American historians are now asking a shocking question: Was Lincoln racist?

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I am not sure that there was any doubt, I haven't seen the film but I always suspected that it would be a PC version of Lincoln and not the unvarnished truth.

The film currently taking America by storm begins with a black Union cavalryman pausing from the slaughter of the Civil War to recite the Gettysburg Address by heart as the president who gave it trudges past through the mud. It ends with Abraham Lincoln in quiet triumph, his work done in seeing slavery banned throughout the nation, and the Confederacy of the American South brought to its knees. Breaking off from a discussion with colleagues about giving blacks the vote, Uncle Abe — played by Daniel Day-Lewis — heads off to a night at the theatre with Mrs Lincoln, and a fateful encounter with assassin John Wilkes Booth.

Lincoln, Steven Spielberg’s sweeping epic about the 16th President of America’s triumph over slavery, won a commanding 12 Oscar nominations last week and is leading the field for this year’s Academy Awards, with Day-Lewis hotly tipped for the best actor accolade.

Weaned — as every U.S. schoolchild is — on the notion of Lincoln as a towering, morally spotless leader in America’s history, the Oscar grandees are unlikely to vote against it: it seems almost treasonous to stand in the way of this lump-in-the-throat, desperately worthy celebration of the man who has been dubbed the ‘Great Emancipator’.

Unfortunately, say historians, its portrayal of America’s most revered president is about as accurate as the notion that an ordinary soldier could have recited the Gettysburg Address from memory when the speech only became famous in the 20th century. Not only, they say, has Spielberg’s lengthy drama grossly exaggerated Lincoln’s role in ending slavery, but it has also glossed over the president’s rather less likeable qualities.

Very definitely a man of his times, say historians, Lincoln was — certainly by today’s standards — a racist who used the N-word liberally, who believed that whites were superior to blacks and who, having jumped on the emancipation bandwagon rather late in the day, wanted to pack the freed slaves off to hard new lives in plantations abroad.
 
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when someone holds veiws that people are somehow less equal to other humans because they have a certain color to their skin then they are racists.


At least Llincoln did some good while being a racist.

I wish the right wing racist of today would try to over come the things their racism causes
 
Oh good lord not this again! By the standards of our times Lincoln was a racist. By the standards of the times in which he lived Lincoln was progressive and, by many, considered a radical on the issue of race. I've read multiple biographies from legitimate biographers on Lincoln and they all draw the same conclusion. When Lincoln entered the white house he did not believe blacks were equal to whites but by the time the Civil War had ended and before his assasination he had changed his mind and believed in equality of the races (certainly before the law). Had Lincoln not changed his mind and others like him it's highly unlikely that the 14th and 15th ammendments would have been ratified when they were immediatly after the Civil War.
 
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Mott the Hoople said:
Oh good lord not this again! By the standards of our times Lincoln was a racist. By the standards of the times in which he lived Lincoln was progressive and, by many, considered a radical on the issue of race. I've read multiple biographies from legitimate biographers on Lincoln and they all draw the same conclusion. When Lincoln entered the white house he did not believe blacks were equal to whites but by the time the Civil War had ended and before his assasination he had changed his mind and believed in equality of the races (certainly before the law). Had Lincoln not changed his mind and others like him it's highly unlikely that the 14th and 15th ammendments would have been ratified when they were immediatly after the Civil War.
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The article quite reasonably points out that passionate abolitionists such as the freed slave Frederick Douglass, newspaper editor William Garrison and heiress Angelina Grimke were the real heroes and heroines of the struggle to end slavery, but their names are largely lost to history now. They don’t even get a mention in Spielberg’s version of events. Also absent is Harriet Beecher Stowe, a clergyman’s daughter and author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which is a fierce attack on slavery and the best-selling novel of the 19th century.

There are those that say he relented on his colonisation plan shortly before he died and others that say he planned to revive it in his second term. General Benjamin F. Butler claimed that Lincoln approached him in 1865 a few days before his assassination, to talk about reviving colonization in Panama.


