Lincoln's Stance on Slavery: The Corwin Amendment Explained
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Dec 11, 2024
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“Lock the Doors and Make Them Stay!” Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War In his first inaugural address, given on March 4, 1861, Lincoln pledged that he would never interfere with the institution of slavery where it existed. To back this pledge, he expressed support for a constitutional amendment, known as the Corwin Amendment, that would prevent the federal government from ever abolishing slavery in the South. Lincoln declared, I understand a proposed amendment to the --which amendment, however, I have not seen--has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service [slavery]. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purposenot to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.1Behind the scenes, Lincoln had employed his leverage as president-elect to ensure the passageof the Corwin Amendment, which would have allowed slavery to exist in the U.S. forever. Without Lincoln’s intervention, the amendment would not have received the two-thirds majority in both chambers of Congress necessary for passage. Thus, ironically, in 1861 it was Abraham Lincoln, whom most people revere as the Great Emancipator, who did his best to prevent slavery from ever being abolished. What’s more, one grossly unconstitutional passage in the amendment proclaimed that the amendment could never be overturned (hence, the amendmentwas to be “irrevocable,” as Lincoln said).2According to the amendment, No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to 1https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln1.asp2Although the amendment passed Congress, it was never ratified because not enough states voted for it.
Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions [slavery] thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the lawsof said State.In his first Inaugural Address, the man who would later be celebrated as a champion of freedom also promised to strongly enforce the fugitive slave laws. Passed in 1850, these laws unleashedfederal marshals into the North to capture escaped slaves and send them back to their masters in the South. A marshal earned $10 for every escaped slave he captured and $5 for every person he set free -- an obvious incentive to transport as many enslaved people to the South aspossible. In some instances, the profit motive spurred marshals to kidnap free people and ship them to the South in chains. Furthermore, citizens were required to help marshals find escaped slaves. The laws imposed stringent penalties on any white people who aided escaped slaves: those who did so could not receive a jury trial and would have to pay a fine of up to $1000 and serve six months in jail. At the time, the average man earned $350 a year. Many northern states passed “personal liberty laws” to nullify this federal law. These laws barred state and local officials from aiding in the capture of fugitive slaves and declared that no state jails could be used to house escaped slaves. Nevertheless, the prospect of the Fugitive Slave Laws enforcement propelled as many as 3000 ex-slaves out of their northern homes and into Canada within 90 days. Those who stayed began buying guns to protect themselves. In Chicago’s small black community, where a little over 500 resided, African American guards patrolled the streets, to provide some warning should slave catchers arrive.3Escaped slaves often faced harrowing circumstances as they attempted to elude federal marshals. One of them was Charles Nalle, rescued by the heroic abolitionist and slave rescuer Harriet Tubman in 1860: During the spring of 1860, Gerrit Smith invited Harriet Tubman, at home in Auburn, to abolitionist meetings in Boston. While en route, Tubman stopped off in Troy, New York, to visit a relative. Her visit was serendipitous, as she became involved in her first public rescue of a fugitive slave. She had labored long and hard, but Tubman felt God directed her to do more. In the wake of Brown’s passing, she vowed she would do more and, if necessary, proclaim what was right in the light of day, rather than under the cover of darkness. On April 27, Charles Nalle, an African American coachman, was being held by Troy authorities. He had escaped from Virginia in 1858. By spring of 1860, he was captured by a slavecatcher who was none other than his own brother, a free black paid to do the dirty work of his slaveholding father. Nalle was being held in a federal commissioner’s office at the Mutual Bank Building when a large group of antislavery protestors began to gather. 3Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom (New York: Back Bay, 2005), 55-56.
