, without shame, Lincoln embraced it and made himself responsible for it.
"We could not get our Constitution unless we permitted them to remain in slavery...."
It followed from this that the paradox of White freedom was that it had a paramount duty to defend Black slavery.
"I hold it to be a paramount duty of us in the free states," Lincoln said, "due to the Union of the states, and perhaps to liberty itself (paradox though it may seem), to let the slavery of the other states alone... "(CW 1:348).
What Lincoln said here is almost as astounding as what he said above For what does this mean if not that the paradox of Lincoln liberty was that its first duty was to defend slavery.
So saying, Lincoln endorsed -- without a dissenting voice from any of his interpreters to date -- the peculiarly Western idea that you can sacrifice some people in order to enrich others. It never seemed to occur to him until the Second Inaugural Address, which he immediately forgot, that everyone who makes that bargain makes or finds his own Gettysburg and ends up meditating on the terrible and self-enforcing imperatives that humans must choose for ALL or for none and that you can't question the humanity of others without losing your own.
Flowing with and out of this was an even greater paradox. For Lincoln didn't believe, as we have seen, that slavery "could be at once eradicated, without producing a greater evil, even to the cause of human liberty itself" (CW 2:130, Lincoln's italics).
What an extraordinary thing to say! What could possibly be a greater evil to the cause of human liberty than slavery? Freeing all slaves at once, Lincoln said, knocking down all the fences at once -- Lincoln's metaphor -- and producing the specter of racial mixing and racial conflict over jobs and other values.
The fifth paradox is that Lincoln opposed the extension of slavery not out of the interest of the slaves but out of the interests of Whites. When he made all those brave speeches about keeping slavery out of Kansas and California, he was not thinking about Black people at all-he was thinking about an endless vista of White settlements on the prairie. Speaking in Peoria, Illinois, in 1854, he said that he, like Thomas Jefferson, wanted the territories to be the "the happy home of teeming millions of free, white, prosperous people, and no slave among them" (CW 2:249). In 1856 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, he said the territories "should be kept open for the homes of free white people" (CW 2:363).
It was a litany: "We want them [the territories] for the homes of free white people." When Senator Douglas argued that Lincoln and his supporters had no direct interest in what happened in the territories, Lincoln replied, "I think we have some interest. I think that as white men we have. Do we not wish for an outlet for our surplus population, if I may so express myself?" (CW 3:311).
Lincoln went on to charge in this and other speeches that the extension of slavery posed a direct threat to the economic position of White men. He stressed in particular the threat to White labor and was not above the demagoguery of warning White labor of the threat of all Black labor, slave and free. If Northerners permitted slavery to spread to the territories, he said, "Negro equality will be abundant, as every White laborer will have occasion to regret when he is elbowed from his plow or his anvil by slave niggers" (CW 3:78).
What was the best way to prevent this? The best thing to do, he said, was to keep the territories free of all Negroes, slave and free,whatever the spelling. "Is it not rather our duty to make labor more respectable by preventing all black competition, especially in the territories?" (CW 3:79, italics added). Notice that word: duty. We shall return to it again and again. Abraham Lincoln believed it was his duty to White people, that it was his obligation as a White man, to keep Black people in slavery and in subordinate positions.
Not the emancipation of the slaves, not the building of a rainbow nation, but the way to the White Dream was his main concern.
And they are going to move into your neighborhood and steal your babies and put them in a big pot and boil them and eat them.
The Serbs and Croats, for instance, speak the same language, although they use different scripts for writing it. Nobody else in the world can really tell them apart, and I would assume they sometimes have trouble themselves.
Fenians and Orangemen speak the same language (mostly) and use the same script. Do not assume they cannot tell each other apart. Indigenous people can see things you do not.
For example, unless something has changed, were I to look at the awning of a shop in downtown Londonderry, Northern Ireland, I might just be able to tell you whether the owner of the shop is Catholic or Protestant. You might be oblivious.
And, of course, a Yank sticks out like a sore thumb. I have seen them identified from blocks away just from the way they walk. (In Europe, we are all Yankees. Of course, it is always amusing to observe a European calling a Southerner a Yankee.)
When I said Lincoln was prophetic, it was with regard to his concern that the continued presence of the black race in America would lead to extended conflict. Are you trying to say that he was wrong about that? If so, you will have to deny much of the history of the last 1.5 centuries.
I am not trying to say Lincoln was wrong, I am saying it flatly, in caps and bold-face. LINCOLN WAS WRONG. It is not the continued presence of the Black race that leads to extended conflict. It is the continued prejudice and ignorance of some of the White race that leads to extended conflict. You cannot rightfully blame your prejudice and your ignorance on the person against whom you discriminate.
Apparently the continued presence of the Red race was considered unendurable as well. The solution was genocide.
Apparently, now the continued presence of Latinos (Lincoln referred to them as "mongrels") will become a similar problem.
If a problem exists, it is not attributable to the continued presence of the Black, Red, or Brown Americans.
I did not mean to leave out Yellow people. During WW2, we took American citizens of Japanese ethnicity and imprisoned them in detention camps. The problem was not with these Americans of Japanese ancestry either.
NO. Lincoln could lay claim that Blacks and Lincoln and other White racist bigots couldn't live peaceably in this country. And surely, that is a far as that racist could see.
Lincoln and other White racist bigots could not live peaceably with Red people either. The solution was genocide.
Subsequently, during WW2 we threw American citizens of Japanese descent into internment camps. Those Americans had yellow skin and slanty eyes and had to be locked up.