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People would do well to read the Lincoln/Douglass debate. Additionally, Lincoln wasn't concerned with slavery per se, he was concerned with preserving the Union. He said multiple times if he could preserve the Union while keeping slavery, he would do it.

In my view he was one of our worst presidents ever and it has nothing to do with the Emancipation Proclamation. It was his cavalier attitude toward the US Constitution.
 
Aoxomoxoa said:
I am not sure that there was any doubt, I haven't seen the film but I always suspected that it would be a PC version of Lincoln and not the unvarnished truth.

The film currently taking America by storm begins with a black Union cavalryman pausing from the slaughter of the Civil War to recite the Gettysburg Address by heart as the president who gave it trudges past through the mud. It ends with Abraham Lincoln in quiet triumph, his work done in seeing slavery banned throughout the nation, and the Confederacy of the American South brought to its knees. Breaking off from a discussion with colleagues about giving blacks the vote, Uncle Abe — played by Daniel Day-Lewis — heads off to a night at the theatre with Mrs Lincoln, and a fateful encounter with assassin John Wilkes Booth.

Lincoln, Steven Spielberg’s sweeping epic about the 16th President of America’s triumph over slavery, won a commanding 12 Oscar nominations last week and is leading the field for this year’s Academy Awards, with Day-Lewis hotly tipped for the best actor accolade.

Weaned — as every U.S. schoolchild is — on the notion of Lincoln as a towering, morally spotless leader in America’s history, the Oscar grandees are unlikely to vote against it: it seems almost treasonous to stand in the way of this lump-in-the-throat, desperately worthy celebration of the man who has been dubbed the ‘Great Emancipator’.

Unfortunately, say historians, its portrayal of America’s most revered president is about as accurate as the notion that an ordinary soldier could have recited the Gettysburg Address from memory when the speech only became famous in the 20th century. Not only, they say, has Spielberg’s lengthy drama grossly exaggerated Lincoln’s role in ending slavery, but it has also glossed over the president’s rather less likeable qualities.

Very definitely a man of his times, say historians, Lincoln was — certainly by today’s standards — a racist who used the N-word liberally, who believed that whites were superior to blacks and who, having jumped on the emancipation bandwagon rather late in the day, wanted to pack the freed slaves off to hard new lives in plantations abroad.
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Of course he was a racist. He was a Republican;)
 
Aoxomoxoa said:
The article quite reasonably points out that passionate abolitionists such as the freed slave Frederick Douglass, newspaper editor William Garrison and heiress Angelina Grimke were the real heroes and heroines of the struggle to end slavery, but their names are largely lost to history now. They don’t even get a mention in Spielberg’s version of events. Also absent is Harriet Beecher Stowe, a clergyman’s daughter and author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which is a fierce attack on slavery and the best-selling novel of the 19th century.

There are those that say he relented on his colonisation plan shortly before he died and others that say he planned to revive it in his second term. General Benjamin F. Butler claimed that Lincoln approached him in 1865 a few days before his assassination, to talk about reviving colonization in Panama.


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You missed the most important radical abolitionist of them all. Salmon P. Chase. As for the colonization plan, find better sources. That's complete nonsense. When Lincoln published the Emancipation Proclamation and with it the call for blacks to serve in the Union Army to fight for their country and their freedom any thoughts of anything but legal equality went right out the window. This notion that Lincoln would have reconsidered colonization after the Emancipation Proclomation was published is complete and utter nonsense. Once blacks picked up arms to fight for their nation such notions were toast and Lincoln knew that.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
You missed the most important radical abolitionist of them all. Salmon P. Chase. As for the colonization plan, find better sources. That's complete nonsense. When Lincoln published the Emancipation Proclamation and with it the call for blacks to serve in the Union Army to fight for their country and their freedom any thoughts of anything but legal equality went right out the window. This notion that Lincoln would have reconsidered colonization after the Emancipation Proclomation was published is complete and utter nonsense. Once blacks picked up arms to fight for their nation such notions were toast and Lincoln knew that.
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I suggest that you read this before dismissing it out of hand as new information has come to hand from the National Archives in Kew, London.

