This was no fleeting notion. Lincoln's commitment to the idea of deporting black Americans is mentioned in numerous prewar speeches, two State of the Union addresses, several Cabinet meetings, and in a notorious meeting with African American leaders at the White House, at which he urged them to encourage their followers to leave the country. Lincoln was hardly alone in his idea that America was a white republic. Virtually every major political leader of the early republic held this view, including Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, John Marshall, and even George Washington himself. Historians have simply decided to excise this indecent aspect of Lincoln, so that they can force his image into the mold of the sainted president, which was invented as a device to manipulate public opinion in favor of any policy of the sitting leadership.
Historians are so selective about history that they virtually re-write it.
Lincoln's racism was not just a lightly held notion, but was the center and circumference of his being, as one of his most deeply held beliefs. He resisted the abolitionists in the Republican Party from the very start, and had no intention of implementing their agenda. He was in fact a major supporter of slavery in the United States, and in and of himself was an oppressor. In the end Lincoln was a political opportunist. Before his career as a politician he had served as a corporate attorney for some of the biggest interests in Illinois, including railroad corporations.