Mark Weber-Israel at 60: A Grim Balance Sheet

Israel at 60: A Grim Balance Sheet By Mark Weber An interview with the director of the Institute for Historical Review, conducted by the Mehr news agency, and published in theTehran Times, a leading English-language daily in Iran, May 14, 2008. Israel was established 60 years ago this month. Israelis are celebrating, but Arabs recall the state’s founding as the “Nakba,” or catastrophe. What’s your view? When Israel was established in May 1948, its leaders pledged that the new state would be a model of justice in the world – a “light unto the nations.” They told the world that they were founding a country in which, at long last, Jews would live in peace and security. They said that Israel would be a self-sufficient nation where Jews would prosper on the basis of their own labor, abilities and efforts. Israel’s leaders declared that they were creating a new society in which Jews would finally live as a “normal” people in a country of their own. Israel and its founding ideology, Zionism, was supposed to solve the centuries-old problem of tension between Jews and non-Jews. Although Israelis cite some impressive achievements over the past 60 years, the Zionist state has failed to achieve its proclaimed goals. Far from being a beacon of morality, it has deservedly earned a global reputation as an oppressive, self-righteous, arrogant and belligerent state. Israel was founded on terrorism, massacres, ethnic cleansing and the dispossession of its native Palestinian population. Even now it violates international law, inflicts a harsh collective punishment on the civilian population of Gaza, and continues to deny Palestinians their human and national rights. In accord with its Jewish supremacist ideology, Israel’s discrimination against non-Jews is systematic and institutional. It is the only country in the region that occupies territory of its neighbors, that refuses to define its borders, and which possesses a large and illegal arsenal of nuclear weapons. Even as a Jewish sanctuary, Israel cannot be regarded as a success. Jews are less safe and secure in Israel than almost anywhere else in the world. The great majority of Jews in the world have preferred not to live in “their” country. Israel has never been self-supporting. It has always required massive subsidies from the outside – above all from the United States. Total direct US aid to Israel has amounted to well over $140 billion (in 2003 dollars). In addition, Germany and other European states and companies have paid out many billions in “restitution,” and wealthy Jewish communities, especially in the US, have provided substantial financial assistance. Far from transforming Jews into a “normal” people, Israel and its Zionist ideology have highlighted and encouraged Jewish distinctiveness. Zionism holds that Jews around the world make up a separate nationality or people, and that Jews everywhere owe a primary loyalty to Israel and the world Jewish community, rather than to the countries of which they are citizens. And indeed, most Jews around the world express loyalty to Israel and the “Jewish people,” for example, through support for openly Zionist organizations. Why does the United States support Israel? President Harry Truman gave US diplomatic recognition to the new Israeli state immediately following its proclamation in May 1948. In doing so, he rejected the advice of nearly every American official who was responsible for US foreign policy. Secretary of State George C. Marshall angrily told Truman that recognizing Israel would put partisan political interests above America’s national interest. Loy Henderson, head of the State Department’s bureau for Middle East affairs, warned the President that US backing for the new Zionist state would be “contrary to the interests of the United States and will eventually involve us in international difficulties of so grave a character that the reaction throughout the world, as well as in this country, will be very strong.” Zionists, Henderson advised, “ignored such principles as self-determination and majority rule,” and instead embraced “the principle of a theocratic racial state.” He also warned that the establishment of a US-backed Zionist state “would guarantee that the Palestine problem would be permanent and still more complicated in the future.” Contrary to claims made by American and Israeli political leaders, US support for Israel has never been in America’s authentic national interest, nor has it been based on a commitment to democracy and freedom. Instead, US support for Israel has always been an expression of Jewish-Zionist power. America’s wealthy and well-organized Jewish community wields tremendous influence through its important role in the media, in political and cultural life, and, more directly, through massive donations to the election campaigns of politicians of both major political parties. The Jewish-Zionist grip has tightened over the years, and has reached a high point in the “neo-conservative” administration of George W. Bush. This is manifest above all in the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Although the motives are complex, concern for Israel’s interests was an essential factor in the White House decision to attack and subdue one of Israel’s greatest regional adversaries. Has American support for Israel been good for the United States? Just as perceptive Washington officials foresaw in 1948, America’s pro-Israel policy has proven terribly costly to the United States – in wasted billions of dollars, in lost international credibility and standing, and in lives squandered for the interests of a foreign state. In the years ahead, the price paid by Americans for their nation’s commitment to Israel will undoubtedly rise. The US invasion of Iraq alone has been a calamity for America. It has cost thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. Around the world, it has generated unmatched distrust and hostility toward the US. In Arab and Muslim countries, it has fueled intense hatred of the United States, and has brought many new recruits to the ranks of anti-American terrorists. One important reason why Americans are unable to effectively offset the power of the organized Jewish community is that the US population lacks cultural, religious, ethnic or racial cohesion, and thus any common basis on which to rally and organize. In a country of individualists whose concerns center on themselves and their families and friends, the power of the focused and well-organized Jewish community is immense. Given these realities, any fundamental shift in US Middle East policy is unlikely in the foreseeable future. What is Israel’s future? In spite of its impressive military arsenal, and virtually unlimited support from the United States, Israel’s long-term prospects are not good. Although the US will continue to be the world’s foremost military, financial and economic power for the foreseeable future, and will continue to provide Israel with crucial financial, military and diplomatic support, the relative global power of the US is steadily declining. Around the world, including the United States, loathing of Israel is widespread and steadily mounting. In Asia and Europe, political and business leaders increasingly regard Israel and its policies as harmful to global order and stability. Regional demographic trends are also important. In Israel and its occupied territories, the Arab population is growing at a faster rate than the Jewish population, and within 20 years non-Jews will almost certainly be the majority. Very few persons in 1985 foresaw the collapse six years later of the mighty and seemingly solid Soviet Union. But its end was predictable because it was an essentially artificial entity based on an inhumane and impractical ideology. Although Israel is a formidable military power, it is an aberrant, crisis-prone state, artificially kept alive with outside support, and based on an unworkable ideology. Given its artificial character and built-in problems, as well as global political-economic and regional demographic trends, Israel’s future in the next 60 years is not bright.

Mark Weber-The 'Good War' Myth of World War Two

The 'Good War' Myth of World War Two By Mark Weber World War II was not only the greatest military conflict in history, it was also America's most important twentieth-century war. It brought profound and permanent social, governmental and cultural changes in the United States, and has had a great impact on how Americans regard themselves and their country’s place in the world. This global clash -- with the United States and the other “Allies” on one side, and Nazi Germany, imperialist Japan and the other “Axis” countries on the other -- is routinely portrayed in the US as the “good war,” a morally clear-cut conflict between Good and Evil. / 1 In the view of British author and historian Paul Addison, “the war served a generation of Britons and Americans as a myth which enshrined their essential purity, a parable of good and evil.” / 2   Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme wartime Commander of American forces in Europe, and later US president for eight years, called the fight against Nazi Germany “the Great Crusade.” /  3  And President Bill Clinton said that in World War II the United States “saved the world from tyranny.” / 4  Americans are also told that this was an unavoidable and necessary war, one that the US had to wage to keep from being enslaved by cruel and ruthless dictators. Whatever doubts or misgivings Americans may have had about their country's role in Iraq , Vietnam , or other overseas conflicts, most accept that the sacrifices made by the US in World War II, especially in defeating Hitler’s Germany , were entirely justified and worthwhile. For more than 60 years, this view has been reinforced in countless motion pictures, on television, by teachers, in textbooks, and by political leaders. The reverential way that the US role in the war has been portrayed moved Bruce Russett, professor of political science at Yale University , to write: / 5 “Participation in the war against Hitler remains almost wholly sacrosanct, nearly in the realm of theology … Whatever criticisms of twentieth-century American policy are put forth, United States participation in World War II remains almost entirely immune. According to our national mythology, that was a `good war,’ one of the few for which the benefits clearly outweighed the costs. Except for a few books published shortly after the war and quickly forgotten, this orthodoxy has been essentially unchallenged.” How accurate is this hallowed portrayal of America ’s role in World War II? As we shall see, it does not hold up under close examination. First, a look at the outbreak of war in Europe . When the leaders of Britain and France declared war against Germany on September 3, 1939, they announced that they were doing so because German military forces had attacked Poland , thereby threatening Polish independence. In going to war against Germany , the British and French leaders transformed what was then a geographically limited, two-day-old clash between Germany and Poland into a continental, European-wide conflict. It soon became obvious that the British-French justification for going to war was not sincere. When Soviet Russian forces attacked Poland from the East two weeks later, ultimately taking even more Polish territory than did Germany , the leaders of Britain and France did not declare war against the Soviet Union . And although Britain and France went to war supposedly to protect Polish independence, at the end of the fighting in 1945 – after five and a half years of horrific struggle, death and suffering – Poland was still not free, but instead was entirely under the brutal rule of Soviet Russia. Sir Basil Liddell Hart, an outstanding twentieth-century British military historian, put it this way: / 6 “The Western Allies entered the war with a two-fold object. The immediate purpose was to fulfill their promise to preserve the independence of Poland . The ultimate purpose was to remove a potential menace to themselves, and thus ensure their own security. In the outcome, they failed in both purposes. Not only did they fail to prevent Poland from being overcome in the first place, and partitioned between Germany and Russia , but after six years of war which ended in apparent victory they were forced to acquiesce in Russia ’s domination of Poland – abandoning their pledges to the Poles who had fought on their side.” In 1940, shortly after he was named prime minister, Winston Churchill spelled out, in two often quoted speeches, his reasons for continuing Britain ’s war against Germany . In his famous “Blood, Sweat and Tears” speech, the great British wartime leader said that unless Germany was defeated, there would be “no survival for the British empire, no survival for all that the British empire has stood for…” A few weeks later, in his “Finest Hour” address, Churchill said: “Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire.” / 7 How strange those words sound today. Even though Britain supposedly “won,” or at least was on the winning side in the war, the once-mighty British empire has vanished into history. No British leader today would dare defend the often brutal record of British imperialism, including killing and bombing in order to maintain exploitative colonial rule over millions in Asia and Africa . Nor would any British leader today dare to justify killing people in order to uphold “Christian civilization,” not least for fear of offending Britain ’s large and rapidly growing non-Christian population. Americans like to believe that “good guys” win, and “bad guys” lose, and, in international affairs, that “good” countries win wars, and “bad” countries lose them. In keeping with this view, Americans are encouraged to believe that the US role in defeating Germany and Japan demonstrated the righteousness of the “ American Way ,” and the superiority of our country’s form of government and society. But if there is any validity to this view, it would be more accurate to say that the war’s outcome showed the righteousness of the “ Soviet Way ,” and the superiority of the Soviet Communist form of society and government. Indeed, for decades that was a proud claim of Moscow ’s leaders. As one official Soviet history book, published in the 1970s, put it:  “The war demonstrated the superiority of the Soviet socialist social and state system … The war further demonstrated the social and political unity of the Soviet people … Once again it underscored the significance of the guiding and organizing role of the Communist Party in socialist society. The Communist Party consolidated millions of people in their fight against the fascist aggressors … The selfless dedication demonstrated by the Communist Party during the war years further solidified the trust, respect and love it enjoys among the Soviet people.” / 8 In fact, Hitler’s Germany was defeated, first and foremost, by the Soviet Union . Some 70-80 percent of German combat forces were destroyed by the Soviet military on the Eastern front. The D-Day landing in France by American and British forces, which is often portrayed in the United States as a critically important military blow against Nazi Germany, was launched in June 1944 -- that is, less than a year before the end of the war in Europe, and months after the great Soviet military victories at Stalingrad and Kursk, which were decisive in Germany’s defeat. / 9 What were the American goals in World War II, and how successful was the US in achieving them? In 1941 President Franklin Roosevelt, together with British prime minister Winston Churchill, issued a formal declaration of Allied war aims, the much-publicized “Atlantic Charter.” In it, the United States and Britain declared that they sought “no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned,” that they would “respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of governments under which they will live,” and that they would strive “to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them.” It soon became apparent, though, that this solemn pledge of freedom and self-government for “all peoples” was little more than empty propaganda. / 10  This is hardly surprising, given that America’s two most important military allies in the war were Great Britain and the Soviet Union – that is, the world’s foremost imperialist power, and the world’s cruelest tyranny. At the outbreak of war in 1939, Britain ruled over the largest colonial empire in history, holding more millions of people against their will than any regime before or since. This vast empire included what is now India , Pakistan , Bangladesh , Malaysia , Nigeria , Ghana , Kenya , Uganda , Tanzania , and South Africa . America 's other great wartime ally, the Soviet Union, was, by any objective measure, the most tyrannical or oppressive regime of its time, and a vastly more cruel despotism than Hitler's Germany . As historians acknowledge, the victims of Soviet dictator Stalin greatly outnumber those who perished as a result of Hitler’s policies. Robert Conquest, a prominent scholar of twentieth century Russian history, estimates the number of those who lost their lives as a consequence of Stalin’s policies as “no fewer than 20 million.” / 11 During the war the United States helped substantially to maintain Stalin’s tyranny, and to aid the Soviet Union in oppressing additional millions of Europeans, while also helping Britain to maintain or re-establish its imperial rule over many millions in Asia and Africa . / 12 Paul Fussell, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who served in World War II as a US Army lieutenant, wrote in his acclaimed book Wartime that “the Allied war has been sanitized and romanticized almost beyond recognition by the sentimental, the loony patriotic, the ignorant and the bloodthirsty.” / 13 An important feature of this “sanitized” view is the belief that whereas the Nazi German regime was responsible for many terrible war crimes and atrocities, the Allies, and especially the United States , waged war humanely. In fact, the record of Allied misdeeds is a long one, and includes the British-American bombing of German cities, a terroristic campaign that took the lives of more than half a million civilians, the genocidal “ethnic cleansing” of millions of civilians in eastern and central Europe, and the large-scale postwar mistreatment of German prisoners. / 14 After “forty months of war duty and five major battles” in which Edgar L. Jones served as “an ambulance driver, a merchant seaman, an Army historian, and a war correspondent,” he wrote an article dispelling some myths