So asked Abraham Lincoln of General Benjamin Butler in early 1865 (page 19 of the linked article). Lincoln answered his own question: Deport them all out of America, he said. After complimenting Butler on his ability to move large numbers of people by water during the war, Lincoln asked him if he could work up a plan to deport every last black person in America by sea. This was all well known to prior generations of historians before the Great PC Whitewashing of Civil War History commenced, as discussed in this 1919 article in the Journal of Negro History. (Thanks to Tom Mullen).
Could this mean that Lincoln was not quite the racial saint that the Republican Party (among others) has portrayed him as being for the past 150 years?
11:00 am on June 8, 2016
