I Wouldn't Characterize it as "Let" - Glorianna Posted: Apr 19th, 2021 - 10:41 am In Reply to: Lincoln was going to let the slaves go back to Africa. - Frederick Douglass made the case
Lincoln was a strong supporter of the movement to colonize freed blacks in Africa. As much as he was against slavery, that did not mean that he saw blacks and whites as equals and felt it would be better if the races lived apart.
The country you mention is Liberia. The decades-long civil war that has been going on in that country stems, in part, from descendants of the original people living their taking issue with the colonized American blacks taking over their land and political power 150 years ago.
Probably more important to Lincoln's decision that maybe blacks should stay is that after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect on 01/01/1863, blacks were finally allowed to enlist in the Union Army and enlist they did. They were perfectly willing to fight for their own race's freedom and this despite knowing they could be enslaved if captured rather than treated as prisoners of war, being paid less than white soldiers and possibly being killed after surrendering as happened at Fort Pillow. By 1863, conscription had been enacted in the North, and some whites took exception. Perhaps the most famous draft riot, which degenerated into a race riot where unarmed blacks were killed and the Negro orphanage burned, occurred in New York City. Troops who had been involved at Gettysburg had to be called in to restore order. By the end of the Civil War, 1 in 10 soldiers in the Union Army was black.
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