By citing Lincoln's meeting of November 5, 1863 with the African Civilization Society, arranged by James Mitchell, the Commissioner of Emigration, whose annotation indicated it was about colonization, I rebutted the assertion to which I responded.
Nothing you have said has anything to do with that conversation. Moreover, in all that you have said, you lack links, citations or quotations.
You had said:
[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...
As I pointed out, Delany was NOT a leader of that group. I quoted a source that said: "the pair agreed on aims." They agreed on aims, but evidently they did not agree on methods. You called Delany a leader of the African Civilization Society. What was your unnamed source?
[x] Don't fall into the trap of taking every qualification as a negation
Don't fall into the trap of relying on faulty memory to say Martin Delany was a leader of the African Civilization Society. Look it up, get your facts straight, and provide sources.
You have inaccurately rephrased or paraphrased things that were said or quoted.
For example,
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.
What the quoted source said, was: "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."
In precisely which part of Africa do you believe Central America is located?????
At least Central America was physically possible. Considering sending 4 million people to Africa using sailing ships is indicative of Gross Public Dumb.
Please provide links or sources, and accurate quotes.
Regarding Delany, I can only provide the sources that are out there. You have provided no source to support anything you have said.
Research your own material and correct your errors of fact.
[x] 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.
What I said was: "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."
Colonization was a common idea. Quote the many people who actually considered DEPORTING 4 million people to AFRICA. If they were not planning to use Scotty's transporter, how did they plan on doing it? It was an impossible, brain-dead, stupid, idiotic idea. It was logistically impossible.
Colonization resolution in Congress, January 1858. Congressional Globe, 35th Congress, 1st Sess., Pt. 1, pp. 293-298.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llcg&fileName=045/llcg045.db&recNum=356
One great difficulty obstructed these efforts. Emancipation was easy, but the amalgamation of the white and black races was abhorrent, and their existence as equals, under the same Government, was for that reason impossible. They were, nevertheless, resolved to make the experiment of the gradual abolition of slavery, hoping that time would make some outlet to the degraded caste. I believe the existing circumstances on this continent now justify that hope. The attempt of African colonization, to relieve us of the load, has failed. The immense distance, and the barbarous state of the mother country, to which we would restore its improved race that has arisen among us, has paralyzed all the efforts of the benevolent society that has labored so long in vain to form a community in Liberia which would draw hence its kindred emancipated population, and establish a nation there to spread civilization and religion over Africa.
[x] 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.
Delany did not advocate mass-migration to Africa. If you assert otherwise, provide source and quote.
Abraham Lincoln
Address at Cooper Institute, New York City
February 27, 1860
In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, ``It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation, and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly; and their places be, pari passu, filled up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up.''
The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol 3, page 541.
Annual Message to Congress
December 1, 1862
Heretofore colored people, to some extent, have fled north from bondage; and now, perhaps, from both bondage and destitution. But if gradual emancipation and deportation be adopted, they will have neither to flee from. Their old masters will give them wages at least until new laborers can be procured; and the freed men, in turn, will gladly give their labor for the wages, till new homes can be found for them, in congenial climes, and with people of their own blood and race. This proposition can be trusted on the mutual interests involved. And, in any event, cannot the north decide for itself, whether to receive them?
[x] 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.
Provide a source for this pantsload. It was logistically impossible to export 4 million people to Africa. The idea that fueled emigration was amalgamation and separation of the races.
Colonization resolution in Congress, January 1858. Congressional Globe, 35th Congress, 1st Sess., Pt. 1, pp. 293-298.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llcg&fileName=045/llcg045.db&recNum=356
The "gradual abolition" contemplated by Washington had, before Mr. Jefferson's death, made so large a class of free negroes as to endanger the safety of the white race by inciting formidable insurrections among the slaves, besides producing the lesser inconveniences apprehended. Hence the law prohibiting manumission without the removal of the emancipated slaves from the State.
