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Subject: [PA-Civil-War] Ebony Editor Calls Lincoln 'Racist'
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2002 16:21:49 EDT
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So much of American Mythology is based around the lovable Lincoln myth,
the "Honest Abe" myth. Lincoln is Internationally portrayed as a lovable,
kindly, paternal Grandfather type, he has taken on almost deity dimensions in
many people's minds. Lincoln, in fact, killed more Americans than the King
George, Stalin, The Kaiser, Hitler, Mao and Tojo combined, oh! and he was a
racist too. Many of Lincoln's favorite officers and proficient killers of
Southern
Men, Women and Children went on to become depraved, methodical Indian
killers, Custer and Sherman to name just two. Lincoln was a top gun Rail
Road Lawyer and many of his top military officers went on to do the Rail Road
bosses' bloody Indian "clean up" work. Many recent US Presidents, including
Clinton, had a giant bust of Lincoln in camera view whenever they gave a talk
from their White House office. Everyone on the globe knows the "civil war" is
over but the question is, when will they start telling the truth and when
will
they quite attacking those that simply want to publish or know the truth? Why
is the truth such a dangerous thing?
Ebony Editor Calls Lincoln `Racist' in a New, and Controversial, Study.
http://ebony.com/glory.html
"The world's largest Black-owned publishing company is the home of EBONY
and JET magazines".
Author/s: Robed Stacy Mccain
Issue: July 3, 2000
Ebony magazine's Lerone Bennett Jr. has written a history of Abraham Lincoln
that calls for a reexamination of the racial attitudes of the 16th president
of the
United States. The `Great Emancipator,' argues the author, was actually a
white supremacist.
Abraham Lincoln "was a racist who opposed equal rights for black people,
who loved minstrel shows, who used the N-word, who wanted to deport all
blacks," according to Lerone Bennett Jr., whose new book, Forced Into Glory:
Abraham Lincoln's White Dream (Johnson Publishing Co., $35) examines
Lincoln's record. "There has been a systematic attempt to keep the American
public from knowing the real Lincoln and the depth of his commitment to
white supremacy."
While the book may be shocking to readers accustomed to viewing the nation's
16th president as the "Great Emancipator," Bennett denounces that view as the
"Massa Lincoln" myth. "We're dealing with a 135-year-old problem here," says
Bennett, executive editor of Ebony magazine. "It's one of the most
extraordinary efforts I know of to hide a whole man and a whole history,
particularly when that man is one of the most celebrated men in American
history."
Forced Into Glory is creating a stir inside and outside academia. The book is
a
"full-scale assault on Lincoln's reputation," wrote Eric Foner, a professor
of
history at Columbia University, in the Los Angeles Times. According to Time
magazine columnist Jack E. White, Bennett's book "rips off the cover" of
attempts by historians to hide "the unflattering truth about Lincoln's racist
ideals."
Drawing on historical documents, Forced Into Glory chronicles Lincoln's
racial
beliefs and his actions toward blacks and slavery:
* Lincoln publicly referred to blacks by the most offensive racial slur. In
one
speech, Lincoln said he opposed the expansion of slavery into the territories
because he didn't want the West "to become an asylum for slavery and n--s"
* Lincoln was, in the words of one friend, "especially fond of Negro minstrel
shows," attending blackface performances in Chicago and Washington. At an
1860 performance of Rumsey and Newcomb's Minstrels, Lincoln "clapped his
great hands, demanding an encore, louder than anyone" when the minstrels
performed "Dixie." Lincoln was also fond of what he called "darky" jokes,
Bennett documents.
* Lincoln envisioned and advocated an all-white West, declaring in Alton,
Ill.,
in 1858 that he was "in favor of our new territories being in such a
condition
that white men may find a home ... as an outlet for free white people
everywhere, the world over."
* Lincoln supported his home state's law, passed in 1853, forbidding blacks
to
move to Illinois. The Illinois Constitution, adopted in 1848, called for laws
to
"effectually prohibit free persons of color from immigrating to and settling
in
this state."
* Lincoln blamed blacks for the Civil War. "But for your race among us there
could not be a war," he said, "although many men engaged on either side do
not care for you one way or another."
* Lincoln claimed that Mexicans "are most decidedly a race of mongrels. I
understand that there is not more than one person there out of eight who is
pure white."
Repeatedly during the course of his career, Lincoln urged that American
blacks
be sent to Africa or elsewhere. In 1854, he declared his "first impulse would
be
to free all the slaves and send them to Liberia -- to their own native land."
In
1860, he called for the "emancipation and deportation" of slaves. In his
State
of the Union addresses as president, he twice called for the deportation of
blacks. In 1865, in the last days of his life, Lincoln said of blacks, "I
believe it
would be better to export them all to some fertile country with a good
climate,
which they could have to themselves."
Such facts may not be well-known, but they are "not hidden in the records,"
says Bennett. "You can't read the Lincoln record without realizing all that"
Lincoln became "a secular saint," he argues, partly because of the
circumstances of his 1865 assassination, immediately after the Confederate
surrender at Appomattox. "Without question, I think the manner of his death,
the time of his death ... all these were major factors in turning Lincoln
into the
American icon."
As a result, historians have hidden much of the truth about that era. "People
in
the North don't know how deeply involved the North was in slavery," says
Bennett, adding that Illinois "had one of the worst black codes in
America....
Black people were hunted like beasts of the field on the streets of Chicago,
with Lincoln's support."
Indeed, the Emancipation Proclamation did not actually free any slaves. "The
most famous act in American history never happened," argues Bennett, noting
that Lincoln issued the proclamation only under pressure from radical
Republicans in Congress -- men such as Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania and
Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. Along with abolitionists such as Wendell
Phillips and Frederick Douglass, the radicals were "the real emancipators,"
claims Bennett. "There were several major white leaders [during the Civil
War]
who are virtually unknown today, who were far in advance of anything Lincoln
believed."
Lincoln still has his defenders, of course. In criticizing Bennett's book,
syndicated columnist Steve Chapman has said that Lincoln's "racial attitudes
evolved as he grew older." Chapman also cited the opinion of Civil War
historian James McPherson that if Lincoln had pursued a more vigorous
antislavery policy, he would have lost support in the North and, ultimately,
lost
the war against the Confederacy.
In recent years, Lincoln has been criticized most commonly by conservatives
who see him as centralizing federal power and trampling on constitutional
rights. The late historian M.E. Bradford was denied appointment as chairman
of the National Endowment of the Arts in 1981 when his critics, including
columnist George Will, drew attention to Bradford's anti-Lincoln writings.
Bennett, 71, first took on the Lincoln myth in 1968, writing an Ebony article
that caused "a firestorm all across the country," he says. The idea of
turning
the article into a book was never far from his mind. "But about seven years
ago, I started working on it again," he recalls. "I started putting together
a
group of essays ... and as I read it again, I started adding to it, and it
became
600 pages, 700 pages. I had to cut out 200 pages."
It has been worth the effort, says Bennett, to help Americans face the real
Lincoln: "The myth is an obstacle to understanding. Lincoln is a metaphor for
our real determination to evade the race problem in this country." Historians
talk about the problem of reinterpreting Lincoln, but they do so at the end
of a
700-page book, in the footnotes. Says Bennett, "Cynics may not believe that
the truth will set you free; but lies will definitely enslave you. I don't
see any
way to get away from the duty to tell the truth."
COPYRIGHT 2000
News World Communications, Inc.
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