You say, Christoff it's your birthday - man you still look 33.
What is your secret friend, will you tell to me?
Day fulfilled with excitement, loving friends and family too
a day to share with those you love, a day that was a jewel.

Bedazzled, bedazzling, thrilling, chilling, day,
September birthday baby, with September birthday way
that month the single most blessed, blessed with colors and the sun
that allows the leaves to come out, of their closet and have fun
letting their true colors shine resplendant under sky
we take so much for granted, much better than to ask why?

Why, well it could be answered, but the answer would n'ere be truth
why is just a story told by parents to their youth.
Why is complicated, and why Shakespeare first took up pen
to lead us to an answer, and then another answer again
to see all things connected, to see all life a whole,
yet to me, you're Always Tevyev, the man with such a soul
who sought and then found knowledge, and the wisdom of his age,
who lacked (of course for money) but was rich beyond the page
the page of accounts and ledgers, upon which we mark our time on earth,
and you my friend have radiated so much joy ever since your birth.

Until it comes again, like for the cubbies we can say,
"WAIT 'TIL NEXT YEAR, ALL. WE WILL HAVE OUR DAY."

We Could Use A Little Class Warfare Right Now

By David A. Love, JD
BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor


Recently, the jobs crisis in America prompted New York mayor Michael Bloomberg to predict that riots will come if jobs are not created soon.

“We have a lot of kids graduating college, can't find jobs,” Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show. “That's what happened in Cairo. That's what happened in Madrid. You don't want those kinds of riots here.”

“The damage to a generation that can't find jobs will go on for many, many years,” he added.

As for a nation with multimedia diversions - not to mention a stubborn, widespread belief that the American Dream of upward mobility still will come to all who want it - I have maintained that it will take a great deal for riots to come to this country once again. I certainly would not want to see violence fall upon anyone in any community.

At the same time, as a student of history I understand that things do happen. In the 1960s, communities of color reached a tipping point. Call them riots, civil disturbances or urban rebellions, they often arose from acts of police brutality. But ultimately, they came to reflect frustration over poverty and inequality, a lack of economic opportunity, no jobs, bad schools and a shortage of housing.

And it was also a time of heightened political awareness and political activism, with the civil rights, antiwar and Black Power movements in full force. Meanwhile, J. Edgar Hoover and the police made their best effort to neutralize these protest movements, even if it meant assassinating their leaders.

Now, I’m sure that some commentators at the time dismissed the riots as acts of vandalism and mayhem on the part of “those” lawless people, meaning black folks, who just don’t know how to behave.

And yet, while blacks, Latinos and other historically marginalized groups have always known pain, whether back in the day or under the current recession, today we are witnessing something fundamentally different. Today, the thumbscrews are being applied to America’s poor, working class and middle class, as a collective. And you can’t help but believe that the torturers are engaged in a perverse experiment to see how much they can get away with.

If the U.S. has not reached a tipping point of sorts, but you can’t help but think it will come soon. Some 6.9 million jobs have been lost since the trap door came loose on the nation’s flawed economic system in 2007. Add to that the jobs needed to keep up with population growth and America has a jobs deficit of 11 million jobs.

A jobs crisis exists side-by-side with a staggering rate of poverty unmatched in over half a century. One in six Americans lives in poverty - 46.2 million people, or 15.1 percent - a third of them children. The Latino poverty rate is 26 percent, with 27 percent for blacks. The U.S. is experiencing a lost decade, and beyond the numbers there exists a profound psychological toll that defies any degree of quantifying.

It is one thing to say that half of all Americans earn less than $26,000, and only 1 percent earn over $250,000. You can also point out that in the land of opportunity, the nation with the highest inequality in the industrialized world, 400 people have more wealth than half the entire country combined.

But it is an entirely different proposition to ask why, and how to stop it.

Simply put, America’s political governance system has been purchased by the nation’s top 1 percent, and they are getting their money’s worth. Corporate money has taken over the government, and the government is unable, no, unwilling to take care of the needs of its people, sans the 1 percent who possess their sales receipt in hand.

American politics is legalized bribery and corruption. With the social welfare system peeling away for austerity’s sake, American capitalism, unfettered, is reverting back to its natural state of exploitation - allowing a few winners, mostly losers, and a lot of cold-bloodedness and cold-heartedness to go around.

The party controlling Congress is a Koch Brothers-led sideshow of extremism, lunacy, instability and racial paranoia. And the party in the White House is led by a man who means well on his best days, but has placed far too much faith in Ivy League white dudes. He has sought friendship with those who plan his demise - and that of the nation’s economy for political gain - as he legitimizes and embraces their pathological ideas. Half-measures and Clintonian triangulation have appeared misplaced and wholly inadequate, falling far short of the bold promises of hope and change in the 2008 election.

Right now, the president is on the right track in his populist efforts at pushback against the GOP, including a proposal to end the Bush tax cuts and tax the wealthy more, or at least as much as the rest of us.

Ultimately, public pressure will turn all of this around, as it always does. What we learned is that elections are not enough, and politics is not a spectator sport. The people must demand what they want from their elected officials, and change the terms of the public debate. Mass protest, not President Obama, will do the job of saving us from American capitalism.

A movement called Occupy Wall Street has decided to take a cue from the Arab Spring, and engage in nonviolent mass occupation to fight the greed and corruption of the top 1 percent and restore democracy in America. The movement, which plans to camp out on Wall Street for a few months, is not getting as much attention as it should. Hopefully that will change. We could use a little class warfare right now. It is always good to know where things stand.

BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor, David A. Love, JD is a journalist and human rights advocate based in Philadelphia, is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. and a contributor to The Huffington Post, the Grio, The Progressive Media Project, McClatchy-Tribune News Service, In These Times and Philadelphia Independent Media Center. He also blogs at davidalove.com, NewsOne, Daily Kos, and Open Salon. Click here to contact Mr. Love.

Reallocation of wealth - why the hell not?

This is an old post of mine from MarkGanzersBlog.Blogspot.com

Well, why the hell not.
Sure, this country was founded upon the principle
That NOTHING was more sacred than private property
Especially not to the private property owners
And the founding fathers, most of them
Set about to keep theirs (their private property)
Which, of course, included slaves
(and take everything else in sight - just ask the Native Americans
Y'all remember the Declaration of Independence

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

Okay, so, that was what they WROTE
And when Jefferson penned the words
"all men are created equal"
we can rest assured that when he said MEN, he meant MEN, and not women
and he really meant this to apply only to WHITE MEN, because
BLACK MEN, where in fact, PROPERTY, chattle, like cattle
and BLACK WOMEN, where in fact, sperm receptacles
for those times, when Mrs. Thomas Jefferson, got headaches

CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED, applies, of course, only to
those who had a say in government, and as envisioned
by the signatories to the Constitution
this meant, property-owning white males
(except "the South", which based on the recent political
(alliance with "the West" actually had retaken the advantage
(lost on the battle fields of the civil war
(in this nation's more recent and better advertised "culture wars"
(and the republican party's co-option by the
(theocons, neocons, wealth elites, corporate elites, media elites and academic elites

But, as my dearly departed brother John was so 'oft wont to day,
I digress.

In a previous post, I performed some number massaging in
an attempt to quantify this nation's distribution of wealth disparities
between the top 1%, top 2-5%, Blacks & Hispanics, and the rest

On a per capita basis, after adjusting out the cost of the HIDDEN HIT
(hidden health insurance tax, upon which I have MUCH more to comment, later)

[PLEASE .. don't EVEN get me started on the differentials between men and women]
[That's just wrong. Y'all know it, and I know it. In my white collar professional field,
[the women who succeeded were WAY better than the majority of the men
[who were hired into the actuarial science community.
[Of course, they HAD to be.
[My long time lady friend, SBG, was also an actuary
[We lived together almost six years
[Ultimately, we became managers of equal rank
[Reporting to the same boss
[Although, I was three years younger than her
[Had three less years of experience
[Supervised far fewer people, ever than did she
[I made more money than she did
[After 8 years in the profession to her 11
[And quite frankly, she was a FAR more competent professional
[Than was I
[BUT ... I was a cute white suburban kid
[who felt that his role on earth
[was to please everybody, all the time
[this sometimes happens
[to the grandsons of alcoholic fathers
[whose youngest daughters take it upon themselves
[to be the in-house peacemaker
[to be Pollyanna, and to ensure
[that all is well in the world
["If I say all is well in the world
["Then, all will be well in the world
[Back to SBG getting hired out of a small liberal arts
[college in Indiana ... DePauw University
[Sue and a guy were hired at the same time
[They hired the guy at about $1,500 more
[Explaining to Sue, that because she was a woman
[She could get pregnant, and quit her job
[and that this was likely
[the year was 1970
[and our company, Bankers Life and Casualty
[was about as liberal a place to work
[as you can possibly imagine
[hiring minorities long before any federal legislation
[because John D MacArthur foresaw the sweep of events
[and wanted to make sure to hire into that market early
[in order to have the pick of the best of the minority candidates
[Blacks, Hispanics, Women, Asians ... etc

So, I grew out of it, and dropped the baggage.
I'm no longer cute, that's a promise
Although suburban, I prefer rural America
And, as for white .. well ... I am a traitor to my race
I REALLY am appalled by the untold misery
the white race has inflicted on the human race
(and upon itself, from time to time, of course)

The average US per capita share of the GDP is $ 42,000
There is a hidden health insurance tax (HIT) per capita of $ 3,500
The adjusted GDP, after the hidden HIT is thus $ 38,500
Trouble is, averages are misleading, quite misleading sometimes

Adj per capita share of the GDP (reduced for Hidden HIT)

Top 1% ........... $ 1,567,000
Top2-5% ........ $ 225,666
BH ................... $ 4,583
PWT ............... $ 17,601

An interesting thing happens, if, by public policy, the federal government were to enact legislation mandating a tax on the top 5% of the wealth elites in this nation to raise revenues sufficient to "reimburse" the lower 95 for the Hidden HIT. This involves a transfer (tax) on the top 5% sufficient to raise:

285,000,000 * $3,473 = $ 0.990 T

Because, if a mechanism could be put into place to get an additional $3,473 per capita into the hands of the lower 95, THEN, the PWT per capita would increase to:

17,601 + 3,473 = 21,074, about HALF of the per capita wealth in the US, with no adjustments
........................... for the hidden HIT.

But, from where to get the $ 0.990 T ... well, TAKE it from the rich
IF the poor people of this country were to ever wake up and arise
As did the French people during the French rebellion
With 43% of the country owning firearms. that's about 129,000,000 people
and with adequate leadership
that's enough to win a revolution

in France, of course, the cut off the heads of the elites
which, of course, I would never advocate

all human life is sacred
all animal life is sacred
all plant life is sacred
all mineral life is sacred
to me

But .. if one were to consider the potential downside
Of having 129 million armed pissed off poor people
roaming the streets, pillaging and plundering
well .. it might give one pause enough
to consider voluntarily surrendering some assets
for the betterment of the commonweal
and with the military bogged down in the middle east
and the national guard too
it would only be necessary to convince local law enforcement officials
that the RIGHT side of such a contest
would be on the side of the poor
(of course, blackwater and all the other mercenary corporations
(would get a LOT of funding to quell such a revolution
(so ... it's unlikely to happen
(still, actuarially speaking, the probability of such an event, is NOT zero

........... Just saying, ya know.

And, heck, you wouldn't have to take it all out of the pockets of the rich
Just open up a dialogue with Iran, "the most dangerous nation in the world"
which spends $91 per capita on defense
talk to their defense experts, learn what it is they spend their money on
and say, "okay, we have four times as many people as you have
"and we'll be willing to spend two and a half times per capita on defense
"what you Iranians spend on defense, get us up to about $230 per capita
"and we'll take the residual of the $1,500 or so the U.S. presently spends
"on defense, the extra $1,270 and use THAT as an offset
"and then go over the budget some more to raise the extra [$3,473 - $1,270 =
"$2.203 per capita, maybe by eliminating the oil depletion allowances
"we been feeding like slop to the pigs at the trough
"from the oil industry
"and we can get it from the pharmacuetical industry, which for more than
"20 years running has been the most profitable sector of the U.S. economy
"and then what we need to make up, THEN, we can tax the rich

Now, aren't those some revolutionary concepts?

Beatles - Revolution Lyrics
You say you want a revolution
Well you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know you can count me out
Don't you know it's gonna be alright?
Alright?
Alright?

You say you got a real solution
Well you know
We'd all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well you know
We're doing what we can
But when you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is brother you have to wait
Don't you know it's gonna be alright?
Alright?
Alright?

You say you'll change the constitution
Well you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it's the institution
Well you know
You better free your mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow
Don't you know know it's gonna be alright?
Alright?
Alright?

Alright! (repeat X number of times)

It's homecoming weekend coming up here in quaint (Except for the teen suicides) Barrington, IL

Ode to ‘69

It was the summer of 1965 when this adventure began; most were still regaling in the conquest of grade school and basking in the glory of reaching the pinnacle of our respective totem poles. It wasn’t until late August that we began to realize that we were about to enter an entirely new realm filled with a great amount of uncertainty. Some of us were anxious, others terrified, but none were ambivalent. We did not, nor could we have known, that the door we were about to enter would, in four short years, be blown from its hinges as we began to experience the real emergence of the ‘boomer’ generation. As we began our high school years, the ‘boomer’ waves were merely lapping the shore. By the time 1969 rolled around, the surf was pounding the shores and our country was about to experience an era of profound change. Little did any of us realize the assassination of JFK in 1963 would merely be a precursor to the equally traumatic losses of Bobby Kennedy (6/5/68) and Martin Luther King (4/4/68). High School is a time of assimilation and collection of individual experiences which constitute part of our entrance exam for adulthood. Forged into this timeframe are the shared experiences of our classmates and the common joys, fears and triumphs which we all shared. We retain these remembrances fondly, with surprising detail that rarely fades. Science cannot really explain this phenomenon, but undoubtedly it’s related to the combination of highly intense events, coupled with the emotional and physical changes encountered during this time period, which sear these events into our collective memory banks. The years 1965-1969 encompassed changes which swept across the country’s landscape without much noticeable warning.

A retrospective examination clearly demonstrates that the music of the time was a major component of this change. The "British Invasion” was in full swing with new bands appearing overnight. No era before, or since, has produced more memorable or endearing music. The Vietnam War reached its zenith in December of 1968 and inductees were being drafted at the highest levels of the war. Open dissension to the war had begun but would not reach the pinnacle of descent until the early ‘70s. Clear generational differences became deep-rooted and the very fabric of the country was being stretched if not yet torn. Overlaying this setting were two remarkable yet seemingly polar-opposite events. The first was the Apollo 11 mission with Neil Armstrong landing on the moon (7/20/69), and later that same summer a more earthly event which proved to be equally dramatic – "WOODSTOCK” (8/15/69). Without much fanfare or advertising, this ‘happening’ at a small farm in upstate New York forever changed the social fabric of the ‘boomer’ generation. No one can really define or characterize that exact change. We just know it did.

So here we are 40 years later – all older and, hopefully, wiser, with experiences to share, stories to tell and acquaintances to renew. Gatherings of this nature are not for everyone, this we know; but for those attending, we are able to share without pretense, the life experiences of those with which we have an intractable common bond and who were early contributors to our future paths. Enjoy and remember – 1969 Reunion committee

Bob Somersby of the Daily Howler Writes on: Likability watch: Who is Candidate Perry! WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2011

Likability watch: Who is Candidate Perry!
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2011

The dumbest reactions on earth: For better or worse, many voters will find a good deal to like about Rick Perry’s personal history.

In Monday’s New York Times, Deborah Sontag offered a standard candidate profile concerning Perry’s personal background. She wrote about the candidate’s upbringing in Paint Creek, Texas.

Sontag threw in one “Confederate” reference just to keep us happy. But trust us: Voters will find a lot to like in Candidate Perry’s smaller-than-small-town background.

Sontag’s profile appeared one day after a pair of New York Times columnists offered the dumbest possible reactions to Perry’s smaller-than-small background. Needless to say, the scribes in question were the twin regents, Collins and Dowd.

Lovers of irony will enjoy the idea that Maureen Dowd could devote a full column to the dumbness of others. But Dowd, dumbest scribe of the past thirty years, was on quite a tear this morning:
DOWD (9/16/11): Our education system is going to hell. Average SAT scores are falling, and America is slipping down the list of nations for college completion. And Rick Perry stands up with a smirk to talk to students about how you can get C’s, D’s and F’s and still run for president.

[…]

The Republicans are now the “How great is it to be stupid?” party. In perpetrating the idea that there’s no intellectual requirement for the office of the presidency, the right wing of the party offers a Farrelly Brothers “Dumb and Dumber” primary in which evolution is avant-garde.

Having grown up with a crush on William F. Buckley Jr. for his sesquipedalian facility, it’s hard for me to watch the right wing of the G.O.P. revel in anti-intellectualism and anti-science cant.

Sarah Palin, who got outraged at a “gotcha” question about what newspapers and magazines she read, is the mother of stupid conservatism. Another “Don’t Know Much About History” Tea Party heroine, Michele Bachmann, seems rather proud of not knowing anything, simply repeating nutty, inflammatory medical claims that somebody in the crowd tells her.

So we’re choosing between the overintellectualized professor and blockheads boasting about their vacuity?