* * *
By the legislation of many free States the intrusion of such emigration was soon prevented; and it may now be asserted with truth, that the laws of the free and the slave States combine to perpetuate slavery ! for where is the freed man to go? A few rich masters provide the means to return their bondsmen to Africa; and recently some small parties embarked to Mexico, to throw themselves upon the humanity of its semi-barbarous people. There is no alternative but to submit to expulsion, or to refuse the boon of freedom. There existed at least a half million manumitted slaves before the prescriptive laws were passed at the North or South. In the latter section, where the intercourse of the enfranchised and enslaved of the same race is pregnant with danger, measures are in progress to reduce all to the condition of slavery. Laws have been passed in some of the slave States providing that the freed may subject themselves again to servitude, if they can find a master.
* * *
Mr. Chairman, it is evident to every man of thought that the freed blacks hold a place in this country which cannot be maintained. Those who have fled to the North are most unwelcome visitors. The strong repugnance of the free white laborer to be yoked with the negro refugee breeds an enmity between races, which must end in the expulsion of the latter. Centuries could not reconcile the Spaniards to the Moors, and although the latter were the most useful people in Spain, their expulsion was the only way to peace. In spite of all that reason or religion can urge, nature has put a badge upon the African, making amalgamation revolting to our race. Centuries have shown that even the aboriginal race of this continent; although approaching our species in every respect more nearly, perish from contiguity with the white man. But I will not argue the point. The law of the North has put its ban upon immigration of negroes into the free States. In the South, causes more potent still make it impossible that the emancipated blacks can remain there. The multiplication of slaves and freed men of the same caste in the section where the dominant race must become proportionally fewer from emigration, has already compelled the latter to prohibit emancipation within the States, and to seek means of deliverance from the free blacks. The northern States will not receive them; the southern States dare not retain them. What is to be done?
[x] 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?
Do you seriously think Lincoln wanted to have millions of Blacks living in his neighborhood? Remember, it was Lincoln who considered AMALGAMATION a GREATER EVIL than slavery. Remember, Lincoln never met an Illinois Black Law he did not like.
CW 2:391-2
Speech at Chicago, Illinois
February 28, 1857
Let it be seen by the result, that the cause of free-men and free-labor is stronger in Chicago that day, than ever before. [Cw 2:391]
We were constantly charged with seeking an amalgamation of the white and black races; and thousands turned from us, not believing the charge (no one believed it) but fearing to face it themselves. [CW 2:392]
CW 2:406-410
Speech at Springfield, Illinois
June 26, 1857
There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people, to the idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races; and Judge Douglas evidently is basing his chief hope, upon the chances of being able to appropriate the benefit of this disgust to himself. [CW 2:406]
But Judge Douglas is especially horrified at the thought of the mixing blood by the white and black races: agreed for once---a thousand times agreed. [CW 2:407]
On this point we fully agree with the Judge; and when he shall show that his policy is better adapted to prevent amalgamation than ours we shall drop ours, and adopt his. Let us see. In 1850 there were in the United States, 405,751, mulattoes. Very few of these are the offspring of whites and free blacks; nearly all have sprung from black slaves and white masters. A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation but as an immediate separation is impossible the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas. That is at least one self-evident truth. A few free colored persons may get into the free States, in any event; but their number is too insignificant to amount to much in the way of mixing blood. [CW 2:408-9]
The proportion of free mulattoes to free blacks---the only colored classes in the free states---is much greater in the slave than in the free states. It is worthy of note too, that among the free states those which make the colored man the nearest to equal the white, have, proportionably the fewest mulattoes the least of amalgamation. In New Hampshire, the State which goes farthest towards equality between the races, there are just 184 Mulattoes while there are in Virginia---how many do you think? 79,775, being 23,126 more than in all the free States together. [CW 2:409]
These statistics show that slavery is the greatest source of amalgamation; and next to it, not the elevation, but the degeneration of the free blacks. Yet Judge Douglas dreads the slightest restraints on the spread of slavery, and the slightest human recognition of the negro, as tending horribly to amalgamation. [CW 2:409]
