Some truths about Lincoln
The world's largest Black-owned
publishing company is the home of EBONY
and JET magazines".
Author/s: Robed Stacy Mccain
Issue: July 3, 2000
Ebony magazine's Lerone Bennett Jr. has written a history of Abraham
Lincoln that calls for a reexamination of the racial attitudes of the 16th
president of the United States. The `Great Emancipator,' argues the author,
was actually a white supremacist.
Abraham Lincoln "was a racist who opposed equal rights for black
people,
who loved minstrel shows, who used the N-word, who wanted to deport all
blacks," according to Lerone Bennett Jr., whose new book, Forced Into
Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream (Johnson Publishing Co., $35) examines
Lincoln's record. "There has been a systematic attempt to keep the American
public from knowing the real Lincoln and the depth of his commitment to
white supremacy."
While the book may be shocking to readers accustomed to viewing the
nation's 16th president as the "Great Emancipator," Bennett denounces
that
view as the "Massa Lincoln" myth. "We're dealing with a
135-year-old
problem here," says Bennett, executive editor of Ebony magazine. "It's
one
of the most extraordinary efforts I know of to hide a whole man and a whole
history, particularly when that man is one of the most celebrated men in
American history."
Forced Into Glory is creating a stir inside and outside academia. The book
is a "full-scale assault on Lincoln's reputation," wrote Eric Foner, a
professor of history at Columbia University, in the Los Angeles Times.
According to Time magazine columnist Jack E. White, Bennett's book "rips
off the cover" of attempts by historians to hide "the unflattering
truth
about Lincoln's racist ideals."
Drawing on historical documents, Forced Into Glory chronicles Lincoln's
racial beliefs and his actions toward blacks and slavery:
* Lincoln publicly referred to blacks by the most offensive racial slur.
In one speech, Lincoln said he opposed the expansion of slavery into the
territories because he didn't want the West "to become an asylum for
slavery and n--s"
* Lincoln was, in the words of one friend, "especially fond of Negro
minstrel shows," attending blackface performances in Chicago and
Washington. At an 1860 performance of Rumsey and Newcomb's Minstrels,
Lincoln "clapped his great hands, demanding an encore, louder than
anyone"
when the minstrels performed "Dixie." Lincoln was also fond of what he
called "darky" jokes, Bennett documents.
* Lincoln envisioned and advocated an all-white West, declaring in Alton,
Ill., in 1858 that he was "in favor of our new territories being in such a
condition that white men may find a home ... as an outlet for free white
people everywhere, the world over."
* Lincoln supported his home state's law, passed in 1853, forbidding
blacks to move to Illinois. The Illinois Constitution, adopted in 1848,
called for laws to "effectually prohibit free persons of color from
immigrating to and settling in this state."
* Lincoln blamed blacks for the Civil War. "But for your race among
us
there could not be a war," he said, "although many men engaged on
either
side do not care for you one way or another."
* Lincoln claimed that Mexicans "are most decidedly a race of
mongrels. I
understand that there is not more than one person there out of eight who is
pure white."
Repeatedly during the course of his career, Lincoln urged that American
blacks be sent to Africa or elsewhere. In 1854, he declared his "first
impulse would be to free all the slaves and send them to Liberia -- to
their own native land." In 1860, he called for the "emancipation and
deportation" of slaves. In his State of the Union addresses as president,
he twice called for the deportation of blacks. In 1865, in the last days of
his life, Lincoln said of blacks, "I believe it would be better to export
them all to some fertile country with a good climate, which they could have
to themselves."
Such facts may not be well-known, but they are "not hidden in the
records," says Bennett. "You can't read the Lincoln record without
realizing all that" Lincoln became "a secular saint," he argues,
partly
because of the circumstances of his 1865 assassination, immediately after
the Confederate surrender at Appomattox. "Without question, I think the
manner of his death, the time of his death ... all these were major factors
in turning Lincoln into the American icon."
As a result, historians have hidden much of the truth about that era.
"People in the North don't know how deeply involved the North was in
slavery," says Bennett, adding that Illinois "had one of the worst
black
codes in America.... Black people were hunted like beasts of the field on
the streets of Chicago, with Lincoln's support."
Indeed, the Emancipation Proclamation did not actually free any slaves.
"The most famous act in American history never happened," argues
Bennett,
noting that Lincoln issued the proclamation only under pressure from
radical Republicans in Congress -- men such as Thaddeus Stevens of
Pennsylvania and Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. Along with abolitionists
such as Wendell Phillips and Frederick Douglass, the radicals were "the
real emancipators," claims Bennett. "There were several major white
leaders
[during the Civil War] who are virtually unknown today, who were far in
advance of anything Lincoln believed."
Lincoln still has his defenders, of course. In criticizing Bennett's book,
syndicated columnist Steve Chapman has said that Lincoln's "racial
attitudes evolved as he grew older." Chapman also cited the opinion of
Civil War historian James McPherson that if Lincoln had pursued a more
vigorous antislavery policy, he would have lost support in the North and,
ultimately, lost the war against the Confederacy.
In recent years, Lincoln has been criticized most commonly by
conservatives who see him as centralizing federal power and trampling on
constitutional rights. The late historian M.E. Bradford was denied
appointment as chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts in 1981 when
his critics, including columnist George Will, drew attention to Bradford's
anti-Lincoln writings.
Bennett, 71, first took on the Lincoln myth in 1968, writing an Ebony
article that caused "a firestorm all across the country," he says. The
idea
of turning the article into a book was never far from his mind. "But about
seven years ago, I started working on it again," he recalls. "I
started
putting together a group of essays ... and as I read it again, I started
adding to it, and it became 600 pages, 700 pages. I had to cut out 200
pages."
It has been worth the effort, says Bennett, to help Americans face the
real Lincoln: "The myth is an obstacle to understanding. Lincoln is a
metaphor for our real determination to evade the race problem in this
country." Historians talk about the problem of reinterpreting Lincoln, but
they do so at the end of a 700-page book, in the footnotes. Says Bennett,
"Cynics may not believe that the truth will set you free; but lies will
definitely enslave you. I don't see any way to get away from the duty to
tell the truth."
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