Abraham Lincoln’s reputation as the great champion of America’s slaves has taken a battering amid new evidence that the revered president wanted to send many of them to toil in British colonies in the Caribbean.

Academics Phillip Magness and Sebastian Page claim that documents uncovered in British archives show that Lincoln was rather less enamoured by the prospect of a racially-united America than is often assumed.
The 16th U.S. president is widely lionised in the U.S. for winning the American Civil War for the Union and bringing an end to slavery.
Although earlier historians have conceded that he did propose sending some of the freed slaves to new colonies, they have dismissed it as a ruse designed to placate racist voters.
However, according to evidence from the British legation in Washington that has turned up at the National Archives in Kew, the president was deadly serious about black colonisation right up until his assassination in 1865.
Mr Magness and Mr Page say that just after Lincoln announced the freedom of three quarters of America’s four million slaves with his historic 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, he authorised plans to set up freedmen’s settlements in what is now Belize and Guyana.
And even as black soldiers were dying for the Union cause and a mission to send 453 freed slaves to colonise a pest-ridden island off Haiti met with a disastrous small pox outbreak, Mr Lincoln was secretly authorising British officials to recruit what could have been hundreds of thousands of blacks for a new life on the sugar and cotton plantations of Central America.
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That's ancient history. Lincoln had all sorts of discussions along these lines. That's not the same as implementing policy. It was also well documented that after including blacks in the Union army that Lincoln questioned colonization as he realized eventually that it couldn't work. Lincoln may have never completely let go of these plans but by the end of the war he had concluded that they simply could not work and that equality before the law was the only real and practical choice. As I said, Lincoln new after Jan 1 1863 that, as a practical measure, colonization would not work and thus he never implemented any such plan.

I mean there is really nothing new here. It's pretty common knowledge that Lincoln held many of the prejudices of his time. That he contemplated plans such as colonization but in the end so what? He eventually drew the conclusion that colonization would not work as a pracitcal matter and he never implemented any colonization policies, either voluntary or coerced, while President. Nor have you addressed the points I made about the 14th and 15th ammendments (not to mention the 13th) which clearly shows which direction things we're going. In fact Lincoln began work on the Emancipation Proclamation and supported the 13th Ammendment mainly due to his conclusion that colonization wouldn't work. That he simply didn't have the political support for it if for no other reason. Had this not been the case and had not Lincoln concluded that equality before the law was the only practical solution I seriously doubt that the 13th, 14th and 15th ammendments would have been ratified within the time frames immeadiatly following the Civil War.
 
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Mott the Hoople said:
That's ancient history. Lincoln had all sorts of discussions along these lines. That's not the same as implementing policy. It was also well documented that after including blacks in the Union army that Lincoln questioned colonization as he realized eventually that it couldn't work. Lincoln may have never completely let go of these plans but by the end of the war he had concluded that they simply could not work and that equality before the law was the only real and practical choice. As I said, Lincoln new after Jan 1 1863 that, as a practical measure, colonization would not work and thus he never implemented any such plan.
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I can't see how it is ancient history if the documents only just turned up recently and are the subject of a new book Colonisation After Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement by British historians Phillip Magness and Sebastian Page.


Did President Abraham Lincoln have special plans for freed slaves after emancipation? Well, two British academics claim the former United States president, hailed (especially by African-Americans) for his campaign against slavery, wanted to send many former American slaves to British colonies in the Caribbean.

"The two British writers are correct," notes Dr. Claud Anderson, president of PowerNomics Corporation of America, a corporation focused on business development, primarily in inner cities. "President Abraham Lincoln's interest was strictly in saving the ´Union of States.` The welfare of five million Black people (slaves) was only little more than a logistical problem. Lincoln considered shipping all Blacks in America back to Africa or to the Caribbean. He even considered establishing a Black colony in Texas or Central America."

