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| Reading the Proclamation, 1863 (PD) |
As Henry Louis Gates, Jr. of The Root so aptly points out, Abraham Lincoln was far from a flaming abolitionist for much of his life.
In fact, Gates vividly describes a “solution” that Lincoln often promoted regarding America’s slavery issue. Simply put, his idea was to “free” the slaves by shipping them and their kin off to Central America.
“Honest Abe” therefore assembled a group of prominent free Afro-Americans in order to persuade them to lead this “Exodus.” Gates explains that “the white Methodist preacher James Mitchell… had spread the word through the black churches of Washington that ‘Father Abraham’ was interested in talking.”
Lincoln began this (mostly one-way) “discussion” with the premise that black and white people are separated by “a broader distance than exists between almost any other two races.” He went on to state, “I think your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence.”
Gates reports that Lincoln then blamed the Civil War on the presence of black Americans. Lincoln’s
(distorted) reasoning was this: “…without the institution of Slavery and the colored race as a basis, the war could not have an existence.”
(Talk about blaming the victim…)
Although Lincoln’s position eventually evolved into the Emancipation Proclamation, elements of his “Exodus” idea persisted for quite some time.
Resources
http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2014/09/lincoln_s_back_to_africa_solution.2.html
Copyright September 22, 2014 by Linda Van Slyke All Rights Reserved
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