Now the Latinos are coming to get you.
Now, why can't -you- live peaceably with someone of another race?
While in Europe, I happened to live in the house of an African man and his family. I assure you, not once did they try to put me in a big pot and boil me.
Racism is wrong and indefensible, whether it be practiced by Lincoln or anyone else.
Then I take it that you recognize Abraham Lincoln.
SOURCE: Forced Into Glory, Lerone Bennett, Jr., pp. 131-134
Since I said in a February 1968 article in Ebony magazine that the great emancipator was naked or, at least, was wearing borrowed clothes, Lincoln experts have circled the wagons. Surveying the post-sixties reevaluation -- "Much of the recent debate," Vorenberg said (24), "was set off by" by the Ebony article -- Professor Arthur Zilversmit said in a Chicago Sun-Times analysis (February 12,1980):
Bennett's article struck a nerve. He had not only called into question the reputation of a beloved hero, but he had challenged the American picture of our history as the story of measured progress toward liberal goals.Several historians and journalists argued with his version of the facts, but his charges could not be easily dismissed by other historians, several of whom began a comprehensive re-evaluation of Lincoln's racial views.
The latest reevaluation appears in the endnotes of David H. Donald's book, Lincoln. Summarizing the views of the leading members of the Lincoln establishment, Donald said correctly that it is an error to try to excuse Lincoln's racial views by saying that he grew up in a racist society and that everybody was a racist. He added, however, that Lincoln "fortunately escaped the more virulent strains of racism." What is the evidence for this? The evidence is that Lincoln didn't say hideous things about Blacks -- can anyone say anything more hideous than that a whole race of people is inferior and should be denied equal rights and deported because of its race? -- and that Lincoln's racist views were "nearly [my italics] always expressed tentatively." Donald cited approvingly Don E. Fehrenbacher's statement that Lincoln "conceded that the Negro might not be his equal, or he said that the Negro was not his equal in certain respects" (italics in original). [13]
This is a direct issue not between Lincoln and me but between the Lincoln establishment and Lincoln. Fehrenbacher says with Donald's approval that Lincoln conceded -- note that word -- that the Negro might not be his equal. Where did that word might come from? That's not what Lincoln said. "Certainly," Lincoln said, "the Negro is not our equal in color -- perhaps not in many other respects" (CW 2:520). Is certainly a tentative word? Lincoln didn't think so, for he used it repeatedly: "I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects -- certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment" (CW 3:16, italics added). On at least fourteen occasions between 1854 and 1860, Lincoln said unambiguously that he believed the Negro race was inferior to the White race. In Galesburg, he referred to "the inferior races" (CW 3:222). Who were "the inferior races?" African-Americans, he said, Mexicans, whom he called "mongrels" (CW 3:235), and probably all colored people.
In addition to all this, Lincoln said repeatedly that there was a physical difference between the Black and White races. What did he mean by the word physical? He meant bodily, corporeally, somatically, biologically, in accordance with the laws of nature. He meant that the difference was more than skin deep. He meant that the difference was immutable and was, he believed, going to last forever and would forever forbid Blacks and Whites living in equality. Forever, even probably forever, does not come within the bounds of tentativeness.
The Lincoln defenders are eminent, they are eloquent -- and they are wrong.
Lincoln did say -- repeatedly -- that the Negro race was physically inferior to the White race. He repeatedly poked fun at Blacks in "darky" jokes and habitually used the N-word.
Nor can we agree with the defense of Lincoln's tentative embrace of inequality. If Lincoln said on one occasion that the Negro -- that is to say, a whole race of people -- was not his equal biologically in some respects, he said on other occasions that the Negro race was not his equal in "many" respects. But what are we arguing about here? What is the difference between many and some and forever and probably forever? If, as the defenders concede, Lincoln said that the Negro, that is to say, the Negro race, was not his equal in certain respects or in any respect and should be denied equal rights because of its race, he was a racist and it is a waste of time to try to quantify the degree of racism or to argue over whether he was a biological, social, or empirical racist.
But we see what is involved here. The proponents of this argument would have us believe that Abraham Lincoln was a good racist. He was, God help us, a tentative racist. How, after the Third Reich and the First and Second American South and South Africa, can anyone say that? A man who condemns a whole race and excludes it from the basic rules of the social contract -- the right to vote and to sit on juries and attend schools -- is not a good racist, and if he were not Abraham Lincoln, we would say he is not a good man. If additionally such a man proposes concretely -- not vaguely or tentatively -- to ethnically cleanse a country by deporting a whole people because of its race, we would say he doesn't even share our sense of humanity.
Conor Cruise O'Brien makes an extremely perceptive comment, saying that the worst racists are the counting racists, the men and women who are always counting the reasons the oppressed group is inferior to the oppressing group (315). George Washington, who was a racist on other levels, was not, O'Brien says, a counting racist. Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln were. They had, to appropriate the words he used about Jefferson, "the classical racist itch to identify characteristics [color, intellect, morality, aesthetics] that could be interpreted as indications of genetic inferiority (315)" and as reasons why Blacks should be oppressed.
