Plan B

ED: We’re going to devote a little time now to an aspect of Lincoln’s thinking that seemed to stand in direct contradiction to emancipation. I’m talking about his support for colonization, the idea that freed slaves should be resettled outside the United States.

So guys, help me with this. At the very time that Lincoln is writing the Emancipation Proclamation, a truly revolutionary document, a document that is going to lay the foundation for the freedom of 4 million slaves, he’s also talking about shipping those freed people out of the country. And people look at this and they go, well, this just suggests that the whole Emancipation Proclamation thing is bogus. He’s still looking for a way to turn America white. To get rid of black people.

Is Lincoln a cynical racist? Is he a shrewd politician? So let’s start with the shrewd politician, Brian. I know that’s the kind of thing that you specialize in.

BRIAN: Right up my alley.

ED: So tell us the political situation, and why Lincoln might be talking about colonization in order to help get emancipation accomplished.

BRIAN: Well, in typical 20th century fashion, Ed, I’m going to use two sound bite phrases. The first is coalition politics, which I think even Peter would agree has a very long heritage in the United States.

PETER: Well, that’s the Constitution.

BRIAN: Exactly.

PETER: The result of a coalition.

BRIAN: Lincoln is trying to hold together a shaky coalition. Remember, you know, the Republican party’s a very new thing. He’s got elections coming up with today we called mid-term elections, in November, 1862. And states all across the North with crucial governorships and senatorial elections. So he is trying to hold together the more conservative elements of his Republican Party. And there are lots of folks in that coalition, lots of residents in the border states, who owed–

MALE SPEAKER: Kentucky and Maryland?

BRIAN: Yeah. Who still owned slaves, who really were very upset about not so much the end of slavery– some were upset about that in and of itself– but what would happen to all of these slaves. And that’s where the second sound bite comes in, and it’s exit strategy. He needs to at least have a plausible case for what’s going to happen to all of these enslaved people when they are free. So that’s kind of an instrumental, even cynical interpretation of things, as I’ve read about it.

PETER: Yeah. Brian, that makes a lot of sense. That’s, in effect, we might say pandering to the center.

BRIAN: Something I love to do, Peter.

PETER: Yeah. But what I think it fails to see is what colonization had meant throughout the Antebellum decades, where the idea comes from in the first place. If you go back to the period of the American founding, the American Revolution, and look forward– and I think that’s our challenge here– you can see that men and women of good faith would say, you know, this is the only plausible solution. That is, emancipation and expatriation. Because think about it. We’re in a state of war here in the American Revolution.

And of course, the great fear of slaveholders throughout the history of slavery is going to be servile insurrection. Well, guess what? When you’re fighting a foreign war against, let’s just say, Britain, then your slaves could become a fifth column. They represent a real security threat.

So to some extent, there’s a kind of a profound realism to this idea of colonization. This is going to be a solution to an intractable situation of conflict between different races. And that idea has legs, folks. It goes through the Antebellum period. And when Lincoln evokes it, it’s not just political calculation. It’s not just Lincoln pandering to the center. Lincoln comes from the center. He’s asking the American people, would you make this enormous investment in a solution which would enable black people and white people not to live together, but to live in peace as separate nations?

ED: That is ideas are changing because the war is changing. The report that he’s receiving every day from Washington tell one story after another of how black people are the best allies of the Union forces. They’re telling them which route to take. They’re telling them how the Rebels are massing somewhere. They’re telling them where they can find the cash, food.

And Lincoln looks at this and says, you know? Maybe these African American people aren’t an enemy in our midst. Maybe they’re the best allies in our midst that we have. And that any imaginable future for this country is going to have to acknowledge that. So even as Lincoln continues to mention colonization here and there, the great thrust of his ideas and of his actions are toward actually incorporating African Americans into whatever America is going to follow the end of this war.