Document Type
Review
Publication Date
Winter 2013
Department 1
Civil War Era Studies
Department 2
History
Abstract
“There is a clause in the Act which is likely to meet with misconstruction in Europe,” wrote Frederick Milnes Edge about the legislation that emancipated the slaves of the District of Columbia in April 1862, “namely the appropriation for colonizing the freed slaves.” Ignore it, Edge advised. It only “was adopted to silence the weak-nerved, whose name is legion—and to enable any of the slaves who see fit to emigrate to more genial climes.” And this, for a long time, has been the way that most commentators have understood colonization—a plan ostensibly designed to expatriate any emancipated blacks to Africa or the West Indies or South America, but offered mostly as a placebo to reassure nervous white Americans that their hiring halls and neighborhoods would not be swamped with cheap (and presumably undesirable) freedmen. [excerpt]
Copyright Note
This is the publisher's version of the work. This publication appears in Gettysburg College's institutional repository by permission of the copyright owner for personal use, not for redistribution.
Recommended Citation
Guelzo, Allen C. "Colonization After Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement by Phillip W. Magness and Sebastian N. Page." Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 34.1 (Winter 2013), 78-87.
Required Publisher's Statement
Original version is available from the publisher at: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0034.110/--colonization-after-emancipation-lincoln-and-the-movement-for?rgn=main;view=fulltext;q1=Colonization+After+Emancipation