The occupational hazard of democracy is know-nothing voters. It shouldn’t be know-nothing candidates.
After making that know-nothing, anti-science remark about our educational system, Dowd took after the rest of the nation. Everyone was stupid this day, including the nation’s students! She was mad at the know-nothing voters, of course—but also at the know-nothing candidates! But along the way, she offered these mots. Especially from a national journalist, this is a very dumb comment:
DOWD: Our education system is going to hell. Average SAT scores are falling, and America is slipping down the list of nations for college completion. And Rick Perry stands up with a smirk to talk to students about how you can get C’s, D’s and F’s and still run for president.

The Texas governor did help his former chief of staff who went to lobby for a pharmaceutical company that donated to Perry, so he at least knows the arithmetic of back scratching.

Perry told the students, “God uses broken people to reach a broken world.” What does that even mean?
Darlings! Whatever could that awful man mean?

As several anti-Perry commenters noted, Dowd’s question was massively dumb. The concept of “broken people” seems to be quite common for many Christians, as a quick Google search shows. This rather obvious possibility didn’t even occur to Dowd, who couldn’t wait to play the role of sneering East Coast liberal.

“God uses broken people to reach a broken world?” That isn’t part of our own cultural framework. But Dowd couldn’t wait to show the voters how pathetically dumb she thinks they are—even as she rushed to showcase her own cultural know-nothingness.

It has been 39 years since Pauline Kael made her famous clueless remark about the inscrutable public. (As reported in the New York Times: “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them.”) Thirty-nine years later, people like Dowd can’t wait to announce that they themselves have no earthly idea about the outlooks, beliefs, culture and views of vast numbers of voters.

If Maureen Dowd didn’t exist, the RNC would have to invent her. But then, the high Lady Collins made a remark about Perry in Sunday’s Times that struck us as quite clueless too. Quite clueless, and politically dumb:
COLLINS (9/16/11): Rick Perry has never spent any serious time outside of Texas, except for a five-year stint in the military. Nobody sent him off to boarding school to expand his horizons. He grew up in Paint Creek, where he graduated third in a high school class of 13. He went to the most deeply Texas of all the state’s major institutions of higher learning. He was a terrible student, but won the prized post of yell leader, the most deeply Texas of all possible Aggie achievements. Then he joined the Air Force and flew transport planes out of Texas, Germany and the Middle East. “There was no telling what you were going to haul around on any given day, from high-value cargo like human beings to the colonel’s kitty litter,” he once told a reporter in Texas.
“Rick Perry has never spent any serious time outside of Texas, except for a five-year stint in the military.” Do you have any idea how dumb that will sound to a wide range of voters? A quick guess: Collins does not.

Dowd of course is a hopeless case; we remain puzzled by Collins. The ID line on her Sunday piece said this: “Gail Collins’s book on Texas will be published next year by W. W. Norton.” Uh-oh! Given the way Collins like to sneer at red states and the rubes within them, it’s entirely possible that her book will elect Perry all by itself!

We’re puzzled by Collins. She loves to sneer at folk in red states. But where in the world did she get the idea that this was the essence of her regency? Darlings! Collins grew up in St. Louis herself! And oh our god! She went to college in Milwaukee! But somewhere along the way, Collins adopted the idea that she exists to sneer at the rubes whose towns still have Dairy Queens.

This is stupid on the merits. Even worse, it’s politically dumb.

Just a guess: Voters will like Rick Perry’s small town background—especially once our side gets through with all the requisite comments.
Posted by bob somerby on Wednesday, September 21, 2011 3 comments
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THE ABSENCE OF THE PROFESSORS: Good grief—even Krugman!
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2011

PART 3—THE AUTUMN OF 96: It’s amazingly easy to get disinformed concerning Social Security. Consider the plight of the poor shlub voters who watched last night’s Special Report.

In an early segment, correspondent Shannon Bream reviewed the things “Floridians are talking about ahead of Thursday night's [GOP] debate.” Bream had interviewed Justin Sayfie, whom she described as a “Florida political analyst.” She had also spoken with Jeff Niefeld, a Florida Democratic voter.

Before long, the 1.6 million people watching the show were being treated to this:
BREAM (9/20/11): There's also the issue of Social Security and a term used by Texas governor, Rick Perry.

NIEFELD: You can call it a Ponzi scheme implies that it's a criminal enterprise. Social Security is not criminal. It's not criminal. We all pay into it, and at the end of our time, allotted time, we can draw out of it.

BREAM: But attitudes are shifting here in Florida along with demographics. Nearly half the state's electorate is now under 50 and willing to acknowledge some hard truth about the solvency of Social Security.

SAYFIE: If you're a younger voter, if you're a voter between the ages of 18 and 30 and you're paying into the system and you don't have a reasonable belief that you're going to be paid, the term Ponzi scheme probably sounds about right.
The Democratic voter defended the system. But the political analyst told younger viewers that they shouldn’t expect any benefits from the Ponzi-like program.

Fox viewers were hearing this presentation for perhaps the ten millionth time. Bream offered no contradiction or challenge. Neither did Brett Baier, the program’s irresponsible anchor.

Alas! American voters have been disinformed in precisely this way for the past thirty years. Today, the liberal world is no longer completely asleep in the woods. Today, many liberals get the chance to hear analysts explain what's wrong with this rank disinformation.

But in earlier decades, the situation was worse. Consider what happened in 1996 when the New York Times reviewed Pete Peterson’s book, “Will America Grow Up Before It Grows Old? How the Coming Social Security Crisis Threatens You, Your Family, and Your Country.”

Peterson was a well-known alarmist on Social Security; he had been for quite a few years. A well-known economist did the review—and he seemed to be buying the premise:
KRUGMAN (10/20/96): In this silly season politicians are once again promising that we can have it all—that we can cut taxes, spare every popular spending program from even the smallest cut and still balance the budget. Nobody really believes them; if the public is willing to indulge such fantasies, it is because it does not, when all is said and done, really take the budget deficit seriously. After all, we have run huge deficits year after year as far back as anyone except economists can remember, and the sky has not fallen. Where is the crisis?

Just over the horizon, that's where. Through a kind of sound-bite numerology, the political debate over deficits became fixated last year on the seven-year prospect; each party insists that its economic program will balance the budget in the year 2002. Neither will, but that is beside the point. Responsible adults are supposed to plan more than seven years ahead. Yet if you think even briefly about what the Federal budget will look like in 20 years, you immediately realize that we are drifting inexorably toward crisis; if you think 30 years ahead, you wonder whether the Republic can be saved.

Peter G. Peterson states the reason for this succinctly in his brief, scary new book, "Will America Grow Up Before It Grows Old?"
Good grief! Could the republic be saved? Prospects weren’t looking real good.

The Times’ reviewer was in fact Paul Krugman, an eminent economist who wasn’t as well-known at that time as he is today. If you’re familiar with Krugman’s current work, you may be surprised to see the things he wrote in the autumn of 96.

(In this 1996 piece, Krugman also reviewed a book about the AARP. To read the review, click here.)

We haven’t read Peterson’s book, nor are we Peterson haters. But if you were an average shlub, it was very easy to get alarmed about the future during this era. As Krugman proceeded, he pretty much bought every part of Peterson’s thesis. For those who know Krugman’s work today, this passage will sound quite peculiar:
KRUGMAN: Generous benefits for the elderly are feasible as long as there are relatively few retirees compared with the number of taxpaying workers—which is the current situation, because the baby boomers swell the workforce. In 2010, however, the boomers will begin to retire. Every year thereafter, for the next quarter-century, several million 65-year-olds will leave the rolls of taxpayers and begin claiming their benefits.

The budgetary effects of this demographic tidal wave are straightforward to compute, but so huge as almost to defy comprehension. Mr. Peterson, the chairman of the Blackstone Group, a private investment bank, informs us that "the combined Federal cost of Social Security and Medicare, expressed as a share of workers' taxable payroll, is officially projected to rise from the already burdensome 17 percent in 1995 to between 35 and 55 percent in 2040. And this figure does not include the many other costs—from nursing homes to civil service and military pensions—that are destined to grow along with the age wave.”
Does that sound like Krugman today? As he continued, Krugman even made it sound like those “trust funds” might be a big bag of air:
KRUGMAN (continuing directly): But aren't Social Security and Medicare basically pension funds, in which workers' contributions are invested to provide for their retirement? Hardly. A private pension fund that planned to pay the benefits these programs promise would be accumulating huge reserves. In fact, the so-called "trust funds" are making barely any provisions for the future. In another spectacular statistic, Mr. Peterson notes that if Medicare and Social Security had to obey the same rules that apply to private pensions, the reported Federal deficit this year would be not its official $150 billion, but roughly $1.5 trillion.

In short, the Federal Government, however solid its finances may currently appear, is in fact living utterly beyond its means. While the present generation of retirees is doing very nicely, the promises that are being made to those now working cannot be honored.
Gack! As Krugman closed, he pictured a semi-dystopia:
KRUGMAN: Both Mr. Morris and Mr. Peterson offer plans to avert the crisis ahead. The details differ, and Mr. Peterson's proposal is more completely fleshed out, but the general thrust is clear: slow the growth in benefit levels, gradually raise the retirement age, impose limits on expensive terminal medical care that prolongs life for only weeks or days and—last but not least—raise taxes moderately now, rather than massively later. We need not dwell on their sensible proposals, however, because there is not the slightest prospect that they will be put into effect—or indeed that we will do anything serious about the looming crisis until it is almost upon us.

Both books take comfort from the economist Herbert Stein's famous dictum that unsustainable trends tend not to be sustained. Something is bound to give—but what? Will retired boomers—who will have even more political clout than today's smallish population of retired voters—be willing to accept a sharply reduced standard of living? That is hard to imagine. Will younger voters be willing to accept huge increases in tax rates to support the boomers in the style they have been promised? That is equally hard to imagine. Or will the Government try to square the circle by simply printing the money it needs, creating runaway inflation? Surely that is inconceivable. Yet one or more of these unthinkable things will happen, because something must.
Something "unthinkable" was going to happen, Krugman said as he closed his review. For the average shlub, even the average liberal, it was very easy to get alarmed in the autumn of 96.

Was Krugman “wrong” in his assessments? In 2007, a flap blew up about his past statements on these subjects, including those in this review. At the time, Krugman seemed to say that the facts had changed since 1996; some defenders noted that he had lumped Social Security and Medicare together in his review. But that wasn’t the stance he took in real time concerning this review. In real time, Dean Baker wrote a letter to the Times, chiding Krugman for his assessments. (Baker: “It should not be necessary to explain simple concepts to an economist as distinguished as Paul Krugman.” Full text below.) By the late autumn of 96, Krugman was taking back what he had said in an exchange with Jamie Galbraith in Slate:
GALBRAITH (11/8/96): Is there a crisis of the Social Security system? The most recent issue of Challenge carries a fine assortment of views on this vexing question. Of these, the most persuasive argue that there is no crisis, that possible shortfalls in Social Security can be fixed by very modest adjustments, at most. Unfortunately, alarmists like the dedicated anti-Social Security campaigner Pete Peterson, an investment banker, are dominating this debate. It is regrettable that certain serious economists—it might disrupt present comity if I named a name—have recently stated their categorical support for the alarmist position.

KRUGMAN (11/12/96): First of all, a mea culpa of my own. Ignore Galbraith's coyness: I was the economist who went overboard in supporting Pete Peterson's position on entitlements and demographics. Demographics play a smaller role in Peterson's forecasts, and debatable projections of medical costs a larger one, than I realized when I recently reviewed his book for the New York Times. I broke my own rule that you should always check an argument both with a back-of-the-envelope calculation and by consulting with the real experts, no matter how plausible and reasonable its author sounds. Do as I say and normally do, not as I unfortunately did in this case.
Only three weeks had passed, but Krugman was bailing on his review. Remarkably, he seemed to say that he had failed to check Peterson’s arguments “by consulting with the real experts” before he wrote his review. He seemed to say that he’d gone with the flow because Peterson sounded so reasonable.

That was then, not now. Over the past dozen years, Krugman has become our most important, constructive, informative upper-end journalist. But in yesterday’s post, we took you through Larissa McFarquhar’s detailed review of Krugman’s career—which at one point was rather careerist, according to Krugman himself. In McFarquhar’s review, Krugman was quoted saying this: “I feel now like I was sleepwalking through the twenty years before 2000.”

It’s hard to argue with that assessment if he was writing reviews for the nation’s most important newspaper without bothering to check the author’s argument—reviews concerning a major topic on which the public was being disinformed and had been for many years. (The piece appeared in the widely-read and influential Sunday “Book Review” section.)

Where have the professors been over the past thirty years? In large part, last night’s garbage still sells on Fox (and in other precincts) because of their thirty-year silence. After he took his post as a New York Times columnist, Krugman became the giant exception to this rule. But we’ll suggest that you read his review of Peterson’s scary book in conjunction with the McFarquhar profile, in which Krugman and his wife, Robin Wells, describe the contempt the professors had in the late 1990s for people who would lower themselves to speak to the public, the rubes.

By Krugman’s own account, his life changed after 1999. But the public remains highly disinformed. In large part, the thanks for this can go to our sleeping professors.

At one time, professors were absent-minded. For the past thirty years, they’ve simple been absent. Over and over, this cohort has failed you.

Crackers! What should we do?

Tomorrow: What should we do?

Baker replied: Dean Baker responded to Krugman’s review. Here’s the full text of his letter:
LETTER TO THE NEW YORK TIMES (11/17/96): It should not be necessary to explain simple concepts to an economist as distinguished as Paul Krugman. Unfortunately, his review of two recent books on entitlement programs for the elderly (Oct. 20) shows he is as susceptible to prevailing misconceptions in this area as the rest of the nation's pundits.

Mr. Krugman comments approvingly on "Will America Grow Up Before It Grows Old?," by Peter G. Peterson, which purports to show that the elderly are going to bankrupt the nation. Mr. Krugman, like Mr. Peterson, lumps Social Security and Government health care programs for the elderly together. But the issues are completely different.

In the case of Social Security, according to the trustees' report, it will be possible to meet all scheduled benefit payments over the next 75 years with relatively minor tax increases (2.2 percent of payroll, if done tomorrow). These increases would allow future generations to enjoy substantially higher after-tax income than workers do at present. The main reason taxes will have to rise at all is not the retirement of the baby boom generation, but the fact that people are living longer.

The Medicare and Medicaid projections are indeed a nightmare, but this is because of underlying projections in the cost of health care more generally. The Health Care Financing Administration's projections show that private sector health care spending will be nearly $4,000 per person by the year 2005. This means that a family of four at the median income will be spending approximately 30 percent of its before-tax income on health care. That is a crisis, but it has nothing to do with entitlement programs for the elderly.

Dean Baker/Washington
Today, Baker’s easy-to-follow points are understood by many liberals. But in the fall of 96, it was still extremely easy for liberals to get disinformed.
Posted by bob somerby on Wednesday, September 21, 2011 4 comments
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Defiant silly-bill watch: Bruni and Brooks on the rampage!
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

A deeply inane public culture: Just a fairly obvious guess! The New York Times added Frank Bruni to the team make its op-ed page even dumber.

This morning, the scribe is back from Milan—and he’s quite upset with one of those silly-bill pols! Throwing life-style in our faces, Paul Ryan has staged “a minor masterpiece of image calibration:”
BRUNI (9/20/11): Paul Ryan may not be running for president this time around, but if you have any doubt about his ambitions for a long, prominent future in government, just look at his comments in a Q. and A. published in Sunday’s Times. They’re a minor masterpiece of image calibration.

In the span of two dozen sentences, Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, mentioned the Bible, or rather a beginner’s version of it, which he said he was reading aloud to his 6-year-old son. He mentioned his truck and his appetite for hard rock, thus establishing automotive and musical affinities that balance his wonkier, number-crunching bona fides. He mentioned hunting—with a bow, no less.

Then came the capper. He mentioned his talent for what I’d like to call venison charcuterie, just because he so clearly wouldn’t. “I butcher my own deer, grind the meat, stuff it in casings and then smoke it,” he said, making clear that Sarah Palin in all her moose-eviscerating glory has nothing on him.
Bruni just can’t handle the phoniness of Ryan’s comments—his silly-bill musings about music and hunting. Bruni goes on to rage against the dying of the light. More specifically, he rages against the way those pols force us to listen to silly shit about their proletarian lifestyles.

“The relationship between lifestyle and political priorities is at best oblique,” the thoughtful fellow muses. “You really can’t judge how politicians will govern by whether they hunt or windsurf, frolic in the Texas brush or the Martha’s Vineyard sand, favor corn dogs or arugula.”

Bruni fails to note an obvious fact. In the case of Ryan, those were the silly-shit topics the New York Times asked him about! In the edited interview, he also notes that he watches CNBC—and that he is currently listening to “a series of provocative lectures by Professor J. Rufus Fears of the University of Oklahoma.”

Ryan didn’t seem to be kidding, but we don’t plan to google Professor Fears. “With the help of a Kindle, I’m reading John Mauldin’s ‘Endgame: The End of the Debt Supercycle,’” Ryan also throws in, though it doesn't make Bruni's column.

There’s no way to know how much dull shit got left on the cutting-room floor. Playing the fool, Bruni complainsabout what Ryan said "in the span of two dozen sentences." But the interview may have lasted for hours. It's edited. Let's say that again!

For ourselves, we recalled the hard-as-nails, just-the-facts approach Bruni brought to his own work as a campaign reporter. Here he was, following Candidate Bush on the New Hampshire trail:
BRUNI (9/14/99): When Gov. George W. Bush of Texas first hit the Presidential campaign trail in June, he wore monogrammed cowboy boots, the perfect accessory for his folksy affability and casual self-assurance.

