The Great Emancipator?

When most Americans think of Abraham Lincoln, they almost always remember him as the President who freed the slaves. Celebrated as the "Great Emancipator," he is widely praised as a hero who fought the Civil War (1861-1865) to give African-American slaves their freedom and equality.

American Colonization Society

While this narrative would make a nice bedtime story, the truth is that Abraham Lincoln believed that African-Americans could never be assimilated into white society. He rejected social equality and strongly supported the idea of Colonization (the view that blacks should be "emancipated" and resettled in Africa, Central America, etc.) in order to protect free white labor. In his own words...

1854: "If all earthly power were given me...I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution [of slavery. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native land...politically and socially our equals?...My own feelings will not admit of this...those of the great mass of white people will not ... We can not, then, make them equals."

1857: Racial separation "must be effected by colonization...where there is a will there is a way."

1858:  "There is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."

1860: "It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation, and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly; and in their places be...filled up by free white laborers."

1861: Lincoln ordered the Secretary of War to travel to Panama (Chiriqui) "for the purpose of reconnaissance of, and a report upon the lands, and harbors of the Isthmus of Chiriqui; the fitness of the lands to the colonization of the Negro race."

1862: Lincoln authorized $600,000 "to make provision for the transportation, colonization and settlement in some tropical country beyond the limits of the United States, of such persons of African race..."

1862: "I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I strongly favor colonization."

1863: Lincoln discussed a plan to "remove the whole colored race of the slave states into Texas."

1876: Frederick Douglass probably best summarizes Lincoln's views...

"In his interest, in his association, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man. He was preeminently the white man's President, entirely devoted to the welfare of the white man. He was ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people, to promote the welfare of the white people of this country."