Posted on 07/22/2002 8:53:06 AM PDT by TexConfederate1861
Ebony magazine's Lerone Bennett Jr. has written a history of Abraham Lincoln that calls for a reexamination of the racial attitudes of the 16th president of the United States. The `Great Emancipator,' argues the author, was actually a white supremacist.
Abraham Lincoln "was a racist who opposed equal rights for black people, who loved minstrel shows, who used the N-word, who wanted to deport all blacks," according to Lerone Bennett Jr., whose new book, Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream (Johnson Publishing Co., $35) examines Lincoln's record. "There has been a systematic attempt to keep the American public from knowing the real Lincoln and the depth of his commitment to white supremacy."
While the book may be shocking to readers accustomed to viewing the nation's 16th president as the "Great Emancipator," Bennett denounces that view as the "Massa Lincoln" myth. "We're dealing with a 135-year-old problem here," says Bennett, executive editor of Ebony magazine. "It's one of the most extraordinary efforts I know of to hide a whole man and a whole history, particularly when that man is one of the most celebrated men in American history."
Forced Into Glory is creating a stir inside and outside academia. The book is a "full-scale assault on Lincoln's reputation," wrote Eric Foner, a professor of history at Columbia University, in the Los Angeles Times. According to Time magazine columnist Jack E. White, Bennett's book "rips off the cover" of attempts by historians to hide "the unflattering truth about Lincoln's racist ideals."
Drawing on historical documents, Forced Into Glory chronicles Lincoln's racial beliefs and his actions toward blacks and slavery:
* Lincoln publicly referred to blacks by the most offensive racial slur. In one speech, Lincoln said he opposed the expansion of slavery into the territories because he didn't want the West "to become an asylum for slavery and n--s"
* Lincoln was, in the words of one friend, "especially fond of Negro minstrel shows," attending blackface performances in Chicago and Washington. At an 1860 performance of Rumsey and Newcomb's Minstrels, Lincoln "clapped his great hands, demanding an encore, louder than anyone" when the minstrels performed "Dixie." Lincoln was also fond of what he called "darky" jokes, Bennett documents.
* Lincoln envisioned and advocated an all-white West, declaring in Alton, Ill., in 1858 that he was "in favor of our new territories being in such a condition that white men may find a home ... as an outlet for free white people everywhere, the world over."
* Lincoln supported his home state's law, passed in 1853, forbidding blacks to move to Illinois. The Illinois Constitution, adopted in 1848, called for laws to "effectually prohibit free persons of color from immigrating to and settling in this state."
* Lincoln blamed blacks for the Civil War. "But for your race among us there could not be a war," he said, "although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or another."
* Lincoln claimed that Mexicans "are most decidedly a race of mongrels. I understand that there is not more than one person there out of eight who is pure white."
Repeatedly during the course of his career, Lincoln urged that American blacks be sent to Africa or elsewhere. In 1854, he declared his "first impulse would be to free all the slaves and send them to Liberia -- to their own native land." In 1860, he called for the "emancipation and deportation" of slaves. In his State of the Union addresses as president, he twice called for the deportation of blacks. In 1865, in the last days of his life, Lincoln said of blacks, "I believe it would be better to export them all to some fertile country with a good climate, which they could have to themselves."
Such facts may not be well-known, but they are "not hidden in the records," says Bennett. "You can't read the Lincoln record without realizing all that" Lincoln became "a secular saint," he argues, partly because of the circumstances of his 1865 assassination, immediately after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox. "Without question, I think the manner of his death, the time of his death ... all these were major factors in turning Lincoln into the American icon."
As a result, historians have hidden much of the truth about that era. "People in the North don't know how deeply involved the North was in slavery," says Bennett, adding that Illinois "had one of the worst black codes in America.... Black people were hunted like beasts of the field on the streets of Chicago, with Lincoln's support."
Indeed, the Emancipation Proclamation did not actually free any slaves. "The most famous act in American history never happened," argues Bennett, noting that Lincoln issued the proclamation only under pressure from radical Republicans in Congress -- men such as Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania and Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. Along with abolitionists such as Wendell Phillips and Frederick Douglass, the radicals were "the real emancipators," claims Bennett. "There were several major white leaders [during the Civil War] who are virtually unknown today, who were far in advance of anything Lincoln believed."