But when he visited New Hampshire early last week, he was shod in a pair of conservative, shiny black loafers that seemed to reflect more than the pants cuffs above them. They suggested an impulse by Mr. Bush to put at least a bit of a damper on his brash irreverence, which has earned him affection but is a less certain invitation for respect.
That was the start of a lengthy “news report” during Campaign 2000. Two months later, on the front page, Bruni was still pursuing his defiant, hard-news approach:
BRUNI (11/27/99): As George W. Bush loped through the headquarters of the Timberland Company here, he might have been any candidate in the hunt for votes, any pol on the path toward the presidency. He tirelessly shook hands, dutifully took questions and let a multitude of promises bloom.

But there was something different about Governor Bush's approach, something jazzier and jauntier. It came out in the way he praised a 20-year-old man for his "articulate" remarks, then appended the high-minded compliment with a surprising term of endearment.

"Dude," Mr. Bush called his new acquaintance.

It emerged again when Mr. Bush crossed paths with an elderly employee, and she told him that he had her support.

"I'll seal it with a kiss!" Mr. Bush proposed and, wearing a vaguely naughty expression, swooped down on the captive seamstress.

Mr. Bush's arm curled tight around the shoulders of other voters; he arched his eyebrows and threw coquettish grins and conspiratorial glances their way. It was campaigning as facial calisthenics, and Mr. Bush was its Jack LaLanne.

He is frequently that way. When Mr. Bush is not reciting memorized lines in an official speech or rendering careful answers in a formal interview, he is physically expansive and verbally irreverent, folksy and feisty, a politician more playful than most of his peers.
Bruni may be a great food critic. But when it comes to politics and policy, he is one of the emptiest suits the Times has dredged up yet.

Then too, there’s David Brooks, self-flagellating today over the failed Obama. Brooks was so angry at his failed pal, he decided to play an old card:
BROOKS (9/20/11): It has gone back, as an appreciative Ezra Klein of The Washington Post conceded, to politics as usual. The president is sounding like the Al Gore for President campaign, but without the earth tones. Tax increases for the rich! Protect entitlements! People versus the powerful! I was hoping the president would give a cynical nation something unconventional, but, as you know, I’m a sap.
You never forget your first narrative! At the Times, columnists write their own headlines. Today, this is Brooks’ boxed sub-head:

“Al Gore without the earth tones”

Through some sort of programming error, that just can’t get these themes out of their heads! For the record, Candidate Gore did not propose “tax increases for the rich.” But it feels good to pretend.

Brooks is playing the fool today. Here, he offers a rare attempt at making an actual argument:
BROOKS: [Obama] claimed we can afford future Medicare costs if we raise taxes on the rich. He repeated the old half-truth about millionaires not paying as much in taxes as their secretaries. (In reality, the top 10 percent of earners pay nearly 70 percent of all income taxes, according to the I.R.S. People in the richest 1 percent pay 31 percent of their income to the federal government while the average worker pays less than 14 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office.)
“The top 10 percent of earners pay nearly 70 percent of all income taxes?” As almost anyone can see, that fact doesn’t refute the “half-truth” in question—and that fact is completely meaningless unless you include the percentage of income received by that top ten percent. (Even then, you have to be careful.) Of course, that next set of facts doesn’t refute Obama’s half-truth either.

For the record, a half-truth can contain a lot of truth. Brooks is semi-right about one thing today: Obama’s pledge to avoid raising taxes on the bottom 98 percent is a rather strange artifact. But in today’s New York Times editorial, the editors report that Obama’s proposed tax hikes on upper-end earners would produce $1.3 trillion over ten years.

Do Obama's tax proposals make sense? Brooks never quite finds time to say. He’s too busy flashing back on Candidate Gore's brown suit.

Today, Bruni forgets his own silly shit. Brooks flashes on his.
Posted by bob somerby on Tuesday, September 20, 2011 11 comments
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SAT score watch: Why are average scores down? Day 2!
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

At the Post, you can take your choice between information and spin: In yesterday’s Washington Post, Michael Chandler did a follow-report about this year’s SAT scores. More specifically, he provided more information about the way the tests are being taken by a wider student population.

This wider participation might explain why average scores are slightly down this year. (For yesterday’s post on this topic, just click here.)

First, Chandler described a “technical shift,” a change to which he briefly alluded in his original front-page report. According to a College Board spokesperson, a change in reporting procedures this year may have lowered average scores:
CHANDLER (9/19/11): The College Board has traditionally calculated average SAT scores for graduating seniors through March of that year. For the Class of 2011, it began including scores from tests taken through June.

The switch added about 50,000 test-takers, or 3 percent of the total. Although not a huge number, these late entrants to the college process are more likely to be "VERY low performers," a College Board spokeswoman said in an e-mail.
For the first time, the last-minute Charlies and Charlenes were included. This may tend to lower the average.

Next, Chandler reported another possible factor in the lower average scores—“the growing popularity of the ACT, a rival college entrance exam.” How would that work? “Although the SAT is dominant in the Washington area,” Chandler writes, “more local seniors are trying both, rather than seeking to improve their SAT scores by retaking it.”

Presumably, if seniors don’t try to improve their SAT scores, this would tend to lower the average, though Chandler doesn’t check this logic with the College Board.

In a final point, Chandler noted another way the tested population is growing. Some states now require or enable all students to take the SAT:
CHANDLER: Increasingly, the SAT and the ACT are being used to encourage students to apply to college, not just to enable them. [sic]

Delaware has a new four-year contract with the College Board to administer the SAT to all high school juniors.

Texas offers all students vouchers to take the SAT or ACT for free, and Idaho is moving in the same direction. Seven states offer the ACT to all juniors: Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, North Dakota, Tennessee and Wyoming.

"Obviously, not all these students go to college, but it helps to focus them on the idea of going to college," said Ed Colby, an ACT spokesman.
It isn’t clear that any of this would have affected this year’s average scores. But at least Chandler was trying!

Unheard of! In two reports on this topic, Chandler provided real information! But if it’s spin and partisan screeching you like, the Post had something for you as well! Right next to Chandler’s report, the Post published this information-averse analysis by Valerie Strauss. That was the place a reader could go to learn that it’s all Bush’s fault.

For years, we liberals slept in the woods. Now we’ve emerged, and we enjoy our silly spin too! Strauss’ “logic” is very weak—but it does let “liberals” feel good!

Strauss is sure it’s all Bush’s fault. This is about as close as she gets to making an actual argument:
STRAUSS (9/19/11): The College Board also noted that nearly 1.65 million students from the 2011 graduating class took the SAT and that it represented the most diverse class in history. Forty-four percent were minority students, 36 percent were first-generation college-goers and 27 percent do not speak English exclusively.

It further noted that “it is common for mean scores to decline slightly when the number of students taking an exam increases because more students of varied academic backgrounds are represented in the test-taking pool,” and it said that “there are more high-performing students among the class of 2011 than ever before.”

Who’s kidding whom? If there are more high-performing students, there must be more low-performing students, too, to bring down the average.
Sad. Strauss jumped on an upbeat claim by the College Board, thus ignoring the larger claim—the claim that wider student participation tends to bring average scores down. In fact, Strauss never even mentioned the fact that participation went from 47 percent in 2010 to “more than half” this past year. Why glaze the eyes with that?

Strauss then cherry-picked a datum or two and her work was done.

Why did average scores inch down this year? Like Strauss, we can’t tell you. But people like Strauss always know in advance! In truth, the world was a better place before pseudo-liberals joined pseudo-cons in pretending to reason like that.
Posted by bob somerby on Tuesday, September 20, 2011 1 comments
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THE ABSENCE OF THE PROFESSORS: Don’t do it, Krugman was told!
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

PART 2—PLANET OF THE PROFESSORS: It’s very easy to be disinformed in this particular country.

In part, it’s easy to be disinformed because of the professors.

Has any group failed you more reliably over the past several decades? As more and more parts of our public discourse have been seized by disinformation, you could always count on the professors to stay away from the field of battle. No explanation or clarification was likely to come from their refined aeries! Just consider a few basic areas where the professors have failed to help:

Medicare cuts, mid-1990s: Was Newt Gingrich’s GOP proposing “cuts” to the Medicare program? Or were they proposing that we slow the rate at which the program would grow? For two years, this inane discussion dominated the political wars.

Al Franken explained the matter in his book, Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot. But the nation’s “journalists” couldn’t. In their hands, the discussion ended up where every discussion did in this era—with the claim that Clinton was lying again, although rather plainly he wasn’t.

Which professors stepped forward during this era to clarify this gong-show discussion? Which health care experts? Which logicians? Keep searching for a name!

Campaign 2000: For twenty months, the national press corps worked very hard to make Candidate Gore a liar. (Just like President Clinton!) They did this by inventing a series of ludicrous paraphrases of innocuous things Gore had said. Rather, they adopted a series of paraphrases from the RNC, which was scripting the national press during that gruesome campaign.

(Al Gore said he discovered Love Canal! Except actually, no—he didn’t.)

Which professors stepped forward during this era to clarify this rolling gong-show? To explain how reasonable paraphrase works? Which “logicians” stepped up to the plate? Go ahead! Search for a name!

The future of Social Security: For three decades, a relentless disinformation campaign has surrounded the Social Security program. A string of deceptive talking-points has left the public deeply confused—disinformed—about the future prospects of this venerable program.

This problem was clear by the early 1994, when a survey showed that younger voters didn’t believe they would ever receive Social Security benefits. (Famously, they were more likely to believe in UFOs.) Which professors have ever stepped forward to clarify this decades-old gong-show? Go ahead! Name all their names!

The cost of American health care: Every American is getting ripped off by the costs of American health care. Most Americans don’t understand this fact. They certainly don’t know the reasons why we pay so much for health care.

In 2009, the nation spent a year pretending to discussing health care. Go ahead! Name the professors! (You can’t name Michael Moore.)

We could list other topics, but you get the general idea.

People! Where are all the professors? In theory, the country is crawling with learned folk who are expert in various disciplines. Why don’t they lend their expertise—if it exists—to the national discussion?

We’ve been asking this question for years. Last week, we read a profile of a well-known, very public professor. The profile seemed to shed some light on this matter.

The professor in question is Paul Krugman, who has thrown himself into the public discourse over the past dozen years. The profile appeared last year, in the New Yorker, although we don’t recall seeing it at the time.

In the profile, Larissa McFarquhar traced the route by which Krugman became involved in the public political discourse. As noted, Krugman has been deeply involved in the public debate over the past dozen years. But in her profile, McFarquhar described Krugman’s attitudes and beliefs before his somewhat belated political dawning.

It seemed to us that this profile may have answered some of our questions about the defiantly useless class from which Krugman emerged.

McFarquhar interviewed Krugman and his wife, Robin Wells, for her detailed profile. (Wells is an economist.) In the following passage, Krugman describes his attitudes early in his career:
MACFARQUHAR (3/1/10: In his columns, Krugman is belligerently, obsessively political, but this aspect of his personality is actually a recent development. His parents were New Deal liberals, but they weren’t especially interested in politics. In his academic work, Krugman focused mostly on subjects with little political salience. During the eighties, he thought that supply-side economics was stupid, but he didn’t think that much about it. Unlike Wells, who was so upset when Reagan was elected that she moved to England, Krugman found Reagan comical rather than evil. “I had very little sense of what was at stake in the tax issues,” he says. “I was into career-building at that point and not that concerned.” He worked for Reagan on the staff of the Council of Economic Advisers for a year, but even that didn’t get him thinking about politics. “I feel now like I was sleepwalking through the twenty years before 2000,” he says. “I knew that there was a right-left division, I had a pretty good sense that people like Dick Armey were not good to have rational discussion with, but I didn’t really have a sense of how deep the divide went.”
In the past twelve years, Krugman has played a major role in our public political discourse. But during the 1980s, he was “career-building,” he said. “I feel now like I was sleepwalking through the twenty years before 2000,” he told McFarquhar.

Krugman has emerged from that dream. Other savants have not.

In the following passage, McFarquhar describes Krugman’s political horizon during the 1990s. In the argot of the 1960s, Krugman still hadn’t been politicized. We’ll offer a fairly large chunk:
MCFARQUHAR: When Krugman first began writing articles for popular publications, in the mid-nineties, Bill Clinton was in office, and Krugman thought of the left and the right as more or less equal in power. Thus, there was no pressing need for him to take sides—he would shoot down idiocy wherever it presented itself, which was, in his opinion, all over the place. He thought of himself as a liberal, but he was a liberal economist, which wasn’t quite the same thing as a regular liberal. Until the late nineties, when he became absorbed by what was going wrong with Japan, he believed that monetary policy, rather than government spending, was all that was needed to avoid recessions: he agreed with Milton Friedman that if only the Fed had done its job better the Great Depression would never have happened. He thought that people who wanted to boycott Nike and other companies that ran sweatshops abroad were sentimental and stupid. Yes, of course, those foreign workers weren’t earning American wages and didn’t have American protections, but working in a sweatshop was still much better than their alternatives—that’s why they chose to work there. Moreover, sweatshops really weren’t the threat to American workers that the left claimed they were. “A back-of-the-envelope calculation…suggests that capital flows to the Third World since 1990…have reduced real wages in the advanced world by about 0.15%,” he wrote in 1994. That was not nothing, but it certainly wasn’t anything to get paranoid about. The world needed more sweatshops, not fewer. Free trade was good for everyone. He felt that there was a market hatred on the left that was as dogmatic and irrational as government hatred on the right.

In writing his first popular book, “The Age of Diminished Expectations,” he became preoccupied by the way that inequality had vastly increased in the Reagan years…After the book was published, in 1990, various people denied that inequality had increased, and this really annoyed him. He began to get into fights. He was taken aback by the 1994 midterm elections, and during the impeachment hearings he began to think that the Republicans were getting pretty radical, but he still wasn’t angry about it. “Some of my friends tell me that I should spend more time attacking right-wingers,” he wrote in 1998. “The problem is finding things to say. Supply-siders never tire of proclaiming that taxes are the root of all evil, but reasonable people do get tired of explaining, over and over again, that they aren’t.”

Certainly until the Enron scandal, Krugman had no sense that there was any kind of problem in American corporate governance. (He consulted briefly for Enron before he went to the Times.) Occasionally, he received letters from people claiming that corporations were cooking the books, but he thought this sounded so implausible that he dismissed them. “I believed that the market was enforcing,” he says. “I believed in the S.E.C. I just never really thought about it. It seemed like a pretty sunny world in 1999, and, for all of my cynicism, I shared a lot of that. The extent of corporate fraud, the financial malfeasance, the sheer viciousness of the political scene—those are all things that, ten years ago, I didn’t see.”
In McFarquhar’s account, Krugman was still largely distanced from partisan politics during this period.

In the late 1990s, the New York Times approached Krugman about writing a column. McFarquhar records a fascinating reaction from his professional colleagues:
MCFARQUHAR (continuing directly): When the Times approached him about writing a column, he was torn. “His friends said, ‘This is a waste of your time,’ ” Wells says. “We economists thought that we were doing substantive work and the rest of the world was dross.” Krugman cared about his academic reputation more than anything else. If he started writing for a newspaper, would his colleagues think he’d become a pseudo-economist, a former economist, a vapid policy entrepreneur like Lester Thurow? Lester Thurow had become known in certain circles as Less Than Thorough. It was hard to imagine what mean nickname could be made out of Paul Krugman, but what if someone came up with one? Could he take it?
Quoting Wells, McFarquhar records a fascinating reaction from the other professors. Frankly, ick! Why would any Serious Person want to write a mere newspaper column? Why would any serious person want to speak to the rubes?

According to Wells, the unseemliness of such conduct was impressed upon poor Krugman. Luckily, Krugman made the right decision. But that passage offers a fascinating look at the culture of the important people who have failed you so reliably, for so many years.

Darlings! It just isn’t done! Who would write a mere newspaper column? A column for the unwashed!

Finally, McFarquhar describes the process which produced the Krugman of the present day. He has become a fallen man. He gets upset about public lying—lying to average people:
MCFARQUHAR (continuing directly): It was the 2000 election campaign that finally radicalized him. He’d begun writing his column the year before, and although his mandate at the outset was economic and business matters, he began paying more attention to the world in general. During the campaign, he perceived the Bush people telling outright lies, and this shocked him. Reagan’s people had at least tried to justify their policies with economic models and rationalizations. Krugman hadn’t believed the models would work, but at least they were there.

After the election, he began to attack Bush’s policies in his column, and, as his outrage escalated, his attacks grew more venomous. Krugman felt that liberals were unwilling to confront or even to acknowledge the anger on the right with some of their own, so he was going to have to do it. “He saw that it had been very, very painful during the nineties to get American fiscal policy in order, and he saw all of that being thrown away callously and with very little thought,” Brad DeLong, a professor of economics at Berkeley, says. “And it turned out to be true that Alan Greenspan was going to meetings at the White House saying we’re going to regret this. Paul was simply six years behind those of us who had worked in the Clinton Administration, who found the collapse of reality-based Republicanism coming much earlier.”
As Hector said of Paris, "Silly man!"

For the record, the “outright lie” which played the largest role in this conversion seems to have been Candidate Bush’s repeated misstatements about the basic outlines of his own budget proposal. In the fall of 2000, Krugman devoted three columns to this topic (September 24, October 1, October 11). Needless to say, these columns were ignored by the rest of the press corps. The rest of the press corps was busy inventing several more “lies” by Gore:

Al Gore lied about the union lullaby!
Al Gore lied about the cost of his pet Labrador’s arthritis pills!
Al Gore went to those Texas fires with Unknown Person X, not with Unknown Person Y!

That’s what the “press corps” was yapping about as Krugman wrote those columns.