Such separation, if ever effected at all, must be effected by colonization; and no political party, as such, is now doing anything directly for colonization. Party operations at present only favor or retard colonization incidentally. The enterprise is a difficult one; but ``when there is a will there is a way;'' and what colonization needs most is a hearty will. Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest. Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and, at the same time, favorable to, or, at least, not against, our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be. [CW 2:410]
Speech at Augusta, Illinois
August 25, 1858
CW 3:39
The first hour of his speech was devoted to an examination of Clay's principles on the Slavery question, and to repelling the charges, made against the speaker, that he was an ``Abolitionist,'' in favor of ``negro equality'' and ``amalgamation.'' [CW 3:39]
Speeches at Clinton, Illinois
September 2, 1858
CW 3:85
Judge Douglas is very much afraid that the triumph of the Republican party will lead to a general mixture of the white and black races. Perhaps I am wrong in saying that he is afraid; so I will correct myself by saying that he pretends to fear that the success of our party will result in the amalgamation of blacks and whites. I think I can show plainly, from documents now before me, that Judge Douglas' fears are groundless. The census of 1850 tells us that in that year there were over four hundred thousand mulattoes in the United States. Now let us take what is called an Abolition State---the Republican, slavery-hating State of New Hampshire---and see how many mulattoes we can find within her borders. The number amounts to just one hundred and eighty-four. In the Old Dominion---in the Democratic and aristocratic State of Virginia---there were a few more mulattoes than the census-takers found in New Hampshire. How many do you suppose there were? Seventy-nine thousand seven hundred and seventy-five---twenty-three thousand more than there were in all the free States! In the slave States there were, in 1850, three hundred and forty-eight thousand mulattoes---all of home production; and in the free States there were less than sixty thousand mulattoes---and a large number of them were imported from the South. [CW 3:85]
Speech at Bloomington, Illinois
September 4, 1858
CW 3:89-90
Mr. L. then read at considerable length from another of his published speeches, on the subject of negro equality, and contrasting the Declaration of Independence with Douglas' version of it, which confines its meaning to an assertion of the equality of British subjects in America with British subjects in England. Referring to the ``amalgamation'' humbug, he inquired where the mulattoes came from, and quoted the census figures, showing that nearly the whole of them are from slave States; that New Hampshire, whose laws approach nearest to negro equality, contains scarcely any mulattoes, while Virginia has several thousand more than all the free States combined. And he inquired which party was practically in favor of amalgamation, we who wish to exclude negroes from the territory, or those who wish to mix them in with the whites there. [CW 3:89-90]
Second Speech at Leavenworth, Kansas
December 5, 1859
CW 2:505
Mr. Lincoln said that, in political arguments, the Democracy turned up their noses at ``amalgamation.'' But while there were only one hundred and seventy-nine mulattoes in the Republican State of New Hampshire, there were seventy-nine thousand in the good old Democratic State of Virginia---and the only notable instance of the amalgamation that occurred to him was in the case of a Democratic Vice President. Mr. Lincoln wanted the races kept distinct. [CW 2:505]
I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]---that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
Websites on the African Civilization Society, Garnet and Delany gave me the impression that Delany was an important figure in the ACS. In fact, he criticized Garnet and Garnet took it badly. It may have been a struggle of egos. Delany, the chairman of the National Emigration Convention, had been an important figure in the colonization movement when Garnet had opposed it. Delany was in Africa when the society was founded, and couldn't have taken kindly to Garnet's challenge to his position. Garnet's and Delany's efforts moved in parallel, but they were not in phase.
But Victor Ullman, Delany's biographer explains: "In November 1861 Delany was invited back into the fold of organized black leadership and even aligned himself with the African Civilization Society after he had won every change in its constitution he demanded. By then Henry Highland Garnet had temporarily been lost to Haitian emigration, and the Society's officers were now chiefly pastors of Negro congregations around New York" (Victor Ullman, Martin R. Delany: The Beginnings of Black Nationalism, 1971. p. 264).
Ullman recounts the November 4th, 1861 meeting of Delany with Cain and the other officers and the changes Delany wrote to the Society's constitution. He goes on: "The sum and substance of these meetings and additions of all that Delany had been preaching for nearly a year, was that he now became the spokesman for the organization" (p. 265). I don't have a photostat of Delany's ACS membership card, but it looks like the impression that websites gave of an association between Martin Delany and the African Civilization Society were substantially correct. How much this matters is another question.
