Interesting Article About Abe Lincoln

[Milk3]

New book sheds new light on Lincoln's racial views - Yahoo! News

"Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address has inspired Americans for generations, but consider his jarring remarks in 1862 to a White House audience of free blacks, urging them to leave the U.S. and settle in Central America. "For the sake of your race, you should sacrifice something of your present comfort for the purpose of being as grand in that respect as the white people," Lincoln said, promoting his idea of colonization: resettling blacks in foreign countries on the belief that whites and blacks could not coexist in the same nation.
Lincoln went on to say that free blacks who envisioned a permanent life in the United States were being "selfish" and he promoted Central America as an ideal location "especially because of the similarity of climate with your native land — thus being suited to your physical condition." "




"Illinois' state historian, Tom Schwartz, who is also a research director at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Ill., said that while historians differ, there is ample evidence that Lincoln's views evolved away from colonization in the final two years of the Civil War. Lincoln gave several speeches referring to the rights blacks had earned as they enlisted in the Union Army, for instance. And presidential secretary John Hay wrote in July 1864 that Lincoln had "sloughed off" colonization.
"Most of the evidence points to the idea that Lincoln is looking at other ways" to resolve the transition from slavery besides colonization at the end of his presidency, Schwartz said."


"Magness said views on Lincoln can be strongly held and often divergent. He noted that people have sought to use Lincoln's legacy to support all manner of political policy agendas since the day he was assassinated. And nobody can claim definitive knowledge of Lincoln's own views, especially on a topic as complex as race relations.
"He never had a chance to complete his vision. Lincoln's racial views were evolving at the time of his death," Magness said."





Does this change anyone's view of Lincoln?

[simple man]

No. Already knew this- his stance was changing as he got older. One train of thought is that he was killed because of his softening stance on this and the way the South would be run , after the war.

[R13]

What? For anyone with any basic knowledge of history, we already knew this, so why would this change? This was about the same view he had he whole life, in todays term, he was a racist - he still believed blacks were inferior, but always thought they deserved the same rights as whites and hated slavery since he seen it as a boy. Booth was a complete dumbass, a southern sympathizer he single handily fucked the south over and set them back 50-75 years. Lincoln was the one person that didn't want to punish the south, he was going to forgive basically everything and give huge efforts to rebuild the south. So a big pat on the to Mr. John Wilkes Booth for that. I've never understood why southerners/the right always try to diminish Lincoln and what he did, he's one of the greatest and probably the greatest POTUS we have ever had.