Back to our original question: Where have those lofty professors been? Relentlessly, this group has failed you. McFarquhar described the process by which Krugman left them behind.

Tomorrow, we’ll show you how bad things can get before a professor makes this break. It has been extremely easy to get disinformed about Social Security.

Krugman himself was a bit out to lunch before he abandoned Versailles.

Tomorrow: The autumn of 96

Bob Somersby of the Daily howler write on: David Brooks watch: How can we get information! WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2011

How do you fact-check a problem like David: David Brooks got whupped all over town for yesterday’s very strange column.

That said, let’s focus again on a few of Brooks’ factual claims. Question: How can the average citizen fact-check claims like the claims found in this passage?
BROOKS (9/20/11): [Obama] claimed we can afford future Medicare costs if we raise taxes on the rich. He repeated the old half-truth about millionaires not paying as much in taxes as their secretaries. (In reality, the top 10 percent of earners pay nearly 70 percent of all income taxes, according to the I.R.S. People in the richest 1 percent pay 31 percent of their income to the federal government while the average worker pays less than 14 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office.)
Citizens encounter such claims all the time. But where can a citizen go to fact-check such claims?

Yesterday, Timothy Noah pushed back against Brooks on his new blog at TNR. Last fall, Noah authored this voluminous series at Slate concerning income inequality. Yesterday, he offered this reaction to the first of Brooks’ highlighted factual claims:
NOAH (9/20/11): David Brooks has indigestion because President Barack Obama, whom Brooks rather likes, wants to raise taxes on the rich. "He repeated the old half-truth about millionaires not paying as much in taxes as their secretaries." Why is that a half-truth? Because "the top 10 percent of earners pay nearly 70 percent of all income taxes, according to the I.R.S."

Oh, please. The top 10 percent pays nearly 70 percent of all income taxes because the top 10 percent makes half the income—49.74 percent, including capital gains, before the recession and only slightly less now.
Yeah, but where did Noah get that? He explained: “My source is the World Top Incomes Database, a fantastic Web resource put together by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, Facundo Alvaredo and Tony Atkinson,” he wrote. To access that site, just click here.

Would the average reader know to go to that site? Once he got there, would he know how to proceed? As he continued, Noah reacted to Brooks’ second claim, citing a CBO source:
NOAH: The relevant statistic isn't what proportion of the nation's taxes comes from the rich. It's what proportion of the rich's income gets paid in taxes. Brooks cites a Congressional Budget Office report that says people in the richest 1 percent pay 31 percent of their income in taxes to the federal government. Boo hoo. What he doesn't say is that back in 1979, on the eve of the Reagan revolution, the richest 1 percent paid 37 percent of their income in taxes to the federal government, even though its share of the nation's income was much lower than it is now (34 percent, including capital gains).
In fairness to Brooks, “Boo hoo” isn’t an argument. Nor is anyone required to care when they’re told that the tax rate in question was once six points higher. But to see that CBO report, just click here. Though even when you go to that report, you may still have a problem.

Go ahead—check over to that report. Its pair of headlines say this:

Effective Federal Tax Rates for All Households, by Comprehensive Household Income Quintile, 1979-2006
Total Effective Federal Tax Rate

Question: Does that include all federal taxes? Payroll taxes and income taxes? And what does “effective tax rate” mean? If the average reader scanned that report, do you think he or she would know?

Noah knows much more than the average bird about where to go for this kind of info. His series at Slate was superb. But it’s remarkably hard for average people to locate such information. Factual claims get thrown all around. They’re very hard to fact-check.

This is a long-term failure of the liberal world. More on this point to come.

Branding is the revenge of the losers Written by cha on 17 August, 2011 — Leave a Comment By Morten Grønborg

Branding is the lazy, incompetent manufacturers’ revenge upon those more capable. Their br illiant move was to shift the field of battle from the real to something secondary. That is why w e now compete on words and symbols rather than on substance.Read about why branding is wasted money, wrapped in promises of progress.

The idea of branding has journeyed from the mercantile world into the intimate sphere and the political-cultural public sphere. In its wake, differentiated indifference has spread. Wherever branding has been used in an attempt to create variety and renewal, we have instead received more of the same, and this phenomenon has turned out to be self-reinforcing. Branding is used as a solution, but in reality exacerbates the problem because it doesn’t create real differences, only apparent differences. This, again, creates a further need for differentiation, and this means the snowball starts rolling. Downhill.

In this article, I explain why the otherwise much-lauded and widely used branding phenomenon isn’t a solution to anything, but rather a problem for our society and our need for progress. But let us first take a look at what branding really is.

Branding = speculation

Branding has become such an overwhelming a success that it has become cool to be against it. It’s not difficult to rally people around the viewpoint that branding has got out of hand – everybody seems to be branding themselves and that advertisements creep in everywhere. However, the thing is that most people don’t quite realise what branding really is about, a fact that often turns any opposition into a fight against the big brands and their ubiquitous presence. Just think of the Canadian organisation AdBusters. People commonly equate branding with marketing, which directs the focus to communication between buyer and seller and naturally the element of acclamation.

However, this is wrong. If you reduce branding to simply being “leading to market”, like leading a cow to an agricultural show to parade it and then sell it, you miss an important point. Branding isn’t a matter of communication, but of speculation. It is crucial to understand this – precisely as it is crucial to distinguish between branding and its auxiliary disciplines, such as PR and advertising. These are quite different matters. In my opinion, the latter are honest disciplines, because what good is it that somebody is offering us the world’s best product if we are never aware of its existence? Not a lot. It’s not a problem to promote yourself – the problem arises when you stop trusting in your product. Here, branding is an effort aimed at hiding that you don’t have or can’t offer anything better than everybody else, and it is mainly there to hide the fact that you are just as impotent as (or no more potent than) everybody else around you. It is a smokescreen. It is giving up.

In mercantile lingo, this impotence is called a generic product situation. Generic products will be familiar to most people who have paid for things they actually need. Electricity is one example; mineral water another. There may be minor quantitative or content-based differences between different makes of these two generic products, but in the big picture it doesn’t matter much whether we choose one make over another. Both will solve our problems – and this is where branding comes into the picture. How else can manufacturers sell more of their products, if all the other makes are pretty much identical?

In the privatised capitalism model, there are – in principle – two ways to compete with other manufacturers or producers (if we discount illegal cartelisation where competing actors divide the market between them). You can 1) compete on price or 2) compete on quality, and the latter has the very favourable effect that somebody will develop something that actually is better than what the others are offering. This gives rise to questions about who has the best product, who can deliver it at the best price and who is best and cheapest? This constitutes healthy competition, which is the logic behind all progress in recent history.

However, competition on quality is difficult and requires you to make an effort and dare something new. It isn’t the easiest path, especially not for the impotent manufacturer. Nor can a company be particularly interested in competing on price, since this primarily favours the consumers and the two or three manufacturers that actually are cheapest. Numbers four, five and six will ultimately lose money. Neither way is particularly attractive, and it is here that branding offers a third possible alternative. The implications are complex, but the principle is simple. Branding is a matter of recognising that you don’t have anything special to offer, so you must create a strong, immaterial universe instead. This universe is your new product, and you should look at the old one as a by-product – something secondary, an accessory.

There are countless examples of companies having success with this approach, and these heroes of the business world are used as prime examples in the many long books written about branding over the last few decades. There’s a lot of money to be made from describing and teaching the philosophy of branding, because it works. Often, there’s no difference between products in a given category, yet we still pay too much for a number of these generics when we shop. The difference is ”hot air” – beautifully ornamented vapour, some of which is so expensive that it resembles idiocy to any rational thinker. But the companies behind these measures are laughing all the way to the bank – branding is the best idea anybody has ever presented them with.

To read the rest of the article and the whole magazine click here and log-in! (www.cifs.dk)Scenario is also available in Danish.

If you are not a current subscriber to SCENARIO or a member of The Copenhagen Instititute for Futures Studies, then get in touch with us or subscribe here.

Bill Mandel on Larry Pinkney = The following is excerpt from Bill Mandel's autobiography "Saying No to Power" published in 1996 and can be found on pages 500-504

For four solid years, while I was researching and writing Soviet But Not Russian, my primary social activism was on behalf of prisoners. The credit is due them, for it was initiated by their letters stimulated by my broadcasts and sometimes deeply involving KPFA as a station.

Further conflict between me and the News Department arose out of my efforts for Larry Pinkney, a former Black Panther. His militancy started with his experiences as the only African-American student in a Maryland High School of three thousand, which had Ku Klux Klan agitators. Years later, Pinkney had been appointed by San Francisco Mayor [Joseph] Alioto, under pressure from segments of the Black, white, and Chicano communities, to the Civil Service Commission oral board interviewing candidates for the Fire Department. He had been the only Black member, the only civilian, the youngest. Having lost the key to an apartment available to him, he tried to get in through a window. Police, tailing him, said as they seized him: "We have you now, nigger!" and beat him badly. He was convicted of burglary under the illegal-entry clause of the penal code.

Pinkney wrote me early in 1983, when completing in Vacaville a nine-year term that began in Canada. He is best described in a "To Whom It May Concern" letter about him from a member of the Canadian Parliament from the Conservative Party. Canada had cooperated with the U.S. desire to imprison Larry after he fled this country subsequent to that frame-up in 1973. It was only after the UN Human Rights Committee officially condemned the actions of the Canadian government in his case that he was transferred to imprisonment in the U.S. in his seventh year of incarceration, instead of being released. The Canadian M.P. wrote:

"I am our Party's spokesman on issues relating to Correction and Parole... I became acquainted with Mr. Larry Pinkney... I was quickly impressed with the high level of personal integrity which he displayed. He was not looking for any favours, he was not enumerating an inventory of complaints or alibis. In short, there was no evidence that he had ever become a part of the criminal sub-culture which makes up so much a part of our prison population... I have... found... him... meticulously honorable. My experience with him is that his word is his bond."

I sent him poems I had written in the early '50s, primarily about Black freedom struggles I had participated in. He wrote: "They made me feel love, but most of all, your poems make me feel hope. Your poem, 'For My Children, To Dr. DuBois,' is my favorite. Its strength lies in its combined gentleness and searing truthfulness; so powerful, yet so gentle."

...A year after we became acquainted, [Pinkney] was framed for allegedly trying to start a riot in prison. None had occurred. In fact -- I had been kept informed of the situation as it developed in the previous week -- he was trying to stop one from developing. When I told Bari Scott, the African-American woman who headed KPFA's Third World Department, about the situation, she contacted U.S. Senator Cranston's and Congressmember Dellums; offices. I wrote the Vacaville warden and the head of the state prison system essentially identical letters:

"I intend to broadcast on this matter...," of course in my Soviet program time, "and to ask listeners to write you... I visited Mr. Pinkney last Monday. Mr. Pinkney was greatly troubled by events earlier that day. He had taken the lead in calming the situation, which required approximately four group meetings in the course of the day. He was proud of the fact that he enjoyed the confidence of white and Chicano inmates as well as Black, and that this had made it possible to cool the situation... The removal of peacemakers looks to me like a great way to guarantee a riot next time racial friction occurs. Is that what the authorities desire?"

I described the situation to the News Director, who didn't cover it. When I asked why, she replied that it had "slipped her mind." So I went to the African American woman heading the Third World Department, who contacted the (independent) KPFA Saturday News. They phoned me and broadcast a good story, ending with a request for communications to the authorities. On my own show, on which I gave the case five minutes at the start and two at the end, I got numerous phone calls from people who wanted to write.

Eight days after I informed the News Director of the situation, she could no longer resist the pressure, accepted a call from Larry, and broadcast it on the 6 p.m. news. I wrote him: "Everyone commented on your articulateness."

Representative Dellums wrote the Vacaville warden protesting the violation of state-wide prison rules in the Pinkney case, and saying that U.S. Senator Cranston and a state senator had also had their mail to Pinkney opened. This stimulated a "To Whom It May Concern" letter from the public information department of the prison system saying they got "a large number of similar letters and postcards regarding the situation of Larry Pinkney. Correspondents apparently learned of Mr. Pinkney's situation via a radio broadcast." Pinkney wrote me: "The reason I was found not guilty was not due to my firm presentation or even the witnesses in my defense. I was found not guilty due to the strong support from you, your listeners, and other listeners to KPFA who contacted the Calif. Dept. of Corrections [CDC]."

...Early 1984 saw the wrap-up of my controversy with KPFA News over its handling of Pinkney. At a staff meeting, I said that the News Director's failure to deal for eight days with the story that prison authorities were trying to discipline him for what was actually his role in preventing a riot was an act of racism. In a memo written for circulation within Pacifica, I wrote:

"I do not believe that [the News Director] believes in slavery, lynching, segregation, or discrimination. However, in a country in which the latter two are prevalent realities, plus regular police murder of Blacks, including young children, special sensitivity is demanded in any story where Blacks are involved, particularly in a situation in which the victim has a history of political militancy... Failure to act with such sensitivity is racist. I cannot avoid the conclusion that the very bad relationship between [the News Director] and myself over my 4 1/2 years of criticism of the News Department's handling of Soviet matters played a role in her not acting on the story."

For anyone with any doubt about why militant activists like Pinkney wound up in prison, the following excerpt from his FBI file, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, speaks for itself: "Pinkney is potentially dangerous due to his demonstrated ability to unify black and white. His associates are Negro, White, and Chinese. Special attention is being given to neutralizing him. The areas of sex and drugs appear to be the most effective ones to utilize. His habits in these areas are unknown, but are being monitored with this objective. The FBI is working in conjunction with [blacked out, but a covering note to the U.S. Secret Service, San Francisco, accompanies this]."

Pinkney asked me to pick him up on his release. His parents lived in Washington, D.C., and he had a sister in the Northwest. "There are very few people indeed that I would want to be anywhere near on that day," he wrote me, "as I doubt strongly that they would or could conceive of what it means to me, what I have been through, or my psychological state of mind. With you however, there is no doubt that you know all these things far more poignantly than most people could ever know or hope to know."

Larry's indomitable spirit had come through most strongly in a letter to me describing a most unusual event behind prison walls:

"When I heard that you were going to play that [HUAC hearing] recording,
I did something that I have never done before [in over nine years behind bars]. I rounded up all the prisoners in my dorm and requested that they listen to it, which they did. They were elated hearing you do battle; and afterwards, there were many questions to me from the prisoners (both black and white) about what they had heard. They all clearly got the drift of what you were saying before HUAC, though they asked me to explain some of the words that you used after they heard it... They were cheering you on (something that utterly amazed me)... A couple of the prisoners are adamantly anti-communist; but even they were cheering you on... You got across even to people who have virtually no political astuteness at all."

"These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people." - Abraham Lincoln

Institute for Historical Review


The 'Great Emancipator' and the Issue of Race
Abraham Lincoln's Program of Black Resettlement
By Robert Morgan

Many Americans think of Abraham Lincoln, above all, as the president who freed the slaves. Immortalized as the "Great Emancipator," he is widely regarded as a champion of black freedom who supported social equality of the races, and who fought the American Civil War (1861-1865) to free the slaves.

While it is true that Lincoln regarded slavery as an evil and harmful institution, it is also true, as this paper will show, that he shared the conviction of most Americans of his time, and of many prominent statesmen before and after him, that blacks could not be assimilated into white society. He rejected the notion of social equality of the races, and held to the view that blacks should be resettled abroad. As President, he supported projects to remove blacks from the United States.
Early Experiences

In 1837, at the age of 28, the self-educated Lincoln was admitted to practice law in Illinois. In at least one case, which received considerable attention at the time, he represented a slave-owner. Robert Matson, Lincoln's client, each year brought a crew of slaves from his plantation in Kentucky to a farm he owned in Illinois for seasonal work. State law permitted this, provided that the slaves did not remain in Illinois continuously for a year. In 1847, Matson brought to the farm his favorite mulatto slave, Jane Bryant (wife of his free, black overseer there), and her four children. A dispute developed between Jane Bryant and Matson's white housekeeper, who threatened to have Jane and her children returned to slavery in the South. With the help of local abolitionists, the Bryants fled. They were apprehended, and, in an affidavit sworn out before a justice of the peace, Matson claimed them as his property. Lacking the required certificates of freedom, Bryant and the children were confined to local county jail as the case was argued in court. Lincoln lost the case, and Bryant and her children were declared free. They were later resettled in Liberia.1

In 1842 Lincoln married Mary Todd, who came from one of Kentucky's most prominent slave-holding families.2 While serving as an elected representative in the Illinois legislature, he persuaded his fellow Whigs to support Zachary Taylor, a slave owner, in his successful 1848 bid for the Presidency.3 Lincoln was also a strong supporter of the Illinois law that forbid marriage between whites and blacks.4

"If all earthly power were given me," said Lincoln in a speech delivered in Peoria, Illinois, on October 16, 1854, "I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution [of slavery]. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native land." After acknowledging that this plan's "sudden execution is impossible," he asked whether freed blacks should be made "politically and socially our equals?" "My own feelings will not admit of this," he said, "and [even] if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not ... We can not, then, make them equals."5

One of Lincoln's most representative public statements on the question of racial relations was given in a speech at Springfield, Illinois, on June 26, 1857.6 In this address, he explained why he opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which would have admitted Kansas into the Union as a slave state:

There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races ... A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas ...

Racial separation, Lincoln went on to say, "must be effected by colonization" of the country's blacks to a foreign land. "The enterprise is a difficult one," he acknowledged,

but "where there is a will there is a way," and what colonization needs most is a hearty will. Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest. Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and, at the same time, favorable to, or, at least, not against, our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be.