As a precaution, observers were barred from the commissioner’s courtroom, but Harriet had a plan. She wrapped herself in a shawl and sought admission to the proceedings carrying a food basket. Her props helped her to appear elderly and innocuous (she was only thirty-four at the time) and gained her entrance to the second-floor proceedings. She was standing at the back of the room when the decision was announced to take Nalle back to Virginia. Shortly after Nalle was manacled, Tubman maneuvered herself to take action. In the blink of an eye, the frail old woman transformed herself, taking the guards by surprise. Whirling out of her shawl and grabbing hold of Nalle, she wrenched him free and dragged him down the stairs into the waiting arms of the comrades assembled below. This was no easy feat, as eyewitnesses reported: “She was repeatedly beaten with policemen’s clubs, but she never for a moment released her hold . . . until they were literally worn out with their exertions and Nalle was separated from them. Bleeding and half-conscious, Nalle was carried down to the river and across the water on a skiff, followed by a ferry full of nearly four hundred abolitionists bent on protecting him from recapture. However, authorities on the other side apprehended Nalle again andhe was dragged back to custody. The battle seemed lost, until Tubman herself landed and rallied her followers. On her signal, the mob of abolitionists stormed the judge’s office where Nalle was being held. Bent on liberation, this human battering ram caused all hell to break loose. The Troy Whig described the scene: At last, the door was pulled open by an immense Negro and in a moment he wasfelled by a hatchet in the hands of Deputy Sheriff Morrison; but the body of the fallen man blocked up the door so that it could not be shut. This gave the antislavery mob its opportunity. “When the men who led the assault upon the door of Judge Stewrt’s office were stricken down,” a participant reported, “Harriet and a number of other colored women rushed over their bodies, and brought Nalle out, and putting him into the first wagon passing, started him for the West.”4Tubman saved hundreds of slaves, but sadly because of the fugitive slave laws, many others were captured and returned to subjugation in the South. During the presidential campaign of 1852, Democratic candidate and eventual winner Franklin Pierce expressed hostility to the fugitive slave laws. Lincoln criticized Pierce for doing so and compared the candidate with a “mulatto.”5It may seem strange that the future emancipator of the slaves would defend the fugitive slave laws, but Lincoln was a partisan Whig who hated all Democrats and would do whatever it took to defeat them. Whatever Democrats supported, Lincoln opposed. In 1840, Lincoln denounced President Martin Van Buren for supporting black voting rights in New York State in 1821. Scolding Van Buren as a friend to “Africans,” Lincoln said that the president was 4Clinton, 137-38. 5Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, A Life(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2008), 357.
“clothed with the sable furs of Guinea,” that his “breath smells rank with devotion to the cause ofAfrica’s sons,” and that his “very trail might be followed by scattered bunches of n____r wool.”6Harriet Tubman As an Illinois state legislator, Lincoln was no friend to the rights of African Americans. He voted against allowing them to vote, voted against interracial marriage, and voted to ban them from the state. When accused of being too friendly to African Americans, Lincoln strongly objected, affirming his racist credentials. In a debate for his 1858 Senate campaign, Lincoln revealed, I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause] –that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever [sic] forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot live, while they do remain together there must be the position of the superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race” (Bennett ii).7Lincoln’s racist attitudes embodied the political platform of the Republican Party, formed in 1854after Lincoln’s beloved Whig Party imploded as a result of losing the 1852 presidential election. Lincoln joined the new party, which opposed the spread of slavery to the western territories gained as a result of America’s victory in the Mexican War (1846-48). As Lincoln’s support for the Corwin Amendment demonstrates, the Republican Party did not oppose slavery where it already existed in the South. Lincoln himself thought that slavery would last another 100 years, and he had no problem with that possibility. He just didn’t want it to spread to the West. 6Burlingame, 154. 7https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln3/1:20.1?rgn=div2;view=fulltext
Western Territories Gained from MexicoHowever, the primary reason most Republicans opposed the extension of slavery to the West was not out of any concern for African Americans but because of white supremacist ideology: Republicans wanted an all-white West where poor whites would not have to compete with black slave labor. As pro-Republican newspaper the Indiana Daily Journaldeclared in 1860, it would “be absurd to charge n____r equality’ against a party, the first cardinal principle of whose creed is, exclusion of N____rs from the Territories.”8When attacked as being too friendly towards African Americans, Republicans would strongly object, declaring themselves “pretty thoroughly a white man’s party.”9The New York Times, then a pro-Republican publication, defended Republicans from accusations that they were pro-black: Over 90% of the delegates to the [1860 Republican National] Chicago Convention, the paper argued, would oppose “making negroes, in all respects, the political equals of whites -- of giving them the same rights of suffrage, the same right to office and the same political standing and consideration which belong to the white race. . . . Pointing to the lack of political rights enjoyed by blacks in the free states, the Timesasked rhetorically, “how is the doctrine of negro quality to be ‘forced upon the South’ by Republicans, when they scout and scorn it for for the negroes of the North?”10Thus, in the 1850s, voters were given a choice between two competing forms of white supremacy: most Democrats favored the right of slave owners to transport slaves to the West, whereas Republicans advocated an all-white West. Even though the Republican Party repeatedly assured voters that they would not interfere with slavery where it existed, many southerners did not believe them. Why? Many southern 8Burlingame, 666. 9Burlingame, 666. 10Burlingame, 666.
