Readers of this blog have read this past week about how several historians differ over the question of whether Lincoln continued to pursue initiatives that would provide for the colonization of free blacks abroad after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Basically, the dominant view at present is that he did not do so; a rather spirited minority position is that he did continue to do so. The reason the recent work of Philip Magness and Sebastain Page has made such a splash in some circles is that the authors offer additional evidence that suggests that Lincoln never quite abandoned colonization after all.
Several aspects of this argument intrigue me. First is the continuing debate over the accuracy of Benjamin Butler’s postwar recollections of a meeting he had with Abraham Lincoln in April 1865 where Lincoln supposedly pushed for colonization on the very day where he made public his preference for seeing suffrage extended to some African Americans in the postwar South (a comment that helped seal his fate three nights later). Mark Neely dismissed this account some time ago, while Magness has revived it, and I’ve presented on this blog additional reasons to question Butler’s account in the aftermath of Magness’s article (the advocates of Butler’s account in some shape or form seem reluctant to address that discussion). One can’t attribute my position to standing up for one person or the other, because I’ve butted heads with Neely before and I welcomed Phil Magness as a speaker at last year’s Abraham Lincoln Association.
What I’d like to suggest is that while the debate over Butler’s account may be of interest to students of the historical method, one can address the argument put forth by Magness and Page while setting Butler aside. Butler’s account is highly problematic, as all agree, and so its usefulness as evidence is rather limited. Besides, a more profitable route for those who find Magness and Page persuasive is to look at the other documentary evidence they have presented.
That leads to the other big question raised by this discussion: so what? Let’s stipulate the Magness and Page are correct, and that Lincoln maintained an interest in colonization after January 1, 1863. So what? Does that deliver a fatal blow to the “Lincoln grew and changed” argument (voiced recently by Eric Foner) or to the notion that colonization was no more than a lullaby or a sedative designed to placate white racists (an opinion voiced by Gabor Boritt and Allen Guelzo)?
Probably not. As with Reconstruction (and indeed with emancipation), Lincoln seemed quite willing to entertain and even promote multiple paths toward the same conclusion. What we do know is that Lincoln ceased publicly promoting colonization after December 1862: in his later utterances, he seemed perfectly willing to accept the notion of a biracial America (we can talk about his policy toward indigenous peoples at another time). It is well within the boundaries of the possible that Lincoln wanted to continue to provide free and freed African Americans with the option of emigration as an option, not as the only (or even primary) option. After all, the same reasoning, in a different context, was behind Ulysses S. Grant’s interest in the annexation of the Dominican Republic, even if there were other critical differences (and there were).
One problem here is that we have to be willing as historians to allow the evidence to point in directions we did not anticipate and to suggest interpretations we have not considers (and some may not want to consider). One of the reasons I’ve said that it’s a bad business to fall in love with dead people is that you might develop a rooting interest in the evidence that leads you to consider what you uncover (and perhaps where you choose to look and not to look) in light of those “rooting interests.” The same reasoning holds for the notion that it’s also a bad business to hate dead people: you may not be dispassionate in your consideration of the evidence.
I’ve addressed this issue before in discussing the oft-cited Lincoln comment saying that he could not spare Grant because “he fights.” Sorry, folks, the evidence makes that a highly unlikely utterance. That biographers and others enamored of Lincoln or Grant continue to use it (even when they are aware it is highly problematic) says something about how they approach their craft.
At the same time, we need not jump to extremes when it comes to considering such stories. Accepting Butler’s story does not negate Lincoln’s April 11 remarks about suffrage (or his private remarks on the subject the previous year). It simply complicates the terrain. I’ve come across this in discussions on whether Grant got drunk on the so-called Yazoo bender of June 1863, in which one previous Grant biographer said that historians were in denial about Grant’s problems with alcohol if they rejected the story told by journalist Sylvanus Cadwallader. Indeed, it’s rather easy to punch big holes in Cadwallader’s story and assess what happened in June 1863 (an ailing Grant was advised to turn to alcohol to deal with his illness, and that was not good advice) without denying that Grant was a problem drinker (we’ve been through the issue of whether he was an alcoholic before … read the blog).