about the Americans’ role in the war. “What kind of war do civilians suppose we fought, anyway?,” he told readers of The Atlantic monthly. “We shot prisoners in cold blood, wiped out hospitals, strafed lifeboats, killed or mistreated enemy civilians, finished off the enemy wounded, tossed the dying into a hole with the dead, and in the Pacific boiled the flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments for sweethearts, or carved their bones into letter-openers.” / 15 Shortly after the end of the war, the victorious powers put Germany ’s wartime leaders on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. In doing so, the US and its allies held German leaders to a standard that they did not respect themselves. US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson was not the only high-ranking American official to acknowledge, at least in private, that the claim of unique Allied righteousness was mere pretense. In a letter to the President, written while he was serving as the chief US prosecutor at the great Nuremberg trial of 1945-1946, Jackson acknowledged that the Allies “have done or are doing some of the very things we are prosecuting the Germans for. The French are so violating the Geneva Convention in the treatment of [German] prisoners of war that our command is taking back prisoners sent to them [for forced labor in France ]. We are prosecuting plunder and our Allies are practicing it. We say aggressive war is a crime and one of our allies asserts sovereignty over the Baltic States based on no title except conquest.” / 16 At the conclusion of the Nuremberg trial of 1945-1946, the respected British weekly The Economist cited Soviet crimes, and then added, “Nor should the Western world console itself that the Russians alone stand condemned at the bar of the Allies' own justice.” The Economist editorial went on: “… Among crimes against humanity stands the offence of the indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations. Can the Americans who dropped the atom bomb and the British who destroyed the cities of western Germany plead ‘not guilty’ on this count? Crimes against humanity also include the mass expulsion of populations. Can the Anglo-Saxon leaders who at Potsdam condoned the expulsion of millions of Germans from their homes hold themselves completely innocent?... The nations sitting in judgment [at Nuremberg ] have so clearly proclaimed themselves exempt from the law which they have administered.” / 17 Another popular American assumption is that this country’s enemies in World War II were all non-democratic dictatorships. In fact, on each side there were regimes that were repressive or dictatorial, as well as governments that had broad public support. Many of the countries allied with the US were headed by governments that were oppressive, dictatorial, or otherwise non-democratic. / 18  Finland , a democratic republic, was an important wartime partner of Hitler’s Germany . In crass violation of their own solemnly proclaimed principles, the US , British and Soviet statesmen disposed of tens of millions of people with no regard for their wishes. The deceit and cynicism of the Allied leaders was perhaps most blatant in the infamous British-Soviet “percentages agreement” to divide up South Eastern Europe . At a meeting with Stalin in 1944, Churchill proposed that in Romania the Soviets should have 90 percent influence or authority, and 75 percent in Bulgaria , and that Britain should have 90 percent influence or control in Greece . In Hungary and Yugoslavia , the British leader suggested, each should have 50 percent. Churchill wrote all this out on a piece of paper, which he pushed across to Stalin, who made a check mark on it and passed it back. Churchill then said, “Might it not be thought rather cynical if it seemed we had disposed of these issues, so fateful to millions of people, in such an off-hand manner? Let us burn the paper.” “No, you keep it,” replied Stalin. / 19 To solidify the Allied wartime coalition – which was formally known as the “United Nations” -- President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Churchill, and Soviet premier Stalin met together on two occasions: in November 1943 at Tehran , in occupied Iran , and in February 1945 in Yalta , in Soviet Crimea. The three Allied leaders accomplished what they accused the Axis leaders of Germany , Italy and Japan of conspiring to achieve: world domination. During a 1942 meeting in Washington , President Roosevelt candidly told the Soviet foreign minister that “the United States , England and Russia , and perhaps China , should police the world and enforce disarmament [of all others] by inspection.” / 20 To secure the global rule of the victorious powers after the war, the “Big Three” Allied leaders established the United Nations organization to serve as a permanent world police force. Once Germany and Japan were defeated, though, the US and the Soviet Union squared off against each other, which made it impossible for the UN to function as President Roosevelt had intended. While the US and Soviet Union each sought for decades to secure hegemony in its own sphere of influence, the two “super powers” were also rivals in a decades-long struggle for global supremacy. In his book, A People’s History of the United States, historian Howard Zinn wrote:  / 21 “The victors were the Soviet Union and the United States (also England , France and Nationalist China, but they were weak). Both these countries now went to work – without swastikas, goose-stepping, or officially declared racism, but under the cover of ‘socialism’ on the one side, and `democracy’ on the other, to carve out their own empires of influence. They proceeded to share and contest with one another the domination of the world, to build military machines far greater than the Fascist countries had built, to control the destinies of more countries than Hitler, Mussolini, and Japan had been able to. They also acted to control their own populations, each country with its own techniques – crude in the Soviet Union, sophisticated in the United States – to make their rule secure.” The United States officially entered World War II after the Japanese attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941. Until then, the US was officially a neutral country, and most Americans wanted to keep out of the war that was then raging in Europe and Asia . In spite of the country’s neutral status, President Roosevelt and his administration, together with much of the US media, prodded the American people into supporting war against Germany . A large-scale propaganda campaign was mounted to persuade Americans that Hitler and his Nazi “henchmen” or “hordes” were doing everything in their power to take over and “enslave” the entire world, and that war with Hitler’s Germany was inevitable. As part of this effort, the President and other high-ranking American officials broadcast fantastic lies about supposed plans by Hitler and his government to attack the United States and impose a global dictatorship. / 22 President Roosevelt’s record of lies is acknowledged even by his admirers. Among those who have sought to justify his policy is the eminent American historian Thomas A. Bailey, who wrote:  / 23 “Franklin Roosevelt repeatedly deceived the American people during the period before Pearl Harbor ... He was like the physician who must tell the patient lies for the patient's own good ... The country was overwhelmingly noninterventionist to the very day of Pearl Harbor, and an overt attempt to lead the people into war would have resulted in certain failure and an almost certain ousting of Roosevelt in 1940, with a complete defeat of his ultimate aims.” Professor Bailey went on to offer a cynical view of American democracy: “A president who cannot entrust the people with the truth betrays a certain lack of faith in the basic tenets of democracy. But because the masses are notoriously shortsighted and generally cannot see danger until it is at their throats, our statesmen are forced to deceive them into an awareness of their own long-run interests. This is clearly what Roosevelt had to do, and who shall say that posterity will not thank him for it?” As part of the US government’s campaign to incite war, President Roosevelt in 1941 ordered the US Navy to help British forces in attacking German vessels in the Atlantic .  This was reinforced by a presidential “shoot on sight” order to the US Navy against German and Italian ships. Roosevelt ’s goal was to provoke an “incident” that would provide a pretext for open war. Hitler, for his part, was anxious to avoid conflict with the United States . The German leader responded to the US government’s blatantly illegal provocations by ordering his navy commanders to avoid clashes with US ships. / 24 Also in crass violation of international law, the officially neutral US government provided massive “Lend Lease” aid to Germany ’s enemies, especially Britain and its empire, as well as to Soviet Russia. Two prominent American historians, Allan Nevins and Henry Steele Commager, noted that: “This [1941 “Lend Lease”] measure was clearly unneutral, but the United States , committed now to the defeat of Germany , was not to be stayed by the niceties of international law. Other equally unneutral acts followed – the seizure of Axis shipping, the freezing of Axis funds, the transfer of tankers to Britain, the occupation of Greenland and, later, of Iceland, the extension of lend-lease to the new ally, Russia, and … the presidential order to `shoot on sight’ any enemy submarines.” / 25 In the view of British historian J.F.C. Fuller, President Roosevelt “left no stone unturned to provoke Hitler to declare war on the very people to whom he so ardently promised peace. He provided Great Britain with American destroyers, he landed American troops in Iceland, and he set out to patrol the Atlantic seaways in order to safeguard British convoys; all of which were acts of war … In spite of his manifold enunciations to keep the United States out of the war, he was bent on provoking some incident which would bring them into it.” / 26 So belligerent and unlawful were the Roosevelt administration’s policies that Admiral Harold R. Stark, chief of US naval operations, acknowledged in a confidential September 1941 memorandum for the President: “He [Hitler] has every excuse in the world to declare war on us now, if he were of a mind to.” / 27 Across Europe and Asia , the Second World War brought mass destruction, death to tens of millions of men, women and children, and great suffering to many more. Americans, though, were spared the horrors of large-scale bombing, combat fighting on their home soil, or occupation by foreign armies. At the end of the war the United States was the only major nation not shattered in the global conflict. It emerged as the world’s preeminent economic, military, and financial power. For the US , the half-century from 1945 to the mid-1990s was an era of spectacular economic growth and unmatched global stature. Lewis H. Lapham, author and for years editor of Harper’s magazine, put it this way: “In 1945, the United States inherited the earth … At the end of World War II, what was left of Western civilization passed into the American account. The war had also prompted the country to invent a miraculous economic machine that seemed to grant as many wishes as were asked of it. The continental United States had escaped the plague of war, and so it was easy enough for the heirs to believe that they had been anointed by God.” / 28 But were Americans really better off than if they had stayed out of World War II? Among those who has not thought so is Prof. Bruce Russett, who wrote: / 29 “American participation in World War II had very little effect on the essential structure of international politics thereafter, and probably did little either to advance the material welfare of most Americans or to make the nation secure from foreign military threats … In fact, most Americans probably would have been no worse off, and possibly a little better, if the United States had never become a belligerent… “I personally find it hard to develop a very emphatic preference for Stalinist Russia over Hitlerite Germany … In cold-blooded realist terms, Nazism as an ideology was almost certainly less dangerous to the United States than is Communism.” Although Third Reich Germany and imperial Japan were destroyed, the United States and Britain failed to achieve the political goals proclaimed by their leaders. In August 1945, the prestigious British weekly, The Economist, noted: “At the end of a mighty war fought to defeat Hitlerism, the Allies are making a Hitlerian peace. This is the real measure of their failure.” / 30 Among those who were not happy about the war’s outcome was British historian Basil Liddell Hart, who wrote: “… All the effort that was put into the destruction of Hitlerite Germany resulted in a Europe so devastated and weakened in the process that its power of resistance was much reduced in the face of a fresh and greater menace – and Britain , in common with her European neighbours, had become a poor dependent of the United States . These are the hard facts underlying the victory that was so hopefully pursued and so painfully achieved – after the colossal weight of both Russia and America had been drawn into the scales against Germany . The outcome dispelled the persistent popular illusion that `victory’ spelt peace. It confirmed the warning of past experience that victory is a `mirage in the desert’ – the desert that a long war creates, when waged with modern weapons and unlimited methods.” / 31 Even Winston Churchill had misgivings about the war’s outcome. Three years after the end of the fighting, he wrote: “The human tragedy [of the war] reaches its climax in the fact that after all the exertions and sacrifices of hundreds of millions of people and of the victories of the Righteous Cause, we have still not found Peace or Security, and that we lie in the grip of even worse perils than those we have surmounted.” / 32 At the end of the war, Europe for the first time in its history was no longer master of its own destiny, but was instead under the domination of two great outer European powers, the United States and the Soviet Union , which for political and ideological reasons had no special interest in, or concern for, European culture or Western civilization. /  33 In the view of Charles A. Lindbergh, the world-famous author and aviator, the war was a great setback for the West. Twenty-five years after the end of the conflict, he wrote: / 34 “We won the war in a military sense; but in a broader sense it seems to me we lost it, for our Western civilization is less respected and secure than it was before. In order to defeat Germany and Japan we supported the still greater menaces of Russia and China – which now confront us in a nuclear-weapon era. Poland was not saved … Much of our Western culture was destroyed. We lost the genetic heredity formed through aeons in many million lives … It is alarmingly possible that World War II marks the beginning of our Western civilization’s breakdown, as it already marks the breakdown of the greatest empire ever built by man.” The outcome of the US and British role in the war moved British historian J.F.C. Fuller to write: / 35 “What persuaded them [Roosevelt and Churchill] to adopt so fatal a policy? We hazard to reply – blind hatred! Their hearts ran away with their heads and their emotions befogged their reason. For them the war was not a political conflict in the normal meaning of the words, it was a Manichean contest between Good and Evil, and to carry their people along with them they unleashed a vitriolic propaganda against the devil they had invoked.” Even after the passage of so many years, this hatred has endured. American schools, the US mass media, government agencies and political leaders have for decades carried on a campaign of emotion-laden, one-sided propaganda to uphold the national mythology of World War II. How a nation views the past is not a trivial or merely academic exercise. Our perspective on history profoundly shapes our actions in the present, often with grave consequences for the future. Drawing conclusions from our understanding of the past, we make or support policies that greatly impact many lives. The familiar American portrayal of World War II, and the “good war” mythology of the US role in it, is not merely bad history. It has helped greatly to support and justify a series of arrogant US foreign policy adventures, with harmful consequences for both America and the world. “World War II has warped our view of how we look at things today,” said US Navy rear admiral Gene R. LaRoque, who served in 13 major battles during the war. “We see things in terms of that war, which in a sense was a good war. But the twisted memory of it encourages the men of my generation to be willing, almost eager, to use military force anywhere in the world.”  / 36 Since 1945, American presidents have repeatedly sought to justify US military actions in foreign countries by recalling the “good war” and, in particular, the US role in defeating Germany . During the 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson sought to win support for his Vietnam war policy with historically false portrayals of World War II and Hitler’s Germany . / 37 This moved historian Murray Rothbard to write in 1968: / 38 “ …World War II is the last war myth left, the myth that the Old Left clings to in pure desperation: the myth that here, at least, was a good war, here was a war in which America was in the right. World War II is the war thrown into our faces by the war-making establishment, as it tries, in each war that we face, to wrap itself in the mantle of good and righteous World War II.” In recent years, American political leaders have tried to gain support for war against Iraq and Iran by drawing historical parallels between Hitler and the leaders of those two Middle East countries. Many Americans are understandably outraged by the deceit and falsehoods of President George W. Bush and his administration in seeking public support for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. But as we have seen, presidential deception to justify war did not start with him. Americans who express admiration for the US role in World War II, and for Franklin Roosevelt’s presidential leadership, have little moral right to complain when presidents follow his example and lead the country into war by breaking the law, subverting the Constitution, and lying to the people. If the history of war and conflict teaches us anything, it is the danger of arrogance and hubris – that is, the danger of going to war because a nation’s leaders are convinced of their own righteousness, or have persuaded themselves and the public that a foreign country should be attacked because its government or society is not merely alien, hostile or threatening, but “evil.” This is perhaps the most harmful legacy of America ’s national mythology about World War II -- the notion that worthwhile or justifiable wars are fought against countries headed by supposedly “evil” regimes. And it is this very outlook that moved President George W. Bush to refer to his “war on terrorism” as a “crusade,” and, in a major speech, to proclaim a US foreign policy dedicated to “ending tyranny in the world.” / 39 A nation should go to war only after prudent consideration, after carefully weighing the possible consequences, and only for the most compelling of reasons, after all other alternatives have been exhausted, and as a last resort. This is especially true given the awesome destructive power of modern weaponry, and because – as World War II , the “Good War,” so tragically attests -- wars rarely turn out the way anyone expects. About the Author Mark Weber is director of the Institute for Historical Review. He studied history at the University of Illinois (Chicago), the University of Munich, Portland State University and Indiana University (M.A., 1977). This article was presented as a lecture at an IHR meeting in Costa Mesa, California, on May 24, 2008. End Notes  1. Studs Terkel, “The Good War” (New York: Pantheon, 1984), p. vi. 2. P. Fussell, Wartime (1989), pp. 164-165.Also quoted there by Fussell is Eric Severeid, an influential American journalist and commentator, who wrote that the war “absolutely” was a “contest between good and evil.” 3. Eisenhower declaration of June 6, 1944, issued in connection with the D-Day invasion. 4. Clinton ’s second inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1997. See: M. Weber, “The Danger of Historical Lies: President Clinton's Distortion of History,” The Journal of Historical Review, May-June 1997. http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-2_Weber.html ) 5.  B. M. Russett, No Clear and Present Danger (1972), pp. 12, 17. 6. Basil H. Liddell Hart, History of the Second World War (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1971), p. 3. 7. Churchill speeches of May 13, 1940, and June 18, 1940. 8. K. Gusev, V. Naumov, The USSR : A Short History (Moscow: Progress, 1976), p. 239. 9. N. Davies, No Simple Victory (2007), pp. 24, 25, 276, 484-485; John Erickson, The Road to Berlin (Yale Univ. Press, 1999), p. ix (preface); Soviet losses in the three-week Berlin offensive of April 16 to May 8, 1945, it’s been estimated, were greater than the total of American dead in the Second World War, and greater than the losses of the Western allies in the whole of 1945. H. P. Willmott, The Great Crusade: A New Complete History of the Second World War (New York: 1990), p. 452; In the view of historian John Lukacs: “Their [the Soviet Russians’] resistance and victory over the Germans was their greatest – no, their onlygreat – achievement during the seventy-four years of Soviet Communism.” J. Lukacs, The End of the Twentieth Century and the End of the Modern Age (New York: 1993), p. 55. 10.  British historian J. F. C. Fuller called the Atlantic Charter “first class propaganda, and probably the biggest hoax in history.” J. F. C. Fuller, A Military History of the Western World , Vol. 3 (New York: DaCapo, 1987), p. 453. 11. R. Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment (Oxford Univ. Press, 1990), p. 48. See also: N. Davies, No Simple Victory(2007), pp. 64-67 12.  A few years after the end of the war, former US President Herbert Hoover recalled his critical view of Roosevelt’s policy of aiding the Soviet Union: “In June 1941, when Britain was safe from German invasion due to Hitler's diversion to attack Stalin, I urged that the gargantuan jest of all history would be our giving aid to the Soviet government. I urged that we should allow those two dictators to exhaust each other. I stated that the result of our assistance would be to spread Communism over the whole world. … The consequences have proved that I was right.” Cited by: Scott Horton, “Saving England Wasn’t Worth It,” June 2007. ( http://www.antiwar.com/horton/?articleid=11213 ) 13. P. Fussell, Wartime (New York: 1989), p. ix (preface) 14. See, for example: Max Hastings, Bomber Command (New York: 1979); Giles MacDonogh, After the Reich (2007); N. Davies,No Simple Victory (2007), pp. 67-72; Alfred M. de Zayas, The German Expellees: Victims in War and Peace (New York: 1993); Frederick J. P. Veale, Advance to Barbarism (IHR, 1993); Jörg Friedrich, The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945(Columbia University Press, 2006); Ralph F. Keeling, Gruesome Harvest (Chicago: 1947) 15. Edgar L. Jones, “One War is Enough,” The Atlantic, Feb. 1946. ( http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/nonatlserv.shtml ). Also quoted in P. Fussell, Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Other Essays (New York: 1988), pp. 50-51. 16. Jackson letter to Truman, Oct. 12, 1945. Quoted in: Robert E. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg (New York: 1983), p. 68. See also: James McMillan, Five Men at Nuremberg ( London : 1985), pp. 67, 173-174, 244-245, 380, 414-415. 17. “The Nuremberg Judgment,” editorial, The Economist (London), Oct. 5, 1946. Quoted in: M. Weber, “The Nuremberg Trials and the Holocaust,” The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1992, p. 176. (http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v12/v12p167_Webera.html) 18.  In addition to the Soviet Union and the puppet states under British colonial rule, those countries included China , Brazil , Cuba , and Egypt . 19. Martin Gilbert, Road to Victory, Winston Churchill 1941-45, Vol. VII  (Houghton Mifflin, 1986), pp. 992-994. Source cited: W. Churchill, The Second World War. Vol. 6, Triumph and Tragedy ( London , 1954), p. 198. 20. Warren F. Kimball, The Juggler: Franklin Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman (Princeton Univ. Press, 1991), p. 85 and p. 235 (n. 6). Source cited: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1942, vol. III, pp. 573 f. 21. H. Zinn, A People’s History of the United States ( New York : HarperCollins/ Perennial, 2001), pp. 424-425. 22. In his nationally broadcast address of Dec. 29, 1940, President Roosevelt told Americans that “the Nazi masters of Germany ” were seeking “to enslave the whole of Europe, and then to use the resources of Europe to dominate the rest of the world.” In his address of May 27, 1941, Roosevelt said that “the Nazis” sought “world domination.” On Oct. 25, 1941, US Assistant Secretary of State Adolph Berle told Americans that Hitler and the Nazis “planned to conquer the entire world.” Two days later, the President issued perhaps his most extravagant claim of supposed Nazi plans to take over the world. See: M. Weber, “ Roosevelt 's `Secret Map’ Speech,” The Journal of Historical Review, Spring 1985. See also: Thomas A. Bailey and P. Ryan,Hitler vs. Roosevelt (1979), esp. pp. 199-203; Ted Morgan, FDR: A Biography (New York: 1985), pp. 602-603;       “From the captured German archives, there is no evidence to support the President’s claims that Hitler contemplated any offensive against the western hemisphere, and until America entered the war there is abundant evidence that this was the one thing he wished to avert.” J. F. C. Fuller, A Military History of the Western World, Vol. 3 (New York: DaCapo, 1987), p. 629. 23. T. A. Bailey, The Man in the Street (1948), pp. 11-13. Quoted in: W. H. Chamberlin, America’s Second Crusade, p. 123. See also: Joseph P. Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill, 1939-1941 (New York: 1976), pp. 9, 10, 420, 421. 24.  C. Tansill, Back Door to War (1952), pp. 606-615; Joseph P. Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill, 1939-1941 (New York: 1976), pp. 298, 323, 340, 344, 392, 418, 419, 421; T. A. Bailey and P. B. Ryan, Hitler vs. Roosevelt (1979), pp. 166,  265, 268; Ted Morgan, FDR: A Biography (1985), pp. 589, 601; Frederic R. Sanborn, “Roosevelt is Frustrated in Europe,” in H. E. Barnes, ed.,Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (1993), pp. 219-221; James McMillan, Five Men at Nuremberg (London: 1985), pp. 173-174; W. H. Chamberlin, America’s Second Crusade (1950), pp. 124-147. 25. Allan Nevins, Henry Steele Commager, A Pocket History of the United States (New York: Washington Square Press, 1986), p. 433. 26. J. F. C. Fuller, A Military History of the Western World , Vol. 3 (New York: DaCapo, 1987), p. 416 27. Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948), p. 380. 28. Lewis H. Lapham, “ America ’s Foreign Policy: A Rake’s Progress,” Harper’s, March 1979. Quoted in: Studs Terkel, “The Good War” (New York: 1984), p. 8. 29. B. M. Russett, No Clear and Present Danger (1972), pp. 19, 20, 42. 30.   The Economist ( London ), August 11, 1945. Quoted in: J.F.C. Fuller, A Military History of the Western World , Vol. 3 (New York: DaCapo, 1987), p. 631. 31. Basil H. Liddell Hart, History of the Second World War (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1971), p. 3. 32. W. Churchill, The Gathering Storm ( Boston : 1948), pp. iv-v (preface). 33. H. P. Willmott, The Great Crusade: A New Complete History of the Second World War (New York: The Free Press, 1990), pp. 102-103, 474 , 476; See also: F. P. Yockey, Imperium (Noontide Press, 2000).  34. Charles A. Lindbergh, The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh  (New York: 1970), pp. xiv-xv;   Donald Day, for years a correspondent in central Europe for the Chicago Tribune, was even more emphatic in viewing an Allied victory as catastrophic for Europe and the West. “Speaking as an American and as a newspaperman of 15 years experience who knows something about both the United States and Europe,” he wrote in early 1943, “I think an American control and administration of Europe would be just as destructive and ruinous as Soviet control. Both would be really Jewish control.” Donald Day, Onward Christian Soldiers (Noontide Press, 2002), p. 168. 35.  J. F. C. Fuller, A Military History of the Western World, Vol. 3 (New York: DaCapo, 1987), p. 631. 36. Studs Terkel, “The Good War” (1984), p. 193. 37. President Johnson repeatedly compared the North Vietnamese leadership to Hitler to justify the use of American military power in Southeast Asia . At a news conference on July 28, 1965, for example, he said that “the lessons of history” showed that “surrender” in Vietnam would not bring peace. “We learned from Hitler at Munich ,” he said, “that success only feeds the appetite of aggression. The battle will be renewed in one country and then another country…” 38. Murray N. Rothbard , “Harry Elmer Barnes, RIP,” Left and Right, 1968. (http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard165.html ) 39. George W. Bush, Inaugural address, Jan. 20, 2005. “So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in the world.” For Further Reading Michael C. C. Adams, The Best War Ever: America and World War II (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1994). Thomas A. Bailey, Paul B. Ryan, Hitler vs. Roosevelt : The Undeclared Naval War (New York: The Free Press, 1979). Nicholson Baker, Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization ( New York : Simon & Schuster, 2008) Harry Elmer Barnes, ed., Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (Institute for Historical Review, 1993) Patrick J. Buchanan, Churchill, Hitler and `The Unnecessary War’: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World ( New York : Crown , 2008). William H. Chamberlain, America’s Second Crusade ( Chicago : 1950) Benjamin Colby, ‘Twas a Famous Victory (Arlington House, 1975) George N. Crocker, Roosevelt’s Road to Russia (Regnery, 1961) Norman Davies, No Simple Victory: World War II in Europe, 1939-1945 ( New York : Viking, 2007) Alfred M. de Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam: The Expulsion of the Germans from the East (University of Nebraska, 1989) Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War (New York: 1989). “ Germany ’s Declaration of War Against the United States: Hitler’s Reichstag Speech of December 11, 1941,” The Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1988-89. ( http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v08/v08p389_Hitler.html  ) Max Hastings, Bomber Command (New York: 1979) Robert Higgs, “Truncating the Antecedents: How Americans Have Been Misled about World War II.” March 18, 2008 (http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs77.html ) Giles MacDonogh, After the Reich: The Brutal History of Allied Occupation (Basic Books, 2007) Robert Nisbet, Roosevelt and Stalin: The Failed Courtship ( London : 1989) Amos Perlmutter, FDR & Stalin: A Not So Grand Alliance , 1943-1945 (University of Missouri Press, 1993) Bruce M. Russett, No Clear and Present Danger: A Skeptical View of the U.S. Entry into World War II (New York: Harper & Row, 1972) Michel Sturdza, The Suicide of Europe ( Boston : 1968) Charles C. Tansill, Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy, 1933-1941 ( Chicago : 1952) Studs Terkel, “The Good War”: An Oral History of World War Two (New York: Pantheon, 1984) Nikolai Tolstoy, Stalin’s Secret War (New York: 1981) F. J. P. Veale, Advance to Barbarism (Institute for Historical Review, 1993) Mark Weber, “ Roosevelt 's 'Secret Map' Speech,” The Journal of Historical Review, Spring 1985. (http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p125_Weber.html )

Abraham Lincoln & the Issue of Race

Institute for Historical Review The 'Great Emancipator' and the Issue of Race Abraham Lincoln's Program of Black Resettlement By Robert MorganMany Americans think of Abraham Lincoln, above all, as the president who freed the slaves. Immortalized as the "Great Emancipator," he is widely regarded as a champion of black freedom who supported social equality of the races, and who fought the American Civil War (1861-1865) to free the slaves. While it is true that Lincoln regarded slavery as an evil and harmful institution, it also true, as this paper will show, that he shared the conviction of most Americans of his time, and of many prominent statesmen before and after him, that blacks could not be assimilated into white society. He rejected the notion of social equality of the races, and held to the view that blacks should be resettled abroad. As President, he supported projects to remove blacks from the United States. Early Experiences In 1837, at the age of 28, the self-educated Lincoln was admitted to practice law in Illinois. In at least one case, which received considerable attention at the time, he represented a slave-owner. Robert Matson, Lincoln's client, each year brought a crew of slaves from his plantation in Kentucky to a farm he owned in Illinois for seasonal work. State law permitted this, provided that the slaves did not remain in Illinois continuously for a year. In 1847, Matson brought to the farm his favorite mulatto slave, Jane Bryant (wife of his free, black overseer there), and her four children. A dispute developed between Jane Bryant and Matson's white housekeeper, who threatened to have Jane and her children returned to slavery in the South. With the help of local abolitionists, the Bryants fled. They were apprehended, and, in an affidavit sworn out before a justice of the peace, Matson claimed them as his property. Lacking the required certificates of freedom, Bryant and the children were confined to local county jail as the case was argued in court. Lincoln lost the case, and Bryant and her children were declared free. They were later resettled in Liberia.1 In 1842 Lincoln married Mary Todd, who came from one of Kentucky's most prominent slave-holding families.2 While serving as an elected representative in the Illinois legislature, he persuaded his fellow Whigs to support Zachary Taylor, a slave owner, in his successful 1848 bid for the Presidency.3 Lincoln was also a strong supporter of the Illinois law that forbid marriage between whites and blacks.4 "If all earthly power were given me," said Lincoln in a speech delivered in Peoria, Illinois, on October 16, 1854, "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." After acknowledging that this plan's "sudden execution is impossible," he asked whether freed blacks should be made "politically and socially our equals?" "My own feelings will not admit of this," he said, "and [even] if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not ... We can not, then, make them equals."5 One of Lincoln's most representative public statements on the question of racial relations was given in a speech at Springfield, Illinois, on June 26, 1857.6 In this address, he explained why he opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which would have admitted Kansas into the Union as a slave state: There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races ... A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas ... Racial separation, Lincoln went on to say, "must be effected by colonization" of the country's blacks to a foreign land. "The enterprise is a difficult one," he acknowledged, 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 interest, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be. To affirm the humanity of blacks, Lincoln continued, was more likely to strengthen public sentiment on behalf of colonization than the Democrats' efforts to "crush all sympathy for him, and cultivate and excite hatred and disgust against him ..." Resettlement ("colonization") would not succeed, Lincoln seemed to argue, unless accompanied by humanitarian concern for blacks, and some respect for their rights and abilities. By apparently denying the black person's humanity, supporters of slavery were laying the groundwork for "the indefinite outspreading of his bondage." The Republican program of restricting slavery to where it presently existed, he said, had the long-range benefit of denying to slave holders an opportunity to sell their surplus bondsmen at high prices in new slave territories, and thus encouraged them to support a process of gradual emancipation involving resettlement of the excess outside of the country. Earlier Resettlement Plans The view that America's apparently intractable racial problem should be solved by removing blacks from this country and resettling them elsewhere -- "colonization" or "repatriation" -- was not a new one. As early as 1714 a New Jersey man proposed sending blacks to Africa. In 1777 a Virginia legislature committee, headed by future President Thomas Jefferson (himself a major slave owner), proposed