bluefugue

The idea of colonization made a certain sense if you look at it from a mid 19th century standpoint. There had been slave revolts in the past, and the idea of integration among blacks and whites -- particularly in the South -- would have seemed logistically problematic, if not downright hopeless. (A century of postbellum discrimination, lynching, disenfranchisement, etc., showed it to be a difficult prospect indeed.) I think Lincoln may have felt that shipping the Africans back to Africa would be the most straightforward way to solve the problem -- sort of like yanking out a bad tooth. Obviously it would not have been desirable for the blacks, who had never seen Africa; but I imagine Lincoln would say that it was preferable to living in a land where they were destined by their race to be second-class citizens, and where they had heretofore been enslaved.

Lincoln was assuredly racist -- as almost all white 19th-century Americans were -- but his opinions on the matter do appear to have progressed during his presidency, and I imagine his racism was more patronizing than hostile. He was advised by Frederick Douglass -- the first President to meet with an African American in an official capacity, I believe -- and by the end of the war he seemed to have abandoned his passion for colonization.

Corey Hammer

As a resident of Chicago, I've also sent a letter in to the Sun Times.