In 1852 Delany promoted immigration to Central America in his book. He was not impressed by Liberia because of the power of the White-led American Colonization Society there. Yet by 1859 Delany was exploring in Africa, and in 1860 he spoke in Europe in support of Black-led colonization of West Africa. He even named one of his daughters "Ethiopia." When war was underway, Delany shifted focus to the US. Later, disillusioned by Reconstruction, Delany turned once again to the idea of emigration to West Africa. He died while planning a trip to Central America, but that was for business: in his last Delany years spoke up for voluntary emigration to Africa and fought to keep voluntary resettlement efforts alive.
In so far as Martin Delany is remembered at all today, he is associated with Black Nationalism and its African focus. He considered emigration to both Africa and Central America, and took some time to explore the African option. Delany could change his mind over time. He moved away from resettlement in Central America to African colonization, and then to a focus on the plight of freedmen in the American South. He wasn't wedded to Africa, or Central America or North America or even to emigration. His opinion changed according to what was more likely to be successful and in the best interests of his people. You could compare Delany and Garnet to Theodor Herzl, the early Zionist leader who considered Patagonia and Uganda as well as Palestine for a Jewish Homeland.
And if Delany could change his mind couldn't the same be true for Lincoln? That Lincoln met different Black delegations, suggests that he wasn't the maniacal Negrophobe that you want to make of him. And if two famous advocates of Black colonization could meet towards the end of the war and neither mentioned emigration schemes, it's a clear indication that Lincoln wasn't obsessed by the idea of resettlement to the degree that you imply. That's why I mentioned Delany. There's always been something cartoonish about the vision of Lincoln as a man devoted to getting rid of the Blacks above all else. And "cartoonish" is a kind word for Ben Butler and his fairy tales.
Benjamin Quarles, in his Lincoln and the Negro (p. 193-4), discusses how failed emigration plans and engrosssment in the war weaned Lincoln from his earlier interest in Black emigration. On July 1, 1864, Lincoln's secretary John Hay wrote in his diary that he was happy that "the President has sloughed off the idea of colonization." If that seems late, it's likely that Hay wrote on that date because on the next day, Congress froze the funds for emigration, cutting off all expenditures. Of the $ 600,000 allocated to recolonization, Lincoln had only spent $ 38,329.93, an indication that he wasn't exactly burning to put colonization plans into effect.
Your link to the Congressional Globe for 1858 indicates that resettlement plans were a debatable question in antebellum America (they were never so popular, though, as slaveowners' plans to acquire new tropical territories as future slave states). That one unnamed person said they'd failed is hardly enough to argue that the idea had been abandoned. In the 1850s it was in the interests of slaveowners to argue that resettlement efforts had failed, and in the interests of free soilers, and moderate anti-slavery men like Francis Blair to argue that they hadn't failed and hadn't even been tried. Things changed once freedom had been promised to the majority of slaves.
We can agree today that compulsory resettlement would have been monstrous, though it was a common 19th and 20th century practice. What can't be shown is that supporters of resettlement were more racist than opponents of emancipation. In an age without slavery, it might seem obvious that the supporters of emigration would hate or fear African Americans more and be more hostile to their aspirations, but it wasn't so. Things looked differently at the time. Think of Moses and the Pharaoh: who was "better for the Jews"? When the options are slavery and emigration things look different from when they are life in impoverished Africa and life in affluent America.
In the Cooper Union speech, Lincoln made an appeal to slaveowners: if you fear getting killed in a slave revolt, your state still has time to apply Jefferson's remedy of emancipation and, as Jefferson put it "deportation." He explicitly excluded the possibility of federal action, and directly related his quotation of Jefferson to Southern fears of uprisings. Two years later, circumstances had changed, and some federal action was possible. Two years after that conditions were yet different, a wider sphere for federal action to end slavery through constitutional amendment was possible. Other options, like compensated emancipation and resettlement of freed slaves as a condition of liberation, had closed.