Most of Lincoln's information on Blacks came from minstrel shows and stag sessions with the boys, and he never really got over the idea that the stock minstrel show figure -- loud, funny, dumb, loquacious -- was the typical Negro. The men who observed him every day and heard him talk publicly and privately said he had a low opinion of Blacks and that he poked fun at them and ridiculed them. Donald said that Lincoln "never described them [Blacks] as indolent or incapable of sustained work" (633), but Lamon, who was there and heard the words from Lincoln's mouth, said the sixteenth president "claimed that those who were incidentally liberated by the Federal arms were poor-spirited, lazy, and slothful" and "as docile in the service of the Rebellion as the mules that ploughed the fields or drew the baggage trains." It is no wonder, then, Lamon said, that "with such views honestly formed... that he longed to see them transported to Hayti, Central America, Africa, or anywhere, so that they might in no event, and in no way, participate in the government of his country" (345, italics added).
So much for the tentative school.
No less censurable is the Everybody Was A Racist School, which says that everybody or almost everybody in the nineteenth century was a racist and that it is unnatural and, some say, racist to expect Lincoln to be anything else. Ignoring Whites like Zebina Eastman and Wendell Phillips, this school says Lincoln was a man of the nineteenth century and should be judged by nineteenth century standards, as if freedom is defined by dates, as if equality was invented by Thurgood Marshall, as if the N-word was invented by Mark Fuhrman. Ignoring White men like Trumbull who got elected without totally supporting slavery in the South and man-hunting in the North, they say, in so many words, that if Lincoln hadn't talked like a racist in the nineteenth century, we wouldn't have this warm, comforting integration symbol to worship in the twentieth.
This defense concedes the essential point and forces Lincoln defenders like Oates to defend Lincoln in words that indict him. Explaining and explaining away a Lincoln vote in the Illinois legislature against Negro suffrage, Oates says that "public opinion was almost universally against political rights for black people, and young Lincoln, who had elected to work within the system, was not about to ruin his career by supporting Negro suffrage" (38).
The psychology is apt, and the description of Lincoln's opportunism is devastatingly accurate. The only question is whether Oates is defending Lincoln or attacking him. For you can't say anything more derogatory about a man than that he had elected to work within a system that condemned four million people to slavery and made it a crime for a Black person to settle in his state.
It's remarkable that people who say Lincoln lied and pretended to be a racist to get elected don't realize that the apology is almost as bad as the acts. For it is not all clear that it is better to lie in order to get elected than to honestly confess racism. The defense, moreover, is clearly insufficient, since Lincoln said the same thing in Ohio when he was not running for office and in Washington after he had been elected president. And Strozier is correct when he says that "it would be naive to ignore the essential racism that informed Lincoln's thoughts wherever he spoke" (174).
American Scoundrel, The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Dan Sickles, by Thomas Keneally, 2002, First Edition May 2002, ISBN 0-385-50139-0, Chapter 8, p. 310
[Note: Keneally is also the author of Schindler’s List]
Dan, in his restlessness, wrote on December 9 to the newly reelected President: "I beg respectfully to remind you that I am still unassigned. ... I hope to be spared the humiliation of being dropped from the rolls amongst the list of useless officers." The President was motivated by Dan's part at Gettysburg to find another task for him, and asked him to undertake a taxing mission. Lincoln needed an emissary to go on government business to Panama and Colombia. Greater Colombia, or New Granada, as the Federation of Colombia, Costa Rica, and Panama styled itself, formed one loose federal state ruled from the highland capital of Bogota, Colombia. He was to leave by January with the purpose of persuading the Panamanian authorities to allow Union troops to cross the Isthmus of Panama, something they had recently prohibited. He was then to travel to Bogota and raise, with the federal authorities there, the possibility of Colombia's offering a home to freed black slaves, who were now pooling in Washington and in Northern cities.
From Edward Bates to Abraham Lincoln, November 30, 1864
Washington, Nov 30 1864.
Honored Sir,
I beg your pardon for having overlooked, in the pressure of business, in my latter days in the office, the duty to give formal answer to your question concerning your power still to retain the Revd Mr Mitchell as your assistant or aid in the matter of executing the several acts of Congress relating to the emigration or Colonizing of the freed blacks.
It is too late for me now to give a formal opinion upon the question, as this is my last day in office. I can only say that, having examined all the acts referred to, I am satisfied that, notwithstanding the act which repeals the appropriation contingently, you still have something to do, under those acts; and therefore, that you have the same right to continue Mr Mitchell that you had to appoint him originally. And I hope it will be done, for he seems to be a good man, of zeal & capacity.
Most respectfully Sir
Your obt servt
Edwd. Bates
It' s not that easy being a Lincoln defender as Fehrenbacher proved unwittingly when he crafted the most ingenious defense in the whole Lincoln catalog. Faced with the Charleston Confession (CW 3:145-6) in which Lincoln said he opposed Negro citizenship and equal rights, Fehrenbacher said that "if he [Lincoln] had responded differently at Charleston and elsewhere, the Lincoln of history simply would not exist" (1987, 105-6), meaning, if words have any meaning, that if Lincoln had not come out for White supremacy and racial separation in the nineteenth century, he would not be a national symbol of brotherhood and integration in the twentieth, meaning, if words have any meaning, that racism is historically defensible if a tragic assassination and myths make you into the opposite of what you were.
Beyond all that, the argument, though ingenious, is insufficient. There is no evidence and there will never be enough evidence to prove that Lincoln had to say the specific things he said in the Charleston Confession and elsewhere in order to get elected. What he said, in fact, lost the election and was at best of marginal importance to the presidential power brokers who wanted a conservative candidate with a public image to the right of Chase and Seward and who were more impressed by the tone of his Cooper Institute address than his Charleston Confession. We can say inversely that what Lincoln said at Charleston and elsewhere went further than the situation required, even for realpolitik, and that history, despite the default of historians, will never let him forget it. The same thing can be said about Lincoln's gratuitous statements about the "natural disgust" about Black and White sex, his references to Mexican "mongrels" and n----rs, and his quixotic campaign for colonization. But it doesn't matter. For a man who race-baits in order to get elected and who supports man-hunting, woman-hunting, and children-hunting because of his ambition has nothing to say to us, no matter how many historians sing his praises.