politicians engaged in fear mongering, warning voters that Republicans, if elected, would free allthe slaves. These southern demagogues, known as “Fire-eaters,” claimed that northern failure to enforce the fugitive slave laws indicated the existence of a massive northern conspiracy to free all the slaves and subjugate the South. Therefore, when Lincoln won the presidency in 1860 (with less than 40% of the vote) despite gaining none of the South’s electoral votes, many southerners groundlessly feared that the new president would abolish slavery. First to secede was the Deep South, which cited northern failure to enforce the fugitive slave laws as a primary reason for separating from the Union. According to South Carolina’s Ordinance of Secession (1861): The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from suchservice or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased toeffect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.1111https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states
Because Lincoln wanted the Deep South states to return to the Union, he promised in his 1861 inaugural address to strengthen enforcement of the fugitive slave laws: There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions:"No person held to service or labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from suchservice or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it, for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the intention of the law-giver is the law. Allmembers of Congress swear their support to the whole constitution — to this provision as much as to any other. To the proposition then, that slaves whose cases come within the terms of this clause, "shall be delivered up," their oaths are unanimous. Now, if they would make the effort in good temper, could they not, with nearly equal unanimity, frameand pass a law, by means of which to keep good that unanimous oath?There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be enforced by national or by state authority; but surely that difference is not a very material one. If the slave is tobe surrendered, it can be of but little consequence to him, or to others, by which authority it is done. And should any one, in any case, be content that his oath shall go unkept, on a merely unsubstantial controversy as to how it shall be kept?Again, in any law upon this subject, ought not all the safeguards of liberty known in civilized and humane jurisprudence to be introduced, so that a free man be not, in any case, surrendered as a slave? And might it not be well, at the same time, to provide by law for the enforce ment of that clause in the Constitution which guaranties that "The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States?"I take the official oath to-day, with no mental reservations, and with no purpose to construe the Constitution or laws, by any hypercritical rules. And while I do not choose now to specify particular acts of Congress as proper to be enforced, I do suggest, that it will be much safer for all, both in official and private stations, to conform to, and abide by, all those acts which stand unrepealed, than to violate any of them, trusting to find impunity in having them held to be unconstitutional.12In this instance, Lincoln was being truthful. Behind the scenes, he directed his secretary of state, William Henry Seward, to engineer the passage of a federal law that would recommend the repeal of the northern states’ personal-liberty laws that undermined fugitive slave laws.13Also, for the first year of the Civil War, when slaves would escape to the North, Lincoln would 12https://www.ushistory.org/documents/lincoln1.htm13Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005), 296.
capture them and transport them back to their southern masters. On several occasions, northern generals would free slaves in areas occupied by the Union Army, but Lincoln would overrule these generals and condemn the freed people back to slavery. As we have seen, Lincoln attempted to persuade the seceded states to rejoin the Union by engineering the congressional passage of the Corwin Amendment (the “Slavery Forever” Amendment) and by pledging to bolster enforcement of the fugitive slave laws. When these efforts failed, Lincoln decided to wage war upon the seven seceded Gulf States to force them to return to the Union. It’s important to keep in mind that Lincoln’s decision to go to war against theSouth had nothing to do with slavery; it had to do with opposing secession. The problem for Lincoln was that in March 1861, most northerners were happy to see the southern states go. The March 21, 1861, issue of the New York Timessaid, “It cannot be deniedthat there is a growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go.” TheCincinnati Daily Commercial, which had backed Lincoln, concluded by early April that “the sooner we cut loose the disaffected States, the better it may be for all parties and for the nation.”14When Horace Greeley, the powerful editor of the New York Tribuneand a supporter ofLincoln, told the president to “let the erring sisters go in peace!” Lincoln responded, “Lock the doors and make them stay!”15How could Lincoln persuade an unwilling North to invade the South? A consummate politician, he remembered what had happened on January 9 earlier that year when President James Buchanan sent a ship called the Star of the West to resupply Fort Sumter, a federal military garrison off the coast of South Carolina, which had seceded on December 20. Cadets from the South Carolina Military Academy fired on the ship, sparking outrage in the North. The desire for war briefly flared up in the North, but President Buchanan, wanting peace, refused to retaliate. The war fervor quickly evaporated, and many northerners began to accept the possibility of a permanent national divorce. Reflecting on the Star of the Westepisode, Lincoln realized that if he could manipulate the South into firing on Fort Sumter again, he could have his war. When Lincoln asked his cabinet whether he should resupply the garrison, all members but Postmaster General Mongomery Blairsaid no because they feared that it might incite a war. They