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Alexander Stephens reported that shortly before Lincoln's assasination, he told Stephens he had no plans for assisting freed slaves in adjusting to their new way of life. That was reportedly during a conversation they had at Hampton Roads. As Stephens relates it, Lincoln said, "I guess they'll just have to 'root hog or die.'" That would have fit Lincoln, since he followed black minstrelsy and "Root Hog Or Die" was popular at the time.

Lincoln related the circumstances behind the story in to Alexander McClure.

"You see," said he, "we had reached and were discussing the slavery question. Mr. Hunter said, substantially, that the slaves, always accustomed to an overseer, and to work upon compulsion, suddenly freed, as they would be if the South should consent to peace on the basis of the 'Emancipation Proclamation,' would precipitate not only themselves, but the entire Southern society, into irremediable ruin. No work would be done, nothing would be cultivated, and both blacks and whites would starve!"

Said the President: "I waited for Seward to answer that argument, but as he was silent, I at length said: 'Mr. Hunter, you ought to know a great deal better about this argument than I, for you have always lived under the slave system. I can only say, in reply to your statement of the case, that it reminds me of a man out in Illinois, by the name of Case, who undertook, a few years ago, to raise a very large herd of hogs. It was a great trouble to feed them, and how to get around this was a puzzle to him. At length he hit on the plan of planting an immense field of potatoes, and, when they were sufficiently grown, he turned the whole herd into the field, and let them have full swing, thus saving not only the labor of feeding the hogs, but also that of digging the potatoes. Charmed with his sagacity, he stood one day leaning against the fence, counting his hogs, when a neighbor came along.

"'Well, well,' said he, 'Mr. Case, this is all very fine. Your hogs are doing very well just now, but you know out here in Illinois the frost comes early, and the ground freezes for a foot deep. Then what you going to do?'

"This was a view of the matter which Mr. Case had not taken into account. Butchering time for hogs was 'way on in December or January! He scratched his head, and at length stammered: 'Well, it may come pretty hard on their snouts, but I don't see but that it will be "root, hog, or die."'"

Lincoln was talking to one of the Confederate commissioners, Hunter. Hunter was expressing his concern about what would happen to southren society without the slave labor that provided their wealth. Without slaves, Hunter complained, no work would be done. Nothing would be harvested. People would starve. So when Lincoln related the story it was to point out that the white population could no longer live off the labors of their chattle. The white population would have to work for a change. It was the white population that would have to 'root hog, or die' not the former slaves.

The white population would have to work for a change.

Lincoln, unlike modern south-haters, knew that only a small precentage of southerners owned slaves. Work was nothing new to the white population of the south, but that claim does have a continued popularity among the culturally marxist.

Well, that's an interesting interpretation of the conversation. But there are other accounts.

From the Abraham Lincoln Association via University of Illinois --

Again, in the Hampton Roads conference, when Hunter raised the point that slaves, accustomed to working under overseers, would be unable to get along without them, while on the other hand, the whites, deprived of their slaves, would be unable to make a living, and both would starve, Lincoln was reminded of an old Illinois farmer who hit upon the expedient of planting potatoes and turning his hogs into the patch to root, thereby saving the labor of feeding the hogs and digging the potatoes. A neighbor, happening by, asked him what the hogs would do when the ground froze. The farmer had not thought of that; but after several moments of rumination he observed: "Well, it may come pretty hard on their snouts, but I guess it will be 'root, hog, or die!'"

From another issue of the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, also published by the University of Illinois --

One of the Confederate commissioners then mentioned "the evils of immediate emancipation," specifically, as Stephens later wrote, the hardships that many blacks "who were unable to support themselves" would face in freedom. The president "fully admitted" that the sudden end of slavery might produce severe dislocations, but, instead of elaborating on the point and describing his expectations for the former slaves, he illustrated his view with a rather crude anecdote. Drawing upon his reservoir of rural Midwestern stories, Lincoln told of an Illinois farmer who informed a neighbor that he had discovered a way to save time and labor in feeding his hogs. "What is it"? asked the neighbor. "Why, it is," said the farmer, "to plant plenty of potatoes, and when they are mature, without either digging or housing them, turn the hogs in the field and let them get their own food as they want it." "But," the neighbor inquired, "how will they do when the winter comes and the ground is hard frozen"? "Well," replied the farmer, "let 'em root."

This anecdote, which appears in both Stephens and Campbell's accounts and which Lincoln later repeated to his portraitist, reveals a harsh side to Lincoln, perhaps caused by his desire to reassure the Confederates that he did not seek a social revolution in the postwar South. The story also belies Lincoln's earlier expressions of sympathy for black refugees from slavery and his approval, one month after the Hampton Roads Conference, of the Freedman's Bureau bill providing temporary aid for the former slaves (and white refugees) in their adjustment to freedom. Still, Lincoln, like most Americans at the time, optimistically expected emancipation itself to be "the king's cure" for blacks in the South. Lincoln believed that a free person, now including blacks, should be able to make his way in America through his own ability and effort without the assistance of the state. Though he had admitted the difficulties of the white and black races living together in freedom (his earlier support for black colonization reflected this concern), the president envisioned a limited role for the federal government in protecting and aiding blacks after the war. Had he lived to witness the postwar threat to black freedom, Lincoln might have changed his mind regarding federal responsibility for black liberty.

It's a good article on the Hampton Roads meeting. I recommend it.

And again, this time from Dr. Clyde Wilson, professor of history at the University of South Carolina, writing in The Costs of War: America's Pyrrhic Victories, as quoted in the Mises Review --

And of what did freeing the slaves consist? At the Hampton Roads conference, Alexander Stephens asked Lincoln what the freedmen would do, without education or property. Lincoln's answer: 'Root, hog, or die.' Not the slightest recognition of the immense social crisis presented to American society by millions of freedmen. The staple agriculture of the South, the livelihood of the blacks as well as the whites, was destroyed."