You can't prove a negative.
What the neo-rebs can't do is flesh out any substance to Butler's book. Where is the evidence in the record between 1865 and 1892 that Butler met with Lincoln and discussed these things? Butler is the only source that I have seen advanced.
John Hay, on the other hand, backs up with his diary entry what is amply supported in the record. By 1864 Lincoln was through with colonization.
Walt
??? But that is exactly what you're doing with regards to Lincoln's alleged abandonment of his often stated views on race. The statements or documents rejecting his earlier views have not been presented, yet you act as if they have. As to the Butler quote, what then, makes you think it untrue? A desire for that to be so, based on nothing more than that desire? With regards to both issues, you are like a nearly blind man wearing dark glasses in a dark room with the lights turned off searching for a black cat that isn't there. Yet you keep shouting "I found it, I found it!". To accept the real Lincoln brings no shame, Walt. He was always against slavery, he always thought the black man had rights. His other opinions of them and a desire for separation are only a mirror of the times. Historical perspective is everything, get some.
What the neo-rebs can't do is flesh out any substance to Butler's book.
Apparently the neo-unionists can't flush out any proof it is incorrect, or you would have presented it, instead of simply proclaiming it false because it doesn't fit your desired beliefs.
Where is the evidence in the record between 1865 and 1892 that Butler met with Lincoln and discussed these things? Butler is the only source that I have seen advanced.
By the same token, where is the proof he did not. If it were untrue, would not at least one of the many people associated with Butler or Lincoln have stated so after it was published? If such claims of falsehood existed by contemporaries, I would think that you would have found them and flooded the thread with them.
John Hay, on the other hand, backs up with his diary entry what is amply supported in the record. By 1864 Lincoln was through with colonization.
Not so. He commented on the fact that Lincoln had quit pushing it so hard at that time. An obvious result of the funding being cut off by the radicals who opposed it.
What, you think Butler IGNORED the summons by Lincoln to come to Washington issued in January 1865?