Lincoln still has his defenders, of course. In criticizing Bennett's book, syndicated columnist Steve Chapman has said that Lincoln's "racial attitudes evolved as he grew older." Chapman also cited the opinion of Civil War historian James McPherson that if Lincoln had pursued a more vigorous antislavery policy, he would have lost support in the North and, ultimately, lost the war against the Confederacy.
In recent years, Lincoln has been criticized most commonly by conservatives who see him as centralizing federal power and trampling on constitutional rights. The late historian M.E. Bradford was denied appointment as chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts in 1981 when his critics, including columnist George Will, drew attention to Bradford's anti-Lincoln writings.
Bennett, 71, first took on the Lincoln myth in 1968, writing an Ebony article that caused "a firestorm all across the country," he says. The idea of turning the article into a book was never far from his mind. "But about seven years ago, I started working on it again," he recalls. "I started putting together a group of essays ... and as I read it again, I started adding to it, and it became 600 pages, 700 pages. I had to cut out 200 pages."
It has been worth the effort, says Bennett, to help Americans face the real Lincoln: "The myth is an obstacle to understanding. Lincoln is a metaphor for our real determination to evade the race problem in this country." Historians talk about the problem of reinterpreting Lincoln, but they do so at the end of a 700-page book, in the footnotes. Says Bennett, "Cynics may not believe that the truth will set you free; but lies will definitely enslave you. I don't see any way to get away from the duty to tell the truth."
COPYRIGHT 2000 News World Communications, Inc.
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And for an editor with Ebony to come out with this -- wait and watch the fur fly!
Lincoln - the NIMBY Emancipator.
I read that to mean that if the country had never implemented the institution of slavery, there would have never been a cause for the Civil War. However, the fault was in the country adopting it in the first place.
About time someone other than white southern historians recognized this.
Now let's see, who in the 1860's didn't use the N-word? And I also bet he used terms like "pole", "wop", and bunches of others I can't think of.
So judged against today's PC standards, he'd probably qualify as a candidate for the KKK Grand Dragon. But at that time, it was probably the accepted view.
Too bad he isn't around today so he could be sentenced to Sensitivity training.
This was not an idea that was purely Lincoln's. Jefferson often wrote about his problems with the "slave question.". Jefferson wanted to free all slaves, but knew that (1) the South would probably cecede and (2) what to do with the slave after they were free. Jefferson wrote that blacks and whites would not be able to live together because of the huge amount of animosity on both sides...
Jefferson often thought that the best way to handle things was to either give the free slaves territoy of their own in the West, or send them back to Africa. Lincoln seems to be echoing Jefferson's ideas from 100 years earlier...
For a great bit of insight into the question of freeing slaves, read "Founding Brothers" by Joseph Ellis.
Can you provide a link to the text you posted? Thanks.
I'd be interested in Lerone Bennett's source for this quoteand verification of the date.
I've read elsewhere that Lincoln changed his mind about relocating freed slaves to "their own country" --after he witnessed the courage of the Massachusetts 54th at Fort Wagner (and other black regiments elsewhere). Unfortunately I don't remember the source for that.
I'd be interested in Lerone Bennett's source for this quoteand verification of the date.
I've read elsewhere that Lincoln changed his mind about relocating freed slaves to "their own country" --after he witnessed the courage of the Massachusetts 54th at Fort Wagner (and other black regiments elsewhere). Unfortunately I don't remember the source for that.
To claim, as this jerk apparently does, that Lincoln supported slavery is just a lie. Lincoln argued in the Lincoln-Douglas debates that blacks are "men" within the meaning of the Declaration's phrase "all men are created equal" and on that basis condemned slavery as an evil. His Cooper Institute speech, essentially his presidential platform, made his views clear as well. Lincoln was, however, a man of his age and at least for political purposes supported segregation and voluntary repatriation of blacks to Africa, by supporting the charity funding the Liberia colony. None of this is new, although in a public-schooled country so ignorant of its own history it may appear to be.
But this article is good for one thing; It reminds us that we should not worship mere men, past or present. We need to be grateful for their ideas, courage, nobility, sacrifice, or actions. This nonsense about "motivtion" or "personlity" is merely the modern way to dismiss historical facts or rewrite events to feel good.
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