NYTimes Charles Blow Opinion

[Rob Wick]

After reading the reviews provided by Steve, I decided that I needed to reread Lincoln's address to the five freedmen in April of 1862. Upon rereading it, I came away with a whole new respect for why critics of Lincoln felt the way they did and how the explanation of his motivation for this proposal misses the mark.

Of course, many people, mainly conservatives, talk about how it's wrong to judge someone in the 19th century based on 21st-century morality. To a point, that is right. When I wrote a paper on James G. Randall's "Blundering Generation" thesis, I came across a comment from the late Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., about that very subject. I wrote, "Schlesinger argued that the revisionists—that all historians for that matter—were obliged to pronounce moral judgments on actions that ran counter to the democratic ideals that America’s founding documents pronounced, although he warned that that obligation was no license for forgetting that individuals were prisoners of their own times and societal pressures. In Schlesinger’s view, the error of the revisionists was to bend over so far backward to avoid easy and smug moral judgments on historical actors that they renounced any need to consider moral issues in history at all."

I still believe that today. I also believe that while Lincoln did a great deal for blacks, his approach to the delegation was so wrong-headed that he risked having future generations forget everything he might have done.

For example, Lincoln said in the opening of his talk, "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 suffer very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffer 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."

Think about this for a moment. Yes, there was a difference between the races, but the main point of that difference came mainly from whites like Lincoln, who failed to see that a more forward-looking plan would be to work on changing the viewpoint of society, even if that meant doing so one person at a time. By this introduction, Lincoln all but admits failure in his moral vision of what should happen to African Americans.

"But even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race. You are cut off from many of the advantages which the other race enjoy. 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."

Again, this is pretty poor salesmanship on Lincoln's part. Telling a group of blacks who are part of the elite of the city that no matter how they try or how free any of their brethren may become, they can never expect to attain a status equal to the white man. It reminds me of a cartoon I once saw where two hillbillies were carrying clubs and beating civil rights protestors. "Let that one go," one says to the other, "he says he don't want to be muh equal."

On two separate occasions, Lincoln said he didn't want to discuss his point, but rather, he expected his listeners to accept what he said BECAUSE HE SAID IT. There is an arrogance in Lincoln's words that would make me question why I even chose to attend this meeting.

The following is, in my view, Lincoln's most offensive comment.
"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 could not have an existence."

So it was the black man who fired on Fort Sumter! It was the black man who enacted the Fugitive Slave Law. The black man refused to compromise and then seceded from the Union. Hogwash. The war came about because white politicians couldn't do better or couldn't think outside their own prejudices.

"It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated. I know that there are free men among you, who even if they could better their condition are not as much inclined to go out of the country as those, who being slaves could obtain their freedom on this condition. I suppose one of the principal difficulties in the way of colonization is that the free colored man cannot see that his comfort would be advanced by it. You may believe you can live in Washington or elsewhere in the United States the remainder of your life [as easily], perhaps more so than you can in any foreign country, and hence you may come to the conclusion that you have nothing to do with the idea of going to a foreign country. This is (I speak in no unkind sense) an extremely selfish view of the case."

So because white people suffer from a moral failure to understand that blacks born in this country may want to stay here, to do so is "an extremely selfish view of the case." One wonders exactly how Lincoln won so many law cases with such weak arguments.

"There is an unwillingness on the part of our people, harsh as it may be, for you free colored people to remain with us. Now, if you could give a start to white people, you would open a wide door for many to be made free. If we deal with those who are not free at the beginning, and whose intellects are clouded by Slavery, we have very poor materials to start with. If intelligent colored men, such as are before me, would move in this matter, much might be accomplished. It is exceedingly important that we have men at the beginning capable of thinking as white men, and not those who have been systematically oppressed."

So then, it's impossible to accept that a black man could, on his own, express a thought that a white man should respect? It gets deeper and deeper for Lincoln.

"There is much to encourage you. For the sake of your race you should sacrifice something of your present comfort for the purpose of being as grand in that respect as the white people. It is a cheering thought throughout life that something can be done to ameliorate the condition of those subject to the world's hard usage. It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels he is worthy of himself, and claims kindred to the great God who made him. In the American Revolutionary war sacrifices were made by men engaged in it; but they were cheered by the future. Gen. Washington himself endured greater physical hardships than if he had remained a British subject. Yet he was a happy man, because he was engaged in benefiting his race---something for the children of his neighbors, having none of his own."

By this point, I would have gotten up, thanked Lincoln for his time, and left.

So many historians make excuses for Lincoln that he was far ahead of his time compared to his countrymen, where blacks were concerned. They note that eventually, Lincoln gave up on the idea of colonization, but I doubt he ever stopped believing that whites and blacks would ever get along together and that blacks should take the lead in overcoming white prejudice.

So one must then ask what was Lincoln's motivation for this wrong-headed proposal. Nikole Hannah-Jones and Lerone Bennett point to white supremacy. The term "white supremacy" is obviously a loaded pejorative, given that it requires a conscious thought on the beholder to pursue that viewpoint. We cringe at the thought that our Lincoln could be guilty of such a heinous viewpoint. So, we begin to make excuses and compartmentalize Lincoln. "Look at all the good he did instead of the bad," or "Don't judge Lincoln by today's standards." There is one major problem with that. To say we shouldn't make a moral judgment on Lincoln is to assume that everyone at that time held the same viewpoint because of societal differences. There is just one problem. Not everyone did. Not all whites, especially, and more importantly, not all blacks. That seems to me to be the fatal flaw in the 21st century for 19th-century action debate. We tend to forget that blacks had just as much of a moral right as whites to hold their viewpoint and to have it respected and debated honestly.

So, what was Lincoln's motivation? I thought and thought to figure something out that didn't involve the reductive trope of white supremacy but didn't give Lincoln a pass on a subject that "ran counter to the democratic ideals that America’s founding documents pronounced." A possible explanation came to me as I was reading The Fire is Upon Us by Nicolas Buccola about the debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley at Cambridge University in 1965. Buccola writes:

"Buckley then drew the two central points of his introduction together by saying that rather than treating Baldwin with the 'unctuous servitude' to which he was accustomed--and that animated, he suspected, the standing ovation Baldwin had received minutes earlier--he had something else in mind. "I propose to pay him the honor this night," Buckley pointed at Baldwin with another devious smile on his face. 'I'm going to speak to you without any reference whatever to those surrounding protections which you are used to in virtue of the fact that you are a Negro, and in virtue of the fact that your race has dreadfully suffered at the hands of my race.' This is what Buckley had meant when he said he would treat Baldwin as he would 'a white man'; he would treat him as someone without 'surrounding protections.'"

Lincoln's motivation was his failure to realize and accept that all blacks wanted was to be treated exactly the same as white men, without the "surrounding protections" that Lincoln thought he was offering by the act of colonization. Lincoln could not, or did not, believe that any blacks, even those continuing to suffer at the end of a lash, could figure out what was best for them in their situation. It did not take the nobless oblige of white society to offer this redemption; it only took a society that would accept that we are all human beings, black or white. This was Lincoln's motivation and, in the long run, Lincoln's failure.

Best
Rob