Meet the Real Lincoln

“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political
equality of the white and black races,” said Lincoln in his opening speech at the Fourth Lincoln-Douglas debate,
Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858.

“I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold
office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that 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,” Lincoln continued, “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.“

Later during that same debate on that day, while suggesting ways that slavery might become extinct “in less than a
hundred years,” Lincoln declared: “I am not in favor of Negro citizenship.”

With the War Between the States raging, on August 14, 1862, President Lincoln in a speech to a “Negro Deputation”
at the White House said: “It is better for us both…to be separated.“

Lincoln told the gathered African-Americans that they should consider moving to colonies made up of freed slaves
outside the U.S. “There is,” he said, “an unwillingness on the part of our people, harsh as it may be, for you free
colored people to remain with us.” One place he recommended they consider moving is Liberia, in Africa.

“The place I am thinking about for a colony,” President Lincoln continued to the black leaders, “is in Central
America…. The country is a very excellent one for any people, and with great natural resources and advantages,
and especially because of the similarity of climate with your native soil, thus being suited to your physical
condition.“

Will Goodwin and Spielberg suggest that blacks make up 12 percent of America’s population today only because an
anti-black racist actor named John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln days after the War Between the States ended? Had Lincoln lived, would he have promoted the colonizing of virtually all freed slaves to Central America or back to the
African shores where fellow blacks and Moslem traders had chained and sold them or their ancestors as slaves?

The quotes above usually shock people who were taught from infancy to idolize Lincoln. So, too, does contemplating
Lincoln’s August 22, 1862, letter to abolitionist journalist Horace Greeley declaring that “My paramount object in
this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without
freeing any slave, I would do it….”

Lincoln explicitly endorsed the State of Illinois’ laws barring African Americans from voting, serving on juries,
holding office, or intermarrying with “white” Americans. According to his confidants he regularly used the word
“nigger” in private conversation and sometimes in speeches (this author apologizes for using the offensive “N” word
here, but it is the author’s intent not to cloak the reader from the intense reality underlying the truth that Abe Lincoln
was a bone-deep racist).

Abraham Lincoln, as early as 1852, gave a clear demonstration of his interest in colonization by quoting favorably in
one of his public utterances an oft-repeated statement of Henry Clay,—“There is a moral fitness in the idea of
returning to Africa her children, whose ancestors have been torn from her by the ruthless hand of fraud and
violence.” In popular parlance, however, Lincoln is not a colonizationist. He has become not only the Great
Emancipator but the Great Lover of the Negro and promoter of his welfare. He is thought of, popularly always, as
the champion of the race’s equality. A visit to some of our emancipation celebrations or Lincoln’s birthday
observances is sufficient to convince one of the prevalence of this sentiment. Yet, although Lincoln believed in the
destruction of slavery, he desired the complete separation of the whites and blacks.

Throughout his political career Lincoln persisted in believing in the colonization of the Negro . In the
Lincoln-Douglas debates the beginning of this idea may be seen. Lincoln said: “If all earthly power were given me, I
should not know what to do as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves and send
them to Liberia—to their own native land. But a moment’s reflection would convince me that, whatever of high hope
(as I think there is) there may be in this, in the long run its sudden execution is impossible. If they were all landed
there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money
enough in the world to carry them there in many times ten days. What then? Free them all and keep them among us
as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think that I would not hold one in slavery at any
rate, yet the point is not clear enough for me to denounce people upon. What next? Free them and make them
politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this, and if mine would, we well know that
those of the great mass of whites will not. Whether this feeling accords with sound judgment is not the sole
judgment, if indeed it is any part of it.”

A few years later in a speech in Springfield, Lincoln said: “The enterprise is a difficult one, but where there is a
will there is a way, and what colonization needs most is a hearty will. Will springs from the two elements of moral
sense and self-interest. Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and at the same time favorable to, or at
least not against our interests to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however
great the task may be.“