a plan of gradual emancipation and resettlement of the state's slaves. In 1815, an enterprising free black from Massachusetts named Paul Cuffe transported, at his own expense, 38 free blacks to West Africa. His undertaking showed that at least some free blacks were eager to resettle in a country of their own, and suggested what might be possible with public and even government support.7 In December 1816, a group of distinguished Americans met in Washington, DC, to establish an organization to promote the cause of black resettlement. The "American Colonization Society" soon won backing from some of the young nation's most prominent citizens. Henry Clay, Francis Scott Key, John Randolph, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Bushrod Washington, Charles Carroll, Millard Fillmore, John Marshall, Roger B. Taney, Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster, Stephen A. Douglas, and Abraham Lincoln were members. Clay presided at the group's first meeting.8 Measures to resettle blacks in Africa were soon undertaken. Society member Charles Fenton Mercer played an important role in getting Congress to pass the Anti-Slave Trading Act of March 1819, which appropriated $100,000 to transport blacks to Africa. In enforcing the Act, Mercer suggested to President James Monroe that if blacks were simply returned to the coast of Africa and released, they would probably be re-enslaved, and possibly some returned to the United States. Accordingly, and in cooperation with the Society, Monroe sent agents to acquire territory on Africa's West coast -- a step that led to the founding of the country now known as Liberia. Its capital city was named Monrovia in honor of the American President.9 With crucial Society backing, black settlers began arriving from the United States in 1822. While only free blacks were at first brought over, after 1827, slaves were freed expressly for the purpose of transporting them to Liberia. In 1847, black settlers declared Liberia an independent republic, with an American-style flag and constitution.10 By 1832 the legislatures of more than a dozen states (at that time there were only 24), had given official approval to the Society, including at least three slave-holding states.11 Indiana's legislature, for example, passed the following joint resolution on January 16, 1850:12 Be it resolved by the General Assembly of the State of Indiana: That our Senators and Representatives in Congress be, and they are hereby requested, in the name of the State of Indiana, to call for a change of national policy on the subject of the African Slave Trade, and that they require a settlement of the coast of Africa with colored men from the United States, and procure such changes in our relations with England as will permit us to transport colored men from this country to Africa, with whom to effect said settlement. In January 1858, Missouri Congressman Francis P. Blair, Jr., introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives to set up a committee to inquire into the expediency of providing for the acquisition of territory either in the Central or South American states, to be colonized with colored persons from the United States who are now free, or who may hereafter become free, and who may be willing to settle in such territory as a dependency of the United States, with ample guarantees of their personal and political rights. Blair, quoting Thomas Jefferson, stated that blacks could never be accepted as the equals of whites, and, consequently, urged support for a dual policy of emancipation and deportation, similar to Spain's expulsion of the Moors. Blair went on to argue that the territory acquired for the purpose would also serve as a bulwark against any further encroachment by England in the Central and South American regions.13 Lincoln's Support for Resettlement Lincoln's ideological mentor was Henry Clay, the eminent American scholar, diplomat, and statesman. Because of his skill in the US Senate and House of Representatives, Clay won national acclaim as the "Great Compromiser" and the "Great Pacificator." A slave owner who had humane regard for blacks, he was prominent in the campaign to resettle free blacks outside of the United States, and served as president of the American Colonization Society. Lincoln joined Clay's embryonic Whig party during the 1830s. In an address given in 1858, Lincoln described Clay as "my beau ideal of a statesman, the man for whom I fought all of my humble life."14 The depth of Lincoln's devotion to Clay and his ideals was expressed in a moving eulogy delivered in July 1852 in Springfield, Illinois. After praising Clay's lifelong devotion to the cause of black resettlement, Lincoln quoted approvingly from a speech given by Clay in 1827: "There is a moral fitness in the idea of returning to Africa her children," adding that if Africa offered no refuge, blacks could be sent to another tropical land. Lincoln concluded:15 If as the friends of colonization hope, the present and coming generations of our countrymen shall by any means succeed in freeing our land from the dangerous presence of slavery, and, at the same time, in restoring a captive people to their long-lost fatherland, with bright prospects for the future, and this too, so gradually, that neither races nor individuals shall have suffered by the change, it will indeed be a glorious consummation. In January 1855, Lincoln addressed a meeting of the Illinois branch of the Colonization Society. The surviving outline of his speech suggests that it consisted largely of a well-informed and sympathetic account of the history of the resettlement campaign.16 In supporting "colonization" of the blacks, a plan that might be regarded as a "final solution" to the nation's race question, Lincoln was upholding the views of some of America's most respected figures. Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 In 1858 Lincoln was nominated by the newly-formed Republican Party to challenge Steven Douglas, a Democrat, for his Illinois seat in the US Senate. During the campaign, "Little Giant" Douglas focused on the emotion-charged issue of race relations. He accused Lincoln, and Republicans in general, of advocating the political and social equality of the white and black races, and of thereby promoting racial amalgamation. Lincoln responded by strenuously denying the charge, and by arguing that because slavery was the chief cause of miscegenation in the United States, restricting its further spread into the western territories and new states would, in fact, reduce the possibility of race mixing. Lincoln thus came close to urging support for his party because it best represented white people's interests. Between late August and mid-October, 1858, Lincoln and Douglas travelled together around the state to confront each other in seven historic debates. On August 21, before a crowd of 10,000 at Ottawa, Lincoln declared:17 I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. He continued: I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is physical difference between the two which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. Many people accepted the rumors spread by Douglas supporters that Lincoln favored social equality of the races. Before the start of the September 18 debate at Charleston, Illinois, an elderly man approached Lincoln in a hotel and asked him if the stories were true. Recounting the encounter later before a crowd of 15,000, Lincoln declared:18 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; 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. He continued: 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, 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. Candidate for President Though he failed in his bid for the Senate seat, the Lincoln-Douglas debates thrust "Honest Abe" into the national spotlight.19 In 1860, the Republican Party passed over prominent abolitionists such as William H. Seward and Salmon P. Chase to nominate Lincoln as its presidential candidate. In those days, presidential contenders did not make public speeches after their nomination. In the most widely reprinted of his pre-nomination speeches, delivered at Cooper Union in New York City on February 27, 1860, Lincoln expressed his agreement with the leaders of the infant American republic that slavery is "an evil not be extended, but to be tolerated and protected" where it already exists. "This is all Republicans ask -- all Republicans desire -- in relation to slavery," he emphasized, underscoring the words in his prepared text. After stating that any emancipation should be gradual and carried out in conjunction with a program of scheduled deportation, he went on to cite Thomas Jefferson:20 In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, "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, pari passu [on an equal basis], filled up by free white laborers." On the critical question of slavery, the Republican party platform was not altogether clear. Like most documents of its kind, it included sections designed to appeal to a wide variety of voters. One plank, meant to appease radicals and abolitionists, quoted the "all men are created equal" passage of the Declaration of Independence, though without directly mentioning either the Declaration or non-whites. Another section, designed to attract conservative voters, recognized the right of each state to conduct "its own domestic institutions" as it pleased -- "domestic institutions" being an euphemism for slavery. Still another, somewhat equivocally worded, plank, upheld the right and duty of Congress to legislate slavery in the territories "when necessary."21 On election night, November 7, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was the choice of 39 percent of the voters, with no support from the Deep South. The remainder had cast ballots either for Stephen A. Douglas of the Northern Democratic Party, John C. Breckinridge of the Southern Democratic Party, or John Bell of the Constitutional Union Party. Still, Lincoln won a decisive majority in the electoral college.22 By election day, six southern Governors and virtually every Senator and Representative from the seven states of the lower South had gone on record as favoring secession if Lincoln were elected.23 In December, Congress met in a final attempt to reach a compromise on the slavery question. Senator John H. Crittenden of Kentucky proposed an amendment to the Constitution that would guarantee the institution of slavery against federal interference in those places where it was already established.24 A more controversial provision would extend the old Missouri compromise line to the west coast, thereby permitting slavery in the southwest territories. On December 20, the day South Carolina voted to secede from the Union, Lincoln told a major Republican party figure, Thurlow Weed, that he had no qualms about endorsing the Crittenden amendment if it would restrict slavery to the states where it was already established, and that Congress should recommend to the Northern states that they repeal their "personal liberty" laws that hampered the return of fugitive slaves. However, Lincoln said, he would not support any proposal to extend slavery into the western territories. The Crittenden Amendment failed.25 Southern Fears Less than one third of the white families in the South had any direct connection with slavery, either as owners or as persons who hired slave labor from others. Moreover, fewer than 2,300 of the one and a half million white families in the South owned 50 or more slaves, and could therefore be regarded as slave-holding magnates.26 The vast majority of Southerners thus had no vested interest in retaining or extending slavery. But incitement by Northern abolitionists, where fewer than 500,000 blacks lived, provoked fears in the South, where the black population was concentrated, of a violent black uprising against whites. (In South Carolina, the majority of the population was black.) Concerns that the writings and speeches of white radicals might incite blacks to anti-white rampage, rape and murder were not entirely groundless. Southerners were mindful of the black riots in New York City of 1712 and 1741, the French experience in Haiti (where insurgent blacks had driven out or massacred almost the entire white population), and the bungled effort by religious fanatic John Brown in 1859 to organize an uprising of black slaves. What worried Southerners most about the prospect of an end to slavery was fear of what the newly-freed blacks might do. Southern dread of Lincoln was inflamed by the region's newspapers and slave-owning politicians, who portrayed the President-elect as a pawn of radical abolitionists. Much was made of Lincoln's widely-quoted words from a June 1858 speech:27 A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free ... I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. During the critical four-month period between election and inauguration days, Southern Unionists strongly urged the President-elect to issue a definitive public statement on the slavery issue that would calm rapidly-growing Southern fears. Mindful of the way that newspapers in the slave-holding states had either ignored or twisted his earlier public statements on this issue, Lincoln chose to express himself cautiously. To the editor of the Missouri Republican, for example, he wrote:28 I could say nothing which I have not already said, and which is in print and accessible to the public. Please pardon me for suggesting that if the papers like yours, which heretofore have persistently garbled and misrepresented what I have said, will now fully and fairly place it before their readers, there can be no further misunderstanding. I beg you to believe me sincere, when ... I urge it as the true cure for real uneasiness in the country ... The Republican newspapers now, and for some time past, are and have been republishing copious extracts from my many published speeches, which would at once reach the whole public if your class of papers would also publish them. I am not at liberty to shift my ground -- that is out of the question. If I thought a repetition would do any good, I would make it. But my judgment is it would do positive harm. The secessionists, per se believing they had alarmed me, would clamor all the louder. Lincoln also addressed the decisive issue in correspondence with Alexander H. Stephens, who would soon become Vice President of the Confederacy. Stephens was an old and much admired acquaintance of Lincoln's, a one-time fellow Whig and Congressman. Having seen reports of a pro-Union speech in Georgia by Stephens, Lincoln wrote to express his thanks. Stephens responded with a request that the President-elect strike a blow on behalf of Southern Unionists by clearly expressing his views. In a private letter of December 22, 1860, Lincoln replied:29 Do the people of the south really entertain fears that a Republican administration would, directly or indirectly, interfere with their slaves, or with them, about their slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, there is no cause for such fears. Lincoln went on to sum up the issue as he saw it: "You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us." To Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, who had passed along a report of a rabid anti-Lincoln harangue in the Mississippi legislature, Lincoln wrote that "madman" there had quite misrepresented his views. He stated he was not "pledged to the ultimate extinction of slavery," and that he did not "hold the black man to be the equal of the white."30 When a Mississippian appeared at a reception for Lincoln in the Illinois statehouse, and boldly announced he was a secessionist, Lincoln responded by saying that he was opposed to any interference with slavery where it existed. He gave the same sort of general assurance to a number of callers and correspondents. He also wrote a few anonymous editorials for the Illinois State Journal, the Republican newspaper of Springfield. Additionally, he composed a few lines for a speech delivered by Senator Trumball at the Republican victory celebration in Springfield on November 20. In those lines Lincoln pledged that "each and all" of the states would be "left in as complete control of their own affairs" as ever.31 Inauguration Abraham Lincoln took the oath as President on March 4, 1861. Among the first words of his Inaugural Address was a pledge (repeating words from an August 1858 speech) intended to placate Southern apprehensions: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." Referring to the proposed Crittenden amendment, which would make explicit constitutional protection of slavery where it already existed, he said, "I have no objection to its being made express, and irrevocable." He also promised to support legislation for the capture and return of runaway slaves.32 At the same time, though, Lincoln emphasized that "no state, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union." With regard to those states that already proclaimed their secession from the Union, he said: I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the states. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part; and I shall perform it, so far as practicable, unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite means, or, in some authoritative manner, direct the contrary. In his masterful multi-volume study of the background and course of the Civil War, American historian Allan Nevins attempted to identify the conflict's principle underlying cause:33 The main root of the conflict (and there were minor roots) was the problem of slavery with its complementary problem of race-adjustment; the main source of the tragedy was the refusal of either section to face these conjoined problems squarely and pay the heavy costs of a peaceful settlement. Had it not been for the difference in race, the slavery issue would have presented no great difficulties. But as the racial gulf existed, the South inarticulately but clearly perceived that elimination of this issue would still leave it the terrible problem of the Negro ... A heavy responsibility for the failure of America in this period rests with this Southern leadership, which lacked imagination, ability, and courage. But the North was by no means without its full share, for the North equally refused to give a constructive examination to the central question of slavery as linked with race adjustment. This was because of two principal reasons. Most abolitionists and many other sentimental-minded Northerners simply denied that the problem existed. Regarding all Negroes as white men with dark skins, whom a few years of schooling would bring abreast of the dominant race, they thought that no difficult adjustment was required. A much more numerous body of Northerners would have granted that a great and terrible task of race adjustment existed -- but they were reluctant to help shoulder any part of it ... Indiana, Illinois and even Kansas were unwilling to take a single additional person of color. Outbreak of War Dramatic events were swiftly creating enormous problems for the new President, who had greatly underestimated the depth of secessionist feeling in the South.34 In January and early February, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas followed South Carolina's example and left the Union. Florida troops fired on the federal stronghold of Fort Pickens. When South Carolina seceded, she claimed as rightfully hers all US government property within her borders, including federal forts and arsenals. While announcing a willingness to pay the federal government for at least a share of the cost of improvements it had made, South Carolina insisted that these properties belonged to the state, and would no longer tolerate the presence of a "foreign" power upon her soil. The other newly-seceding states took the same position.35 On the day Lincoln took the presidential oath, the federal government still controlled four forts inside the new Confederacy. In Florida there were Forts Taylor, Jefferson, and Pickens, the first two of which seemed secure, while in South Carolina there was Fort Sumter, which was almost entirely encircled by hostile forces.36 While historians do not agree whether Lincoln deliberately sought to provoke an attack by his decision to re-supply the Fort, it is known that on April 9, while the bombardment of the stronghold was underway, the new President received a delegation of Virginia Unionists at the White House. Lincoln reminded them of his inaugural pledge that there would be "no invasion -- not using force," beyond what was necessary to hold federal government sites and to collect customs duties. "But if, as now appeared to be true, an unprovoked assault has been made upon Fort Sumter, I shall hold myself at liberty to repossess, if I can, like places which have been seized before the Government was devolved upon me."37 In the aftermath of the Confederate seizure of Fort Sumter in mid-April, Lincoln called upon the states to provide 75,000 soldiers to put down the rebellion. Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina responded by leaving the Union and joining the newly-formed "Confederate States of America." This increased the size of the Confederacy by a third, and almost doubled its population and economic resources. Remaining with the Union, though, were four slave-holding border states -- Delaware, Missouri, Maryland and Kentucky -- and, predictably, the slave-holding District of Columbia. The American Civil War of 1861-1865 -- or the "War Between the States," as many Southerners call it -- eventually claimed the lives of 360,000 in the Union forces, and an estimated 258,000 among the Confederates, in addition to hundreds of thousands of maimed and wounded. It was by far the most destructive war in American history. Even after fighting began in earnest, Lincoln stuck to his long-held position on the slavery issue by countermanding orders by Union generals to free slaves. In July 1861, General John C. Frémont -- the Republican party's unsuccessful 1856 Presidential candidate -- declared martial law in Missouri, and announced that all slaves of owners in the state who opposed the Union were free. President Lincoln immediately canceled the order. Because the Southern states no longer sent representatives to Washington, abolitionists and radical Republicans wielded exceptional power in Congress, which responded to Lincoln's cancellation of Främont's order by passing, on August 6, 1861, the (first) Confiscation Act. It provided that any property, including slaves, used with the owner's consent in aiding and abetting insurrection against the United States, was the lawful subject of prize and capture wherever found.38 In May 1862, Union General David Hunter issued an order declaring all slaves in Georgia, Florida and South Carolina to be free. Lincoln promptly revoked the order. An irate Congress responded by passing, in July, a second Confiscation Act that declared "forever free" all slaves whose owners were in rebellion, whether or not the slaves were used for military purposes. Lincoln refused to sign the Act until it was amended, stating he thought it an unconditional bill of attainder. Although he did not veto the amended law, Lincoln expressed his dissatisfaction with it. Furthermore, he did not faithfully enforce either of the Confiscation Acts.39 Deaths in Union 'Contraband Camps' Slaves seized under the Confiscation Acts, as well as runaway slaves who turned themselves in to Union forces, were held in so-called "contraband" camps. In his message to the Confederate Congress in the fall of 1863, President Jefferson Davis sharply criticized Union treatment of these blacks. After describing the starvation and suffering in these camps, he said: "There is little hazard in predicting that in all localities where the enemy have a temporary foothold, the Negroes, who under our care increased sixfold ... will have been reduced by mortality during the war to no more than one-half their previous number." However exaggerated Davis' words may have been, it remains a grim fact that many blacks lost their lives in these internment camps, and considerably more suffered terribly as victims of hunger, exposure and neglect. In 1864, one Union officer called the death rate in these camps "frightful," and said that "most competent judges place it as no less than twenty-five percent in the last two years."40 The Chiriqui Resettlement Plan Even before he took office, Lincoln was pleased to note widespread public support for "colonization" of the country's blacks.41 "In 1861-1862, there was widespread support among conservative Republicans and Democrats for the colonization abroad of Negroes emancipated by the war," historian James M. McPherson has noted. At the same time, free blacks in parts of the North were circulating a petition asking Congress to purchase a tract of land in Central America as a site for their resettlement.42 In spite of the pressing demands imposed by the war, Lincoln soon took time to implement his long-standing plan for resettling blacks outside the United States. Ambrose W. Thompson, a Philadelphian who had grown rich in coastal shipping, provided the new president with what seemed to be a good opportunity. Thompson had obtained control of several hundred thousand acres in the Chiriqui region of what is now Panama, and had formed the "Chiriqui Improvement Company." He proposed transporting liberated blacks from the United States to the Central American region, where they would mine the coal that was supposedly there in abundance. This coal would be sold to the US Navy, with the resulting profits used to sustain the black colony, including development of plantations of cotton, sugar, coffee, and rice. The Chiriqui project would also help to extend US commercial dominance over tropical America.43 Negotiations to realize the plan began in May 1861, and on August 8, Thompson made a formal proposal to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Wells to deliver coal from Chiriqui at one-half the price the government was then paying. Meanwhile, Lincoln had referred the proposal to his brother-in-law, Ninian W. Edwards, who, on August 9, 1861, enthusiastically endorsed the proposed contract.44 Appointing a commission to investigate the Thompson proposal, Lincoln referred its findings to Francis P. Blair, Sr. Endorsing a government contract with the Chiriqui Improvement Company even more strongly than Edwards had, the senior Blair believed the main purpose of such a contract should be to utilize the area controlled by Thompson to "solve" the black question. He repeated Jefferson's view that blacks would ultimately have to be deported from the United States, reviewed Lincoln's own endorsement of resettlement, and discussed the activities of his son, Missouri Representative Francis P. Blair, Jr., on behalf of deportation. Blair concluded his lengthy report with a recommendation that Henry T. Blow, US Minister to Venezuela, be sent to Chiriqui to make an examination for the government.45 Lincoln ordered his Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, to release Thompson from his military duties so he could escort Blow to Central America46 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; the practicability of connecting the said harbors by a railroad; and the works which will be necessary for the Chiriqui Company to erect to protect the colonists as they may arrive, as well as for the protection and defense of the harbors at the termini of said road. Cameron was to provide Thompson with the necessary equipment and assistants. The mission was to be carried out under sealed orders with every precaution for secrecy,47 because Lincoln did not have legal authority to undertake such an expedition. While Blow was investigating the Chiriqui area, Lincoln called Delaware Congressman George Fisher to the White House in November 1861 to discuss compensated emancipation of the slaves in that small state -- where the 1860 census had enumerated only 507 slave-holders, owning fewer than 1,800 slaves. The President asked Fisher to determine whether the Delaware legislature could be persuaded to free slaves in the state if the government compensated the owners for them. Once the plan proved feasible in Delaware, the President hoped, he might be able to persuade the other border states and, eventually, even the secessionist states, to adopt it. With assistance from Lincoln, Fisher drew up a bill to be presented to the state legislature when it met in late December. It provided that when the federal government had appropriated money to pay an average of $500 for each slave, emancipation would go into effect. As soon as it was made public, though, an acrimonious debate broke out, with party rancor and pro-slavery sentiment combining to defeat the proposed legislation.48 'Absolute Necessity' In his first annual message to Congress on December 3, 1861, President Lincoln proposed that persons liberated by the fighting should be deemed free and that, in any event, steps be taken for colonizing [them] ... at some place, or places, in a climate congenial to them. It might be well to consider, too, whether the free colored people already in the United States could not, so far as individuals may desire, be included in such colonization. This effort, Lincoln recognized, "may involve the acquiring of territory, and also the appropriation of money beyond that to be expended in the territorial acquisition." Some form of resettlement, he said, amounts to an "absolute necessity."49 Growing Clamor for Emancipation Lincoln's faithful enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law not only filled Washington, DC, jails with runaway slaves waiting to be claimed by their owners, but also enraged many who loathed slavery. In an effort to appease his party's abolitionist faction, Lincoln urged that the United States formally recognize the black republics of Haiti and Liberia, a proposal that Congress accepted.50 Lincoln realized that the growing clamor to abolish slavery threatened to seriously jeopardize the support he needed to prosecute the war to preserve the Union. Accordingly, on March 6, 1862, he called on Congress to endorse a carefully worded resolution:51 Resolved, that the United States ought to cooperate with any state which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such state pecuniary aid, to be used by such state in its discretion, to compensate for the inconvenience, public and private, produced by such change of system. In a letter to New York Times editor Henry J. Raymond urging support for the resolution, Lincoln explained that one million dollars, or less than a half-day's cost of the war, would buy all the slaves in Delaware, and that $174 million, or less than 87 days' cost of the war, would purchase all the slaves in the border states and the District of Columbia.52 Although the resolution lacked authority of law, and was merely a declaration of intent, it alarmed representatives from the loyal slave-holding border states. Missouri Congressman Frank P. Blair, Jr. (who, in 1868, would campaign as the Democratic party's vice presidential candidate) spoke against the resolution in a speech in the House on April 11, 1862. Emancipation of the slaves, he warned, would be a terrible mistake until arrangements were first made to resettle the blacks abroad. Blair spoke of shipping them to areas south of the Rio Grande. In spite of such opposition, though, moderate Republicans and Democrats joined to approve the resolution, which was passed by Congress and signed by Lincoln on April 10, 1862. Not a single border state lawmaker had voted for the measure, however.53 In an effort to assuage such concerns, in July Lincoln called border state Congressmen and Senators to a White House meeting at which he explained that the recently-passed resolution involved no claim of federal authority over slavery in the states, and that it left the issue under state control. Seeking to calm fears that emancipation would suddenly result in many freed Negroes in their midst, he again spoke of resettlement of blacks as the solution. "Room in South America for colonization can be obtained cheaply, and in abundance," said the President. "And when numbers shall be large enough to be company and encouragement for one another, the freed people will not be so reluctant to go."54 Congress Votes Funds for Resettlement In 1860, the 3,185 slaves in the District of Columbia were owned by just two percent of the District's residents. In April 1862, Lincoln arranged to have a bill introduced in Congress that would compensate District slave-holders an average of $300 for each slave. An additional $100,000 was appropriated 55 to be expended under the direction of the President of the United States, to aid in the colonization and settlement of such free persons of African descent now residing in said District, including those to be liberated by this act, as may desire to emigrate to the Republic of Haiti or Liberia, or such other country beyond the limits of the United States as the President may determine. When he signed the bill into law on April 16, Lincoln stated: "I am gratified that the two principles of compensation, and colonization, are both recognized, and practically applied in the act."56 Two months later, as part of the (second) Confiscation Act of July 1862, Congress appropriated an additional half-million dollars for the President's use in resettling blacks who came under Union military control. Rejecting criticism from prominent "radicals" such as Senator Charles Sumner, most Senators and Representatives expressed support for the bold project in a joint resolution declaring57 that the President is hereby authorized 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, made free by the provisions of this act, as may be willing to emigrate ... Lincoln now had Congressional authority and $600,000 in authorized funds to proceed with his plan for resettlement. Obstacles Serious obstacles remained, however. Secretary of the Interior Caleb B. Smith informed the President that Liberia was out of the question as a destination for resettling blacks because of the inhospitable climate, the unwillingness of blacks to travel so far, and the great expense involved in transporting people such a vast distance. Haiti was ruled out because of the low level of civilization there, because Catholic influence was so strong there, and because of fears that the Spanish might soon take control of the Caribbean country. Those blacks who had expressed a desire to emigrate, Secretary Smith went on to explain, preferred to remain in the western hemisphere. The only really acceptable site was Chiriqui, Smith concluded, because of its relative proximity to the United States, and because of the availability of coal there.58Meanwhile, the United States minister in Brazil expressed the view that the country's abundance of land and shortage of labor made it a good site for resettling America's blacks.59 In mid-May 1862, Lincoln received a paper from Reverend James Mitchell that laid out arguments for resettling the country's black population:60 Our republican system was meant for a homogeneous people. As long as blacks continue to live with the whites they constitute a threat to the national life. Family life may also collapse and the increase of mixed breed bastards may some day challenge the supremacy of the white man. Mitchell went on to recommend the gradual deportation of America's blacks to Central America and Mexico. "That region had once known a great empire and could become one again," he stated. "This continent could then be divided between a race of mixed bloods and Anglo-Americans." Lincoln was apparently impressed with Mitchell's arguments. A short time later, he appointed him as his Commissioner of Emigration. A Historic White House Meeting Eager to proceed with the Chiriqui project, on August 14, 1862, Lincoln met with five free black ministers, the first time a delegation of their race was invited to the White House on a matter of public policy. The President made no effort to engage in conversation with the visitors, who were bluntly informed that they had been invited to listen. Lincoln did not mince words, but candidly told the group:61 You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think your race suffers very greatly, many of them, by living among us, while ours suffers from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side. If this is admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be separated. ... Even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race ... The aspiration of men is to enjoy equality with the best when free, but on this broad continent, not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of ours. Go where you are treated the best, and the ban is still upon you. ... We look to our condition, owing to the existence of the two races on this continent. I need not recount to you the effects upon white men growing out of the institution of slavery. I believe in its general evil effects on the white race. See our present condition -- the country engaged in war! -- our white men cutting one another's throats, none knowing how far it will extend; and then consider what we know to be the truth. But for your race among us there could not be