[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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(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).
Delaney was in Africa when Garnet's society was founded. I don't know if he was a member or not. I don't know whether Delaney, who was making a name for himself in his own right would have wanted to put his efforts under Garnet's control.
But I do think you've go the wrong handle on things. Your source writes: "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." Do you take this as a sign of major disagreements?
If the two men largely agreed on aims, then they agreed on much. Efforts that "run in parallel" aren't opposed to each other. If Garnet proposed to "follow up" Delaney's efforts, then their projects had much in common, and there were efforts at some form of "coordination." Don't fall into the trap of taking every qualification as a negation -- or every glass that's 3/4 or 1/2 full as empty.
Delany's path diverged from Frederick Douglass's when Delaney began to support colonization schemes. Douglass was critical of the emigration efforts of both Delany and Garnet, and it's not likely that the ideas of either man had more in common with Douglass's than they had with each other. But for all that, Delany and Garnet were both quite radical: neither was simply a lapdog of Whites who wanted to get rid of Blacks.
Your quasi-marxist source which claims that Lincoln promised in the 1860s that slaves would be sent to Africa as soon as they were freed is highly doubtful. It was in Lincoln's interest in that campaign not even to mention emancipation or abolition, since his opponents represented him as a radical abolitionist. I can't find any such promise in his speeches and doubt it's there, as any mention of emancipation, other than a denial that it was on the agenda, would have doomed Lincoln's candidacy.
You claim that Lincoln was the only one who wanted to deport 4 million people to Africa. Wrong on both counts. Colonization was a common idea among many anti-slavery Americans, and abolitionist sentiment in the early 19th century largely involved colonization. When it's said that Virginia had more abolitionist societies in 1820 or 1830 than Northern states, it's precisely colonization societies that are being discussed. It was not something that Lincoln thought up on his own. Though we may deplore it now, emigration was regarded as part of the moderate anti-slavery package. But by 1863 colonization was an idea whose time had passed.
And Lincoln didn't argue for deportation, but presumed that freed Blacks would want a country of their own outside the US. It looks like a foolish assumption, but it was a natural assumption for some to make. Garnet and Delany and some other African-American leaders came to the conclusion that the real future of American Blacks lay in Africa. Was it so unnatural that a White man concerned about the ability of Whites to leave with Blacks would assume this to be a common sentiment among African-Americans?
The idea that fueled emigration was that slave owners could free their slaves under the condition that they go to Africa. The government could compensate slave owners and pay for their passage. But once large numbers of slaves were freed, and the power of the slaveholders was broken, the colonization mindset was broken.
Do you really think Lincoln wanted to dispatch millions of Blacks by force to Africa? To send away all those potential Republican supporters in order to please Democrat rebels and seditionists? Forcible emigration wouldn't have been anything new in the century that begin with the slave trade and saw the Trail of Tears, the Sioux and Nez Perce wars and Wounded Knee, but why not judge the man on what he did and give him the benefit of the doubt about what he did not do?
I mentioned Delaney, because of the way that he and Cain and other Black abolitionist supporters of emigration came to devote themselves to conditions at home. Emigration remained an option for those who wanted it, but the focus of their activities shifted back to America. White supporters of Black Nationalism, like Gentile Zionists, are always suspect in some quarters, but it's certainly possible that Lincoln underwent a similar turn as the war went on. One can't tell what the man thought or what he would have done had he lived, but given the evidence it's more likely that he was undergoing a similar evolution.
You seem to like large "document dumps." A bit more effort to express what you actually think and why would be more useful. One can always through document against document forever without coming closer to any agreement or understanding. Indeed, keep at it long enough and it becomes unclear just what the subject of the argument is. Taking the time to digest the documents and say what it is that you think they prove pays off and saves time and effort in the end.
And your method seems to be to find some flaw or failing or stain of sin or vice in those you disagree with, and then assume that they aren't worth bothering with further, except to condemn. But all of us have such flaws, even those you might support or admire or agree with. It's not that someone has sins on their soul that matters, it's what they do in spite of having failed or erred.
Nineteenth Century Americans were trapped in a box called slavery, and proposed different ways to get out of it. Some ways out were better than others. But recognizing that contemporary circumstances are the bind we're all in -- Lincoln, Douglass, Douglas, Davis, Grant, Lee, their contemporaries, ourselves -- it's enough to judge people on what they actually do, not on the ideas that they may have entertained at one point or another.
Given the predominant racial attitudes of 19th Century America no public figure of those days would pass muster as respectable today. Regardless of the ideas that Lincoln took from his own day, he was a major force in pushing America to better racial attitudes. It's silly and perverse to single him out as the main villain in the history of American race relations.