Scores of historians have spent countless hours trying to discredit Butler and his story. but since it is impossible to prove a nagative, and since, as other historians have pointed out, Butler's account is "full and circumstantial" and there was no reason for him to lie, these efforts have proved fruitless. More to the point, Lincoln said the same thing about colonization and his fear of Black violence to others (see page 615). Based on these and other factors, some scholars, Ludwell H. Johnson (68) and Herman Belz (282) among them, have concluded that there is no reason to doubt the butler account. "If Butler's recollection is substantially correct, as it appears to be," George Frederickson said, "then one can only conclude that Lincoln continued to his dying day to deny the possibility of racial harmony and equality in the United States and persisted in regarding colonization as the only real alternative to perpetual race conflict" (57)Forced Into Glory, Lerone Bennett, Jr., p. 167
Citations:
Belz, Herman, Reconstructing the Union. Ithaca, 1969.
Frederickson, George M. "A Man but Not a Brother: Abraham Lincoln and Racial Equality," Journal of Southern History 41 (February 1975): 39-58.
Johnson, Ludwell. "Lincoln and Equal Rights: The Authenticity of the Wadsworth Letter," Journal of Southern History 32 (Sept. 1966): 83-7
Congressman Julian, who conferred with Lincoln often as a member of the powerful Joint Committee on the Conduct ofthe War, used almost the same words, saying that when Lincoln "very reluctantly issued his preliminary proclamation ... he wished it distinctly understood that the deportation of the slaves was, in his min, inseparably connected with the policy" (RR 61)Forced Into Glory, Lerone Bennett, Jr., p. 510
Citation:
Allen T. Rice, Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time. New York, 1888.
Looking back later, Rev. Mitchell said, according to an interview published in the St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat, August 26, 1894, that he asked a Presbyterian pastor to recommend a local man who could help him organize Illinois for the American Colonization Society. The pastor recommended Lincoln, who didn't, Mitchell said, look like much but who had a firm grasp of the politics of colonization and what Mitchell had done in Indiana. Lincoln was thirty-four years old when he met Mitchell. What did he believe? He "earnestly believed in and advocated colonization as a means of solving 'the race problem,'" Mitchell said. The two men became friends or at least associates, and Lincoln later names Mitchell commissioner of [Black] emigration in the Lincoln administration.Forced Into Glory, Lerone Bennett, Jr., p. 226
This was not an ad hoc political tactic or a hastily devised response to the pressure of events -- this was, Lincoln's emigration aide Rev. James Mitchell told the St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat on August 16, 1894, the foundation of Lincoln's private and public policy. It was "his honest conviction that it was better for both races to separate. This was the central point of his policy, around which hung all his private views, and as far as others would let him, his public acts" [Italics added] Lincoln was "fully convinced" that "the republic was already dangerously encumbered with African blood that would not legally mix with American [sic] . . . . He regarded a mixed race as eminently anti-republican, because of the heterogeneous character it gives the population where it exists, and for similar reasons he did not favor the annexation of tropical lands encumbers with mixed races ...."Forced Into Glory, Lerone Bennett, Jr., p. 384
Lincoln's emigration aide, the Rev. James Mitchell, said the Proclamation "did not change Mr. Lincoln's policy of colonization, nor was it so intended." On August 18, 1863, seven months after the signing of the Proclamation and three months before the Gettysburg Address, Mitchell said he asked Lincoln if the "might say that colonization was still the policy of the Administration." Lincoln replied twice, he said, that "I have never thought so much on any subject and arrived at a conclusion so definite as I have in this case, and in after years found myself wrong." Lincoln added that "it would have been much better to separate the races than to have such scenes as those in New York [during the Draft Riots] the other day, where Negroes were hanged to lamp posts."Forced Into Glory, Lerone Bennett, Jr., p. 554
Impossible.
A conversation is alleged to have taken place, but one of the two parties is killed four days later. No account given by the other party will pass muster as a credible source by any reputable historian.
All a reputable historian will credit is what we know: "Butler said Lincoln said".
Walt