failed to realize that war was exactlywhat Lincoln wanted. He approved an expedition to resupply the fort. As the president later explained to Gustavus Fox, who organized the expedition, “You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumpter [sic], even if it should fail; and it is no consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result.”16In a conversation with longtime friend Senator Orville Browning two months after the war began, Lincoln revealed, according to Browning’s diary, that “he himself [Lincoln] conceivedthe idea, and proposed sending supplies without attempting to reinforce [,] giving notice of the fact to Governor Pickens of S.C. The plan succeeded. They attacked Sumter -- it fell, and thus, did more service than it otherwise would.”17After South Carolina fired on Fort Sumter, Lincoln seized on the ensuing hysteria in the North to call for 75,000 militiamen to invade the South. Infuriated by Lincoln’s decision to invade the Gulf States, several other southern states, including Virginia, seceded in solidarity with their threatened sister states. 14William Marvel, Mr. Lincoln Goes to War (Mariner, 2007), 222. 15https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/lincoln-uncompromised16Ludwell Johnson, North against South(Wiley and Sons, 1993), 79. 17Johnson, 79.
Firing on the Star of the West (Jan. 9, 1861) Lincoln expected a short war. After all, the Union’s population was 21 million, whereas the Confederacy’s was 9.5 million. Furthermore, unlike the South’s slave-based agricultural system,the North’s economy was among the most industrialized in the world. One major Union victory, he thought, would crush the spirit of the Confederacy. Lincoln was wrong. The brutal conflict would last four years and consume the lives of more than 700,000 people -- still the largest death toll of any U.S. war by far. Lincoln launched his invasion not out of any concern for the slaves but to crush secession. Only out of desperation -- a year and a half into the war -- did Lincoln decide to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. As he explained in a public letter to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, he issued the proclamation purely to win the war. Greeley had been urging Lincoln to free the slaves. Lincoln responded to Greeley that if he decided to do so, it would be to win the war, not out of any humanitarian motive: My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.Yours,A. Lincoln.
By the time Lincoln wrote this letter, he had already decided to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. In the letter, he is explaining his reasoning: wartime necessity, not moral principle, will determine his response to slavery. Although he personally opposes slavery, he is willing to maintain its existence to win the war. Indeed, from a political standpoint, maintaining slavery was his preferred solution until midway through 1862. By that point, Lincoln faced a desperate situation: despite the dramatic industrial and manpoweradvantages of the North, the Confederate army of Robert E. Lee had inflicted a series of devastating defeats upon the Union. Continued southern victories could have inspired Great Britain, which sympathized with the Confederacy, to grant the fledgling nation diplomatic recognition. If Britain, which ruled the world’s most powerful empire, recognized the legitimacy of the Confederacy, winning the war would have become nearly impossible for the North. Thankfully for Lincoln, Britain was staunchly anti-slavery. By making the war about slavery, Lincoln could prevent Britain from recognizing the South. Also, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation would cause chaos in the South by inciting slave revolts and undermining the agricultural economy. In addition, the Emancipation Proclamation would inspire African Americans to fight for the North. Ultimately, 179,000 black men would serve in the Union Army. The most important long-term result of making the war about slavery was that now Lincoln couldpresent a conflict that was started to crush secession as a holy crusade to end an evil institution. A wealthy corporate lawyer who had dedicated his life to political expediency and the acquisition of power could now be viewed as one of the greatest defenders of freedom America has ever known. The question now was what to do with the freed slaves. Lincoln’s preferred solution was colonization: deporting all the freed African Americans back to Africa or to Latin America. Lincoln was a lifelong advocate of colonization: “As one of the eleven managers of the Illinois State Colonization Society, Lincoln was involved on all levels in the colonization movement. The historian Eugene H. Berwanger says ‘Lincoln in 1857 urged the Illinois state legislature to appropriate money for colonization in order to remove free Negroes from the state and prevent miscegenation.”18That same year, in a speech at Springfield on the Dred Scott decision, Lincolnbecame unusually agitated over the question of amalgamation, that is to say, Black and White sex.”Lincoln’s desire for colonization played an important role in his presidency. According to Lincoln’s Navy secretary Gideon Welles, whose detailed diary most historians consider an excellent source, “‘Almost from the commencement of this administration,’ Lincoln favored ‘deporting the colored race. . . . The President was earnest in this manner; wished to send the Negroes out of the country.’”19In an August 1862 meeting with a delegation of Washington’s black leaders, Lincoln urged themto support colonization. According to historian and Lincoln admirer David Blight, Lincoln shockingly blamed the war on the presence of blacks. “But for your race among us there could not be war, although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or another.” The host acknowledged that blacks, slave or free, were enduring “the greatest wrong inflicted on any people,” but racial equality of any kind, in his view, could never be possible in America. “On this broad continent,” said Lincoln, 18Lerone Bennett, Jr. Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream(Johnson, 2000), 72. 19Bennett, 84.