Lincoln was growing, changing and coming into contact with African Americans. No one can say what he would have done had he died, but as says, the Lincoln of 1865 wasn't the Lincoln of 1860. Would Lincoln really have deported the Blacks who fought so bravely and loyally in the army? Would he, after advocating giving the vote to educated Blacks and Negro troops have shipped off the rest against their will. If Andrew Johnson, who disliked African Americans far more than Lincoln, didn't advocate recolonization, what makes you think Lincoln would have done so. The obsession looks more like yours than Lincoln's.
Bennett's conclusions are nonsense. Of course immediate emancipation would have been disruptive. It took a century after emancipation for a more egalitarian society to evolve, and former slaveholders and former Confederates were fighting against it at every point. Southerners said time and time again that immediate emancipation would be a nightmare. A large majority weren't even in favor of gradual emancipation. Bennett simply doesn't know what he's talking about.
You seem to have "racial amalgamation" on the brain. Of course it was a concern in the 19th century, but it was only one of many factors that motivated Jefferson and the other gentlemen who promoted emigration. Such fears would be found among those who opposed emigration as much as among those who favored it. Fear of miscegenation was an issue used against Lincoln in his campaigns, not something he had a monopoly or particular obsession with.
Before Garrison, emancipation and emigration were very often regarded as a package. It was felt that abolition wouldn't come if Whites had to live among Blacks. People came to the early colonization movement for different reasons: first because Whites would oppose liberation if they had to compete with Whites so colonization would hasten emancipation, second because of the fear of race war, which had already happened in Haiti and was the "greater evil" you are always asking about, third because of Negrophobia and the fear of race-mixing that so obsesses you, fourth because of a concern for the welfare of the Blacks, who some thought would be victimized in freedom, and fifth because of a hostility to freed Blacks who were regarded as a disruptive element and a threat to White society and slavery.
I don't have access to a Gallup poll from the 19th century about which reasons were most important, but if you look in to the matter, I think you'll find that the concerns of the supporters of resettlement were quite varied. You might start here: the fear was of free black competition and of friction between the two communities, and there was concern for the inability of Blacks to assimilate. More here.
You may want to argue that concern about racial amalgamation or Black sexual potency was behind it all. But those concerns grew more prominent later. Whatever deep psychic fears the supporters of colonization may have had under the surface: James Monroe and the other founders still had much of the command and self-possession of masters. They certainly had their fears, but they weren't dominated by them. Whatever the proportions of fear and bigotry in their make-up, there was also some benevolence, though we might have to look harder to find it now. Colonization was part of the mindset of the founding generation. It's certainly not a defensible idea now, but if you fail to understand it in context, you enter into the territory of today's politically correct misreadings of our past.
You appear to be toeing the current left-wing politically correct line on American history, and using it to single out Abraham Lincoln as in some way especially monstrous. It's a losing strategy. People who ask questions and think independently are going to realize that Lincoln was in no way a unique villain in the history of American race relations, but was typical, and indeed, rather above average for his day.
What you say about Lincoln could also be said about Jefferson and other American icons. To believe in our Constitutional system it helps if we believe that the American founding was about more than racism and oppression. Continual attacks on Lincoln either lead to hypocrisy and scapegoating, as followers single Lincoln out for the faults of his age and ignore the broader picture, or to repudiation of the heritage of the early Republic on the grounds that racism is too widespread (or perhaps to an embrace of racism, since it is so widespread). Seeing events, ideas and personalities in context, rather than simply attacking them for not coming up to our standards is the antidote for such cynicism.
If you are scoring points, you can add one to your subtotal because I got the name of the organization wrong once. Maybe you've won others and maybe you'll concede that I've picked up one or two against you. But tallying points for this and that side isn't of much use. I had never heard of the African Civilization Society when I saw your post and have since learned much about it. An increase in knowledge is worth more than simply throwing arguments or documents at each other.
It looks like you're hiding behind all of your documents and unwilling to come out and say just what you mean and make a cogent argument for it in your own words. Massive document dumps designed to prove that Lincoln was a bad man don't serve any purpose. It's well known that 19th century racial attitudes don't accord with those acceptable today. If you condemn those attitudes, fine. That's good, but it involves far more than Abraham Lincoln. If you want to make a serious point about his Presidency you'll have to understand what his options were.