If we examine these defenses closer, we realize that the inarticulate major premise of all Lincoln schools is a defense of contemporary racial policies by a defense of Lincoln's conservatism and his anti-Black opposition to immediate, general and real freedom for Blacks. Benjamin Thomas puts himself in Lincoln's place and writes, "One must be realistic about this slavery issue, Lincoln thought" (112). Where have we heard this before? My God, yes, that's what segregationists and their White liberal allies said in the days of segregation. That's what segregationists and their White liberal allies have always said. Lord Charnwood, Lincoln's English biographer, denounced "the cold pedantry" of Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase and others who criticized Lincoln "on the ground of some natural right of all men to the suffrage." The true policy, Charnwood said, thinking about the South Africa of his day, was "doubtless that which [Cecil] Rhodes and other statesmen adopted in the Cape Colony [in South Africa] and which Lincoln had advocated in the case of Louisiana" (334-5).
You are talking about the 1850's, right?
When black soldiers served under Old Glory, President Lincoln began to work for full rights for them.
And as the letters I've included before show, he did much to increase the number of blacks recruited.
Also, I don't know about any "Charleston confession." Lincoln consistently said ther D of I applied to all.
Walt
[Walt] The last time President Lincoln supported colonization was on 12/1/62.
[Walt] After that, he fell silent publicly. No private conversations show it either.
I was responding to Walt's solemn assurance that Lincoln did not discuss colonization in public or private after 12/1/62. The meeting with the African Civilization Society was on November 5, 1863. Whatever did they talk about? Perhaps they discussed whether Abe's team, the Cubbies, would ever win a World Series. Perhaps they talked about donating some tax dollars to the Society but never discussed colonization. But then one must wonder why the meeting was arranged by James Mitchell, Commissioner for Emigration.
LINKAbraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress.
Transcribed and Annotated by the Lincoln Studies Center, Knox College. Galesburg, Illinois.
From [James Mitchell] to John P. Usher[1], November 5, 1863[Note 1 The following draft of an executive order appears to be in the hand of James Mitchell, the commissioner for emigration. On November 5, 1863, Mitchell wrote to Lincoln and requested him to meet with members of the African Civilization Society. The interview was granted and the officers of the society presented Lincoln with a petition requesting $5,000 in federal aid. Mitchell apparently prepared the order in the hope that Lincoln would deem the cause worthy and sign the authorization to release funds for the society. See Mitchell to Lincoln, November 5, 1863 and African Civilization Society to Lincoln, November 5, 1863.]
Executive Mansion
Nov 5th 1863.
The Secretary of the Interior is hereby directed to issue a requisition on the Treasurer of the United States, for the sum of Five Thousand Dollars, to be placed to the credit of John Peterson, and Henry M Wilson, the Treasurer and Secretary of "The African Civilization Society, of New York-- The requisition shall be handed to James Mitchell, Commissioner of Emigration, who shall deliver it to said Society, when its said Officers, shall lodge with him a good and sufficient bond, for the proper arrangement of those funds; of which he shall be the judge, the money to be drawn from the Colonization funds
Brother James even memorialized the meeting. He made some marginal note about "COLONIZATION" but he must have been confused because Walt knows for a fact that Lincoln never discussed COLONIZATION in public or private conversations after 1862.
LINKAbraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress.
Transcribed and Annotated by the Lincoln Studies Center, Knox College. Galesburg, Illinois.
From James Mitchell to Abraham Lincoln [1], November 5, 1863[Note 1 Mitchell, an Indiana minister, was appointed the commissioner for emigration in 1862.]
[Marginal note: Colinization]
Washington Nov 5th/63
The Officers of "The African Civilization Society", are in attendance and respectfully ask a short interview -- they are
G W Levere, President
H M Wilson, Sect
R H Cain, [2] Director
[Note 2 Richard H. Cain was a minister of the African Methodist Episcopal church at Brooklyn, New York. Following the Civil War, Cain moved to South Carolina where he was active in missionary work and politics. He served in the state legislature and was elected to two terms in Congress (1873-75, 1877-79). In 1880 Cain was ordained a bishop.]
P S Porter, ... "
Wm Anderson, ... "
I have the honor to
remain your servantJames Mitchell.
Comm. of E[migration][Endorsement:]
Appointed to see them at 4 ocl P M [3]
[Note 3 The officers of the African Civilization Society presented Lincoln with a petition requesting $5,000 to aid the work of the society. See African Civilization Society to Abraham Lincoln, November 5, 1863.]
[x] Though most African-American Abolitionists and activists attacked the African Colonization [sic - Civilization] Society for its emigration schemes, it was a family quarrel. Leaders of the group, like Henry Highland Garnet and Martin Delany were passionate abolitionists who had decided that emigration was a viable option for freedmen....
It appears that Martin Delany was neither a leader nor a member of the African Civilization Society.
[x] As time went on, interest in emigration as a live option declined, though the ACS leaders wanted the option kept open. Lincoln knew of Delany's activities in support of emigration, but Delany's account of his own 1865 meeting with Lincoln makes no mention of colonization that I can see, an indication that Lincoln may well have left his interest in colonization behind.
