This is a series of posts from the cited paper, I will try to divide it into many parts, put titles, and some illustration to fit in blogger and this Blog.
From The Journal of Historical Review, Sept.-Oct. 1993 (Vol. 13, No. 5), pages 4-25.
By Robert Morgan
Lincoln's Support for Resettlement
Lincoln's ideological mentor was Henry Clay, the eminent American scholar, diplomat, and statesman. Because of his skill in the US Senate and House of Representatives, Clay won national acclaim as the "Great Compromiser" and the "Great Pacificator." A slave owner who had humane regard for blacks, he was prominent in the campaign to resettle free blacks outside of the United States, and served as president of the American Colonization Society. Lincoln joined Clay's embryonic Whig party during the 1830s. In an address given in 1858, Lincoln described Clay as "my beau ideal of a statesman, the man for whom I fought all of my humble life."
The incompatibility of Negroes
The depth of Lincoln's devotion to Clay and his ideals was expressed in a moving eulogy delivered in July 1852 in Springfield, Illinois. After praising Clay's lifelong devotion to the cause of black resettlement, Lincoln quoted approvingly from a speech given by Clay in 1827:
"There is a moral fitness in the idea of returning to Africa her children," adding that if Africa offered no refuge, blacks could be sent to another tropical land. Lincoln concluded"
If as the friends of colonization hope, the present and coming generations of our countrymen shall by any means succeed in freeing our land from the dangerous presence of slavery,
"...and, at the same time, in restoring a captive people to their long-lost fatherland, with bright prospects for the future, and this too, so gradually, that neither races nor individuals shall have suffered by the change, it will indeed be a glorious consummation."
In January 1855, Lincoln addressed a meeting of the Illinois branch of the Colonization Society. The surviving outline of his speech suggests that it consisted largely of a well-informed and sympathetic account of the history of the resettlement campaign.
Races issue in America
In supporting "colonization" of the blacks, a plan that might be regarded as a "final solution" to the nation's race question, Lincoln was upholding the views of some of America's most respected figures.
Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858
In 1858 Lincoln was nominated by the newly-formed Republican Party to challenge Steven Douglas, a Democrat, for his Illinois seat in the US Senate. During the campaign, "Little Giant" Douglas focused on the emotion-charged issue of race relations. He accused Lincoln, and Republicans in general, of advocating the political and social equality of the white and black races, and of thereby promoting racial amalgamation. Lincoln responded by strenuously denying the charge, and by arguing that because slavery was the chief cause of miscegenation in the United States, restricting its further spread into the western territories and new states would, in fact, reduce the possibility of race mixing. Lincoln thus came close to urging support for his party because it best represented white people's interests.
Between late August and mid-October, 1858, Lincoln and Douglas travelled together around the state to confront each other in seven historic debates. On August 21, before a crowd of 10,000 at Ottawa, Lincoln declared.
I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
He continued: (Negroes inferiority)
The Emancipation: superficial proclamation
I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is physical difference between the two which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position.
The real Lincoln
Many people accepted the rumors spread by Douglas supporters that Lincoln favored social equality of the races. Before the start of the September 18 debate at Charleston, Illinois, an elderly man approached Lincoln in a hotel and asked him if the stories were true. Recounting the encounter later before a crowd of 15,000, Lincoln declared.
I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.
He continued: (Evolution)
I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
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