To affirm the humanity of blacks, Lincoln continued, was more likely to strengthen public sentiment on behalf of colonization than the Democrats' efforts to "crush all sympathy for him, and cultivate and excite hatred and disgust against him ..." Resettlement ("colonization") would not succeed, Lincoln seemed to argue, unless accompanied by humanitarian concern for blacks, and some respect for their rights and abilities. By apparently denying the black person's humanity, supporters of slavery were laying the groundwork for "the indefinite outspreading of his bondage." The Republican program of restricting slavery to where it presently existed, he said, had the long-range benefit of denying to slave holders an opportunity to sell their surplus bondsmen at high prices in new slave territories, and thus encouraged them to support a process of gradual emancipation involving resettlement of the excess outside of the country.
Earlier Resettlement Plans

The view that America's apparently intractable racial problem should be solved by removing blacks from this country and resettling them elsewhere -- "colonization" or "repatriation" -- was not a new one. As early as 1714 a New Jersey man proposed sending blacks to Africa. In 1777 a Virginia legislature committee, headed by future President Thomas Jefferson (himself a major slave owner), proposed a plan of gradual emancipation and resettlement of the state's slaves. In 1815, an enterprising free black from Massachusetts named Paul Cuffe transported, at his own expense, 38 free blacks to West Africa. His undertaking showed that at least some free blacks were eager to resettle in a country of their own, and suggested what might be possible with public and even government support.7

In December 1816, a group of distinguished Americans met in Washington, DC, to establish an organization to promote the cause of black resettlement. The "American Colonization Society" soon won backing from some of the young nation's most prominent citizens. Henry Clay, Francis Scott Key, John Randolph, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Bushrod Washington, Charles Carroll, Millard Fillmore, John Marshall, Roger B. Taney, Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster, Stephen A. Douglas, and Abraham Lincoln were members. Clay presided at the group's first meeting.8

Measures to resettle blacks in Africa were soon undertaken. Society member Charles Fenton Mercer played an important role in getting Congress to pass the Anti-Slave Trading Act of March 1819, which appropriated $100,000 to transport blacks to Africa. In enforcing the Act, Mercer suggested to President James Monroe that if blacks were simply returned to the coast of Africa and released, they would probably be re-enslaved, and possibly some returned to the United States. Accordingly, and in cooperation with the Society, Monroe sent agents to acquire territory on Africa's West coast -- a step that led to the founding of the country now known as Liberia. Its capital city was named Monrovia in honor of the American President.9

With crucial Society backing, black settlers began arriving from the United States in 1822. While only free blacks were at first brought over, after 1827, slaves were freed expressly for the purpose of transporting them to Liberia. In 1847, black settlers declared Liberia an independent republic, with an American-style flag and constitution.10

By 1832 the legislatures of more than a dozen states (at that time there were only 24), had given official approval to the Society, including at least three slave-holding states.11 Indiana's legislature, for example, passed the following joint resolution on January 16, 1850:12

Be it resolved by the General Assembly of the State of Indiana: That our Senators and Representatives in Congress be, and they are hereby requested, in the name of the State of Indiana, to call for a change of national policy on the subject of the African Slave Trade, and that they require a settlement of the coast of Africa with colored men from the United States, and procure such changes in our relations with England as will permit us to transport colored men from this country to Africa, with whom to effect said settlement.

In January 1858, Missouri Congressman Francis P. Blair, Jr., introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives to set up a committee

to inquire into the expediency of providing for the acquisition of territory either in the Central or South American states, to be colonized with colored persons from the United States who are now free, or who may hereafter become free, and who may be willing to settle in such territory as a dependency of the United States, with ample guarantees of their personal and political rights.

Blair, quoting Thomas Jefferson, stated that blacks could never be accepted as the equals of whites, and, consequently, urged support for a dual policy of emancipation and deportation, similar to Spain's expulsion of the Moors. Blair went on to argue that the territory acquired for the purpose would also serve as a bulwark against any further encroachment by England in the Central and South American regions.13
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."14

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:15

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.16

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:17

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:

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.

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:18

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:

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.

Candidate for President

Though he failed in his bid for the Senate seat, the Lincoln-Douglas debates thrust "Honest Abe" into the national spotlight.19 In 1860, the Republican Party passed over prominent abolitionists such as William H. Seward and Salmon P. Chase to nominate Lincoln as its presidential candidate.

In those days, presidential contenders did not make public speeches after their nomination. In the most widely reprinted of his pre-nomination speeches, delivered at Cooper Union in New York City on February 27, 1860, Lincoln expressed his agreement with the leaders of the infant American republic that slavery is "an evil not be extended, but to be tolerated and protected" where it already exists. "This is all Republicans ask -- all Republicans desire -- in relation to slavery," he emphasized, underscoring the words in his prepared text. After stating that any emancipation should be gradual and carried out in conjunction with a program of scheduled deportation, he went on to cite Thomas Jefferson:20

In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, "It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation, and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly; and in their places be, pari passu [on an equal basis], filled up by free white laborers."

On the critical question of slavery, the Republican party platform was not altogether clear. Like most documents of its kind, it included sections designed to appeal to a wide variety of voters. One plank, meant to appease radicals and abolitionists, quoted the "all men are created equal" passage of the Declaration of Independence, though without directly mentioning either the Declaration or non-whites. Another section, designed to attract conservative voters, recognized the right of each state to conduct "its own domestic institutions" as it pleased -- "domestic institutions" being an euphemism for slavery. Still another, somewhat equivocally worded, plank, upheld the right and duty of Congress to legislate slavery in the territories "when necessary."21

On election night, November 7, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was the choice of 39 percent of the voters, with no support from the Deep South. The remainder had cast ballots either for Stephen A. Douglas of the Northern Democratic Party, John C. Breckinridge of the Southern Democratic Party, or John Bell of the Constitutional Union Party. Still, Lincoln won a decisive majority in the electoral college.22

By election day, six southern Governors and virtually every Senator and Representative from the seven states of the lower South had gone on record as favoring secession if Lincoln were elected.23 In December, Congress met in a final attempt to reach a compromise on the slavery question. Senator John H. Crittenden of Kentucky proposed an amendment to the Constitution that would guarantee the institution of slavery against federal interference in those places where it was already established.24 A more controversial provision would extend the old Missouri compromise line to the west coast, thereby permitting slavery in the southwest territories.

On December 20, the day South Carolina voted to secede from the Union, Lincoln told a major Republican party figure, Thurlow Weed, that he had no qualms about endorsing the Crittenden amendment if it would restrict slavery to the states where it was already established, and that Congress should recommend to the Northern states that they repeal their "personal liberty" laws that hampered the return of fugitive slaves. However, Lincoln said, he would not support any proposal to extend slavery into the western territories. The Crittenden Amendment failed.25
Southern Fears

Less than one third of the white families in the South had any direct connection with slavery, either as owners or as persons who hired slave labor from others. Moreover, fewer than 2,300 of the one and a half million white families in the South owned 50 or more slaves, and could therefore be regarded as slave-holding magnates.26

The vast majority of Southerners thus had no vested interest in retaining or extending slavery. But incitement by Northern abolitionists, where fewer than 500,000 blacks lived, provoked fears in the South, where the black population was concentrated, of a violent black uprising against whites. (In South Carolina, the majority of the population was black.) Concerns that the writings and speeches of white radicals might incite blacks to anti-white rampage, rape and murder were not entirely groundless. Southerners were mindful of the black riots in New York City of 1712 and 1741, the French experience in Haiti (where insurgent blacks had driven out or massacred almost the entire white population), and the bungled effort by religious fanatic John Brown in 1859 to organize an uprising of black slaves.

What worried Southerners most about the prospect of an end to slavery was fear of what the newly-freed blacks might do. Southern dread of Lincoln was inflamed by the region's newspapers and slave-owning politicians, who portrayed the President-elect as a pawn of radical abolitionists. Much was made of Lincoln's widely-quoted words from a June 1858 speech:27

A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free ... I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.

During the critical four-month period between election and inauguration days, Southern Unionists strongly urged the President-elect to issue a definitive public statement on the slavery issue that would calm rapidly-growing Southern fears. Mindful of the way that newspapers in the slave-holding states had either ignored or twisted his earlier public statements on this issue, Lincoln chose to express himself cautiously. To the editor of the Missouri Republican, for example, he wrote:28

I could say nothing which I have not already said, and which is in print and accessible to the public.

Please pardon me for suggesting that if the papers like yours, which heretofore have persistently garbled and misrepresented what I have said, will now fully and fairly place it before their readers, there can be no further misunderstanding. I beg you to believe me sincere, when ... I urge it as the true cure for real uneasiness in the country ...

The Republican newspapers now, and for some time past, are and have been republishing copious extracts from my many published speeches, which would at once reach the whole public if your class of papers would also publish them. I am not at liberty to shift my ground -- that is out of the question. If I thought a repetition would do any good, I would make it. But my judgment is it would do positive harm. The secessionists, per se believing they had alarmed me, would clamor all the louder.

Lincoln also addressed the decisive issue in correspondence with Alexander H. Stephens, who would soon become Vice President of the Confederacy. Stephens was an old and much admired acquaintance of Lincoln's, a one-time fellow Whig and Congressman. Having seen reports of a pro-Union speech in Georgia by Stephens, Lincoln wrote to express his thanks. Stephens responded with a request that the President-elect strike a blow on behalf of Southern Unionists by clearly expressing his views. In a private letter of December 22, 1860, Lincoln replied:29

Do the people of the south really entertain fears that a Republican administration would, directly or indirectly, interfere with their slaves, or with them, about their slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, there is no cause for such fears.

Lincoln went on to sum up the issue as he saw it: "You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us."

To Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, who had passed along a report of a rabid anti-Lincoln harangue in the Mississippi legislature, Lincoln wrote that "madman" there had quite misrepresented his views. He stated he was not "pledged to the ultimate extinction of slavery," and that he did not "hold the black man to be the equal of the white."30

When a Mississippian appeared at a reception for Lincoln in the Illinois statehouse, and boldly announced he was a secessionist, Lincoln responded by saying that he was opposed to any interference with slavery where it existed. He gave the same sort of general assurance to a number of callers and correspondents. He also wrote a few anonymous editorials for the Illinois State Journal, the Republican newspaper of Springfield. Additionally, he composed a few lines for a speech delivered by Senator Trumball at the Republican victory celebration in Springfield on November 20. In those lines Lincoln pledged that "each and all" of the states would be "left in as complete control of their own affairs" as ever.31
Inauguration

Abraham Lincoln took the oath as President on March 4, 1861. Among the first words of his Inaugural Address was a pledge (repeating words from an August 1858 speech) intended to placate Southern apprehensions: "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." Referring to the proposed Crittenden amendment, which would make explicit constitutional protection of slavery where it already existed, he said, "I have no objection to its being made express, and irrevocable." He also promised to support legislation for the capture and return of runaway slaves.32

At the same time, though, Lincoln emphasized that "no state, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union." With regard to those states that already proclaimed their secession from the Union, he said:

I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the states. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part; and I shall perform it, so far as practicable, unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite means, or, in some authoritative manner, direct the contrary.

In his masterful multi-volume study of the background and course of the Civil War, American historian Allan Nevins attempted to identify the conflict's principle underlying cause:33

The main root of the conflict (and there were minor roots) was the problem of slavery with its complementary problem of race-adjustment; the main source of the tragedy was the refusal of either section to face these conjoined problems squarely and pay the heavy costs of a peaceful settlement. Had it not been for the difference in race, the slavery issue would have presented no great difficulties. But as the racial gulf existed, the South inarticulately but clearly perceived that elimination of this issue would still leave it the terrible problem of the Negro ...

A heavy responsibility for the failure of America in this period rests with this Southern leadership, which lacked imagination, ability, and courage. But the North was by no means without its full share, for the North equally refused to give a constructive examination to the central question of slavery as linked with race adjustment. This was because of two principal reasons. Most abolitionists and many other sentimental-minded Northerners simply denied that the problem existed. Regarding all Negroes as white men with dark skins, whom a few years of schooling would bring abreast of the dominant race, they thought that no difficult adjustment was required. A much more numerous body of Northerners would have granted that a great and terrible task of race adjustment existed -- but they were reluctant to help shoulder any part of it ... Indiana, Illinois and even Kansas were unwilling to take a single additional person of color.

Outbreak of War

Dramatic events were swiftly creating enormous problems for the new President, who had greatly underestimated the depth of secessionist feeling in the South.34 In January and early February, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas followed South Carolina's example and left the Union. Florida troops fired on the federal stronghold of Fort Pickens. When South Carolina seceded, she claimed as rightfully hers all US government property within her borders, including federal forts and arsenals. While announcing a willingness to pay the federal government for at least a share of the cost of improvements it had made, South Carolina insisted that these properties belonged to the state, and would no longer tolerate the presence of a "foreign" power upon her soil. The other newly-seceding states took the same position.35

On the day Lincoln took the presidential oath, the federal government still controlled four forts inside the new Confederacy. In Florida there were Forts Taylor, Jefferson, and Pickens, the first two of which seemed secure, while in South Carolina there was Fort Sumter, which was almost entirely encircled by hostile forces.36 While historians do not agree whether Lincoln deliberately sought to provoke an attack by his decision to re-supply the Fort, it is known that on April 9, while the bombardment of the stronghold was underway, the new President received a delegation of Virginia Unionists at the White House. Lincoln reminded them of his inaugural pledge that there would be "no invasion -- not using force," beyond what was necessary to hold federal government sites and to collect customs duties. "But if, as now appeared to be true, an unprovoked assault has been made upon Fort Sumter, I shall hold myself at liberty to repossess, if I can, like places which have been seized before the Government was devolved upon me."37

In the aftermath of the Confederate seizure of Fort Sumter in mid-April, Lincoln called upon the states to provide 75,000 soldiers to put down the rebellion. Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina responded by leaving the Union and joining the newly-formed "Confederate States of America." This increased the size of the Confederacy by a third, and almost doubled its population and economic resources. Remaining with the Union, though, were four slave-holding border states -- Delaware, Missouri, Maryland and Kentucky -- and, predictably, the slave-holding District of Columbia.

The American Civil War of 1861-1865 -- or the "War Between the States," as many Southerners call it -- eventually claimed the lives of 360,000 in the Union forces, and an estimated 258,000 among the Confederates, in addition to hundreds of thousands of maimed and wounded. It was by far the most destructive war in American history.

Even after fighting began in earnest, Lincoln stuck to his long-held position on the slavery issue by countermanding orders by Union generals to free slaves. In July 1861, General John C. Frémont -- the Republican party's unsuccessful 1856 Presidential candidate -- declared martial law in Missouri, and announced that all slaves of owners in the state who opposed the Union were free. President Lincoln immediately canceled the order. Because the Southern states no longer sent representatives to Washington, abolitionists and radical Republicans wielded exceptional power in Congress, which responded to Lincoln's cancellation of Främont's order by passing, on August 6, 1861, the (first) Confiscation Act. It provided that any property, including slaves, used with the owner's consent in aiding and abetting insurrection against the United States, was the lawful subject of prize and capture wherever found.38

In May 1862, Union General David Hunter issued an order declaring all slaves in Georgia, Florida and South Carolina to be free. Lincoln promptly revoked the order. An irate Congress responded by passing, in July, a second Confiscation Act that declared "forever free" all slaves whose owners were in rebellion, whether or not the slaves were used for military purposes. Lincoln refused to sign the Act until it was amended, stating he thought it an unconditional bill of attainder. Although he did not veto the amended law, Lincoln expressed his dissatisfaction with it. Furthermore, he did not faithfully enforce either of the Confiscation Acts.39
Deaths in Union 'Contraband Camps'

Slaves seized under the Confiscation Acts, as well as runaway slaves who turned themselves in to Union forces, were held in so-called "contraband" camps. In his message to the Confederate Congress in the fall of 1863, President Jefferson Davis sharply criticized Union treatment of these blacks. After describing the starvation and suffering in these camps, he said: "There is little hazard in predicting that in all localities where the enemy have a temporary foothold, the Negroes, who under our care increased sixfold ... will have been reduced by mortality during the war to no more than one-half their previous number." However exaggerated Davis' words may have been, it remains a grim fact that many blacks lost their lives in these internment camps, and considerably more suffered terribly as victims of hunger, exposure and neglect. In 1864, one Union officer called the death rate in these camps "frightful," and said that "most competent judges place it as no less than twenty-five percent in the last two years."40
The Chiriqui Resettlement Plan

Even before he took office, Lincoln was pleased to note widespread public support for "colonization" of the country's blacks.41 "In 1861-1862, there was widespread support among conservative Republicans and Democrats for the colonization abroad of Negroes emancipated by the war," historian James M. McPherson has noted. At the same time, free blacks in parts of the North were circulating a petition asking Congress to purchase a tract of land in Central America as a site for their resettlement.42

In spite of the pressing demands imposed by the war, Lincoln soon took time to implement his long-standing plan for resettling blacks outside the United States.

