Black Historian Documents Lincoln’s Racism
By Robert Stacy McCain
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
May 26, 2000Abraham Lincoln "was a racist who opposed equal rights for black people, who loved minstrel shows, who used the N-word, who wanted to deport all blacks," a veteran journalist and historian says.
"There has been a systematic attempt to keep the American public from knowing the real Lincoln and the depth of his commitment to white supremacy," says Lerone Bennett Jr., whose new book, "Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream," examines Lincoln’s record.
While the book may be shocking to readers accustomed to viewing the nation’s 16th president as "The Great Emancipator," Mr. Bennett denounces that view as the "Massa Lincoln Myth."
"We’re dealing with a 135-year-old problem here," says Mr. Bennett, executive editor of Ebony magazine. "It’s one of the most extraordinary efforts I know of to hide a whole man and a whole history, particularly when that man is one of the most celebrated men in American history."
"Forced Into Glory" is creating a stir both inside and outside academia.
The book is a "full-scale assault on Lincoln´s reputation," Columbia University history professor Eric Foner declared in a 2,000- word review in the Los Angeles Times. In the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, a University of Florida professor called Mr. Bennett’s book a "compelling critique." Time magazine columnist Jack E. White said the book "rips off the cover" of attempts by historians to hide "the unflattering truth about Lincoln’s racist ideals."
Drawing on historical documents, "Forced Into Glory" chronicles Lincoln’s racial beliefs and his actions toward blacks and slavery:
* Lincoln publicly referred to blacks by the most offensive racial slur. In one speech, Lincoln said he opposed the expansion of slavery into the territories because he didn’t want the West "to become an asylum for slavery and n—–s."
* Lincoln was, in the words of one friend, "especially fond of Negro minstrel shows," attending blackface performances in Chicago and Washington. At an 1860 performance of Rumsey and Newcomb’s Minstrels, Lincoln "clapped his great hands, demanding an encore, louder than anyone" when the minstrels performed "Dixie." Lincoln was also fond of what he called "darky" jokes, Mr. Bennett documents.
* Lincoln envisioned and advocated an all-white West, declaring at Alton, Ill., in 1858, that he was "in favor of our new territories being in such a condition that white men may find a home … as an outlet for free white people everywhere, the world over."
* Lincoln supported his home state’s law, passed in 1853, forbidding blacks to move to Illinois. The Illinois state constitution, adopted in 1848, called for laws to "effectually prohibit free persons of color from immigrating to and settling in this state."
* Lincoln blamed blacks for the Civil War, telling them, "But for your race among us there could not be a war, although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or another."
* Lincoln claimed that "the people of Mexico are most decidedly a race of mongrels. I understand that there is not more than one person there out of eight who is pure white."
* Repeatedly over the course of his career, Lincoln urged that American blacks be sent to Africa or elsewhere.
In 1854, Lincoln declared his "first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia ; to their own native land." In 1860, Lincoln called for the "emancipation and deportation" of slaves.
In his State of the Union addresses as president, he twice called for the deportation of blacks. In 1865, in the last days of his life,Lincoln said of blacks, "I believe it would be better to export them all to some fertile country with a good climate, which they could have to themselves."
Such facts may not be well-known, but they are "not hidden in the records. … You can’t read the Lincoln record without realizing all that," Mr. Bennett says.
Lincoln became "a secular saint," Mr. Bennett says, partly because of the circumstances of his 1865 assassination, immediately after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox.
"Without question, I think the manner of his death, the time of his death . . . all these were major factors in turning Lincoln into the American icon," Mr. Bennett says, noting that Lincoln was later praised even by those who had been his harshest critics during his life.
"There was an explosion of emotion in the North" after Lincoln’s assassination, Mr. Bennett says. Lincoln "was appropriated, he was used."
Historians have hidden much of the truth about that era, Mr. Bennett adds.
"People in the North don’t know how deeply involved the North was in slavery," he says, adding that Illinois "had one of the worst black codes in America. People don’t know that. . . . Black people were hunted like beasts of the field on the streets of Chicago, withLincoln’s support."
Lincoln still has his defenders, of course. In criticizing Mr. Bennett’s book, syndicated columnist Steve Chapman has said thatLincoln’s "racial attitudes evolved as he grew older."
Mr. Chapman also cited the opinion of Civil War historian James McPherson that if Lincoln had pursued a more vigorous anti-slavery policy, he would have lost support in the North and, ultimately, lost the war against the Confederacy.
In recent years, Lincoln has been most commonly criticized by conservatives who see him as centralizing federal power and trampling on constitutional rights. The late historian M.E. Bradford was denied appointment as chairman of the National Endowment of the Humanities in 1981 when his critics including columnist George Will drew attention to Mr. Bradford’s anti-Lincoln writings.
Mr. Bennett’s criticism in "Forced Into Glory," however, is from the left, faulting Lincoln for opposing racial equality. Mr. Bennett, 71, first took on the Lincoln myth in 1968, writing an Ebony magazine article that caused "a firestorm all across the country," he says.
Despite the controversy, the article did begin "what some historians say was a re-evaluation of Lincoln" a re-evaluation that has not gone far enough, he says.
"Major historians will talk about this problem of reinterpreting Lincoln, but they will do it at the end of a 700-page book, in the footnotes," Mr. Bennett says.
The idea of turning that 1968 Lincoln article into a book "was never far from my mind," Mr. Bennett says. "But about seven years ago, I started working on it again. I started putting together a group of essays . . . and as I read it again, I started adding to it, and it became 600 pages, 700 pages I had to cut out 200 pages."
It was worth the effort, he says, to help Americans face the real Lincoln.
"The myth is an obstacle to understanding," Mr. Bennett says. Lincoln "is a metaphor for our real determination to evade the race problem in this country."
Lincoln gets credit for the Emancipation Proclamation, which did not actually free any slaves, Mr. Bennett says.
"The most famous act in American history never happened," he says, noting that Lincoln issued the proclamation only under pressure from Radical Republicans in Congress men such as Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania and Charles Sumner ofMassachusetts.
Along with abolitionists such as Wendell Phillips and Frederick Douglass, the Radicals were "the real emancipators," Mr. Bennett says. "There were several major white leaders [during the Civil War] who are virtually unknown today, who were far in advance of anything Lincoln believed."
It is a "moral imperative" for Americans to know the truth about Lincoln, Mr. Bennett says.
"Cynics may not believe that the truth will set you free; but lies will definitely enslave you," he says. "I don’t see any way to get away from the duty to tell the truth."
© 2000 News World Communications, Inc.