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I'm just pointing out the fallacy of the lincoln is God argument. Maybe he did believe in freedom for the blacks, just apart from him and if he had to do anything about it, outside of this country. Which puts his whole 1854 speech into its true perspective instead of the revisionist ideal he didn't actually mean what he said.

It's exactly how liberals act today. Act on the injustice as long as that action doesn't effect them. Your hero could do that considering the Black Codes in the north already in place banning blacks from living there. They would have to stay in the South, or if he had his way, be forced back onto boats and shipped somewhere. And probably not first class either. Sounds like a real humanitarian to me. Too bad Nobel wasn't around to give him a medal

Your hero could do that considering the Black Codes in the north already in place banning blacks from living there. They would have to stay in the South, or if he had his way, be forced back onto boats and shipped somewhere.

They would be caught between a rock and a hard place, wouldn't they bill? After all, every single southern state had laws forbidding free blacks from moving in. Most had laws restricting the manumission of blacks or forbidding it all together. One, Virginia, even had it in the state Constitution that a freed black had 12 months to leave the state or else they would be sold back into slavery. So I guess that in the unlikely event a black man was freed down south then they would have no place to go, except Michigan, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Vermont...

The American Colonization Society was founded in 1816. Among its founders were Francis Scott Key, Henry Clay, Bushrod Washington, John Randolph of Roanoake, Richard Bland Lee, Daniel Webster, William Crawford, and Richard Rush, son of Benjamin Rush. Presidents Madison and Monroe were also supporters, and sought government assistance for the project of colonizing freed slaves in Africa. Thomas Jefferson is also on record as supporting the idea. Indeed, Jefferson's efforts at resettlement were a major inspiration to the Society. John Marshall was another supporter. Andrew Jackson was listed as an officer without his consent. In later years it had some support from Black abolitionists like Martin Delaney.

The ACS was part of that early anti-slavery sentiment in Virginia, Maryland and Kentucky, as well as in Northern states, that we've been told died after a more militant abolitionism took root in the North. Seen from the perspective of its day it was one of the few channels for promoting emancipation and manumission voluntarily by slaveholders themselves. The refusal of the states to treat free blacks as equals, and the opposition of many people to emancipation if freed Blacks remained in the country led many humanitarian minds to support the ACS. Opposition to the ACS, at least in its early days, was more likely to come from staunch supporters of slavery than from abolitionists.

So in saying that Lincoln supported the Illinois Colonization Society, you're saying that he was of one mind with more enlightened political luminaries of the day. In retrospect the idea of removing freed slaves from the country their labor had helped to build up looks monstrous. Was it worse than slavery itself? Was largely voluntary resettlement worse than the slave trade or the crimes involved in the maintenance of slavery? Was it worse to resettle slaves in a free country or to separate them from their families and sell them down the river? Was resettlement of freed slaves worse than the dispossession and removal of Indian tribes going on at the same time? Was it much worse than the forcible resettlement of English convicts and paupers in Australia?

We rightly reject such ideas of "resettlement" or "population exchange" today. There is much cruelty and injustice hidden behind such euphemisms. In retrospect, it's clear that colonization or resettlement was an alternative to integration, but we shouldn't single out the ACS as a particularly evil organization in the context of its day, when integration and racial equality were not considered options.

Your politically correct attacks on Lincoln are of a piece with attacks on Washington and Jefferson for having been slaveholders. Dismantling the "Lincoln myth" won't be any prelude to a glorification of secessionist or Confederate leaders. It's just another step in the trashing of the American past.