Ambrose W. Thompson, a Philadelphian who had grown rich in coastal shipping, provided the new president with what seemed to be a good opportunity. Thompson had obtained control of several hundred thousand acres in the Chiriqui region of what is now Panama, and had formed the "Chiriqui Improvement Company." He proposed transporting liberated blacks from the United States to the Central American region, where they would mine the coal that was supposedly there in abundance. This coal would be sold to the US Navy, with the resulting profits used to sustain the black colony, including development of plantations of cotton, sugar, coffee, and rice. The Chiriqui project would also help to extend US commercial dominance over tropical America.43

Negotiations to realize the plan began in May 1861, and on August 8, Thompson made a formal proposal to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Wells to deliver coal from Chiriqui at one-half the price the government was then paying. Meanwhile, Lincoln had referred the proposal to his brother-in-law, Ninian W. Edwards, who, on August 9, 1861, enthusiastically endorsed the proposed contract.44

Appointing a commission to investigate the Thompson proposal, Lincoln referred its findings to Francis P. Blair, Sr. Endorsing a government contract with the Chiriqui Improvement Company even more strongly than Edwards had, the senior Blair believed the main purpose of such a contract should be to utilize the area controlled by Thompson to "solve" the black question. He repeated Jefferson's view that blacks would ultimately have to be deported from the United States, reviewed Lincoln's own endorsement of resettlement, and discussed the activities of his son, Missouri Representative Francis P. Blair, Jr., on behalf of deportation. Blair concluded his lengthy report with a recommendation that Henry T. Blow, US Minister to Venezuela, be sent to Chiriqui to make an examination for the government.45

Lincoln ordered his Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, to release Thompson from his military duties so he could escort Blow to Central America46

for the purpose of reconnaissance of, and a report upon the lands, and harbors of the Isthmus of Chiriqui; the fitness of the lands to the colonization of the Negro race; the practicability of connecting the said harbors by a railroad; and the works which will be necessary for the Chiriqui Company to erect to protect the colonists as they may arrive, as well as for the protection and defense of the harbors at the termini of said road.

Cameron was to provide Thompson with the necessary equipment and assistants. The mission was to be carried out under sealed orders with every precaution for secrecy,47 because Lincoln did not have legal authority to undertake such an expedition.

While Blow was investigating the Chiriqui area, Lincoln called Delaware Congressman George Fisher to the White House in November 1861 to discuss compensated emancipation of the slaves in that small state -- where the 1860 census had enumerated only 507 slave-holders, owning fewer than 1,800 slaves. The President asked Fisher to determine whether the Delaware legislature could be persuaded to free slaves in the state if the government compensated the owners for them. Once the plan proved feasible in Delaware, the President hoped, he might be able to persuade the other border states and, eventually, even the secessionist states, to adopt it. With assistance from Lincoln, Fisher drew up a bill to be presented to the state legislature when it met in late December. It provided that when the federal government had appropriated money to pay an average of $500 for each slave, emancipation would go into effect. As soon as it was made public, though, an acrimonious debate broke out, with party rancor and pro-slavery sentiment combining to defeat the proposed legislation.48
'Absolute Necessity'

In his first annual message to Congress on December 3, 1861, President Lincoln proposed that persons liberated by the fighting should be deemed free and

that, in any event, steps be taken for colonizing [them] ... at some place, or places, in a climate congenial to them. It might be well to consider, too, whether the free colored people already in the United States could not, so far as individuals may desire, be included in such colonization.

This effort, Lincoln recognized, "may involve the acquiring of territory, and also the appropriation of money beyond that to be expended in the territorial acquisition." Some form of resettlement, he said, amounts to an "absolute necessity."49
Growing Clamor for Emancipation

Lincoln's faithful enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law not only filled Washington, DC, jails with runaway slaves waiting to be claimed by their owners, but also enraged many who loathed slavery. In an effort to appease his party's abolitionist faction, Lincoln urged that the United States formally recognize the black republics of Haiti and Liberia, a proposal that Congress accepted.50

Lincoln realized that the growing clamor to abolish slavery threatened to seriously jeopardize the support he needed to prosecute the war to preserve the Union. Accordingly, on March 6, 1862, he called on Congress to endorse a carefully worded resolution:51

Resolved, that the United States ought to cooperate with any state which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such state pecuniary aid, to be used by such state in its discretion, to compensate for the inconvenience, public and private, produced by such change of system.

In a letter to New York Times editor Henry J. Raymond urging support for the resolution, Lincoln explained that one million dollars, or less than a half-day's cost of the war, would buy all the slaves in Delaware, and that $174 million, or less than 87 days' cost of the war, would purchase all the slaves in the border states and the District of Columbia.52

Although the resolution lacked authority of law, and was merely a declaration of intent, it alarmed representatives from the loyal slave-holding border states. Missouri Congressman Frank P. Blair, Jr. (who, in 1868, would campaign as the Democratic party's vice presidential candidate) spoke against the resolution in a speech in the House on April 11, 1862. Emancipation of the slaves, he warned, would be a terrible mistake until arrangements were first made to resettle the blacks abroad. Blair spoke of shipping them to areas south of the Rio Grande.

In spite of such opposition, though, moderate Republicans and Democrats joined to approve the resolution, which was passed by Congress and signed by Lincoln on April 10, 1862. Not a single border state lawmaker had voted for the measure, however.53

In an effort to assuage such concerns, in July Lincoln called border state Congressmen and Senators to a White House meeting at which he explained that the recently-passed resolution involved no claim of federal authority over slavery in the states, and that it left the issue under state control. Seeking to calm fears that emancipation would suddenly result in many freed Negroes in their midst, he again spoke of resettlement of blacks as the solution. "Room in South America for colonization can be obtained cheaply, and in abundance," said the President. "And when numbers shall be large enough to be company and encouragement for one another, the freed people will not be so reluctant to go."54
Congress Votes Funds for Resettlement

In 1860, the 3,185 slaves in the District of Columbia were owned by just two percent of the District's residents. In April 1862, Lincoln arranged to have a bill introduced in Congress that would compensate District slave-holders an average of $300 for each slave. An additional $100,000 was appropriated 55

to be expended under the direction of the President of the United States, to aid in the colonization and settlement of such free persons of African descent now residing in said District, including those to be liberated by this act, as may desire to emigrate to the Republic of Haiti or Liberia, or such other country beyond the limits of the United States as the President may determine.

When he signed the bill into law on April 16, Lincoln stated: "I am gratified that the two principles of compensation, and colonization, are both recognized, and practically applied in the act."56

Two months later, as part of the (second) Confiscation Act of July 1862, Congress appropriated an additional half-million dollars for the President's use in resettling blacks who came under Union military control. Rejecting criticism from prominent "radicals" such as Senator Charles Sumner, most Senators and Representatives expressed support for the bold project in a joint resolution declaring57

that the President is hereby authorized to make provision for the transportation, colonization and settlement in some tropical country beyond the limits of the United States, of such persons of African race, made free by the provisions of this act, as may be willing to emigrate ...

Lincoln now had Congressional authority and $600,000 in authorized funds to proceed with his plan for resettlement.
Obstacles

Serious obstacles remained, however. Secretary of the Interior Caleb B. Smith informed the President that Liberia was out of the question as a destination for resettling blacks because of the inhospitable climate, the unwillingness of blacks to travel so far, and the great expense involved in transporting people such a vast distance. Haiti was ruled out because of the low level of civilization there, because Catholic influence was so strong there, and because of fears that the Spanish might soon take control of the Caribbean country. Those blacks who had expressed a desire to emigrate, Secretary Smith went on to explain, preferred to remain in the western hemisphere. The only really acceptable site was Chiriqui, Smith concluded, because of its relative proximity to the United States, and because of the availability of coal there.58 Meanwhile, the United States minister in Brazil expressed the view that the country's abundance of land and shortage of labor made it a good site for resettling America's blacks.59

In mid-May 1862, Lincoln received a paper from Reverend James Mitchell that laid out arguments for resettling the country's black population:60

Our republican system was meant for a homogeneous people. As long as blacks continue to live with the whites they constitute a threat to the national life. Family life may also collapse and the increase of mixed breed bastards may some day challenge the supremacy of the white man.

Mitchell went on to recommend the gradual deportation of America's blacks to Central America and Mexico. "That region had once known a great empire and could become one again," he stated. "This continent could then be divided between a race of mixed bloods and Anglo-Americans." Lincoln was apparently impressed with Mitchell's arguments. A short time later, he appointed him as his Commissioner of Emigration.
A Historic White House Meeting

Eager to proceed with the Chiriqui project, on August 14, 1862, Lincoln met with five free black ministers, the first time a delegation of their race was invited to the White House on a matter of public policy. The President made no effort to engage in conversation with the visitors, who were bluntly informed that they had been invited to listen. Lincoln did not mince words, but candidly told the group:61

You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think your race suffers very greatly, many of them, by living among us, while ours suffers from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side. If this is admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be separated.

... Even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race ... The aspiration of men is to enjoy equality with the best when free, but on this broad continent, not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of ours. Go where you are treated the best, and the ban is still upon you.

... We look to our condition, owing to the existence of the two races on this continent. I need not recount to you the effects upon white men growing out of the institution of slavery. I believe in its general evil effects on the white race.

See our present condition -- the country engaged in war! -- our white men cutting one another's throats, none knowing how far it will extend; and then consider what we know to be the truth. But for your race among us there could not be war, although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or the other. Nevertheless, I repeat, without the institution of slavery, and the colored race as a basis, the war would not have an existence.

It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated.

An excellent site for black resettlement, Lincoln went on, was available in Central America. It had good harbors and an abundance of coal that would permit the colony to be quickly put on a firm financial footing. The President concluded by asking the delegation to determine if a number of freedmen with their families would be willing to go as soon as arrangements could be made.
Organizing Black Support

The next day, Rev. Mitchell -- who had attended the historic White House meeting as Lincoln's Commissioner of Immigration -- placed an advertisement in northern newspapers announcing: "Correspondence is desired with colored men favorable to Central America, Liberian or Haitian emigration, especially the first named."62 Mitchell also sent a memorandum to black ministers urging them to use their influence to encourage emigration. Providence itself, he wrote, had decreed a separate existence for the races. Blacks were half responsible for the terrible Civil War, Mitchell went on, and forecast further bloodshed unless they left the country. He concluded:63

This is a nation of equal white laborers, and as you cannot be accepted on equal terms, there is no place here for you. You cannot go into the North or the West without arousing the growing feeling of hostility toward you. The south must also have a homogeneous population, and any attempt to give the freedmen equal status in the South will bring disaster to both races.

Rev. Edwin Thomas, the chairman of the black delegation, informed the President in a letter of August 16 that while he had originally opposed colonization, after becoming acquainted with the facts he now favored it. He asked Lincoln's authorization to travel among his black friends and co-workers to convince them of the virtues of emigration.64

While Thompson continued working on colonization of the Chiriqui site, Lincoln turned to Kansas Senator Samuel Pomeroy, whom he appointed United States Colonization Agent, to recruit black emigrants for Chiriqui resettlement, and arrange for their transportation. On August 26, 1862, Pomeroy issued a dramatic official appeal "To the Free Colored People of the United States":65

The hour has now arrived in the history of your settlement upon this continent when it is within your own power to take one step that will secure, if successful, the elevation, freedom, and social position of your race upon the American continent ...

I want mechanics and labourers, earnest, honest, and sober men, for the interest of a generation, it may be of mankind, are involved in the success of this experiment, and with the approbation of the American people, and under the blessing of Almighty God, it cannot, it shall not fail.

Although many blacks soon made clear their unwillingness to leave the country, Pomeroy was pleased to report in October that he had received nearly 14,000 applications from blacks who desired to emigrate.66

On September 12, 1862, the federal government concluded a provisional contract with Ambrose Thompson, providing for development and colonization of his vast leased holdings in the Chiriqui region. Pomeroy was to determine the fitness of the Chiriqui site for resettlement. Along with the signatures of Thompson and Interior Secretary Caleb Smith, the contract contained a note by the President: "The within contract is approved, and the Secretary of the Interior is directed to execute the same. A. Lincoln." That same day, Lincoln also issued an order directing the Department of the Interior to carry out the "colonization" provisions of the relevant laws of April and July 1862.67

The President next instructed Pomeroy, acting as his agent, to accompany the proposed colonizing expedition. Lincoln authorized him to advance Thompson $50,000 when and if colonization actually began, and to allow Thompson such sums as might immediately be necessary for incidental expenses.68 Interior Secretary Smith sent Pomeroy more specific instructions. He was to escort a group of black "Freedmen" who were willing to resettle abroad. However, before attempting to establish a colony at Chiriqui, no matter how promising the site, he should first obtain permission of the local authorities, in order to prevent diplomatic misunderstandings.69

Acting on these instructions, Pomeroy went to New York to obtain a ship for the venture. Robert Murray, United States Marshall at New York, was advised of Pomeroy's status as special colonization agent, and was asked to help him secure a suitable ship.70 On September 16, Interior Secretary Smith wired Pomeroy: "President wants information ... has Murray the control and custody of the vessel? Is there order of sale; and if so, when? Is any deposit necessary to get the vessel?"71 President Lincoln's concern with black resettlement at this time is all the more significant because September 1862 was a very critical period for Union military fortunes. In spite of this, he took time to keep himself abreast of the project, even to the point of having a telegram sent to hurry the procurement of a ship for the venture.
The Emancipation Proclamation

During the winter and spring 1861-1862, public support grew rapidly for the view that slavery must be abolished everywhere. Lincoln did not ignore the ever louder calls for decisive action.72 On June 19, he signed a law abolishing slavery in all the federal territories.73 At the same time, he was quietly preparing an even more dramatic measure.

At a cabinet meeting on July 22, Lincoln read out the draft text of a document he had prepared -- a proclamation that would give the Confederate states a hundred days to stop their "rebellion" upon threat of declaring all slaves in those states to be free.

The President told his cabinet that he did not want advice on the merits of the proclamation itself -- he had made up his mind about that, he said -- but he would welcome suggestions about how best to implement the edict. For two days cabinet members debated the draft. Only two -- Secretary of State William Seward and Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase, abolitionists who had challenged Lincoln for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination -- agreed even in part with the proclamation's contents. Seward persuaded the President not to issue it until after a Union military victory (of which so far there had been few), or otherwise it would appear "the last measure of an exhausted government, a cry for help."74

Union General McClellan's success on September 17 in holding off the forces of General Lee at Antietam provided a federal victory of sorts, and the waited-for opportunity. Five days later, Lincoln issued his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which included a favorable reference to colonization:75

I, Abraham Lincoln ... do hereby proclaim and declare that hereafter, as heretofore, the war will be prosecuted for the object of practically restoring the constitutional relation between the United States, and each of the states, and the people thereof ...

That it is my purpose, upon the next meeting of Congress to again recommend the adoption of a practical measure tendering pecuniary aid to the free acceptance or rejection of all slave-states, so called, the people whereof may not be then be in rebellion against the United States, and which states, may then have voluntarily adopted, or thereafter may voluntarily adopt, immediate, or gradual abolishment of slavery within their respective limits; and that the effort to colonize persons of African descent, with their consent, upon this continent, or elsewhere, with the previously obtained consent of the Governments existing there, will be continued.

Lincoln then went on to state that on January 1, 1863,

all persons held as slaves within any state, or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever, free ...

The edict then cited the law passed by Congress on March 13, 1862, which prohibited military personnel from returning escaped slaves, and the second Confiscation Act of July 1862.
Proclamation Limitations

On New Year's Day, 1863, Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation.76 Contrary to what its title suggests, however, the presidential edict did not immediately free a single slave. It "freed" only slaves who were under Confederate control, and explicitly exempted slaves in Union-controlled territories, including federal-occupied areas of the Confederacy, West Virginia, and the four slave-holding states that remained in the Union.

The Proclamation, Secretary Seward wryly commented, emancipated slaves where it could not reach them, and left them in bondage where it could have set them free. Moreover, because it was issued as a war measure, the Proclamation's long-term validity was uncertain. Apparently any future President could simply revoke it. "The popular picture of Lincoln using a stroke of the pen to lift the shackles from the limbs of four million slaves is ludicrously false," historian Allan Nevins has noted.77
'Military Necessity'

Lincoln himself specifically cited "military necessity" as his reason for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. After more than a year of combat, and in spite of its great advantages in industrial might and numbers, federal forces had still not succeeded in breaking the South. At this critical juncture of the war, the President apparently now hoped, a formal edict abolishing slavery in the Confederate states would strike a blow at the Confederacy's ability to wage war by encouraging dissension, escapes, and possibly revolt among its large slave labor force.78

As the war progressed, black labor had become ever more critical in the hard-pressed Confederacy. Blacks planted, cultivated and harvested the food that they then transported to the Confederate armies. Blacks raised and butchered the beef, pigs and chicken used to feed the Confederate troops. They wove the cloth and knitted the socks to clothe the grey-uniformed soldiers. As Union armies invaded the South, tearing up railroads and demolishing bridges, free blacks and slaves repaired them. They toiled in the South's factories, shipping yards, and mines. In 1862, the famous Tredegar iron works advertised for 1,000 slaves. In 1864, there were 4,301 blacks and 2,518 whites in the iron mines of the Confederate states east of the Mississippi.79

Blacks also served with the Confederate military forces as mechanics, teamsters, and common laborers. They cared for the sick and scrubbed the wounded in Confederate hospitals. Nearly all of the South's military fortifications were constructed by black laborers. Most of the cooks in the Confederate army were slaves. Of the 400 workers at the Naval arsenal in Selma, Alabama, in 1865, 310 were blacks. Blacks served with crews of Confederate blockade-runners and stoked the firerooms of the South's warships.80

Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, the legendary cavalry commander, said in a postwar interview: "When I entered the army I took 47 Negroes into the army with me, and 45 of them were surrendered with me ... These boys stayed with me, drove my teams, and better Confederates did not live."81

On several occasions, Lincoln explained his reasons for issuing the Proclamation. On September 13, 1862, the day after the preliminary proclamation was issued, Lincoln met with a delegation of pro-abolitionist Christian ministers, and told them bluntly: "Understand, I raise no objections against it [slavery] on legal or constitutional grounds ... I view the matter [emancipation] as a practical war measure, to be decided upon according to the advantages or disadvantages it may offer to the suppression of the rebellion."82

To Salmon Chase, his Treasury Secretary, the President justified the Proclamations's limits: "The original [preliminary] proclamation has no constitutional or legal justification, except as a military measure," he explained. "The exceptions were made because the military necessity did not apply to the exempted localities. Nor does that necessity apply to them now any more than it did then."83

Horace Greeley, editor of the influential New York Tribune, called upon the President to immediately and totally abolish slavery in an emphatic and prominently displayed editorial published August 20, 1862. Lincoln responded in a widely-quoted letter:84

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union ...