war, although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or the other. Nevertheless, I repeat, without the institution of slavery, and the colored race as a basis, the war would not have an existence. It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated. An excellent site for black resettlement, Lincoln went on, was available in Central America. It had good harbors and an abundance of coal that would permit the colony to be quickly put on a firm financial footing. The President concluded by asking the delegation to determine if a number of freedmen with their families would be willing to go as soon as arrangements could be made. Organizing Black Support The next day, Rev. Mitchell -- who had attended the historic White House meeting as Lincoln's Commissioner of Immigration -- placed an advertisement in northern newspapers announcing: "Correspondence is desired with colored men favorable to Central America, Liberian or Haitian emigration, especially the first named."62 Mitchell also sent a memorandum to black ministers urging them to use their influence to encourage emigration. Providence itself, he wrote, had decreed a separate existence for the races. Blacks were half responsible for the terrible Civil War, Mitchell went on, and forecast further bloodshed unless they left the country. He concluded:63 This is a nation of equal white laborers, and as you cannot be accepted on equal terms, there is no place here for you. You cannot go into the North or the West without arousing the growing feeling of hostility toward you. The south must also have a homogeneous population, and any attempt to give the freedmen equal status in the South will bring disaster to both races. Rev. Edwin Thomas, the chairman of the black delegation, informed the President in a letter of August 16 that while he had originally opposed colonization, after becoming acquainted with the facts he now favored it. He asked Lincoln's authorization to travel among his black friends and co-workers to convince them of the virtues of emigration.64 While Thompson continued working on colonization of the Chiriqui site, Lincoln turned to Kansas Senator Samuel Pomeroy, whom he appointed United States Colonization Agent, to recruit black emigrants for Chiriqui resettlement, and arrange for their transportation. On August 26, 1862, Pomeroy issued a dramatic official appeal "To the Free Colored People of the United States":65 The hour has now arrived in the history of your settlement upon this continent when it is within your own power to take one step that will secure, if successful, the elevation, freedom, and social position of your race upon the American continent ... I want mechanics and labourers, earnest, honest, and sober men, for the interest of a generation, it may be of mankind, are involved in the success of this experiment, and with the approbation of the American people, and under the blessing of Almighty God, it cannot, it shall not fail. Although many blacks soon made clear their unwillingness to leave the country, Pomeroy was pleased to report in October that he had received nearly 14,000 applications from blacks who desired to emigrate.66 On September 12, 1862, the federal government concluded a provisional contract with Ambrose Thompson, providing for development and colonization of his vast leased holdings in the Chiriqui region. Pomeroy was to determine the fitness of the Chiriqui site for resettlement. Along with the signatures of Thompson and Interior Secretary Caleb Smith, the contract contained a note by the President: "The within contract is approved, and the Secretary of the Interior is directed to execute the same. A. Lincoln." That same day, Lincoln also issued an order directing the Department of the Interior to carry out the "colonization" provisions of the relevant laws of April and July 1862.67 The President next instructed Pomeroy, acting as his agent, to accompany the proposed colonizing expedition. Lincoln authorized him to advance Thompson $50,000 when and if colonization actually began, and to allow Thompson such sums as might immediately be necessary for incidental expenses.68 Interior Secretary Smith sent Pomeroy more specific instructions. He was to escort a group of black "Freedmen" who were willing to resettle abroad. However, before attempting to establish a colony at Chiriqui, no matter how promising the site, he should first obtain permission of the local authorities, in order to prevent diplomatic misunderstandings.69 Acting on these instructions, Pomeroy went to New York to obtain a ship for the venture. Robert Murray, United States Marshall at New York, was advised of Pomeroy's status as special colonization agent, and was asked to help him secure a suitable ship.70 On September 16, Interior Secretary Smith wired Pomeroy: "President wants information ... has Murray the control and custody of the vessel? Is there order of sale; and if so, when? Is any deposit necessary to get the vessel?"71 President Lincoln's concern with black resettlement at this time is all the more significant because September 1862 was a very critical period for Union military fortunes. In spite of this, he took time to keep himself abreast of the project, even to the point of having a telegram sent to hurry the procurement of a ship for the venture. The Emancipation Proclamation During the winter and spring 1861-1862, public support grew rapidly for the view that slavery must be abolished everywhere. Lincoln did not ignore the ever louder calls for decisive action.72 On June 19, he signed a law abolishing slavery in all the federal territories.73 At the same time, he was quietly preparing an even more dramatic measure. At a cabinet meeting on July 22, Lincoln read out the draft text of a document he had prepared -- a proclamation that would give the Confederate states a hundred days to stop their "rebellion" upon threat of declaring all slaves in those states to be free. The President told his cabinet that he did not want advice on the merits of the proclamation itself -- he had made up his mind about that, he said -- but he would welcome suggestions about how best to implement the edict. For two days cabinet members debated the draft. Only two -- Secretary of State William Seward and Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase, abolitionists who had challenged Lincoln for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination -- agreed even in part with the proclamation's contents. Seward persuaded the President not to issue it until after a Union military victory (of which so far there had been few), or otherwise it would appear "the last measure of an exhausted government, a cry for help."74 Union General McClellan's success on September 17 in holding off the forces of General Lee at Antietam provided a federal victory of sorts, and the waited-for opportunity. Five days later, Lincoln issued his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which included a favorable reference to colonization:75 I, Abraham Lincoln ... do hereby proclaim and declare that hereafter, as heretofore, the war will be prosecuted for the object of practically restoring the constitutional relation between the United States, and each of the states, and the people thereof ... That it is my purpose, upon the next meeting of Congress to again recommend the adoption of a practical measure tendering pecuniary aid to the free acceptance or rejection of all slave-states, so called, the people whereof may not be then be in rebellion against the United States, and which states, may then have voluntarily adopted, or thereafter may voluntarily adopt, immediate, or gradual abolishment of slavery within their respective limits; and that the effort to colonize persons of African descent, with their consent, upon this continent, or elsewhere, with the previously obtained consent of the Governments existing there, will be continued. Lincoln then went on to state that on January 1, 1863, all persons held as slaves within any state, or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever, free ... The edict then cited the law passed by Congress on March 13, 1862, which prohibited military personnel from returning escaped slaves, and the second Confiscation Act of July 1862. Proclamation Limitations On New Year's Day, 1863, Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation.76 Contrary to what its title suggests, however, the presidential edict did not immediately free a single slave. It "freed" only slaves who were under Confederate control, and explicitly exempted slaves in Union-controlled territories, including federal-occupied areas of the Confederacy, West Virginia, and the four slave-holding states that remained in the Union. The Proclamation, Secretary Seward wryly commented, emancipated slaves where it could not reach them, and left them in bondage where it could have set them free. Moreover, because it was issued as a war measure, the Proclamation's long-term validity was uncertain. Apparently any future President could simply revoke it. "The popular picture of Lincoln using a stroke of the pen to lift the shackles from the limbs of four million slaves is ludicrously false," historian Allan Nevins has noted.77 'Military Necessity' Lincoln himself specifically cited "military necessity" as his reason for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. After more than a year of combat, and in spite of its great advantages in industrial might and numbers, federal forces had still not succeeded in breaking the South. At this critical juncture of the war, the President apparently now hoped, a formal edict abolishing slavery in the Confederate states would strike a blow at the Confederacy's ability to wage war by encouraging dissension, escapes, and possibly revolt among its large slave labor force.78 As the war progressed, black labor had become ever more critical in the hard-pressed Confederacy. Blacks planted, cultivated and harvested the food that they then transported to the Confederate armies. Blacks raised and butchered the beef, pigs and chicken used to feed the Confederate troops. They wove the cloth and knitted the socks to clothe the grey-uniformed soldiers. As Union armies invaded the South, tearing up railroads and demolishing bridges, free blacks and slaves repaired them. They toiled in the South's factories, shipping yards, and mines. In 1862, the famous Tredegar iron works advertised for 1,000 slaves. In 1864, there were 4,301 blacks and 2,518 whites in the iron mines of the Confederate states east of the Mississippi.79 Blacks also served with the Confederate military forces as mechanics, teamsters, and common laborers. They cared for the sick and scrubbed the wounded in Confederate hospitals. Nearly all of the South's military fortifications were constructed by black laborers. Most of the cooks in the Confederate army were slaves. Of the 400 workers at the Naval arsenal in Selma, Alabama, in 1865, 310 were blacks. Blacks served with crews of Confederate blockade-runners and stoked the firerooms of the South's warships.80 Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, the legendary cavalry commander, said in a postwar interview: "When I entered the army I took 47 Negroes into the army with me, and 45 of them were surrendered with me ... These boys stayed with me, drove my teams, and better Confederates did not live."81 On several occasions, Lincoln explained his reasons for issuing the Proclamation. On September 13, 1862, the day after the preliminary proclamation was issued, Lincoln met with a delegation of pro-abolitionist Christian ministers, and told them bluntly: "Understand, I raise no objections against it [slavery] on legal or constitutional grounds ... I view the matter [emancipation] as a practical war measure, to be decided upon according to the advantages or disadvantages it may offer to the suppression of the rebellion."82 To Salmon Chase, his Treasury Secretary, the President justified the Proclamations's limits: "The original [preliminary] proclamation has no constitutional or legal justification, except as a military measure," he explained. "The exceptions were made because the military necessity did not apply to the exempted localities. Nor does that necessity apply to them now any more than it did then."83 Horace Greeley, editor of the influential New York Tribune, called upon the President to immediately and totally abolish slavery in an emphatic and prominently displayed editorial published August 20, 1862. Lincoln responded in a widely-quoted letter:84 My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union ... Concern about growing sentiment in the North to end slavery, along with sharp criticism from prominent abolitionists, was apparently another motivating factor for the President. (Abolitionists even feared that the Confederate states might give up their struggle for independence before the January first deadline, and thus preserve the institution of slavery.)85 Lincoln assured Edward Stanly, a pro-slavery Southerner he had appointed as military governor of the occupied North Carolina coast, that "the proclamation had become a civil necessity to prevent the radicals from openly embarrassing the government in the conduct of the war."86 Impact of the Proclamation While abolitionists predictably hailed the final Proclamation, sentiment among northern whites was generally unfavorable. The edict cost the President considerable support, and undoubtedly was a factor in Republican party setbacks in the Congressional elections of 1862. In the army, hardly one Union soldier in ten approved of emancipation, and some officers resigned in protest.87 As a work of propaganda, the Proclamation proved effective. To encourage discontent among slaves in the Confederacy, a million copies were distributed in the Union-occupied South and, as hoped, news of it spread rapidly by word of mouth among the Confederacy's slaves, arousing hopes of freedom and encouraging many to escape.88 The Proclamation "had the desired effect of creating confusion in the South and depriving the Confederacy of much of its valuable laboring force," affirms historian John Hope Franklin.89 Finally, in the eyes of many people -- particularly in Europe -- Lincoln's edict made the Union army a liberating force: all slaves in areas henceforward coming under federal control would automatically be free. The Proclamation greatly strengthened support for the Union cause abroad, especially in Britain and France, where anti-slavery sentiment was strong. In Europe, the edict transformed the conflict into a Union crusade for freedom, and contributed greatly to dashing the Confederacy's remaining hopes of formal diplomatic recognition from Britain and France.90"The Emancipation Proclamation," reported Henry Adams from London, "has done more for us [the Union] here than all our former victories and all our diplomacy. It is creating an almost convulsive reaction in our favor all over this country."91 End of the Resettlement Efforts Lincoln continued to press ahead with his plan to resettle blacks in Central America, in spite of opposition from all but one member of his own Cabinet, and the conclusion of a scientific report that Chiriqui coal was "worthless."92 Mounting opposition to any resettlement plan also came from abolitionists, who insisted that blacks had a right to remain in the land of their birth. In addition, some Republican party leaders opposed resettlement because they were counting on black political support, which would be particularly important in controlling a defeated South, where most whites would be barred from voting. Others agreed with Republican Senator Charles Sumner, who argued that black laborers were an important part of the national economy, and any attempt to export them "would be fatal to the prosperity of the country."93 In the (Northern) election campaign of November 1862, emancipation figured as a major issue. Violent mobs of abolitionists opposed those who spoke out in favor of resettlement.94 What proved decisive in bringing an end to the Chiriqui project, though, were emphatic protests by the republics that would be directly effected by large-scale resettlement. In Central America, the prospect that millions of blacks would soon be arriving provoked alarm. A sense of panic prevailed in Nicaragua and Honduras, the American consul reported, because of fears of "a dreadful deluge of negro emigration ... from the United States." In August and September, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica protested officially to the American government about the resettlement venture. (Objection from Costa Rica was particularly worrisome because that country claimed part of the Chiriqui territory controlled by Thompson.)95 On September 19, envoy Luis Molina, a diplomat who represented the three Central American states, formally explained to American officials the objections of the three countries against the resettlement plan. This venture, he protested, was an attempt to use Central America as a depository for "a plague of which the United States desired to rid themselves." Molina also reminded Seward that, for the USA to remain faithful to its own Monroe Doctrine, it could no more assume that there were lands available in Latin America for colonization than could a European power. The envoy concluded his strong protest by hinting that the republics he represented were prepared to use force to repel what they interpreted as an invasion. Learning later that the resettlement project was still underway, Molina delivered a second formal protest on September 29.96 Secretary of State Seward was not able to ignore such protests. After all, why should Central Americans be happy to welcome people of a race that was so despised in the United States? Accordingly, on October 7, 1862, Seward prevailed on the President to call a "temporary" halt to the Chiriqui project.97 Thus, the emphatic unwillingness of the Central American republics to accept black migrants dealt the decisive blow to the Chiriqui project. At a time when the Union cause was still precarious, Secretary of State Steward was obliged to show special concern for US relations with Latin America.98 Lincoln Proposes a Constitutional Amendment In spite of such obstacles, Lincoln re-affirmed his strong support for gradual emancipation coupled with resettlement in his second annual message to Congress of December 1, 1862. On this occasion he used the word deportation. So serious was he about his plan that he proposed a draft Constitutional Amendment to give it the greatest legal sanction possible. Lincoln told Congress:99 I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I strongly favor colonization. In this view, I recommend the adoption of the following resolution and articles amendatory to the Constitution of the United States ... "Congress may appropriate money, and otherwise provide, for colonizing free colored persons, with their consent, at any place or places without the United States." Applications have been made to me by many free Americans of African descent to favor their emigration, with a view to such colonization as was contemplated in recent acts of Congress ... Several of the Spanish American republics have protested against the sending of such colonies [settlers] to their respective territories ... Liberia and Haiti are, as yet, the only countries to which colonists of African descent from here could go with certainty of being received and adopted as citizens ... Their old masters will gladly give them wages at least until new laborers can be procured; and the freedmen, in turn, will gladly give their labor for the wages, till new homes can be found for them, in congenial climes, and with people of their own blood and race. Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves ... The President's December 1862 proposal had five basic elements:100 1. Because slavery was a "domestic institution," and thus the concern of the states alone, they -- and not the federal government -- were to voluntarily emancipate the slaves. 2. Slave-holders would be fully compensated for their loss. 3. The federal government would assist the states, with bonds as grants in aid, in meeting the financial burden of compensation. 4. Emancipation would be carried out gradually: the states would have until the year 1900 to free their slaves. 5. The freed blacks would be resettled outside the United States. The 'Ile à Vache' Project With the collapse of the Chiriqui plan, Lincoln next gave serious consideration to a small Caribbean island off the coast of the black republic of Haiti, Ile à Vache, as a possible resettlement site for freed blacks. In December 1862, the President signed a contract with Bernard Kock, a businessman who said that he had obtained a long-term lease on the island. Kock agreed to settle 5,000 blacks on the island, and to provide them with housing, food, medicine, churches, schools, and employment, at a cost to the government of $50 each. About 450 blacks were accordingly transported to the island at federal government expense, but the project was not a success. As a result of poor organization, corruption, and Haitian government opposition, about a hundred of the deportees soon died of disease, thirst and starvation. In February-March 1864, a government-chartered ship brought the survivors back to the United States. After that, Congress cancelled all funds it had set aside for black resettlement.101 End of Resettlement Efforts In early 1863, Lincoln discussed with his Register of the Treasury a plan to "remove the whole colored race of the slave states into Texas." Apparently nothing came of the discussion.102 Hard-pressed by the demands of the war situation, and lacking a suitable resettlement site or even strong support within his own inner circle, Lincoln apparently gave up on specific resettlement efforts. On July 1, 1864, presidential secretary John Hay wrote in his diary: "I am happy that the President has sloughed off that idea of colonization."103 Whatever its merits, the notion that America's racial question could be solved by massive resettlement of the black population probably never had much realistic prospect of success, given the realities of American life. Writing in The Journal of Negro History, historian Paul Scheips summed up:104 ... Large-scale colonization of Negroes could only have succeeded, if it could have succeeded at all, if the Nation had been willing to make the gigantic propaganda, diplomatic, administrative, transportation and financial effort that would have been required. As it was, according to [historian Carl] Sandburg, "in a way, nobody cared." But even had hundreds of thousands of Negroes been colonized, the Nation's race problem would not have been solved. Abolishing Slavery A Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which would prohibit slavery throughout the United States, was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864. Because the House failed immediately to approve it with the necessary two-thirds majority vote, Lincoln, in his Annual Message of December 6, asked the House to reconsider it. On January 31, 1865, and with three votes to spare, the House approved it. By this time, slavery had already been abolished in Arkansas, Louisiana, Maryland and Missouri, and a similar move seemed imminent in Tennessee and Kentucky.105 On February 3, 1865, Lincoln and Secretary of State Seward met with a Confederate peace delegation that included Confederate Vice President Stephens. Lincoln told the delegation that he still favored compensation to owners of emancipated slaves. It had never been his intention, the President said, to interfere with slavery in the states; he had been driven to it by necessity. He believed that the people of the North and South were equally responsible for slavery. If hostilities ceased and the states voluntarily abolished slavery, he believed, the government would indemnify the owners to the extent, possibly, of $400 million. Although the conference was not fruitful, two days later Lincoln presented to his cabinet a proposal to appropriate $400 million for reimbursement to slave owners, providing hostilities stopped by April 1. (The cabinet unanimously rejected the proposal, which Lincoln then regretfully abandoned.)106 On April 9, General Lee surrendered his army to General Grant at Appomatox Courthouse, and by the end of May, all fighting had ceased. The Civil War was over. Lincoln's Fear of 'Race War' A short time before his death on April 15, 1865, Lincoln met with General Benjamin F. Butler, who reported that the President spoke to him of "exporting" the blacks.107 "But what shall we do with the negroes after they are free?," Lincoln said. "I can hardly believe that the South and North can live in peace, unless we can get rid of the negroes ... I believe that it would be better to export them all to some fertile country with a good climate, which they could have to themselves." Along with a request to Butler to look into the question of how best to use "our very large navy" to send "the blacks away," the President laid bare his fears for the future: If these black soldiers of ours go back to the South, I am afraid that they will be but little better off with their masters than they were before, and yet they will be free men. I fear a race war, and it will be at least a guerilla war because we have taught these men how to fight ... There are plenty of men in the North who will furnish the negroes with arms if there is any oppression of them by their late masters. To his dying day, it appears, Lincoln did not believe that harmony between white and black was feasible, and viewed resettlement of the blacks as the preferable alternative to race conflict. " ... Although Lincoln believed in the destruction of slavery," concludes black historian Charles Wesley (in an article in The Journal of Negro History), "he desired the complete separation of the whites and blacks. Throughout his political career, Lincoln persisted in believing in the colonization of the Negro."108 Frederick Douglass, a gifted African American writer and activist who knew Lincoln, characterized him in a speech delivered in 1876:109 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. Allan Nevins, one of this century's most prolific and acclaimed historians of US history, summed up Lincoln's view of the complex issue of race, and his vision of America's future:110 His conception ran beyond the mere liberation of four million colored folk; it implied a far-reaching alteration of American society, industry, and government. A gradual planned emancipation, a concomitant transportation of hundreds of thousands and perhaps even millions of people overseas, a careful governmental nursing of the new colonies, and a payment of unprecedented sums to the section thus deprived of its old labor supply -- this scheme carried unprecedented implications. To put this into effect would immensely increase the power of the national government and widen its abilities. If even partially practicable, it would mean a long step toward rendering the American people homogeneous in color and race, a rapid stimulation of immigration to replace the workers exported, a greater world position for the republic, and a pervasive change in popular outlook and ideas. The attempt would do more to convert the unorganized country into an organized nation than anything yet planned. Impossible, and undesirable even if possible? -- probably; but Lincoln continued to hold to his vision. For most Americans today, Lincoln's plan to "solve" America's vexing racial problem by resettling the blacks in a foreign country probably seems bizarre and utterly impractical, if not outrageous and cruel. At the same time, though, and particularly when considered in the context of the terrible Civil War that cost so many lives, it is worth pondering just why and how such a far-fetched plan was ever able to win the support of a leader of the stature and wisdom of Abraham Lincoln. Notes 1. Benjamin Quarles, Lincoln and the Negro (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1962), pp. 21-27.; Nathaniel Weyl and William Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (Arlington House, 1971), pp. 197-198.; Carl Sandburg,Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1926 [two volumes]), Vol. I, pp. 330-334. 2. Benjamin Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952), pp. 85, 89, 260, 480. While Mary Todd Lincoln's eldest brother and a half-sister remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War, another brother, David, three half-brothers, and the husbands of three half-sisters fought on the side of the Confederacy. (Brother David, a half-brother named Alec, and the husband of a half-sister lost their lives in the fighting.) 3. B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), pp. 121-122. 4. Benjamin Quarles, Lincoln and the Negro (New York: 1962), pp. 36-37.; Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 158. 5. Roy P. Basler, editor, et al, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1953-1955 [eight volumes and index]), Vol. II, pp. 255-256. (Cited hereinafter as R. Basler, Collected Works.).; David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper, eds., The American Intellectual Tradition (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989), vol. I, pp. 378-379. 6. R. Basler, Collected Works (1953), vol. II, pp. 405, 408, 409. 7. John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans(New York: A. Knopf, 1964 [2nd ed.]), pp. 234-235. [In the fifth edition of 1980, see pages 108-109, 177.].; Leslie H. Fischel, Jr., and Benjamin Quarles, The Negro American: A Documentary History (New York: W. Morrow, 1967), pp. 75-78.; Arvarh E. Strickland, "Negro Colonization Movements to 1840," Lincoln Herald (Harrogate, Tenn.: Lincoln Memorial Univ. Press), Vol. 61, No. 2 (Summer 1959), pp. 43-56.; Earnest S. Cox, Lincoln's Negro Policy (Torrance, Calif.: Noontide Press, 1968), pp. 19-25. Thomas Jefferson outlined his plan for black resettlement in Notes on the State of Virginia (apparently first published in 1785): "To emancipate all slaves born after passing of the act [a proposed law] ... [They] should continue with their parents to a certain age, then be brought up, at public expense, to tillage, arts, or sciences, according to their geniuses, till the females should be eighteen, and the males twenty-one years of age, when they should be colonized to such place as the circumstances of the time should render most proper, sending them out with arms, implements of household and of the handicraft arts, seeds, pairs of the useful domestic animals, etc., to declare them a free and independent people, and to extend to them our alliance and protection till they have acquired strength ..." (Source: Life and Selected Works of Thomas Jefferson [New York: Modern Library, 1944], p. 255. Also quoted in: Nathaniel Weyl and William Marina,American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro [Arlington House, 1971], p. 83.) For more on Jefferson's view of the race issue, and his support for forcible deportation, see: N. Weyl and W. Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (1971), pp. 71-100. 8. Nathaniel Weyl and William Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (Arlington House, 1971), pp. 132-134.; Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union(New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1947), vol. I ("Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847-1852"), pp. 511-517.; Robert William Fogel, Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New York: 1989), pp. 251-254. 9. Henry N. Sherwood, "The Formation of the American Colonization Society,"The Journal of Negro History, Vol. II, (July 1917), pp. 209-228.; Earnest Cox,Lincoln's Negro Policy (1968), pp. 19-25.; Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union(New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1960), vol. I ("Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847-1852"), pp. 511-516.; Congressional Globe, 25th Congress, 1st Session, Pt. 1, pp. 293-298. 10. C. I. Foster, "The Colonization of Free Negroes in Liberia, 1816-1835," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 38 (January 1953), pp. 41-66.; John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (New York: 1964 [2nd ed.]), pp. 235-236,; Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1960), vol. I ("Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847-1852"), pp. 511-516. 11. John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans (New York: A. Knopf, 1964 [2nd ed.]), p. 235. 12. General Laws of the State of Indiana, Passed at the 34th Session of the General Assembly (Indianapolis: 1850), [Chap. XXVII], p. 247. 13. Congressional Globe, 35th Congress, 1st Sess., Pt. 1, pp. 293-298. See also: Allan Nevins, The War for the Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863" (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1960), pp. 516-517. [This is volume VI of The Ordeal of the Union.] 14. R. Basler, Collected Works (1953), vol. III, p. 29.; In 1864, Lincoln told Congressman James Rollins: "You and I were old whigs, both of us followers of that great statesman, Henry Clay, and I tell you I never had an opinion upon the subject of slavery in my life that I did not get from him." Quoted in: Nathaniel Weyl and William Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro(Arlington House, 1971), p. 196. 15. R. Basler, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953), Vol. II, p. 132. Also quoted in: Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), pp. 105-107.; See also: Allan Nevins, The War for the Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863" (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1960), p. 7. 16. R. Basler, Collected Works (1953), Vol. II, pp. 298-299. 17. R. Basler, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953), Vol. III, p. 16.; Paul M. Angle, ed., Created Equal?: The Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 117. 18. R. Basler, The Collected Works Of Abraham Lincoln (1953), Vol. III, pp. 145-146.; James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality (Princeton Univ. Press, 1964), pp. 23-24.; Paul M. Angle, ed., Created Equal?: The Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 235. 19. B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), p. 192. 20. R. P. Basler, ed., et al, The Collected Works Of Abraham Lincoln (1953), vol. III, pp. 522-550, esp. pp. 535, 541.; The complete text is also in: Robert W. Johannsen, Democracy on Trial: 1845-1877 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 105-119.; See also: Richard N. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (New York: McGraw Hill, 1958), p. 220. 21. Richard N. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (New York: 1958), p. 83. 22. R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), p. 77. 23. B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), pp. 224-225. 24. One of Crittenden's sons would later serve as a Confederate army General, while another would serve as a General in the federal forces. 25. R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), pp. 87-92.; Stephen Oates,With Malice Toward None (New York: 1977), pp. 199-200. 26. Leland D. Baldwin, The Stream of American History (New York: American Book Co., 1952 [two volumes], vol. I, 293. It is likewise often overlooked that there were more than 250,000 free blacks in the South. In New Orleans alone, more than 3,000 free blacks owned black slaves themselves, many being ranked as slave magnates. More than 8,000 black slaves were owned by Indians in Florida and the West who supported and often fought on the side of the Confederacy. 27. B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), p. 180.; Roger Butterfield, The American Past (New York: 1947), pp. 153-154. 28. B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), pp. 226-227. 29. R. P. Basler, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953), Vol. IV, p. 160.; R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), p. 85. 30. R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), pp. 85-86. 31. R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), p. 86. 32. B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), p. 246.; The complete text of Lincoln's 1861 Inaugural Address is in: Robert W. Johannsen, Democracy on Trial: 1845-1877 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 161-168, and in: R. P. Basler, The Collected Works Of Abraham Lincoln (1953), vol. IV, pp. 262-271. 33. Allan Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln: Prologue to Civil War, 1859-1861(New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1950), pp. 468-469. [This is volume IV of TheOrdeal of the Union.] 34. Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None: The Life Of Abraham Lincoln(1977), pp. 196, 197, 204, 209, 226-227. See also: Sam G. Dickson, "Shattering the Icon of Abraham Lincoln," The Journal of Historical Review (Vol. 7, No. 3), Fall 1986, p. 327. 35. R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), p. 105. 36. R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), p. 110. 37. R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), p. 117. 38. R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), p. 221.; B. Thomas,Abraham Lincoln (1952), pp. 275-277. 39. R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), p. 221. 