"The “borrowed plumage” quote comes from Gurowski via Bennett’s “Forced Into Glory,” which Civil War historian James McPherson took apart thoroughly in the New York Times. Sadly for Bennett, his tendentious, cherry-picking case for Lincoln as racist hypocrite has become required neo-Confederate reading. You can find it frequently referenced at LewRockwell. Yes, the same Lew Rockwell who produced Ron Paul’s racist newsletter. It undergirds neo-Confederate writer Thomas diLorenzo’s crusade against all things Lincoln, including the movie — which was cited approvingly on Ron Paul’s website, under the headline “Lincoln the Racist.” Not surprisingly, Jack Hunter admired the book. In fact, Hunter put forward essentially the same view of Lincoln in “John Wilkes Booth Was Right”: Some like to say that Lincoln did all of this to free the slaves, which would have been news to Lincoln who was not only a white supremacist, but intended to raise funds through Congress to send black Americans – free or slave – back to Africa. Far from being a humanitarian, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation did indeed free slaves in the South in the hopes that they would turn against their masters, but protected slavery in states loyal to Lincoln. Even the constitution of Lincoln’s home state of Illinois prohibited blacks from entering the state and this policy was heavily endorsed by the President. OK, that was in 2004. Hunter says he doesn’t believe that John Wilkes Booth was right anymore. But as recently as 2009, he was quoting Bennett approvingly to compare Lincoln to Hitler. Here’s his Charleston City Paper column, “Those who compare Confederate soldiers to Hitler should look at Lincoln”: Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and imprisoned thousands upon thousands of newspaper editors, judges, politicians, and any other citizens, public or private, who dared to get in his way. Conducting the first “total war” of the modern era — in which Lincoln’s armies intentionally targeted innocent women, children, and old men in the South — was nothing less than an act of “genocide” against Southerners. There is nothing even remotely comparable in the actions of Confederate President Jefferson Davis or even Southern leaders like Robert E. Lee to the fascist tactics of Lincoln. In his book Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream, author Lerone Bennett Jr., the former editor of Ebony magazine, wrote the following of Lincoln’s plan to repatriate American blacks to Africa: “deportation … was the only racial solution he ever had … Racial cleansing became, 72 years before the Third Reich, 133 years before Bosnia, the official policy of the United States.” Obviously Bennett is comparing Lincoln to Hitler, based purely on the president’s intentions for black Americans. Now, Rand Paul would never compare Lincoln to Hitler, of course. But his casual, self-satisfied assertion that Lincoln was “forced into glory” is a staple of neo-Confederate Lincoln hate, even if he says he’s “not an enemy” of the president who fought the Civil War to end slavery. This is classic Paul, trying to have it both ways. You can cherry-pick quotes from Lincoln to prove virtually anything about his racial views. He was, in fact, a supporter of a colonization plan to send freed slaves to Africa — Liberia was usually the destination — for a time. He made many disturbing public declarations of his belief in black inferiority. But his views changed. In his last speech before he died, Lincoln indicated he supported giving the vote to freed slaves who were literate or had served in the Union army. Although that didn’t satisfy Lerone Bennett, as McPherson observed, since no such requirements applied to whites, it outraged slavery defenders. ”That means nigger citizenship,” John Wilkes Booth replied. ”Now by God, I’ll put him through. That is the last speech he will ever make.”"
Posted on: Thu, 11 Jul 2013 19:16:51 +0000
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