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Robert Stacy McCain
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
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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," a veteran journalist and historian says.
"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," says Lerone Bennett Jr., whose new book, "Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream," examines Lincoln's record.
While the book may be shocking to readers accustomed to viewing the nation's 16th president as "The Great Emancipator," Mr. Bennett denounces that view as the "Massa Lincoln Myth."
"We're dealing with a 135-year-old problem here," says Mr. 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 both inside and outside academia.
The book is a "full-scale assault on Lincoln´s reputation," Columbia University history professor Eric Foner declared in a 2,000- word review in the Los Angeles Times. In the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, a University of Florida professor called Mr. Bennett's book a "compelling critique."
Time magazine columnist Jack E. White said the 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Drawing on historical documents, "Forced Into Glory" chronicles Lincoln's racial beliefs and his actions toward blacks and slavery:
ITEM; 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."
ITEM; 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, Mr. Bennett documents.
ITEM; Lincoln envisioned and advocated an all-white West, declaring at 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."
ITEM; Lincoln supported his home state's law, passed in 1853, forbidding blacks to move to Illinois. The Illinois state constitution, adopted in 1848, called for laws to "effectually prohibit free persons of color from immigrating to and settling in this state."
ITEM; Lincoln blamed blacks for the Civil War, telling them, "But for your race among us there could not be a war, although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or another."
ITEM; Lincoln claimed that "the people of Mexico 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."
ITEM; Repeatedly over the course of his career, Lincoln urged that American blacks be sent to Africa or elsewhere.
In 1854, Lincoln declared his "first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia - to their own native land." In 1860, Lincoln 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. . . . You can't read the Lincoln record without realizing all that," Mr. Bennett says.
Lincoln became "a secular saint," Mr. Bennett says, 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," Mr. Bennett says, noting that Lincoln was later praised even by those who had been his harshest critics during his life.
"There was an explosion of emotion in the North" after Lincoln's assassination, Mr. Bennett says. Lincoln "was appropriated, he was used."
Historians have hidden much of the truth about that era, Mr. Bennett adds.
"People in the North don't know how deeply involved the North was in slavery," he says, adding that Illinois "had one of the worst black codes in America. People don't know that. . . . Black people were hunted like beasts of the field on the streets of Chicago, with Lincoln's support."
Lincoln still has his defenders, of course. In criticizing Mr. Bennett's book, syndicated columnist Steve Chapman has said that Lincoln's "racial attitudes evolved as he grew older."
Mr. Chapman also cited the opinion of Civil War historian James McPherson that if Lincoln had pursued a more vigorous anti-slavery policy, he would have lost support in the North and, ultimately, lost the war against the Confederacy.
In recent years, Lincoln has been most commonly criticized 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 Mr. Bradford's anti-Lincoln writings.
Mr. Bennett's criticism in "Forced Into Glory" however, is from the left, faulting Lincoln for opposing racial equality.
Mr. Bennett, 71, first took on the Lincoln myth in 1968, writing an Ebony magazine article that caused "a firestorm all across the country," he says.
Despite the controversy, the article did begin "what some historians say was a re-evaluation of Lincoln" - a re-evaluation that has not gone far enough, he says.
"Major historians will talk about this problem of reinterpreting Lincoln, but they will do it at the end of a 700-page book, in the footnotes," Mr. Bennett says.
The idea of turning that 1968 Lincoln article into a book "was never far from my mind," Mr. Bennett says. "But about seven years ago, I started working on it again. 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 was worth the effort, he says, to help Americans face the real Lincoln.
"The myth is an obstacle to understanding," Mr. Bennett says. Lincoln "is a metaphor for our real determination to evade the race problem in this country."
Lincoln gets credit for the Emancipation Proclamation, which did not actually free any slaves, Mr. Bennett says.
"The most famous act in American history never happened," he says, 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," Mr. Bennett says. "There were several major white leaders [during the Civil War] who are virtually unknown today, who were far in advance of anything Lincoln believed."
It is a "moral imperative" for Americans to know the truth about Lincoln, Mr. Bennett says.
"Cynics may not believe that the truth will set you free; but lies will definitely enslave you," he says. "I don't see any way to get away from the duty to tell the truth." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Here is the column which appeared today in the Lexington Herald-Leader. Larry, who happens to be black, has wanted to get this off his chest in a public forum for some time. He prepared this with black history month in mind, and the paper bit on it! It appeared on the op-ed page, and is the largest column on it. The logo which has been running all through the paper "Black History Month In Celebration" appears as an inset in the column (this is some Black history that they haven't yet seen though). – A Southerner
Headline "Black history distorted by 'political correctness' "
By Larry Sykes
As a black Southerner, I am upset when witness to "knee-jerk" attacks on white Southerners such as Merlene Davis' "Class on Slavery Teaches White Man's 'Truth'".