40. J. H. Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (1964 [2nd ed.]), pp. 268-271. [In the fifth edition of 1980, this is pp. 207-208.].; See also: Allan Nevins, The War For The Union, vol. III, "The Organized War, 1863-1864" (New York: 1971), pp. 418-419, 428, 432. [This is volume VII of The Ordeal of the Union.] 41. In January 1861, the influential New York Tribune proposed a plan for the gradual, compensated emancipation of the 600,000 slaves in Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana. The federal government, the paper urged, should appropriate enough money to compensate slave-holders an average of $400 per slave. See: James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality (1964), p. 40.; Allan Nevins, The War for the Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863," (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1960), p. 7 (fn. 9). [This is volume VI of The Ordeal of the Union.] In 1854, Jacob Dewees of Philadelphia published a 236-page book, The Great Future of Africa and America; an Essay showing our whole duty to the Black Man, consistent with our own safety and glory. Dewees urged compensated emancipation, to be paid for by the proceeds of sales of public lands, and transportation of the Negroes to Africa, a process that might take as long as a century. Source: Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1960), vol. I ("Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847-1852"), p. 517 ( fn. 29). 42. James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality (1964), p. 155.; A. Nevins,The War For The Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863" (New York: 1960), p. 8 (fn. 12). 43. 36th Congress, 1st Session, House of Representatives, Report No. 568: Report of the Hon. F.H. Morse, of Maine, from the Committee on Naval Affairs, H.R. in Relation to the Contract made by the Secretary of the Navy for Coal and Other Privileges on the Isthmus of Chiriqui.; At that time, the Chiriqui region was part of New Granada.; On the Chiriqui project, see also: Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln and the Chiriqui Colonization Project," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4, (October 1952), pp. 418-420.; Nathaniel Weyl and William Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (1971), pp. 215-216.; Allan Nevins, The War For The Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863" (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1960), p. 7.; R. P. Basler, ed., et al, The Collected Works Of Abraham Lincoln (1953), Vol. V, pp. 370-371 (note). 44. "Important Considerations for Congress," enclosure with Ninian W. Edwards to Abraham Lincoln, August 9, 1861. The Robert Todd Lincoln Collection of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln (Washington: Library of Congress, 1947 [194 volumes]), vol. 52, f. 11109. (Hereafter cited as Lincoln Collection.).; Also cited in: Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln and the Chiriqui Colonization Project," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (October 1952), pp. 420-421. 45. F. P. Blair, Sr. to A. Lincoln, November 16, 1861. Lincoln Collection, Vol. 61, ff. 13002-13014.; Also cited in: P. J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 420-421. 46. A. Lincoln to Simon Cameron, December [?], 1861, Lincoln Collection, vol. 64, f. 13636.; Also cited in: P. J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (1952), p. 421. 47. A. Lincoln to Gideon Welles, December [?], 1861, Lincoln Collection (cited above), Vol. 64, ff. 13637-13638. 48. Allan Nevins, The War For The Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863," (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1960), pp. 6-8. [This is volume VI of The Ordeal of the Union.] 49. R. P. Basler, et al, The Collected Works Of Abraham Lincoln (1953), Vol. V, pp. 35-53, esp. p. 48. 50. Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None: The Life Of Abraham Lincoln(New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 299.; Nathaniel Weyl and William Marina,American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (1971), p. 216. 51. Allan Nevins, The War For The Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863," (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1960), p. 31. 52. A. Nevins, The War For The Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863" (New York: 1960), p. 32. 53. A. Nevins, The War For The Union, volume II, (1960), pp. 32-33. 54. R. Basler, ed., et al, Collected Works (1953), vol. V, p. 318.; Robert W. Johannsen, Democracy on Trial: 1845-1877 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), p. 265. 55. N. Weyl and W. Marina, American Statesmen (1971), pp. 216-217.; 37th Congress, 2nd Session, Public Laws of the United States (Boston, 1861-1862), XII, p. 378. 56. R. Basler, Collected Works (1953), vol. V, p. 192. 57. Charles H. Wesley, "Lincoln's Plan for Colonizing the Emancipated Negroes," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. IV, No. 1 (January 1919), p. 11.; Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 422-424.; N. Weyl and W. Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (1971), pp. 216-217.; R. P. Basler, The Collected Works Of Abraham Lincoln (1953), Vol. V, p. 32.; B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), p. 360. 58. Caleb Smith to A. Lincoln, April 23, 1862, 47th Congress, 1st Session, House of Representatives, Exec. Doc. 46, Resolutions of the House of Representatives Relative to Certain Lands and Harbors Known as the Chiriqui Grant, p. 132. (Hereafter referred to as Report on the Chiriqui Grant.) . ; This document is cited in: P. J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (1952), p. 425.; See also: A. Nevins, The War For The Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863," (New York: 1960), p. 148 (fn. 16). 59. A. Nevins, The War For The Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863" (New York: 1960), p. 148 (fn. 16). 60. James Mitchell to A. Lincoln, May 18, 1862. Lincoln Collection (cited above), Vol. 76, f. 16044.; P. J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (1952), pp. 426-427. 61. R. Basler, et al, Collected Works (1953), vol. V, pp. 370-375.; A record of this meeting is also given in: Nathaniel Weyl and William Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (1971), pp. 217-221.; See also: Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 428-430. 62. "The Colonization Scheme," Detroit Free Press, August 15 (or 27), 1862. See also: Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 437-438. 63. James Mitchell, Commissioner of Emigration, to United States Ministers of the Colored Race, 1862. Lincoln Collection (cited above in footnote 44), Vol, 98, ff. 20758- 20759. 64. Edwin M. Thomas to A. Lincoln, August 16, 1862. Lincoln Collection (cited above), Vol. 84, ff. 17718-17719. 65. Bedford Pim, The Gate of the Pacific (London: 1863), pp. 144-146.; Cited in: Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (1952), pp. 436-437.; James M. McPherson, The Negro's Civil War (New York: 1965), p. 95.; "Colonization Scheme," Detroit Free Press, August 15 (or 27), 1862. 66. Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (1952), pp. 437-438. 67. Report on the Chiriqui Grant (cited above in footnote 58), pp. 134-136.; Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (1952), pp. 432-433. 68. 39th Congress, 1st Sess., Senate Executive Document 55. Report on the Transportation, Settlement, and Colonization of Persons of the African Race, pp. 16-17. 69. Caleb Smith to Robert Murphy, Sept. 16, 1862. 39th Congress, 1st Sess., Senate Executive Document 55. Report on the Transportation, Settlement, and Colonization of Persons of the African Race, p. 17. 70. Caleb Smith to Samuel Pomeroy, Sept. 20, 1862. 39th Congress, 1st Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 55. Report on the Transportation, Settlement, and Colonization of Persons of the African Race, p. 17. 71. Caleb Smith to S. Pomeroy, Sept. 20, 1862. Same source, p. 17. 72. James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality (1964), pp. 80, 81, 82, 89, 93, 94. 73. John H. Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (New York: 1964 [2nd ed.]), p. 277.; Stephen Oates, With Malice Toward None (1977), p. 299. 74. Benjamin Quarles, Lincoln and the Negro (New York: 1962), pp. 126-127.; B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), p. 334. 75. The complete text of Lincoln's preliminary Emancipation Proclamation of September 22, 1862, is printed in: Robert W. Johannsen, Democracy on Trial: 1845-1877 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 266-268, and in: R. P. Basler,The Collected Works Of Abraham Lincoln (1953), vol. V, pp. 433-436. 76. The complete text of the final Emancipation Proclamation is printed in: Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years, (New York: 1954 [One-volume edition]), pp. 345-346. 77. Allan Nevins, The War For The Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863" (New York: 1960), p. 235. 78. Benjamin Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), p. 333. As historians acknowledge, Lincoln did not issue the Emancipation Proclamation out of altruistic concern for blacks in bondage. If his objective truly had been solely to free slaves in the Confederacy, he could simply have faithfully enforced the second Confiscation Act, by which Confederate slaves coming under Union control were set free. It is also possible that, having announced on September 22, 1862, that he would make a final proclamation of emancipation on January 1, 1863, Lincoln had an excuse for disregarding the Confiscation laws, and could stave off support for pending legislation, which he opposed, that would permit blacks to fight for the Union. It also appears that edict provided the President with a means to frustrate Thaddeus Stevens and other abolitionists in Congress, who had introduced legislation to make freedmen and soldiers out of the slaves from the four slave-holding states that had remained with the Union. According to this interpretation, holds, Lincoln hoped to make use of the hundred-day period before the final proclamation was to be issued in order to make irreversible progress on implementing the Chiriqui colonization project, and to gain additional support for the gradual black resettlement. 79. John H. Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (1964 [2nd ed.]), pp. 283-286. [This is apparently p. 228 of the 1974 edition.] 80. Same source as footnote 79. 81. Forrest interview in the Cincinnati Commercial, August 28, 1868. Reprinted in: Stanley Horn, Invisible Empire: The Story of the Ku Klux Klan, 1866-1871 (Montclair, N.J.: Patterson-Smith, 2nd ed., 1969), p. 414. 82. R. Basler, ed., et al, Collected Works (1953), vol. V, p. 421. 83. B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), p. 361. 84. A. Nevins, The War For The Union, vol. II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863" (New York: 1960), pp. 231-233.; Facsimile of text of Lincoln's letter of Aug. 22, 1862 to Greeley in: Stefan Lorant, Lincoln: A Picture Story of His Life (New York: Bonanza, 1969), pp. 158-159.; See also: R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), p. 224.; B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), pp. 342-343. 85. B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), pp. 333, 356-359. 86. R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), p. 227.; N. Weyl and W. Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (1971), p. 226. 87. John H. Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (New York: 1964 [2nd ed.]), p. 278.; Stephen Oates, With Malice Toward None (1977), pp. 322, 339, 343. 88. Roger Butterfield, The American Past (New York: 1947), p. 172.; Allan Nevins, The War For The Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863" (New York: 1960), pp. 235-237. 89. John H. Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (New York: 1964 [2nd ed.]), p. 280. 90. Stephen Oates, With Malice Toward None (1977), p. 340.; A. Nevins, The War For The Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863" (New York: 1960), pp. 236-237. 91. Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years, (New York: 1954 [One-volume edition]), p. 347.; Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People (New York: 1964 [7th edition]), p. 342.; See also: A. Nevins, The War For The Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863" (New York: 1960), pp. 270-273. 92. Joseph Henry to A. Lincoln, Sept. 5, 1862. Lincoln Collection (cited above), Vol. 86, ff. 18226-18227.; Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (1952), pp. 430-431.; Nathaniel Weyl and W. Marina,American Statesmen (1971), p. 224.; Gerstle Mack, The Land Divided (New York: 1944), p. 276. 93. Perley Poore, Reminiscences of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis(Philadelphia: 1866), II, pp. 107-108. 94. James L. Sellers, "James R. Doolittle," The Wisconsin Magazine of History, XVII (March 1934), pp. 302-304. 95. James R. Partridge to William Seward, August 26, 1862, A.B. Dickinson to W. Seward, Sept. 12, 1862, and Pedro Zeledon to A.B. Dickinson, Sept. 12, 1862. Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, pp. 891-892, 897-898.; Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (1952), pp. 443-444 (incl. note 50).; N. Andrew Cleven, "Some Plans for Colonizing Liberated Negro Slaves in Hispanic America," The Southwestern Political and Social Science Quarterly, VI (September 1925), p. 157. 96. Luis Molina to W. Seward, Sept. 19, 1862. Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, pp. 899-903. 97. John Usher to Samuel Pomeroy, Oct. 7, 1862. 39th Congress, 1st Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 55. Report on the Transportation, Settlement, and Colonization of Persons of the African Race, p. 21.; Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (1952), pp. 440-441. 98. Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (1952), p. 441.; Nathaniel Weyl and W. Marina, American Statesmen (1971), p. 224. 99. R. Basler, ed., et al, Collected Works (1953), vol. V, pp. 518-537, esp. pp. 520, 521, 530, 531, 534, 535. Also quoted, in part, in: N. Weyl and W. Marina,American Statesmen (1971), pp. 225, 227. 100. R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), pp. 221-222, 228. 101. James M. McPherson, The Negro's Civil War (New York: Pantheon, 1965), pp. 96-97.; Charles H. Wesley, "Lincoln's Plan ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. IV, No. 1 (January 1919), pp. 17-19.; B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln(1952), pp. 362-363.; N. Weyl and W. Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (1971), pp. 227-228.; Stephen Oates, With Malice Toward None(1977), p. 342. 102. N. Weyl and W. Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro(1971), pp. 228-229. Source cited: L. E. Chittenden, Recollections of Abraham Lincoln.; Lincoln apparently also gave consideration to setting aside Florida as a black asylum or reservation. See: Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... , " The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (October 1952), p. 419. 103. Tyler Dennett, ed., Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay (New York: 1930), p. 203.; Also, quoted in: Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4, p. 439. 104. Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (October 1952), p. 453. 105. B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), pp. 493-494. 106. B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), pp. 501-503. 107. Benjamin Butler, Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin F. Butler (Boston: 1892), pp. 903-908.; Quoted in: Charles H. Wesley, "Lincoln's Plan for Colonizing the Emancipated Negroes," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. IV, No. 1 (January 1919), p. 20.; Earnest S. Cox, Lincoln's Negro Policy (Torrance, Calif.: 1968), pp. 62-64.; Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln and the Chiriqui Colonization Project," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (October 1952), pp. 448-449. In the view of historian H. Belz, the essence of what Butler reports that Lincoln said to him here is "in accord with views ... [he] expressed elsewhere concerning reconstruction." See: Herman Belz,Reconstructing the Union: Theory and Policy During the Civil War (Ithaca: 1969), pp. 282-283. Cited in: N. Weyl and W. Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (1971), p. 233 (n. 44). The authenticity of Butler's report has been called into question, notably in: Mark Neely, "Abraham Lincoln and Black Colonization: Benjamin Butler's Spurious Testimony," Civil War History, 25 (1979), pp. 77-83. See also: G. S. Borritt, "The Voyage to the Colony of Linconia," Historian, No. 37 , 1975, pp. 629- 630.; Eugene H. Berwanger, "Lincoln's Constitutional Dilemma: Emancipation and Black Suffrage," Papers of the Abraham Lincoln Association (Springfield, Ill.), Vol. V, 1983, pp. 25-38.; Arthur Zilversmit, "Lincoln and the Problem of Race," Papers of the Abraham Lincoln Association, Vol. II, 1980, pp. 22-45. 108. Charles H. Wesley, "Lincoln's Plan for Colonizing the Emancipated Negroes," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. IV, No. 1 (January 1919), p. 8. 109. Frederick Douglass, "Oration Delivered on the Occasion of the Unveiling of the Freedman's Monument in Memory of Abraham Lincoln," in Washington, DC, April 14, 1876. Quoted in: Nathaniel Weyl and William Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (Arlington House, 1971), p. 169; and in: Benjamin Quarles, ed., Frederick Douglass (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: 1968), p. 74. 110. Allan Nevins, The War For The Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863" (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1960), p. 10. [Volume VI of The Ordeal of the Union.] From: The Journal of Historical Review, Sept.-Oct. 1993 (Vol. 13, No. 5), pages 4-25. About the author Robert Morgan is the pen name of a writer who holds a bachelor degree in general studies from Indiana University-Purdue University (Indianapolis), as well as graduate certificates in Public Management (Indiana University, South Bend) and Labor Union Studies (I.U.-Purdue, Indianapolis). At the time he wrote this item, he was working toward a Master of Public Affairs degree (I.U., South Bend). He has been published more than 65 times in 15 periodicals, including the Indiana Bar Association's Res Gestae, the National Council on Crime and Delinquency's Crime & Delinquency, Indiana University's Preface, Indiana Criminal Law Review, and the Indianapolis Star.