Concern about growing sentiment in the North to end slavery, along with sharp criticism from prominent abolitionists, was apparently another motivating factor for the President. (Abolitionists even feared that the Confederate states might give up their struggle for independence before the January first deadline, and thus preserve the institution of slavery.)85

Lincoln assured Edward Stanly, a pro-slavery Southerner he had appointed as military governor of the occupied North Carolina coast, that "the proclamation had become a civil necessity to prevent the radicals from openly embarrassing the government in the conduct of the war."86
Impact of the Proclamation

While abolitionists predictably hailed the final Proclamation, sentiment among northern whites was generally unfavorable. The edict cost the President considerable support, and undoubtedly was a factor in Republican party setbacks in the Congressional elections of 1862. In the army, hardly one Union soldier in ten approved of emancipation, and some officers resigned in protest.87

As a work of propaganda, the Proclamation proved effective. To encourage discontent among slaves in the Confederacy, a million copies were distributed in the Union-occupied South and, as hoped, news of it spread rapidly by word of mouth among the Confederacy's slaves, arousing hopes of freedom and encouraging many to escape.88 The Proclamation "had the desired effect of creating confusion in the South and depriving the Confederacy of much of its valuable laboring force," affirms historian John Hope Franklin.89

Finally, in the eyes of many people -- particularly in Europe -- Lincoln's edict made the Union army a liberating force: all slaves in areas henceforward coming under federal control would automatically be free.

The Proclamation greatly strengthened support for the Union cause abroad, especially in Britain and France, where anti-slavery sentiment was strong. In Europe, the edict transformed the conflict into a Union crusade for freedom, and contributed greatly to dashing the Confederacy's remaining hopes of formal diplomatic recognition from Britain and France.90 "The Emancipation Proclamation," reported Henry Adams from London, "has done more for us [the Union] here than all our former victories and all our diplomacy. It is creating an almost convulsive reaction in our favor all over this country."91
End of the Resettlement Efforts

Lincoln continued to press ahead with his plan to resettle blacks in Central America, in spite of opposition from all but one member of his own Cabinet, and the conclusion of a scientific report that Chiriqui coal was "worthless."92

Mounting opposition to any resettlement plan also came from abolitionists, who insisted that blacks had a right to remain in the land of their birth. In addition, some Republican party leaders opposed resettlement because they were counting on black political support, which would be particularly important in controlling a defeated South, where most whites would be barred from voting. Others agreed with Republican Senator Charles Sumner, who argued that black laborers were an important part of the national economy, and any attempt to export them "would be fatal to the prosperity of the country."93 In the (Northern) election campaign of November 1862, emancipation figured as a major issue. Violent mobs of abolitionists opposed those who spoke out in favor of resettlement.94

What proved decisive in bringing an end to the Chiriqui project, though, were emphatic protests by the republics that would be directly effected by large-scale resettlement. In Central America, the prospect that millions of blacks would soon be arriving provoked alarm. A sense of panic prevailed in Nicaragua and Honduras, the American consul reported, because of fears of "a dreadful deluge of negro emigration ... from the United States." In August and September, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica protested officially to the American government about the resettlement venture. (Objection from Costa Rica was particularly worrisome because that country claimed part of the Chiriqui territory controlled by Thompson.)95

On September 19, envoy Luis Molina, a diplomat who represented the three Central American states, formally explained to American officials the objections of the three countries against the resettlement plan. This venture, he protested, was an attempt to use Central America as a depository for "a plague of which the United States desired to rid themselves." Molina also reminded Seward that, for the USA to remain faithful to its own Monroe Doctrine, it could no more assume that there were lands available in Latin America for colonization than could a European power. The envoy concluded his strong protest by hinting that the republics he represented were prepared to use force to repel what they interpreted as an invasion. Learning later that the resettlement project was still underway, Molina delivered a second formal protest on September 29.96

Secretary of State Seward was not able to ignore such protests. After all, why should Central Americans be happy to welcome people of a race that was so despised in the United States? Accordingly, on October 7, 1862, Seward prevailed on the President to call a "temporary" halt to the Chiriqui project.97 Thus, the emphatic unwillingness of the Central American republics to accept black migrants dealt the decisive blow to the Chiriqui project. At a time when the Union cause was still precarious, Secretary of State Steward was obliged to show special concern for US relations with Latin America.98
Lincoln Proposes a Constitutional Amendment

In spite of such obstacles, Lincoln re-affirmed his strong support for gradual emancipation coupled with resettlement in his second annual message to Congress of December 1, 1862. On this occasion he used the word deportation. So serious was he about his plan that he proposed a draft Constitutional Amendment to give it the greatest legal sanction possible. Lincoln told Congress:99

I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I strongly favor colonization.

In this view, I recommend the adoption of the following resolution and articles amendatory to the Constitution of the United States ... "Congress may appropriate money, and otherwise provide, for colonizing free colored persons, with their consent, at any place or places without the United States."

Applications have been made to me by many free Americans of African descent to favor their emigration, with a view to such colonization as was contemplated in recent acts of Congress ... Several of the Spanish American republics have protested against the sending of such colonies [settlers] to their respective territories ... Liberia and Haiti are, as yet, the only countries to which colonists of African descent from here could go with certainty of being received and adopted as citizens ...

Their old masters will gladly give them wages at least until new laborers can be procured; and the freedmen, in turn, will gladly give their labor for the wages, till new homes can be found for them, in congenial climes, and with people of their own blood and race.

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves ...

The President's December 1862 proposal had five basic elements:100

1. Because slavery was a "domestic institution," and thus the concern of the states alone, they -- and not the federal government -- were to voluntarily emancipate the slaves.

2. Slave-holders would be fully compensated for their loss.

3. The federal government would assist the states, with bonds as grants in aid, in meeting the financial burden of compensation.

4. Emancipation would be carried out gradually: the states would have until the year 1900 to free their slaves.

5. The freed blacks would be resettled outside the United States.

The 'Ile à Vache' Project

With the collapse of the Chiriqui plan, Lincoln next gave serious consideration to a small Caribbean island off the coast of the black republic of Haiti, Ile à Vache, as a possible resettlement site for freed blacks.

In December 1862, the President signed a contract with Bernard Kock, a businessman who said that he had obtained a long-term lease on the island. Kock agreed to settle 5,000 blacks on the island, and to provide them with housing, food, medicine, churches, schools, and employment, at a cost to the government of $50 each. About 450 blacks were accordingly transported to the island at federal government expense, but the project was not a success. As a result of poor organization, corruption, and Haitian government opposition, about a hundred of the deportees soon died of disease, thirst and starvation. In February-March 1864, a government-chartered ship brought the survivors back to the United States. After that, Congress cancelled all funds it had set aside for black resettlement.101
End of Resettlement Efforts

In early 1863, Lincoln discussed with his Register of the Treasury a plan to "remove the whole colored race of the slave states into Texas." Apparently nothing came of the discussion.102

Hard-pressed by the demands of the war situation, and lacking a suitable resettlement site or even strong support within his own inner circle, Lincoln apparently gave up on specific resettlement efforts. On July 1, 1864, presidential secretary John Hay wrote in his diary: "I am happy that the President has sloughed off that idea of colonization."103

Whatever its merits, the notion that America's racial question could be solved by massive resettlement of the black population probably never had much realistic prospect of success, given the realities of American life. Writing in The Journal of Negro History, historian Paul Scheips summed up:104

... Large-scale colonization of Negroes could only have succeeded, if it could have succeeded at all, if the Nation had been willing to make the gigantic propaganda, diplomatic, administrative, transportation and financial effort that would have been required. As it was, according to [historian Carl] Sandburg, "in a way, nobody cared." But even had hundreds of thousands of Negroes been colonized, the Nation's race problem would not have been solved.

Abolishing Slavery

A Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which would prohibit slavery throughout the United States, was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864. Because the House failed immediately to approve it with the necessary two-thirds majority vote, Lincoln, in his Annual Message of December 6, asked the House to reconsider it. On January 31, 1865, and with three votes to spare, the House approved it. By this time, slavery had already been abolished in Arkansas, Louisiana, Maryland and Missouri, and a similar move seemed imminent in Tennessee and Kentucky.105

On February 3, 1865, Lincoln and Secretary of State Seward met with a Confederate peace delegation that included Confederate Vice President Stephens. Lincoln told the delegation that he still favored compensation to owners of emancipated slaves. It had never been his intention, the President said, to interfere with slavery in the states; he had been driven to it by necessity. He believed that the people of the North and South were equally responsible for slavery. If hostilities ceased and the states voluntarily abolished slavery, he believed, the government would indemnify the owners to the extent, possibly, of $400 million. Although the conference was not fruitful, two days later Lincoln presented to his cabinet a proposal to appropriate $400 million for reimbursement to slave owners, providing hostilities stopped by April 1. (The cabinet unanimously rejected the proposal, which Lincoln then regretfully abandoned.)106

On April 9, General Lee surrendered his army to General Grant at Appomatox Courthouse, and by the end of May, all fighting had ceased. The Civil War was over.
Lincoln's Fear of 'Race War'

A short time before his death on April 15, 1865, Lincoln met with General Benjamin F. Butler, who reported that the President spoke to him of "exporting" the blacks.107

"But what shall we do with the negroes after they are free?," Lincoln said. "I can hardly believe that the South and North can live in peace, unless we can get rid of the negroes ... I believe that it would be better to export them all to some fertile country with a good climate, which they could have to themselves." Along with a request to Butler to look into the question of how best to use "our very large navy" to send "the blacks away," the President laid bare his fears for the future:

If these black soldiers of ours go back to the South, I am afraid that they will be but little better off with their masters than they were before, and yet they will be free men. I fear a race war, and it will be at least a guerilla war because we have taught these men how to fight ... There are plenty of men in the North who will furnish the negroes with arms if there is any oppression of them by their late masters.

To his dying day, it appears, Lincoln did not believe that harmony between white and black was feasible, and viewed resettlement of the blacks as the preferable alternative to race conflict. " ... Although Lincoln believed in the destruction of slavery," concludes black historian Charles Wesley (in an article in The Journal of Negro History), "he desired the complete separation of the whites and blacks. Throughout his political career, Lincoln persisted in believing in the colonization of the Negro."108

Frederick Douglass, a gifted African American writer and activist who knew Lincoln, characterized him in a speech delivered in 1876:109

In his interest, in his association, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man. He was preeminently the white man's President, entirely devoted to the welfare of the white man. He was ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people, to promote the welfare of the white people of this country.

Allan Nevins, one of this century's most prolific and acclaimed historians of US history, summed up Lincoln's view of the complex issue of race, and his vision of America's future:110

His conception ran beyond the mere liberation of four million colored folk; it implied a far-reaching alteration of American society, industry, and government. A gradual planned emancipation, a concomitant transportation of hundreds of thousands and perhaps even millions of people overseas, a careful governmental nursing of the new colonies, and a payment of unprecedented sums to the section thus deprived of its old labor supply -- this scheme carried unprecedented implications.

To put this into effect would immensely increase the power of the national government and widen its abilities. If even partially practicable, it would mean a long step toward rendering the American people homogeneous in color and race, a rapid stimulation of immigration to replace the workers exported, a greater world position for the republic, and a pervasive change in popular outlook and ideas. The attempt would do more to convert the unorganized country into an organized nation than anything yet planned. Impossible, and undesirable even if possible? -- probably; but Lincoln continued to hold to his vision.

For most Americans today, Lincoln's plan to "solve" America's vexing racial problem by resettling the blacks in a foreign country probably seems bizarre and utterly impractical, if not outrageous and cruel. At the same time, though, and particularly when considered in the context of the terrible Civil War that cost so many lives, it is worth pondering just why and how such a far-fetched plan was ever able to win the support of a leader of the stature and wisdom of Abraham Lincoln.


Notes

1. Benjamin Quarles, Lincoln and the Negro (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1962), pp. 21-27.; Nathaniel Weyl and William Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (Arlington House, 1971), pp. 197-198.; Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1926 [two volumes]), Vol. I, pp. 330-334.

2. Benjamin Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952), pp. 85, 89, 260, 480. While Mary Todd Lincoln's eldest brother and a half-sister remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War, another brother, David, three half-brothers, and the husbands of three half-sisters fought on the side of the Confederacy. (Brother David, a half-brother named Alec, and the husband of a half-sister lost their lives in the fighting.)

3. B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), pp. 121-122.

4. Benjamin Quarles, Lincoln and the Negro (New York: 1962), pp. 36-37.; Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 158.

5. Roy P. Basler, editor, et al, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1953-1955 [eight volumes and index]), Vol. II, pp. 255-256. (Cited hereinafter as R. Basler, Collected Works.).; David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper, eds., The American Intellectual Tradition (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989), vol. I, pp. 378-379.

6. R. Basler, Collected Works (1953), vol. II, pp. 405, 408, 409.

7. John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans (New York: A. Knopf, 1964 [2nd ed.]), pp. 234-235. [In the fifth edition of 1980, see pages 108-109, 177.].; Leslie H. Fischel, Jr., and Benjamin Quarles, The Negro American: A Documentary History (New York: W. Morrow, 1967), pp. 75-78.; Arvarh E. Strickland, "Negro Colonization Movements to 1840," Lincoln Herald (Harrogate, Tenn.: Lincoln Memorial Univ. Press), Vol. 61, No. 2 (Summer 1959), pp. 43-56.; Earnest S. Cox, Lincoln's Negro Policy (Torrance, Calif.: Noontide Press, 1968), pp. 19-25.

Thomas Jefferson outlined his plan for black resettlement in Notes on the State of Virginia (apparently first published in 1785): "To emancipate all slaves born after passing of the act [a proposed law] ... [They] should continue with their parents to a certain age, then be brought up, at public expense, to tillage, arts, or sciences, according to their geniuses, till the females should be eighteen, and the males twenty-one years of age, when they should be colonized to such place as the circumstances of the time should render most proper, sending them out with arms, implements of household and of the handicraft arts, seeds, pairs of the useful domestic animals, etc., to declare them a free and independent people, and to extend to them our alliance and protection till they have acquired strength ..." (Source: Life and Selected Works of Thomas Jefferson [New York: Modern Library, 1944], p. 255. Also quoted in: Nathaniel Weyl and William Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro [Arlington House, 1971], p. 83.) For more on Jefferson's view of the race issue, and his support for forcible deportation, see: N. Weyl and W. Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (1971), pp. 71-100.

8. Nathaniel Weyl and William Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (Arlington House, 1971), pp. 132-134.; Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1947), vol. I ("Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847-1852"), pp. 511-517.; Robert William Fogel, Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New York: 1989), pp. 251-254.

9. Henry N. Sherwood, "The Formation of the American Colonization Society," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. II, (July 1917), pp. 209-228.; Earnest Cox, Lincoln's Negro Policy (1968), pp. 19-25.; Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1960), vol. I ("Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847-1852"), pp. 511-516.; Congressional Globe, 25th Congress, 1st Session, Pt. 1, pp. 293-298.

10. C. I. Foster, "The Colonization of Free Negroes in Liberia, 1816-1835," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 38 (January 1953), pp. 41-66.; John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (New York: 1964 [2nd ed.]), pp. 235-236,; Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1960), vol. I ("Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847-1852"), pp. 511-516.

11. John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans (New York: A. Knopf, 1964 [2nd ed.]), p. 235.

12. General Laws of the State of Indiana, Passed at the 34th Session of the General Assembly (Indianapolis: 1850), [Chap. XXVII], p. 247.

13. Congressional Globe, 35th Congress, 1st Sess., Pt. 1, pp. 293-298. See also: Allan Nevins, The War for the Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863" (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1960), pp. 516-517. [This is volume VI of The Ordeal of the Union.]

14. R. Basler, Collected Works (1953), vol. III, p. 29.; In 1864, Lincoln told Congressman James Rollins: "You and I were old whigs, both of us followers of that great statesman, Henry Clay, and I tell you I never had an opinion upon the subject of slavery in my life that I did not get from him." Quoted in: Nathaniel Weyl and William Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (Arlington House, 1971), p. 196.

15. R. Basler, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953), Vol. II, p. 132. Also quoted in: Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), pp. 105-107.; See also: Allan Nevins, The War for the Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863" (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1960), p. 7.

16. R. Basler, Collected Works (1953), Vol. II, pp. 298-299.

17. R. Basler, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953), Vol. III, p. 16.; Paul M. Angle, ed., Created Equal?: The Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 117.

18. R. Basler, The Collected Works Of Abraham Lincoln (1953), Vol. III, pp. 145-146.; James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality (Princeton Univ. Press, 1964), pp. 23-24.; Paul M. Angle, ed., Created Equal?: The Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 235.

19. B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), p. 192.

20. R. P. Basler, ed., et al, The Collected Works Of Abraham Lincoln (1953), vol. III, pp. 522-550, esp. pp. 535, 541.; The complete text is also in: Robert W. Johannsen, Democracy on Trial: 1845-1877 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 105-119.; See also: Richard N. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (New York: McGraw Hill, 1958), p. 220.