“not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of ours.” He did not wish to debate this inequality, since it was “a fact, about which we all feel and think alike,you and I.” With one astonishing presumption after another, he argued that slavery had “evil effects on the white race” as well. “See our present condition—the country engagedin war!—our white men cutting one another’s throats.” Lincoln beseeched the five black representatives, who must have felt more than a little bewildered, to swallow their wishesfor a future in the land of their birth and lead their people to a foreign colony. He did not wish to seem “unkind,’ but for them to reject his plea to lead in voluntary repatriation would be “extremely selfish view of the case” and not in the best interest of their race. “It is exceedingly important that we have men at the beginning capable of thinking as white men,” he bluntly continued, “and not those who have been systematically oppressed.”20Condemning these remarks, abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass later asserted that“a horse thief pleading that the existence of the horse is the apology for his theft or a highwayman contending that the money in the traveler’s pocket is the sole first cause of his robbery are about as much entitled to respect as the President’s reasoning.” Lincoln’s December 1862 message to Congress (issued one month before the official announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation) devotes an entire paragraph to the need for colonization: Applications have been made to me by many free Americans of African descent to favor their emigration, with a view to such colonization as was contemplated in recent acts of Congress. Other parties, at home and abroad--some from interested motives, others upon patriotic considerations, and still others influenced by philanthropic sentiments--have suggested similar measures, while, on the other hand, several of the Spanish American Republics have protested against the sending of such colonies to their respective territories. Under these circumstances I have declined to move any such colony to any state without first obtaining the consent of its government, with an agreement on its part to receive and protect such emigrants in all the rights of freemen; and I have at the same time offered to the several States situated within the Tropics, or having colonies there, to negotiate with them, subject to the advice and consent of the Senate, to favor the voluntary emigration of persons of that class to their respective territories, upon conditions which shall be equal, just, and humane. Liberia and Hayti areas yet the only countries to which colonists of African descent from here could go with certainty of being received and adopted as citizens; and I regret to say such persons contemplating colonization do not seem so willing to migrate to those countries as to some others, nor so willing as I think their interest demands. I believe, however, opinion among them in this respect is improving, and that ere long there will be an augmented and considerable migration to both these countries from the United States.21Throughout the North, African Americans met to protest Lincoln’s colonization proposal. One group in New York declared, “This is our native country, we have as strong an attachment 20David Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018), 372-73. 21https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/december-1-1862-second-annual-message
naturally to our native hills, valleys, plains, luxuriant forests . . . mighty rivers, and lofty mountains as any other people.”22Such opposition failed to deter Lincoln. Throughout 1863 and well into ‘64, Lincoln continued to push for colonization. To defend Lincoln, many historians used to assert that Frederick Douglass persuaded the president to drop his support of colonization, but the most recent biography of Douglass, written by Lincoln admirer David Blight, shows that there is no evidence for this claim. Furthermore, the research of historian Philip Magness has revealed that to his dying day Lincoln supported colonization.2322David Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018), 372-73. 23As argued in the well-researched book Colonization after Emancipation. https://www.amazon.com/Colonization-After-Emancipation-Movement-Resettlement/dp/0826219098