From Slavery to Black Removal: Emancipation and Lincoln's Commitment to Colonization
Authors:   , Bolton Darnell Neilan 
Published: October 2024

This work is intended to add to literature of American race relations, Lincoln history, Civil War history, and American history. It illustrates how most historians have processed Civil War and Lincoln history by centralizing emancipation as the primary policy by which all information of mid-nineteenth century political and cultural information is processed through. This research validates evidence that nineteenth century policy of the colonization of people of African descent can be equally qualified, compared to emancipation, as a central policy of this period during the Lincoln presidency and the Civil War. Considering this policy as a primary nuance of the political structure of the mid-nineteenth century speaks to a different historical implication when interpreting Civil War, Lincoln history, and American race relations of this period. Interpreting mid-nineteenth century American dynamics through a lens of what was called "colonization" of people of African descent more broadly leads historians from eighteenth century American structure into Black removal efforts via colonization in efforts to address issue of what groups would play a role in the participatory government. Penal slavery was America's resulting policy to address Negro belongingness and placement in the nation once it was evident the colonization of the nineteenth century Negro was not a viable option. It in fact, upon the failure of his largest and final colonization attempt, Lincoln replaced colonization with penal slavery as his recommended policy to become the Thirteenth Amendment. I submit that historians interpret this period considering colonization with the same influence of emancipation. First, centralizing colonization, with the concept of emancipation, adds a new emphasis on the United States recognition of Haiti and Liberia, displaying it a much more significant event in mid-nineteenth century America. Second, considering the influence of Negro colonization on mid-nineteenth century America, the period illustrates a dynamic rarely associated with the Civil War transference of American slaveocracy from chattel slavery to penal slavery—as articulated in the Thirteenth Amendment. It better explains how a Civil War of emancipation resulted in another one hundred years of oppressive federal and state racial legislation and imprisonment and broadens our interpretation of the sixteenth president. Adding the colonization of Blacks throughout the nineteenth century and following its path as a perceived solution to Negro belongingness, historians will be led in new ways to interpret how slavery was ultimately transformed during the Civil War, and not abolished in 1865, as prevalent in popular education and US scholarship laments. This research adds that slavery was actually transferred from the private sector to the public sector, specifically the judiciary branch of government, by way of the Thirteenth Amendment's restriction of slavery occurring on in result of legal processes. As important as anything else, the insertion of colonization's influence casts Lincoln as a president more accurately aligned with the primary sources of the mid-nineteenth century as opposed to popular Lincoln narratives. Lincoln's elevation of Negro colonization from private interests to federally induced migration creates a more accurate understanding of who Lincoln was and aligns better with who he represented himself to be—as opposed to only considering emancipation as the only influential policy of the period. Centralizing the significant policy of removing Blacks from the nation during the nineteenth century creates new understandings of notions and perspectives of freedom moving forward from early self-governance formation to modern American race relation.