11016: Lowell On Lincoln.

Lowell Thompson argues, “Lincoln, the Man, Was Better Than the Movie.”

10932: Lowell Thompson’s Inaugural Address.

In the comments section for a New York Times article on President Obama’s Inaugural Address, Lowell Thompson left the following:

As one of the 1.8 million people who came to the 1st Inauguration — and as a fellow African American Chicagoan — I hope Obama rises to the bar set 148 years ago by the man he says is his idol, Abe Lincoln.

In very few words, Lincoln made the most profound, honest and moral statement that, as far as I know, has ever been uttered by any American president.

Although the exact words fail me here — at the spur of the moment — Lincoln admitted that the USA was guilty of heinous crimes against African Americans. He said, in essence, “…and if God decrees that 250 years of slavery be repaid with the death of 600,000 Americans, so be it.” He said it was the righteous will of the Lord.

And even though the war wasn’t originally started or in the end, fought to end slavery, it was one of its most important outcomes.

It would be great if Obama can find the words and the…er…uh…cojones to make a commitment today to finally take the final step in fulfilling the promise of human equality that our nation has always loudly made but never come close to keeping.

Right?

http://buythecover.com

BTW: To paraphrase what some great American once said, “If not Obama, who? If not now, when?”

BTWA: HAPPY KING DAY!

10547: Preliminary Proclamation.

From The New York Post…

Lincoln ‘emancipation’ history in Harlem

From POST WIRE SERVICES

Issued 150 years ago this week, President Abraham Lincoln’s initial proclamation (pictured) to free the slaves in the South is on display this weekend at Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Lincoln released his lesser-known preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on Sept. 22, 1862, 100 days before the final version.

The first of the two documents has gained importance among historians as a turning point in the Civil War.

Slavery and its abolition were once treated by historians as minor parts of the story behind the Civil War, but that began to change after the civil-rights movement of the 1960s, said historian Edward Ayers, president of the University of Richmond.

Since then, the steps that led to emancipation have been recognized for their importance, with the Sept. 22 proclamation being a prime example.

“All our thinking about this has undergone remarkable recasting over the last 50 years,” he said.

“People begin now with slavery as the fundamental fact and emancipation and less with union as being the sole focus of attention.”

Commemorations began Monday with a national forum moderated by Ayers at the Smithsonian Institution. The discussion was broadcast to 100 schools, museums and libraries. The National Endowment for the Humanities also organized readings at the Lincoln Memorial.

Meanwhile, the only surviving version of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in Lincoln’s handwriting will make an eight-city tour of New York state this fall. The official government copy from the National Archives will be shown beginning Saturday in New York City at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Other exhibits will feature copies of the final version in the months preceding the Jan. 1 anniversary of its issuing.

The preliminary proclamation served as a warning that if the Confederacy did not end its “rebellion” against the United States and voluntarily abolish slavery, then Lincoln would order the slaves freed on the first day of 1863. Lincoln believed it was a way to use his military powers to push to end slavery.

Lincoln drafted the preliminary proclamation over the summer of 1862 but held off on releasing it because of Union defeats. He felt there was enough of a victory when Confederate forces turned back after the Battle of Antietam in late August that he went ahead.

There was once skepticism among historians about Lincoln’s deliberate approach. For example, neither version of the proclamation covered five slave-holding Union border states that were freed in separate federal actions. But Ayers says most scholars now view Lincoln as shrewd.

“What we used to see in some ways as a kind of political calculation, we now recognize as a necessary political ability to get things done,” Ayers said.

Slaves also had decided by the time Lincoln was drafting his proclamation in the summer of 1862 that they had a role to play in the war, said historian Thavolia Glymph of Duke University. They were flocking to Union soldiers to declare allegiance with the North.

“The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation essentially confirms, affirms what the slaves have been saying all along — that you can’t win it without us,” Glymph said. “Lincoln agrees.”

