August 14, 1862---Lincoln to freeborn men: "We suffer from your presence."

AUGUST 14, 1862:    

In what was decidedly not his finest hour, President Lincoln hosted a “Deputation of Free Negroes” at the White House, led by the Rev. Joseph Mitchell, commissioner of emigration for the Interior Department. 

It was the first time African Americans had been invited to the White House on a policy matter. The five men were there to discuss a scheme that even a contemporary described as a “simply absurd” exercise in political “charlatanism”: the resettling of emancipated slaves on a 10,000-acre parcel of land in present-day Panama. 

“You and we are different races,” Lincoln said, and “have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races.” The African-American race suffered greatly, he continued, “by living among us, while ours suffers from your presence.” 

In what was a shameful utterance from the mind that created the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural, Lincoln went on to place blame for the war on its weakest victims: “But for your race among us, there could not be war,” and “without the institution of Slavery and the colored race as a basis, the war could not have an existence.” The only solution, Lincoln told the men, was “for us both … to be separated.” 

Colonization schemes were common in the 19^th Century, and had led to the founding of Liberia by the United States and Sierra Leone by the United Kingdom, but were painfully ridiculous and ultimately harmful both to the black Anglo-American emigrants and to the Africa-born natives of those lands---one needs only look at the gory histories of Liberia and Sierra Leone to conclude that these plans were colossal failures and were indeed invitations to future bloodlettings.

Lincoln’s ill-considered and horribly-presented plan may have come about as a possible solution to the social upheavals he anticipated as a result of Emancipation, which was daily becoming an imminent reality. And indeed, blacks in this nation were to face another century of institutionalized second class citizenship and still experience racism at the hands of the violently ignorant.

In any event, the freeborn men Lincoln addressed had nothing but rightful scorn for the plan.