Before the war it is said that, "Although Garnet's and Martin Delany's efforts at colonization at this time were running in parallel and not coordinated, the pair agreed on aims." Delany worked with Frederick Douglass, not Henry Garnet.
During the war, Delany was in the U.S. Army and perhaps was not doing much colonizing at the time. It does seem that Delany had other things on his mind:
Martin Delany Meets Abraham Lincoln....
The following is Delany's own account of the meeting as told to his biographer "Frank Rollin" (Frances Rollin Whipper) (Rollin, pp. 166+171).
* * *
'What can I do for your, sir?' he inquired.
'Nothing, Mr. President,' I replied, 'but I've come to propose something to you, which I think will be beneficial to this nation in this critical hour of her peril.' I shall never forget the expression of his countenance and the inquiring look which he gave me when I answered him.
'Go on, sir,' he said, as I paused through deference to him. I continued the conversation by reminding him of the full realization of arming the blacks of the South, and the ability of the blacks of the North to defeat it by complicity with those at the South, through the medium of the Underground Railroad, a measure known only to themselves.
I next called his attention to the fact of the heartless and almost relentless prejudice exhibited towards the blacks by the Union army, and that something ought to be done to check this growing feeling against the slave, else nothing that we could do would avail. And if such were not expedited, all might be lost. That the blacks in every capacity in which they had been called to act, had done their part faithfully and well.
"After the Civil War, the Black men’s trading venture with Afrika that Dr. Delaney started went bankrupt after their hired sea captain defrauded them in order to pick their ship up cheaply for himself at bankruptcy auction."
[x] Finally, it's often been said that American Blacks are fortunate to have been brought here against their will, because abduction and slavery allowed them to participate in American prosperity. There is something to be said for that view.
Sandburg of all people tells us that enslaved Blacks were better off than free poor Whites. The poor Whites, he said, "lacked [my italics] slaves, land, and the decent creature comforts of the Negro house servant...." They were even worse off than enslaved field hands who had better "quantitities of food, clothing, shelter, and employment..." (Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, 4 Vols., New York, 1939, 1:11)Lerone Bennett, Jr., Forced Into Glory, p. 139
[x] Singling out Lincoln, who let his resettlement plans wither, as the great American villain is foolish and nearsighted.
Lincoln is the only jackass I know of who considered deporting 4 million people to Africa. Perhaps he planned on having Scotty beam them over there.
Sir Thomas Fowell
(1786-1845)
Sir Thomas Fowell (also Sir Thomas Powell Buxton) was one of the leading abolitionists in nineteenth century England. He was born in Essex and educated at Trinity College; he married Hannah Gurney in 1807 and began to work in his uncle’s brewery, Truman, Hanbury, and Company. Raised by a Quaker mother and married into a Quaker family, he soon took up their platform of social reform, seeing it as his Christian duty.
He was made a baronet in 1840 for his abolition work. That same year, he founded the African Civilization Society for the purpose of bringing Christian civilization to the African wilderness. But the Niger Expedition of 1841 failed and was a severe blow to Sir Thomas’ dreams for Africa. His health declined after the failure, and he died in February of 1845.
African Civilization Society.
Constitution of the African Civilization Society; Together With the Testimony of Forty Distinguished Citizens of New York and Brooklyn, to the Importance of the Objects Contemplated by its Friends. Also the Anniversary Address, Delivered by Rev. Joseph P. Thompson, D.D., at the Annual Meeting of the Society, May 19th, 1861. New Haven: Thomas J. Stafford, 1861.
Reprinted from the New Englander for Oct. 1861. Constitution and inaugural address of a society intended to foster the "civilization and Christianization of Africa ... the destruction of the African slave-trade ... and generally, the elevation of the condition of the colored population of our own country, and of other lands."
HENRY HIGHLAND GARNET
Garnet gained national prominence in delivering an address to the 1843 Black convention in Buffalo where his speech for black freedom was generally perceived as a call for slave revolt.
In 1850 Garnet went to Britain for two years, then accepting an appointment from the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, served as a missionary in Jamaica where he worked from 1853-55. In 1856 an illness forced his return to the United States. He accepted a pastorate at New York City's Shiloh Presbyterian Church. In the 1850's he helped found the African Civilization Society, an organization that encouraged black missionary work and entrepreneurship in Africa.
* * *
Garnet's turn towards activism marked his break with leading abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, who rejected politics in favor of moral reform. Garnet's impatience with Garrison's position was expressed publicly as early as 1840 when he was one of the eight black founding members of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society which formalized the split in the ranks of abolitionists. Garnet gave further proof of his disaffection in 1843. The August 1843 National Negro Convention in Albany, New York, gathered more than 70 delegates in the first such convention since the early 1830s. Garnet was a prominent member; in particular he was chairman of the nine-member business committee, which was charged with organizing the issues for discussion. He electrified the convention with "An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America," in which he urged slaves to take action to gain their own freedom: You had far better all die--die immediately, than live slaves, and entail your wretchedness upon your posterity. ... However much you and all of us may desire it, there is not much hope of redemption without the shedding of blood. If you must bleed, let it all come at once--rather die freemen, than live to be the slaves.
The audience was profoundly moved: some wept, others sat with clenched fists. Frederick Douglass, who was not ready to abandon Garrisonian moral suasion, joined with others in opposition to Garnet's position. Douglass spoke for more than an hour against adopting the speech. The rules were suspended to allow Garnet to reply for an hour and a half in a speech, which James McCune Smith said was Garnet's greatest. Unfortunately neither Douglass's speech nor Garnet's reply survive today. The original address was referred to the business committee for moderation and eventually failed to be adopted by one vote.
