Mark heard that:
<<He [Lincoln] was reluctant to legislate the end of slavery and initially
wanted to deport the freed slaves to a colony that would be established in
Africa, feeling that their continued presence in this country would do more
harm than good.>>
As a congressman, Lincoln looked for a rational way to deal with the problems
caused by slavery in a free American society, and he believed he had found it
in colonization. He thought that voluntary immigration of blacks (others
favored involuntary relocation) to Liberia would succeed in both "freeing our
land from the dangerous presence of slavery" and "in restoring a captive
people to their long-lost father-land, with bright prospects for the
future."
Moreover, he thought that colonization would elevate the status of the Negro
race by proving that blacks, in a separate, self-governing community of their
own, were enirely capable of making orderly progress in civiliazation.
The plan was entirely rational - and wholly impractical. American blacks,
nearly all of whom were born and raised in the US, had not the slightest
desire to go to Africa; Southern planters had no intention of freeing their
slaves, and there was no possibility that the Northern states would pay the
enormous cost required to deport and resettle millions of African-
Americans.
Lincoln persisted with his colonization fantasy well into his presidency, but
abandoned colonization by the end of the war as a totally unworkable option.
-Julius
