The evidence on Lincoln and colonization is very mixed and not nearly as clear as DuBois would have us believe. Most Lincoln scholars doubt that he took colonization seriously; on the other hand, he well understood the level racism in America; Lincoln was also a master of political misdirction; in the sense that he might very well have asked for this information, only to use it to prove that colonization impossible, which he already knew. There is no communication from Lincoln to Butler on this subject for 1865 in The Collected Papers of Abraham Lincoln. This does not mean he did not have this discussion with Butler, but I would be curious what the source is. I do not have handy copy of DuBois's Black Reconstruction to check his source. By the spring of 1865 Lincoln was advoctating suffrage for, at a minimum, black veterans. I have no idea what the "colonization laws" were that Yvette refers to.
-- Paul Finkelman Chapman Distinguished Professor of Law University of Tulsa College of Law 3120 East 4th Place Tulsa, OK 74104-3189
918-631-3706 (office) 918-631-2194 (fax)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Barksdale, Yvette wrote:
For a discussion of LIncoln and the colonization movement see W. E. B. Du Bois Black Reconstruction in America 1860 - 1880, pp. 145- 149 .(Touchstone ed. 1995), arguing that LIncoln was strongly in favor of colonization and was dissuaded only by the practical difficulties.
For WEB Du Bois states that as late as 1865 Lincoln said to General Butler "...what shall we do with the Negroes after they are free?..... I can hardly believe that hte south and north can live in peace unless we get rid of the Negroes," Lincoln then requested Butler provide practical estimates of the cost of exporting the freed slaves.
Butler responded there were not enough ships to export African -Americans blacks back to Africa fast enough to keep up with the birth rate of new children born here. The colonization laws were later repealed after African-Americans lost interest in leaving.
yb