21. Richard N. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (New York: 1958), p. 83.

22. R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), p. 77.

23. B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), pp. 224-225.

24. One of Crittenden's sons would later serve as a Confederate army General, while another would serve as a General in the federal forces.

25. R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), pp. 87-92.; Stephen Oates, With Malice Toward None (New York: 1977), pp. 199-200.

26. Leland D. Baldwin, The Stream of American History (New York: American Book Co., 1952 [two volumes], vol. I, 293. It is likewise often overlooked that there were more than 250,000 free blacks in the South. In New Orleans alone, more than 3,000 free blacks owned black slaves themselves, many being ranked as slave magnates. More than 8,000 black slaves were owned by Indians in Florida and the West who supported and often fought on the side of the Confederacy.

27. B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), p. 180.; Roger Butterfield, The American Past (New York: 1947), pp. 153-154.

28. B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), pp. 226-227.

29. R. P. Basler, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953), Vol. IV, p. 160.; R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), p. 85.

30. R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), pp. 85-86.

31. R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), p. 86.

32. B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), p. 246.; The complete text of Lincoln's 1861 Inaugural Address is in: Robert W. Johannsen, Democracy on Trial: 1845-1877 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 161-168, and in: R. P. Basler, The Collected Works Of Abraham Lincoln (1953), vol. IV, pp. 262-271.

33. Allan Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln: Prologue to Civil War, 1859-1861 (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1950), pp. 468-469. [This is volume IV of The Ordeal of the Union.]

34. Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None: The Life Of Abraham Lincoln (1977), pp. 196, 197, 204, 209, 226-227. See also: Sam G. Dickson, "Shattering the Icon of Abraham Lincoln," The Journal of Historical Review (Vol. 7, No. 3), Fall 1986, p. 327.

35. R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), p. 105.

36. R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), p. 110.

37. R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), p. 117.

38. R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), p. 221.; B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), pp. 275-277.

39. R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), p. 221.

40. J. H. Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (1964 [2nd ed.]), pp. 268-271. [In the fifth edition of 1980, this is pp. 207-208.].; See also: Allan Nevins, The War For The Union, vol. III, "The Organized War, 1863-1864" (New York: 1971), pp. 418-419, 428, 432. [This is volume VII of The Ordeal of the Union.]

41. In January 1861, the influential New York Tribune proposed a plan for the gradual, compensated emancipation of the 600,000 slaves in Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana. The federal government, the paper urged, should appropriate enough money to compensate slave-holders an average of $400 per slave. See: James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality (1964), p. 40.; Allan Nevins, The War for the Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863," (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1960), p. 7 (fn. 9). [This is volume VI of The Ordeal of the Union.] In 1854, Jacob Dewees of Philadelphia published a 236-page book, The Great Future of Africa and America; an Essay showing our whole duty to the Black Man, consistent with our own safety and glory. Dewees urged compensated emancipation, to be paid for by the proceeds of sales of public lands, and transportation of the Negroes to Africa, a process that might take as long as a century. Source: Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1960), vol. I ("Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847-1852"), p. 517 ( fn. 29).

42. James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality (1964), p. 155.; A. Nevins, The War For The Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863" (New York: 1960), p. 8 (fn. 12).

43. 36th Congress, 1st Session, House of Representatives, Report No. 568: Report of the Hon. F.H. Morse, of Maine, from the Committee on Naval Affairs, H.R. in Relation to the Contract made by the Secretary of the Navy for Coal and Other Privileges on the Isthmus of Chiriqui.; At that time, the Chiriqui region was part of New Granada.; On the Chiriqui project, see also: Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln and the Chiriqui Colonization Project," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4, (October 1952), pp. 418-420.; Nathaniel Weyl and William Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (1971), pp. 215-216.; Allan Nevins, The War For The Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863" (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1960), p. 7.; R. P. Basler, ed., et al, The Collected Works Of Abraham Lincoln (1953), Vol. V, pp. 370-371 (note).

44. "Important Considerations for Congress," enclosure with Ninian W. Edwards to Abraham Lincoln, August 9, 1861. The Robert Todd Lincoln Collection of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln (Washington: Library of Congress, 1947 [194 volumes]), vol. 52, f. 11109. (Hereafter cited as Lincoln Collection.).; Also cited in: Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln and the Chiriqui Colonization Project," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (October 1952), pp. 420-421.

45. F. P. Blair, Sr. to A. Lincoln, November 16, 1861. Lincoln Collection, Vol. 61, ff. 13002-13014.; Also cited in: P. J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 420-421.

46. A. Lincoln to Simon Cameron, December [?], 1861, Lincoln Collection, vol. 64, f. 13636.; Also cited in: P. J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (1952), p. 421.

47. A. Lincoln to Gideon Welles, December [?], 1861, Lincoln Collection (cited above), Vol. 64, ff. 13637-13638.

48. Allan Nevins, The War For The Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863," (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1960), pp. 6-8. [This is volume VI of The Ordeal of the Union.]

49. R. P. Basler, et al, The Collected Works Of Abraham Lincoln (1953), Vol. V, pp. 35-53, esp. p. 48.

50. Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None: The Life Of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 299.; Nathaniel Weyl and William Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (1971), p. 216.

51. Allan Nevins, The War For The Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863," (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1960), p. 31.

52. A. Nevins, The War For The Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863" (New York: 1960), p. 32.

53. A. Nevins, The War For The Union, volume II, (1960), pp. 32-33.

54. R. Basler, ed., et al, Collected Works (1953), vol. V, p. 318.; Robert W. Johannsen, Democracy on Trial: 1845-1877 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), p. 265.

55. N. Weyl and W. Marina, American Statesmen (1971), pp. 216-217.; 37th Congress, 2nd Session, Public Laws of the United States (Boston, 1861-1862), XII, p. 378.

56. R. Basler, Collected Works (1953), vol. V, p. 192.

57. Charles H. Wesley, "Lincoln's Plan for Colonizing the Emancipated Negroes," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. IV, No. 1 (January 1919), p. 11.; Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 422-424.; N. Weyl and W. Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (1971), pp. 216-217.; R. P. Basler, The Collected Works Of Abraham Lincoln (1953), Vol. V, p. 32.; B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), p. 360.

58. Caleb Smith to A. Lincoln, April 23, 1862, 47th Congress, 1st Session, House of Representatives, Exec. Doc. 46, Resolutions of the House of Representatives Relative to Certain Lands and Harbors Known as the Chiriqui Grant, p. 132. (Hereafter referred to as Report on the Chiriqui Grant.) . ; This document is cited in: P. J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (1952), p. 425.; See also: A. Nevins, The War For The Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863," (New York: 1960), p. 148 (fn. 16).

59. A. Nevins, The War For The Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863" (New York: 1960), p. 148 (fn. 16).

60. James Mitchell to A. Lincoln, May 18, 1862. Lincoln Collection (cited above), Vol. 76, f. 16044.; P. J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (1952), pp. 426-427.

61. R. Basler, et al, Collected Works (1953), vol. V, pp. 370-375.; A record of this meeting is also given in: Nathaniel Weyl and William Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (1971), pp. 217-221.; See also: Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 428-430.

62. "The Colonization Scheme," Detroit Free Press, August 15 (or 27), 1862. See also: Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 437-438.

63. James Mitchell, Commissioner of Emigration, to United States Ministers of the Colored Race, 1862. Lincoln Collection (cited above in footnote 44), Vol, 98, ff. 20758- 20759.

64. Edwin M. Thomas to A. Lincoln, August 16, 1862. Lincoln Collection (cited above), Vol. 84, ff. 17718-17719.

65. Bedford Pim, The Gate of the Pacific (London: 1863), pp. 144-146.; Cited in: Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (1952), pp. 436-437.; James M. McPherson, The Negro's Civil War (New York: 1965), p. 95.; "Colonization Scheme," Detroit Free Press, August 15 (or 27), 1862.

66. Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (1952), pp. 437-438.

67. Report on the Chiriqui Grant (cited above in footnote 58), pp. 134-136.; Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (1952), pp. 432-433.

68. 39th Congress, 1st Sess., Senate Executive Document 55. Report on the Transportation, Settlement, and Colonization of Persons of the African Race, pp. 16-17.

69. Caleb Smith to Robert Murphy, Sept. 16, 1862. 39th Congress, 1st Sess., Senate Executive Document 55. Report on the Transportation, Settlement, and Colonization of Persons of the African Race, p. 17.

70. Caleb Smith to Samuel Pomeroy, Sept. 20, 1862. 39th Congress, 1st Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 55. Report on the Transportation, Settlement, and Colonization of Persons of the African Race, p. 17.

71. Caleb Smith to S. Pomeroy, Sept. 20, 1862. Same source, p. 17.

72. James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality (1964), pp. 80, 81, 82, 89, 93, 94.

73. John H. Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (New York: 1964 [2nd ed.]), p. 277.; Stephen Oates, With Malice Toward None (1977), p. 299.

74. Benjamin Quarles, Lincoln and the Negro (New York: 1962), pp. 126-127.; B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), p. 334.

75. The complete text of Lincoln's preliminary Emancipation Proclamation of September 22, 1862, is printed in: Robert W. Johannsen, Democracy on Trial: 1845-1877 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 266-268, and in: R. P. Basler, The Collected Works Of Abraham Lincoln (1953), vol. V, pp. 433-436.

76. The complete text of the final Emancipation Proclamation is printed in: Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years, (New York: 1954 [One-volume edition]), pp. 345-346.

77. Allan Nevins, The War For The Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863" (New York: 1960), p. 235.

78. Benjamin Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), p. 333. As historians acknowledge, Lincoln did not issue the Emancipation Proclamation out of altruistic concern for blacks in bondage. If his objective truly had been solely to free slaves in the Confederacy, he could simply have faithfully enforced the second Confiscation Act, by which Confederate slaves coming under Union control were set free. It is also possible that, having announced on September 22, 1862, that he would make a final proclamation of emancipation on January 1, 1863, Lincoln had an excuse for disregarding the Confiscation laws, and could stave off support for pending legislation, which he opposed, that would permit blacks to fight for the Union. It also appears that edict provided the President with a means to frustrate Thaddeus Stevens and other abolitionists in Congress, who had introduced legislation to make freedmen and soldiers out of the slaves from the four slave-holding states that had remained with the Union. According to this interpretation, holds, Lincoln hoped to make use of the hundred-day period before the final proclamation was to be issued in order to make irreversible progress on implementing the Chiriqui colonization project, and to gain additional support for the gradual black resettlement.

79. John H. Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (1964 [2nd ed.]), pp. 283-286. [This is apparently p. 228 of the 1974 edition.]

80. Same source as footnote 79.

81. Forrest interview in the Cincinnati Commercial, August 28, 1868. Reprinted in: Stanley Horn, Invisible Empire: The Story of the Ku Klux Klan, 1866-1871 (Montclair, N.J.: Patterson-Smith, 2nd ed., 1969), p. 414.

82. R. Basler, ed., et al, Collected Works (1953), vol. V, p. 421.

83. B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), p. 361.

84. A. Nevins, The War For The Union, vol. II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863" (New York: 1960), pp. 231-233.; Facsimile of text of Lincoln's letter of Aug. 22, 1862 to Greeley in: Stefan Lorant, Lincoln: A Picture Story of His Life (New York: Bonanza, 1969), pp. 158-159.; See also: R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), p. 224.; B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), pp. 342-343.

85. B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), pp. 333, 356-359.

86. R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), p. 227.; N. Weyl and W. Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (1971), p. 226.

87. John H. Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (New York: 1964 [2nd ed.]), p. 278.; Stephen Oates, With Malice Toward None (1977), pp. 322, 339, 343.

88. Roger Butterfield, The American Past (New York: 1947), p. 172.; Allan Nevins, The War For The Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863" (New York: 1960), pp. 235-237.

89. John H. Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (New York: 1964 [2nd ed.]), p. 280.

90. Stephen Oates, With Malice Toward None (1977), p. 340.; A. Nevins, The War For The Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863" (New York: 1960), pp. 236-237.

91. Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years, (New York: 1954 [One-volume edition]), p. 347.; Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People (New York: 1964 [7th edition]), p. 342.; See also: A. Nevins, The War For The Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863" (New York: 1960), pp. 270-273.

92. Joseph Henry to A. Lincoln, Sept. 5, 1862. Lincoln Collection (cited above), Vol. 86, ff. 18226-18227.; Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (1952), pp. 430-431.; Nathaniel Weyl and W. Marina, American Statesmen (1971), p. 224.; Gerstle Mack, The Land Divided (New York: 1944), p. 276.

93. Perley Poore, Reminiscences of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis (Philadelphia: 1866), II, pp. 107-108.

94. James L. Sellers, "James R. Doolittle," The Wisconsin Magazine of History, XVII (March 1934), pp. 302-304.

95. James R. Partridge to William Seward, August 26, 1862, A.B. Dickinson to W. Seward, Sept. 12, 1862, and Pedro Zeledon to A.B. Dickinson, Sept. 12, 1862. Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, pp. 891-892, 897-898.; Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (1952), pp. 443-444 (incl. note 50).; N. Andrew Cleven, "Some Plans for Colonizing Liberated Negro Slaves in Hispanic America," The Southwestern Political and Social Science Quarterly, VI (September 1925), p. 157.

96. Luis Molina to W. Seward, Sept. 19, 1862. Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, pp. 899-903.

97. John Usher to Samuel Pomeroy, Oct. 7, 1862. 39th Congress, 1st Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 55. Report on the Transportation, Settlement, and Colonization of Persons of the African Race, p. 21.; Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (1952), pp. 440-441.

98. Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (1952), p. 441.; Nathaniel Weyl and W. Marina, American Statesmen (1971), p. 224.

99. R. Basler, ed., et al, Collected Works (1953), vol. V, pp. 518-537, esp. pp. 520, 521, 530, 531, 534, 535. Also quoted, in part, in: N. Weyl and W. Marina, American Statesmen (1971), pp. 225, 227.

100. R. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), pp. 221-222, 228.

101. James M. McPherson, The Negro's Civil War (New York: Pantheon, 1965), pp. 96-97.; Charles H. Wesley, "Lincoln's Plan ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. IV, No. 1 (January 1919), pp. 17-19.; B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), pp. 362-363.; N. Weyl and W. Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (1971), pp. 227-228.; Stephen Oates, With Malice Toward None (1977), p. 342.

102. N. Weyl and W. Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (1971), pp. 228-229. Source cited: L. E. Chittenden, Recollections of Abraham Lincoln.; Lincoln apparently also gave consideration to setting aside Florida as a black asylum or reservation. See: Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... , " The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (October 1952), p. 419.

103. Tyler Dennett, ed., Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay (New York: 1930), p. 203.; Also, quoted in: Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4, p. 439.

104. Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln ... ," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (October 1952), p. 453.

105. B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), pp. 493-494.

106. B. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), pp. 501-503.

107. Benjamin Butler, Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin F. Butler (Boston: 1892), pp. 903-908.; Quoted in: Charles H. Wesley, "Lincoln's Plan for Colonizing the Emancipated Negroes," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. IV, No. 1 (January 1919), p. 20.; Earnest S. Cox, Lincoln's Negro Policy (Torrance, Calif.: 1968), pp. 62-64.; Paul J. Scheips, "Lincoln and the Chiriqui Colonization Project," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (October 1952), pp. 448-449. In the view of historian H. Belz, the essence of what Butler reports that Lincoln said to him here is "in accord with views ... [he] expressed elsewhere concerning reconstruction." See: Herman Belz, Reconstructing the Union: Theory and Policy During the Civil War (Ithaca: 1969), pp. 282-283. Cited in: N. Weyl and W. Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (1971), p. 233 (n. 44). The authenticity of Butler's report has been called into question, notably in: Mark Neely, "Abraham Lincoln and Black Colonization: Benjamin Butler's Spurious Testimony," Civil War History, 25 (1979), pp. 77-83. See also: G. S. Borritt, "The Voyage to the Colony of Linconia," Historian, No. 37 , 1975, pp. 629- 630.; Eugene H. Berwanger, "Lincoln's Constitutional Dilemma: Emancipation and Black Suffrage," Papers of the Abraham Lincoln Association (Springfield, Ill.), Vol. V, 1983, pp. 25-38.; Arthur Zilversmit, "Lincoln and the Problem of Race," Papers of the Abraham Lincoln Association, Vol. II, 1980, pp. 22-45.

108. Charles H. Wesley, "Lincoln's Plan for Colonizing the Emancipated Negroes," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. IV, No. 1 (January 1919), p. 8.

109. Frederick Douglass, "Oration Delivered on the Occasion of the Unveiling of the Freedman's Monument in Memory of Abraham Lincoln," in Washington, DC, April 14, 1876. Quoted in: Nathaniel Weyl and William Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (Arlington House, 1971), p. 169; and in: Benjamin Quarles, ed., Frederick Douglass (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: 1968), p. 74.

110. Allan Nevins, The War For The Union, volume II, "War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863" (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1960), p. 10. [Volume VI of The Ordeal of the Union.]



From: The Journal of Historical Review, Sept.-Oct. 1993 (Vol. 13, No. 5), pages 4-25.

About the author

Robert Morgan is the pen name of a writer who holds a bachelor degree in general studies from Indiana University-Purdue University (Indianapolis), as well as graduate certificates in Public Management (Indiana University, South Bend) and Labor Union Studies (I.U.-Purdue, Indianapolis). At the time he wrote this item, he was working toward a Master of Public Affairs degree (I.U., South Bend). He has been published more than 65 times in 15 periodicals, including the Indiana Bar Association's Res Gestae, the National Council on Crime and Delinquency's Crime & Delinquency, Indiana University's Preface, Indiana Criminal Law Review, and the Indianapolis Star.