So let’s see where I am on this issue of Lincoln and colonization and what it says about my understanding of Lincoln and the place of the freedpeople in post-emancipation America … basically, I’m in the same place. I have no problem accepting that Lincoln may have continued to pursue colonization as an option after January 1, 1863. At best, it was simply an option, not the solution. More than that I would not say: it was no longer a solution Lincoln would advocate, and he now realized that he might not have many takers (recall, Lincoln always insisted that colonization be voluntary). In the last twenty-eight months of his life Lincoln came to see how blacks might be part of a postwar American society, with military service bringing with it a claim for citizenship and suffrage. He had yet to think clearly about other aspects of postwar society. That some people see with such clarity what Lincoln himself was struggling to see clearly tells me more about them than about Lincoln.
Crossroads 
I agree with you too.
Your last paragraph strikes the nail squarely on its head. In my own simplistic summary, I think it’s fair to say that at a point in time (maybe 9/62, maybe 1/63, maybe somewhat later), Lincoln had moved from public advocacy of colonization to a different course – even if he may well have retained a personal belief that colonization would have made sense in a post-war America which was still very much a race-based society. There should be nothing truly astonishing about that to Lincoln scholars/students, by the way. As many have pointed out, most recently Brian Dirck, Lincoln was a white man born and raised in a racially stratified culture. It’s a bit much to think that he underwent a complete transformation of his views on race as a 19th century 50-something white man. Colonization is only one element. Why, for example, did it take significant labor before enlistees in black regiments were paid at the same rate as white troops? What does emerge from a close study, I think, is that Lincoln should be credited with stepping away from those views enough to take actions which by any measure in that society were forward-thinking and even “radical”. On the minor point, as I’ve made clear, I don’t believe Ben Butler’s story (but then I’d check the calendar if Ben told me that today is Sunday). That, as I’ve said and as you’ve stated here, does not demolish the “case” about Lincoln’s views. It simply requires resort to other sources. Sort of akin to the judge at sidebar asking “what other evidence do you have, counsel?”
Small edit – I meant to delete “9/62” – Lincoln seems to have still been throwing that colonization carrot around as he did a bit of “waffling” during the fall before committing firmly to issuance of the final proclamation.
Yeah, I think your last para nails it. It is essentially the same thing I was trying to say in one of my comments—it was perhaps an option for those willing, but not *the* option AL would pursue.
You wrote: “Lincoln always insisted that colonization be mandatory.” I thought AL insisted that colonization had to be voluntary or am I recalling Lincoln hagiography.
No, you’re right. And I recall typing that sentence and thinking voluntary, so that says something about how the human mind works (indeed, the reason I highlighted the issue was to check those who would see it as mandatory).
The idea that it was terrible that the USCTs did not receive equal pay for a long period of time seems to get repeated over and over.
Pay was equalized (and back dated) by an Act of Congress, approved 15 June 1864. Since the first blacks had been enlisted in the late summer and early fall of 1862 and the major enlistments came in early 1863, it was only about 18 months. Is that a long time to overcome racial prejudice and get Congress to act? Well, women still do not receive equal pay in the United States.
BTW, one of the arguments against equal pay for African-Americans was that they had received their freedom, worth about $1000 for a young adult male, a huge bounty, when the whites only got $100. OF course the claim assumed that all USCTs were former slaves and ignored the blacks who were free when they enlisted.
18 months is a long time if it’s your pay, especially when your job involves the equal opportunity to take a minie ball in the wrong place. “Eye of the beholder” and all that. Like it or not, the pace of getting it fixed it is a bit at odds with Lincoln’s encomiums for those who were dying to save the Union – which was my only point.
Brooks I certainly think you hit the nail on the head when you conclude that for Lincoln colonization was an option, not a solution. To accept colonization as an option offers nothing in regard to Lincoln’s racial views, whatever they were.