Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream.
Lerone Bennett, Jr., Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream. Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 2000. 652 pages, $35.00I would urge all who have enjoyed Lerone Bennett's masterful text, Before the Mayflower, to read his new book, Forced Into Glory, which deals with the presidency and life of the "Great Emancipator", Abraham Lincoln. Forced Into Glory is a work of true scholarship which exposes a myth which has been cleverly concealed by well-meaning white scholars over the past century. Bennett reveals another side of one of America's most revered Presidents. He describes Lincoln's continuing support of "Black Codes" during Lincoln's legislative career in Illinois and the path he took, beginning in 1836, when he gave his support to the taxation of Blacks to pay for White schools, until 1855 when he led a movement to start a Black separate school in Springfield. Bennett points out that in 1849 Lincoln voted against an anti-slave trade resolution in the Congress and notes Lincoln's active support of the oppressive 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. Bennett also tells of Lincoln's call, in 1852, for compensated emancipation and the deportation of all Blacks in a draft of a Constitutional Amendment.
The author tells us that in 1854, and again in 1860, Lincoln contended that the Negro race was inferior to the White race, and in 1858 he confessed that slavery had always been a "minor question" to him until the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act which produced "Bleeding Kansas." Bennett also describes Lincoln's hatred of miscegenation, or "Amalgamation" as he called it.
On September 18, 1858 in Charleston, Illinois, Lincoln told a cheering audience, "I'll say then that I am not now, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about, in any way, the social and political equality of the White and Black races ... nor of making voters or jurors of them or qualifying them to hold office, nor to have them intermarry with White people ... 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 from living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior and I as much as any White man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the White race."
Bennett points out that between 1854 and 1860 Lincoln said publicly, at least twice that America was made for White people and not for the Negroes, and eight times that he was in favor of White Supremacy and twenty times that he was opposed to equal rights for Blacks.
During his Presidency, Lincoln addressed African-Americans (with the possible exception of Frederick Douglass) as "boy" and autographed a picture for a Black heroine, "To Aunty Sojourner Truth", after her visit.
In 1862, Lincoln remained terrified of the idea of freeing four million Blacks who might "amalgamate" with Whites though flagrant miscegenation. Lincoln also feared the prospect of economic competition from a group who possessed more skills than poor Whites, and that job competition might become violent. Also at this time the border states rejected his plan of the government compensating slaveholders and deporting their freed slaves. Bennett also points out that most of Lincoln's generals (80 out of 110 Brigadier Generals) were from the Democratic Party who hated slaves and admired slaveholders and had no special inclination to attack them.
On July 22, 1862, Lincoln was supposed to give the Proclamation of Enforcement speech but lost his nerve and on the 28th he finally gave it, mainly to further explain the Confiscation Act. He neglected to mention the section of the Emancipation which did not free some slaves from Confederate territory that was under Union control. Secretary Chase noted that the Emancipation Proclamation was not even mentioned in any Cabinet meetings during the six weeks or so after late July.
However, in two "State of the Union" addresses, and in the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln did call for the deportation of Blacks and on another occasions called for their colonization.
It appears that the only emancipation plan, Lincoln ever really believed in was ONE OF GRADUAL COMPENSATED EMANCIPATION LINKED TO THE SUDDEN DEPORTATION OF BLACKS WITH THE APPROVAL OF THEIR WHITE SLAVE-OWNERS. He claimed he had struggled for "a year and a half to save slavery!" Frederick Douglass attacked him for, "becoming a genuine representative of American prejudice and Negro hatred who appeared more concerned with the preservation of slavery than any sentiment of justice or humanity!"
The following August, Lincoln named Senator Samuel Pomeroy, of Kansas, as his Commissioner of African Colonization. Lincoln said he was forced to sign a Preliminary Proclamation on September 22nd to pacify the Radicals in his party, and because the Second Confiscation bill required him to start confiscation of rebel mansions by the end of the month.
In December, the Emancipation Proclamation was written in the White House and was a completely different document than the Preliminary one. When he finished reading the Proclamation, Lincoln told some Washingtonians, "I can only trust in God.... It is now for the country and the world to pass judgment on it and MAYBE take action upon it," It was clear that Lincoln had neither his heart nor his soul in its outcome and that it was done, as far as he was concerned, under MORAL DURESS AND THE PRESSURE OF EVENTS. General James Wadsworth commented, "Never was a more noble subject so belittled by the form it was uttered!"
On December 31, 1862, Lincoln became the nations' only President to sign a contract, on behalf of the United States of America to deport 450 American-born citizens of African descent to an island off the coast of Haiti.
Though he had announced he would free four million slaves on January 1, he had failed to write a single letter or prepare in any way to carry out this mandate for a Jubilee Day for the country's African-Americans. Not only did his documents fail to free anyone but instead it condemned more than a half-million persons to continued servitude. Those slaves were in the "excepted parts" (areas controlled by federal troops in Tennessee, Louisiana and Virginia and were exempted from the Proclamation). Lincoln continued to stress Gradual Emancipation as being better for both Black and Whites, while approving the use of forced labor in Louisiana.
On August 18, 1863, the Reverend James Mitchell, Lincoln's Immigration Aide, asked him if he, "might say that colonization was still the policy of this Administration." Lincoln replied, "I have never thought so much on a subject and arrived at a conclusion so definite as I have in this case and after these many years found myself S0 WRONG." He added "It would have been much better to separate the races than to have such scenes as those now taking place in New York, where Negroes are being hanged on lamp posts."
Lincoln finally admitted, near the end of his life that the Proclamation and the arming of Black soldiers constituted the heaviest blows struck during the rebellion. "Abandon all the posts now possessed by Black men," he told two visitors on August 19, 1864, "and surrender those advantages to the enemy, and we would be compelled to abandon the war in three weeks."
Since 1885, Whites have written over 16,000 books on Abraham Lincoln while only a few major books have been written from a Black perspective about that period. The most notable works by Blacks include histories by George Washington Williams, John Hope Franklin, Benjamin Quarles, C. Eric Lincoln, and W.E.B. DuBois. To that list we should add the book by Lerone Bennett, Jr., Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream.
Arthur C. McWatt, Historian and Teacher (retired)
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| Author: | McWatt, Arthur C. |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Afro-Americans in New York Life and History |
| Date: | Jul 1, 2004 |
| Words: | 1300 |
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