* * *
Although the support for emigration was growing in the black community, Garnet had to face sharp criticism for his position in favor of it, particularly from Frederick Douglass. Douglass commented sharply on a request for American blacks to go to Jamaica made by Garnet before his return. Criticism grew when Garnet founded the African Civilization Society in 1859. He explained the society's aims in an 1860 speech, reprinted in Ofari's book "Let Your Motto Be Resistance," "We believe that Africa is to be redeemed by Christian civilization and that the great work is to be chiefly achieved by the free and voluntary emigration of enterprising colored people."
Alexander Crummell, Garnet's boyhood friend and fellow student who had established himself in Liberia after earning a degree from Cambridge University in England endorsed the goal, as did the influential West-Indian born educator Edward Wilmot Blyden. Garnet made a trip to England as president of the society in 1861. In conjunction with this trip he established a civil rights breakthrough by insisting that his passport contain the word Negro. Before this time the handful of passports issued to blacks had managed to skirt the issue of whether blacks were or were not citizens of the United States by labeling the bearer with some term such as dark. Although Garnet's and Martin Delany's efforts at colonization at this time were running in parallel and not coordinated, the pair agreed on aims. Garnet proposed a visit to Africa to follow up Delany's 1859 efforts there, but the plan fell through with the outbreak of the Civil War.
A side-effect of Garnet's support of emigration and his trip to England in 1861 was an attempt of the board of trustees of Shiloh Church to force him out as pastor. The controversy ended in 1862 when the congregation accepted the resignation of the entire board by a wide majority.
* * *
Garnet's prominence made him one of the prime targets of a white working-class mob during the July 1863 draft riots in New York City when blacks and leading abolitionists were assailed. The rioters appeared on Thirtieth Street, where Garnet resided, calling for him by name. Fortunately his daughter had torn off the brass door plate with an axe, so the house escaped plundering, and several white neighbors helped conceal him and his family. In the aftermath of the insurrection, Garnet headed the distribution of charitable contributions collected by a committee of white merchants.
* * *
Charles L. Reason
African American Mathematician 1818 - 1893
He spoke out against the American Colonization Society and Garnet's African Civilization Society. In 1849 Reason, along with J. W. C. Pennington and Frederick Douglass, sponsored a mass demonstration against colonization at Shiloh Presbyterian Church in New York City. At the meeting, Reason quoted a former American Colonization Society agent in Africa, who claimed that the president and secretary of the society's colony of Liberia had business dealings with European slave traders on the African coast.
MARTIN DELANY
Martin Delany, respected and feared throughout the Reconstruction era in South Carolina for his intelligence and integrity, surprised many by publicly supporting former Confederate Gen. Wade Hampton for governor in the 1876 election. Disgusted by the failure of the U.S. Army and Republican party leadership to help newly emancipated enslaved blacks to start their own small farms and achieve some economic independence, Delany backed Hampton, despite signs that violent white racists, led by Ben Tillman, did likewise. Delany supported Hampton because he saw him as another advocate of education as a prerequisite for a former slave, or any person in fact, to achieve autonomy.
From the News and Courier, Oct. 18, 24, 1876.
"After speaking twenty minutes, Mr. Smythe gave way to Col. M. R. Delany, who was introduced by the chairman as the next Democratic speaker. As soon as Col. Delany mounted the wagon, the Negroes started to beat their drums and left in a body. They would not listen to "De damned Nigger Democrat." In vain the chairman called them to come back and shouted to them to stop their drum beating. They paid no attention to his orders. They marched off and the women crowded around the wagon with their bludgeons, with threats, curses and imprecations. Even Bowen was unable to restore quiet until he leaped from the wagon and brought them back by main force, and Col. Delany was invited to go on with his speech.
* * *
"In the meantime, Delany, Mr. William E. Simmons and several other aged white men had taken refuge in a brick house adjoining the church. . .The negro militia charged out of the swamp, surrounded the brick house and tried to batter down the door. Failing in this they broke open the windows and pointed their muskets at the helpless occupants. . .They all escaped except Mr. Simmons, who upon emerging from the door was knocked down and beaten to death...
(Reynolds, p. 379)
* * *
During his tour in behalf of the North Star, in July 1848, when America's sympathy yearned towards the people of Europe, in the name of whose freedom the thrones were trembling, a mob demanded his life in a village of Northern Ohio.
"They first demanded of him a speech, in a derisive manner, which he refused. In revenge they circulated a report that he was an abolitionist and amalgamationist. This had the desired effect, and soon a mob, consisting of nearly every male in the village, and neighboring farmers, attracted by a blazing fire which they had kindled of store boxes and tar, in the middle of the street, gathered, shouting, swearing, and demanding him of the proprietor of the hotel, who had closed his doors on the appearance of the rabble.
* * *
This granted, the question will then be, Where will we go? This we conceive to be all important, of paramount consideration, and shall endeavor to show the most advantageous locality; and premises the recommendation, with the strictest advice against any countenance whatever, to the migration scheme of the so called Republic of Liberia.
* * *
The Canadians are descended from the same common parentage as the Americans on this side of the Lakes. And there is a manifest tendency on the part of the Canadians generally to Americanism. That the Americans are determined to, and will have the Canadas, to a close observer, there is not a shadow of doubt; and our brethren should know this in time. This there would be no fear of, were not the Canadian people in favor of the project, neither would the Americans attempt an attack upon the provinces, without the move being favored by the people of those places.
