06/13/2022
Lincoln, the Great Emancipator (or not)
Abraham Lincoln walked into the presidency and suddenly the atmosphere of hate, bitterness, and loathing was completely on his shoulders. He was inaugurated in March 1861, and Fort Sumter was fired on in April, 1861 thus beginning what would be called the Civil War, the War Between the States, or the War of Rebellion and the War of Aggression. But the story of Lincoln’s relation to African Americans began before the war by whatever name it was called. He involved himself into the lives and the plans for the future of the lives of free African Americans as a senator from Illinois.
Abraham Lincoln was the Republican senator who debated Stephen Douglass the incumbent Democratic senator from August to October 1858. The major question for the time, was the one concerning the spreading of slavery into new national territories. Southerner wanted those territories to decide for themselves if the wanted to continue the system of human slavery rather than leaving it up to the government to decide. Douglass believed that each territory should be allowed the decision for themselves while Lincoln spoke his opinion in these words; “ a house divided against itself cannot stand…this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.” He took a stand which propelled him into the white house but not into the hearts of the southern population. “Slavery,” as stated by a southern politician in 1860, “is our truth. Slavery is our king. Slavery is our divine right.” These opposing beliefs set the stage for the war that took too many lives to accurately count.
Abraham Lincoln after winning the election and after the bombing of Fort Sumter had to deal with not only the Southern slave owners but found that he had to deal face to face with the Black population whether slave or free. First of all, there were Black men working in the white house and after the Union forces marched into the South, Blacks began walking away from their plantations into the Union camps. What was the Union to do with them. The laws said they were to be sent back to their owners, but the Union generals refused to do that. They became contraband of the Union camps. They worked and daily their numbers increased. They offered their services to join ranks and fight with the Union but Lincoln could not imagine white soldiers willingly standing side by side with Negroes and fighting. But when the tides of war turned and the Union lost battle after battle, the offer for the Negroes to join looked better and better. Our ancestors were given muskets, uniforms, and the privilege to fight for what they knew was their freedom.
At the start of the war, Lincoln’s stand was that he was fighting for the Union. He refused to allow the Union to be broken. He blamed the presence of Negroes for the war. “If Blacks leave, all will be well,” Lincoln touted. “Sacrifice something of your present comfort,” he advised, asking the group of leaders that he called to the White House. He asked them to “press your fellow Blacks to make the trek to Liberia and start anew. To refuse would be extremely selfish. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and, is not either to save or destroy slavery.” …”What I do about slavery and the Colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.” I write this asking all to keep in mind that he was only trying to rid the country of free Blacks, because they upset the slave population just as the American Colonization Society said in 1816. Free Blacks were a danger to the system.
The day before Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, he made a deal and signed a contract with a cotton planter from Florida, Bernard K**k. Mr. K**k was an entrepreneur who knew that Lincoln wanted to rid the country of all free Blacks, so he made arrangements in Haiti for them to be moved there and raise cotton in that country’s fertile ground. The ex-slaves would work raising cotton for four years and after that time would be given 16 acres of land of their own. The plan was to move as many as 5000 men women and children there to begin this project. Lincoln just did not believe that two races could live together in America and share in the white man’s society without problems. Issuing the Emancipation Proclamation would be releasing approximately 4,000,000 ex-slaves free and America to Lincoln’s mind would not stand for that. Colonization was the best plan. So, when K**k shared his idea with Lincoln, the two thought it the solution to Lincoln’s problem and the way for K**k to become rich.
The plan did not work. Only 500 African Americans left our shores for Haiti but more than two hundred of them died before reaching their goal. Nothing panned out and the remaining Blacks revolted after having to sleep on the ground instead of the housing promised them and K**k ran away. President Lincoln ended up sending a ship to bring the remaining Blacks back to America and the plan was put aside.
Lincoln is not the only name that can be added to beliefs that Blacks were not able to assimilate into America society. As far back as the beginning after some had fought for the Revolution against the British forces. Thomas Jefferson thought Toussaint Louverture and other Haitian leaders, “cannibals of the terrible Republic.” The general idea was that Negroes that have been free were a problem. They were a disturbance to the enslaved population and needed to be sent from the country. Discrimination, segregation, and old Jim Crow was supposed to force them to chose to go but our ancestors were a stubborn lot. America was supposed to be home of the brave and land of the free and they intended to stay and they did.
Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation but never signed the order for reimbursing the slave owners for property that had joined the Union forces. Nor did he compensate them for those who were still living on the plantations. Neither did Lincoln make any plans for the millions of Blacks who were freed with the 13th amendment. Our ancestors were freed without ‘pot nor window’. They had nothing; nowhere to go, nothing to eat, no work, and no choices. We are proof today that they were just as determined in freedom as they were in slavery. We are proof today that the same God who saved Daniel from the lion’s den, protected and saved them from whatever vices freedom had for them. We are proof…God was with them, and he is with us today. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued but we don’t know what his future plans were. John Wilkes Booth made sure that we would never know, but we do know that Lincoln did not believe we should call America our country.