Even before the preliminary emancipation, Lincoln floated several ideas about how to end slavery. In 1861, he put out a plan for Delaware and other border states that would pay people to free slaves they owned, though it was never enacted. He also was studying ideas about encouraging slaves to return to Africa or Central America to separate the races, historian Eric Foner of Columbia University said.

His declaration that slaves would be freed was a turning point in a long process, Foner said.

“No one person or one moment is responsible for the end of slavery,” he said.

The government issued miniature copies of the preliminary emancipation that were distributed widely to soldiers in the field. Some survive and have been traded by collectors.

The official U.S. copy with Lincoln’s signature was a paper booklet held together with a ribbon. It’s in relatively good condition at the National Archives but is rarely shown. It has been handled less than the final proclamation, which has endured long-term exhibition and exposure to light in the past, said Catherine Nicholson, an archives conservator.

In recent years, researchers visiting the National Archives have become increasingly interested in seeing records related to emancipation, from the federal government’s Freedman’s Bureau and pension records for U.S. Colored Troops, said archivist Reginald Washington.

Views on the history and impact of emancipation continue to evolve, Ayers said, while at the same time many people still separate black history and white history.

“What historians have shown us over the past 50 years is that these are all part of the same history,” Ayers said. “Listening to just one of those stories is like listening to half a conversation. You can’t understand what was going on.”

Visitors recently to the National Mall on a recent day, though, generally didn’t know much about Lincoln’s initial warning on slavery.

Ray Morrison, a 64-year-old architect from Irvine, Calif., said he was familiar with the final version of the document but not its precursor.

“I do recall that it was a tactic to focus the Civil War, because there were some defeats, to make it not a war of rebellion but a moral issue,” he said of the Jan. 1 document.

Daniel Smith, 21, a student at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina, said he had only been taught about emancipation coming in January 1863.

“Nobody really knows what caused Lincoln to do the emancipating, so this gives more insight that he was planning on doing this,” Smith said. “This is just more knowledge we should know about.”

8581: Honest, Abe Promoted Colonization.

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

Book sheds new light on Lincoln’s racial views

By Matthew Barakat

McLEAN, Va. — Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address has inspired Americans for generations, but consider his jarring remarks in 1862 to a White House audience of free blacks, urging them to leave the U.S. and settle in Central America.

“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,” Lincoln said, promoting his idea of colonization: resettling blacks in foreign countries on the belief that whites and blacks could not coexist in the same nation.

Lincoln went on to say that free blacks who envisioned a permanent life in the United States were being “selfish” and he promoted Central America as an ideal location “especially because of the similarity of climate with your native land — thus being suited to your physical condition.”

As the nation celebrates the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s first inauguration Friday, a new book by a researcher at George Mason University in Fairfax makes the case that Lincoln was even more committed to colonizing blacks than previously known. The book, Colonization After Emancipation, is based in part on newly uncovered documents that authors Philip Magness and Sebastian Page found at the British National Archives outside London and in the U.S. National Archives.

In an interview, Magness said he thinks the documents he uncovered reveal Lincoln’s complexity.

“It makes his life more interesting, his racial legacy more controversial,” said Magness, who is also an adjuct professor at American University.

Lincoln’s views about colonization are well-known among historians, even if they don’t make it into most schoolbooks. Lincoln even referred to colonization in the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, his September 1862 warning to the South that he would free all slaves in Southern territory if the rebellion continued. Unlike some others, Lincoln always promoted a voluntary colonization, rather than forcing blacks to leave.

But historians differ on whether Lincoln moved away from colonization after he issued the official Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, or whether he continued to support it.

Magness and Page’s book offers evidence that Lincoln continued to support colonization, engaging in secret diplomacy with the British to establish a colony in British Honduras, now Belize.

Among the records found at the British archives is an 1863 order from Lincoln granting a British agent permission to recruit volunteers for a Belize colony.

“He didn’t let colonization die off. He became very active in promoting it in the private sphere, through diplomatic channels,” Magness said. He surmises that Lincoln grew weary of the controversy that surrounded colonization efforts, which had become enmeshed in scandal and were criticized by many abolitionists.