Every act of the Americans, ostensibly as courtesy and friendship, tend to that end. This is seen in the policy pursued during the last two or three years, in the continual invitations, frequently reciprocated, that pass from the Americans to their "Canadian brethren" always couched in affectionate language to join them in their various celebrations, in different parts of the States. They have got them as far as Boston, and we may expect to hear them going to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and instead, of the merrymaking over hte beginning or ending of internal improvements, we may expect to see them ere long, wending their way to the seat of the federal government, it may be with William McKenzie, the memorable patriot and present member of the Colonial parliament, bearing in his hand the stars and stripes as their ensign, there to blend their voices in the loud shout of jubilee, in honor of the "bloodless victory" of Canadian annexation.
* * *
Central and South America are evidently the ultimate destination and future home of the colored race on this continent; the advantages of which in preference to all others will be apparent when once pointed out.
NOTE: The native language of these countries, as well as the greater part of South America is Spanish which is the easiest of all foreign languages to learn. It is very remarkable and worthy of note, that with a view of going to Mexico or South America, the writer several years ago paid some attention to the Spanish language, and now, a most singular coincidence, without preunderstanding, in almost every town, where there is any intelligence among them, there are some colored persons of both sexes, who are studying the Spanish language, even the Methodist and other clergymen, among them. And we earnestly entreat all colored persons who can, to study and have their children taught Spanish. No foreign language will be of such import to colored people, in a very short time, as Spanish. Mexico, Central and South America, importune us to speak their language; and if nothing else, the silent indications of Cuba urge us to learn the Spanish tongue. END NOTE
* * *
As it is not reasonable to suppose, that all who read this volume, especially those whom it is intended most to benefit, understand geography; it is deemed advisable, to name particular places, as locality of destination.
We consequently, to begin with, select Nicaragua in Central America, North, and new Grenada, the Northern part of South American, South of Nicaragua, as the most favorable points at present, in every particular for us to emigrate to.
In the first place, they are the nearest points to be reached, and countries at which the California adventurers are now touching on their route to that distant land, and not half the distance of California.
In the second place, the advantages for all kinds of enterprise are equal, if not superior, to almost any other points, the climate being healthy and highly favorable.
In the third place, and by no means the least point of importance, the British nation is bound by solemn treaty to protect both of those nations from foreign imposition, until they are able to stand alone.
* * *
"It was expected that Anti Slavery, according to its professions, would extend to colored persons, as far as in the power of its adherents, those advantages nowhere else to be obtained among white men.
". . .Thus was the cause espoused, and thus did we expect much. But in all this, we were doomed to disappointment. Instead of realising what we had hoped for, we find ourselves occupying the same position in relation to our Anti Slavery friends, as we do in relation to the pro slavery part ofthe community, a mere secondary, underling position, in all our relations to them, and any thing more than this, is not a matter of course affair, it comes not by established anti slavery custom or right, but like that which emanates from the pro slavery portion of the community, by mere sufferance."
* * *
I next called his [Lincoln's] attention to the fact of the heartless and almost relentless prejudice exhibited towards the blacks by the Union army, and that something ought to be done to check this growig feeling against the slave, else nothing that we could do would avail. And if such were not expedited, all might be lost. That the blacks in every capacity in which they had been called to act, had done their part faithfully and well.
* * *
Martin Robinson Delany was born a slave in Charleston, Virginia, on 6th May, 1812. Illegally taught to read by his mother, his father purchased the family's freedom in 1823.
When Delany was nineteen he moved to Pittsburgh where he attended the Bethel Church School. A doctor in the town, Andrew McDowell, employed Delany as his assistant.
In 1843 Delany began publishing the anti-slavery newspaper, The Mystery. Four years later, Delany joined Frederick Douglass on the North Star. He also attended the Harvard Medical School (1849-52) and afterwards established himself as a doctor in Pittsburgh.
Delany continued in the struggle against slavery and he travelled the country campaigning against the Fugitive Slave Act. In 1852 Delany published the Destiny of the Colored People in the United States (1852) where he recommended emigration out of the United States. In 1859 he led an exploration party to West Africa to investigate the Niger Delta as a location for settlement.
During the Civil War Delany recruited soldiers for the Union Army. In 1865 he obtained the rank of major, therefore becoming the first Afro-American to receive a regular army commission. After the war he worked for the Freemen's Bureau.
In 1873 Delany became a customs inspector in Charleston and was an active supporter of the Liberian Exodus Joint Stock Exchange Company, an organization which arranged the transport of emigrants to Liberia. Martin Robinson Delany died in Wilberforce, Ohio, on 24th January, 1885.
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(1) Martin Robinson Delany, letter to William Lloyd Garrison (1852)
I should be willing to remain in this country, fighting and struggling on, the good fight of faith. But I must admit, that I have not hopes in this country - no confidence in the American people - with a few excellent exceptions.
(2) Martin Robinson Delany, Destiny of the Colored People in the United States (1852)
JAILBREAK OUT OF HISTORY:
The Counter-Story of Harriet Tubman
Part 3: With John Brown & Dr. Martin Delany
by Butch Lee
It was no accident that Dr. Delany was being applauded at a gathering of the Royal Society of London, signing commercial treaties in Nigeria, and publishing books - while Harriet was a fugitive conducting protracted, long-range guerrilla raids on the plantation prisons to free New Afrikan prisoners. They were both caught up in what we can now see was a global class struggle, of the malignantly expanding euro capitalism on one side against indigenous communalistic cultures on the other. A gender-class divide that would razor through the heart of the Black Nation.
