Lincoln is on the record in the 1850's and up until 1862 supporting colonization. After blacks were enlisted to fight for the Union, he began clearing the way for black suffrage and citizenship. He says nothing about colonization at all. In 1864 Lincoln began to support voting rights for black soldiers privately and on April 11, 1865 he made a public speech where he took this position.
This film at the Lincoln Memorial is pretty grotesque, no doubt about it.
Walt
That's not true either.
In 1862 Lincoln received from General Pope a simple list of 303 indians that Pope planned to hang in the Minnesota indian uprising.
Lincoln's response to a congressional commission: "...I received a long telegraphic dispatch from Major General Pope, at St. Paul, Minnesota, simply announcing the names of the persons sentenced to be hanged. I immediately telegraphed to have transcripts of the records in all the cases forwarded to me, which transcripts, however did not reach me until two or three days before the present meeting of Congress. Meantime I received, through telgraphic dispatches and otherwise, appeals in behalf of the condemned, appeals for their execution, and expressions of opinion as to proper policy in regard to them, and to the Indians generally in that vicinity, none of which, as I understand, falls within the scope of your inquiry. After the arrival of the transcripts of records, but before I had sufficient opportunity to examine them, I received a joint letter from one of the senators and two of the representatives from Minnesota, which contains some statements of fact not found in the records of the trials...
Anxious to not act with so much clemency as to encourage another outbreak on the one hand, nor with so much severity as to be real cruelty on the other, I caused a careful examination of the records of trials to be made, in view of first ordering the execution of such as had been proved guilty of violating females. Contrary to my expectations, only two of this class were found. I then directed a further examination of all who were proven to have particpated in massacres, as distinquished from participation in battles. This class numbered forty, and included the two convicted of female violation. One of the number is strongly recomended by the commission which tried them, for comutation to ten years' imprisonment. I have ordered the other thirty-nine to be executed on Friday, the 19th. instant."
A. Lincoln
If you read the Kunhardt's picture biography of Lincoln you'll see a photo of a note in Lincoln's own hand where he wrote out the names of Indians codemned to death in the Minnesota uprisings--not out of cruelty, but to prevent the wrong men from being hanged.
Walt
You should study the ideas of colonization and understand why many people supported it. They predicted correctly that even with the end of slavery, blacks would not be accepted as full citizens in this nation. He and others like James Madison, Henry Clay and even R.E. Lee saw colonization as a way for blacks to establish their own nation where they could really be free. It was not a hatred of blacks that drove him to those beliefs, but an understanding that white America would not allow blacks to be equal. 100 years after Lincoln's death, blacks were still being denied fundimental liberties.