Davis was in quite a lather to preach that a college class claimed by an Associated Press reporter to have taught that Southern slaves were "happy" should be muzzled. Her basic reaction to the report was that Southern whites should only be allowed to teach the "evil" parts of their heritage. There was one problem she missed out on, though: the story was a hoax. Videotapes of the class proved that the AP reporter had made up the story about a history class teaching that slaves were happy. While I saw this information on AP wires, I did not see anything carried in the Herald-Leader.
Instead of seeking the truth, "politically correct" blacks have created their own "truth", in which anything that can be connected with American slavery in the Old South is entirely evil - and anything less than this race-baiting propaganda is not acceptable to teach as history. This "truth" ignores the historical facts that American slavery would not have existed without blacks selling fellow blacks into slavery, or that the first slaveholder in the American colonies was black. What seemed to scare Davis the most, though, was that anyone might actually study the "Slave Narratives", since some of what is in them won't fall in line with the revisionist history we are taught today.
Davis says that just because blacks loved the South they didn't love slavery. No one claims that they did; the important point is that most blacks did love their home - the South. Davis then correctly says that thousands of blacks fought for the Confederacy, and did so with patriotism. This is an important truth, which is actively being erased by politically correct forces.
Davis is to be commended for admitting this. She goes on, though, to speculate that blacks fought for the Confederacy because they were somehow duped by whites into doing so through a white conspiracy to keep them completely ignorant of events around them. I disagree; this is an insult to the intelligence of blacks that developed numerous methods of communication and ways to keep that information to themselves and who had eyes and ears with which they could witness the events unfolding around them. The blacks who supported the Confederacy - by keeping the farm going at home, or by supporting and fighting with the army on the front - did not do so because they were duped. They did so because their homes were being invaded - the black wives, sweethearts and sisters were being abused and raped as well as the wives, sweethearts and sisters of the white Southerners by the northern "bands of angels" in Union blue - and because their patriotism overcame the fact that they did not yet share fully in the benefits of society.. Black Confederates did reasonably expect, especially if the South had won, some reward for their patriotism.
In spite of losing the war, though, the patriotism of Confederate blacks was still often rewarded, as evidenced by the Tennessee pension records and other sources. It is today that we try to avoid honoring their patriotism. Why else would Dr. Emory Emerson, a descendant of a black Confederate soldier and member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans have been "disinvited" from the services dedicating a monument which only memorialized the service of blacks in the Union army?
To end her attack, Davis says that Southerners can celebrate the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, but must always remember that men who forged this heritage were evil racists. Then she says to Southerners about their brief years as an independent nation that they are, essentially, best forgotten. My hope is we never forget when the Southern states stood up to defend states' rights and the constitution against a military invasion of the most powerful army on the planet. Just as I hope my 26 years of military service defending my country and constitution would not be forgotten, we should never forget the bravery of the Southern soldier, most of whom didn't own slaves anyway, in taking arms and giving their lives to defend their civil rights, their constitution, and their country.
The civil rights movement of the 1960's in the South would not have succeeded without brave Southern whites that joined with us. The civil rights movement was not about taking away the justifiable pride Southerners have in their heritage, but in securing constitutional guarantees for all. Blacks enjoying constitutional freedoms is not in opposition to, but rather an extension of, states securing their constitutional rights as well. Somehow, though, today what we see is a "civil rights" movement which wants to rob the South of its heritage, pride and symbols. The best way we can stop this wrong is for Southern blacks to repay the favor from the 1960's, and stand today with our Southern white friends, to protect the heritage and symbols of the South, before our common history is completely rewritten and erased by "political correctness".
* Larry Sykes, a Mississippi native and an Army Airborne veteran, lives in Lexington At 09:20 AM 2/25/99 -0500, you wrote: >I would like to send Mr. Sykes a copy of "The Tragic Era" as a thank you >for standing for Southron Truth. Wes, James Turner and I met Larry Sykes at the Kentucky Division Reunion last June. He was there reenacting Confederate as a member of Morgan's Men. Larry is an interesting fellow -- in his 40's, and a television camerman or something like that. He told James and I that he just gotten tired of people telling him what he, as a black man, should think and decided to investigate history for himself. What he found was that he had been spoon-fed propaganda rather than fact, and it didn't take him long to decide that the Confederate position was the right one. While we were conversing a 54th Mass. reenactor ( in his Union Suit) strolled by, said hello to Larry, and gave him a puzzled look, no doubt wondering about Larry's Johnny Reb attire. He says to Larry, "what you doing in that?" and Larry immediately replied "fighting for freedom". You shoulda seen the look on that yankee boy's face!. I nearly busted a gut trying to keep from laughing out loud. Several of the Kentucky boys are trying to help Larry with his genealogy so he can advance from associate member status. When the fight starts, Larry will be with us, and I'll be glad to have him. P.