The two academics, Phillip Magness and Sebastian Page, write in their forthcoming book, Colonisation After Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement, that newly discovered documents in British archives prove that Lincoln wanted to relocate as many Blacks as possible.

Lincoln, the 16th U.S. president, is often revered for not only winning the American Civil War (1861-65) but for bringing an end to slavery. But in reality, says Anderson, who wrote Black Labor, White Wealth: A Search for Power and Economic Justice and PowerNomics®: The National Plan, Lincoln was more interested in developing the United States as a white country. "Lincoln requested the U.S. Congress to give Reparation dollars to White slave holders who lost their slaves, while he killed Radical Republicans' suggestions that all freed slaves receive Reparations in the form of 40 acres, a mule, and $100 dollars," Anderson points out. "President Lincoln even opposed the drafting and initial public announcement of an Emancipation Proclamation for Black slaves. He final agreed and read the Emancipation six months later."

The British historians agree. In their book, they propose that Lincoln was still considering Black colonization up until his assassination in 1865. According to the two British academics, soon after Lincoln announced the freedom of America's four million slaves under the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, he also approved plans to set up freedmen's settlements in what is now known as Belize and Guyana.

Say Magness and Page, Lincoln was “secretly authorizing” British officials to recruit thousands of Blacks move to the sugar and cotton plantations of Central America. According to Magness and Page, the new documents show Lincoln himself met agents for the then-colonies of British Honduras and British Guiana to recruit Blacks to move to the encampments.

Concludes Anderson, "So, in reality, there is absolutely no reason for Black Americans to be honoring and loving President Abraham Lincoln who was no different from any other White person of the 1800s. Congress did not give Reparations to white slave holders because slave holders had invested approximately $8 billion in slaves which was more money than the nation had invested in all level of government and all other businesses."

He adds, "If Black Americans just have to honor whites of that time period, it would make more sense for them to recognize and honor John Brown and members of the Radical Republicans, such as Congressmen Charles Sumner, Stevens, and Benjamin Wade."
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http://www.tnj.com/news/historians-shed-new-light-president-lincoln

http://civilwarhistory.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/historians-uncover-new-abraham-lincoln-records/
 
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I don't know much about the civil war or abolition except from women's involvement in the times. I have read a couple of books on the subject.

I have also picked up a thing or two on his forum.
 
Rana said:
I don't know much about the civil war or abolition except from women's involvement in the times. I have read a couple of books on the subject.

I have also picked up a thing or two on his forum.
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It is interesting to listen to these discussions. I have also picked up a few things over the years with regards to our history. Most of what I have studied is 20th century and beyond.
 
evince said:
I wish the right wing racist of today would try to over come the things their racism causes
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You must be talking about a very obscure minority of the Right, as most of us have no idea what the hell are you talking about.

I would submit that a very large portion of the Left gives little to zero credit to most minorities, as they seem quite comfortable with their perpetual dependency on government welfare.
 
Superfreak said:
It is interesting to listen to these discussions. I have also picked up a few things over the years with regards to our history. Most of what I have studied is 20th century and beyond.
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We are given such a sugar coated version unless you read or major in the subject.
 
Rana said:
We are given such a sugar coated version unless you read or major in the subject.
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Most universities don't teach the truth about many American history subjects. Especially Lincoln.

Now we have the net though.
 
Actually, as usual, Tom has no fucking idea what he is talking about.

Read Foner. I'm really not going to get into this here because I despise the morons involved, but read Foner.

I mean there are other historians you can read on Lincoln (and Mott is correct, much of this is old news), but I'd go with Foner.
 
I will put it this way - the Lincoln we were taught in Middle School, or Grade school or whenever the hell they get to Lincoln, was simplistic, it's true.

And this version of Lincoln being presented here, is just as simplistic.

Lincoln was a fascinating man and a man who changed his views given new information and experiences. IMO he was our best President. But whether you think he was our best or our worst or whatever, read about him at length because, wow.
 
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