Monday, March 07, 2011

An Alt-Neu "Transferist"?

With all the controversy in Israel over the idea of 'transfer' (see here) over the years, this is all we need:

Abraham Lincoln's...remarks in 1862 to a White House audience of free blacks, urging them to leave the U.S. and settle in Central America.


"For the sake of your race, you should sacrifice something of your present comfort for the purpose of being as grand in that respect as the white people," Lincoln said, promoting his idea of colonization: resettling blacks in foreign countries on the belief that whites and blacks could not coexist in the same nation.

Lincoln went on to say that free blacks who envisioned a permanent life in the United States were being "selfish" and he promoted Central America as an ideal location "especially because of the similarity of climate with your native land — thus being suited to your physical condition."

...The book, "Colonization After Emancipation," is based in part on newly uncovered documents that authors Philip Magness and Sebastian Page found at the British National Archives outside London and in the U.S. National Archives...Lincoln even referred to colonization in the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, his September 1862 warning to the South that he would free all slaves in Southern territory if the rebellion continued. Unlike some others, Lincoln always promoted a voluntary colonization, rather than forcing blacks to leave.  But historians differ on whether Lincoln moved away from colonization after he issued the official Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, or whether he continued to support it.

Magness and Page's book offers evidence that Lincoln continued to support colonization, engaging in secret diplomacy with the British to establish a colony in British Honduras, now Belize.  Among the records found at the British archives is an 1863 order from Lincoln granting a British agent permission to recruit volunteers for a Belize colony...[but] presidential secretary John Hay wrote in July 1864 that Lincoln had "sloughed off" colonization.  "Most of the evidence points to the idea that Lincoln is looking at other ways" to resolve the transition from slavery besides colonization at the end of his presidency, Schwartz said...[however] "He never had a chance to complete his vision. Lincoln's racial views were evolving at the time of his death," Magness said.

What would we do if an American president ever actively promoted an extreme Israeli idea?

Transfer. Colonization.

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