Dr. Martin Delany’s dreams were male dreams, of Black capitalistic men rising to join their European brothers in building new commercial empires and nations. He had an honest vision, of the elite of Black men mobilizing themselves to be a proud part of a "man’s world." Hand in hand with their white partners, Delany’s vision saw the most ambitious New Afrikan men becoming indispensable equals with the european powers in exploiting the great mineral wealth, labor, and trade of Black Afrika. Not enemies at all for Martin, but male partners.
So while men have pointed to Dr. Martin Delany as a revolutionary model of anti white defiance, his actual politics were much more complex. His vision of Black independence had a closely constructed capitalism of class and gender. In his most famous writing, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Martin called for "an Expedition of Adventure to the Eastern Coast of Africa." The large funding necessary to in effect take over East Afrika, and establish a ruling nation of Western-educated Black emigrants from the u.s., he amazingly believed would be given to them by the British and French empires:
...To England and France, we should look for sustenance, and the people of those two nations -- as they would have everything to gain from such an adventure and eventual settlement on the EASTERN COAST OF AFRICA -- the opening of an immense trade being the consequence. The whole Continent is rich in minerals, and the most precious metals... with a settlement of enlightened freemen, who with the immense facilities, must soon grow into a powerful nation.
What was most chilling to me about his words was the unconscious implication that East Afrika then was empty, wide open territory for any band of capitalist men who decided to settle there and start their own nation. Isn’t this so achingly familiar? Like the "empty" North Amerika that euro-capitalism gave itself the right to move into, settle, fill up, cleanse. Weren’t there existing Afrikan societies already there, then? Existing masses of women, children, and men? What rights or role would those native societies have had? Or would they have unintentionally been the equivalent to Indians in the final working out of Martin’s capitalistic vision?
This guy-think is really typical for all patriarchal capitalism. Even the Black separatism of that day. The seductive illusion that there can be a benign, "good" capitalism if done by the formerly oppressed, is just that. Martin’s nationalistic colleague, the Rev. Henry Highland Garnett, and his African Civilization Society, argued for emigration back to Afrika on a program of defeating the South with Black capitalism.
Challenged by Garnett to debate emigration, Frederick Douglass repeated their program with dry sarcasm:
The African Civilization Society says to us, go to Africa, raise cotton, civilize the natives, become planters, merchants, compete with the Slave States in the Liverpool cotton market, and thus break down American slavery.
Left unspoken was the obvious question of how anyone could undercut the price of Southern cotton produced by unpaid slave labor. That’s even if introducing the capitalism of cotton plantations, planters and all, to Afrika would have been anything less than a eurocentric home invasion. Even if, or especially if, it were done by some Black men themselves. Dr. Martin Delany’s own Black migration strategy was a plan for the rise of a small New Afrikan bourgeois male class. Logistically not even all the clipper ships in the world could have moved four million New Afrikans back to Afrika faster than their population increase. To say nothing of where million of Black laborers in a place they’d never been might obtain huge tracts of farmland, tools, supplies. No, Dr. Delany’s actual plans were for the small migration of Black businessmen, who would become Afrika’s Western educated merchants, plantation owners & entrepreneurs. The middlemen selling Afrika’s handicrafts, agricultural products, and minerals to the world.
The reality about such well-intentioned male nationalist dreams was that underneath the surface layer of seeming practicality, of self-assure guy-talk about the man’s world of power economics and power politics, their plans were really naive and impractical. Brilliant and serious as Martin was, he wasn’t even close to the ball park. Dr. Delany and Rev. Henry Highland Garnett and their associates inwardly assumed the basic neutrality of capitalism. That men would always want to play ball with men. In real life, of course, capitalism doesn’t play. After the Civil War, the Black men’s trading venture with Afrika that Dr. Delany started went bankrupt after their hired sea captain defrauded them in order to pick their ship up cheaply for himself at bankruptcy auction. Even more to the point, it was a class plan for only a small minority of the "best & brightest." This did not go unnoticed by other New Afrikans. In 1860, the newly-elected Abraham Lincoln found his Union dissolving. The Southern states were seceding even before his Inauguration. The new President tried to calm settler fears about possible masses of freed ex-slaves by picking up Dr. Delany’s own plan for Central American settlements. He promised that as quickly as Blacks were freed they would be sent out of the country. The Lincoln administration and congress appropriated funds to establish a Black colony for ex-slaves in Panama. Overwhelmingly, the Anti Slavery movement attacked Lincoln playing the Black colony card as a racist move. To get rid of the Black community’s boldest & most resourceful, potential leaders, as well as divide their people just as the Crisis was upon them. A few, notably the nationalist forerunner Rev. Henry Highland Garnett, did support Lincoln. (Dr. Delany, on lecture tour in the West, wasn’t in the debate).
Lincoln approved of and praised the Louisiana Constitution. It gave the vote to former Confederate soldiers. It denied the vote to Blacks who fought for the United States Army.
Lincoln refererred to the D of I as the White Man's Charter of Freedom.
July 6, 1852
But I would also, if I could, array his name, opinions, and influence against the opposite extreme---against a few, but an increasing number of men, who, for the sake of perpetuating slavery, are beginning to assail and to ridicule the white-man's charter of freedom---the declaration that ``all men are created free and equal.''
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October 16, 1854
In our greedy chase to make profit of the negro, let us beware, lest we ``cancel and tear to pieces'' even the white man's charter of freedom.
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