Page "Reconstruction Era of the United States" Paragraph 45

In August 1862, President Lincoln met with African American leaders and urged them to colonize some place in Central America.

Lincoln planned to free the Southern slaves in the Emancipation Proclamation and he was concerned that freedmen would not be well treated in the United States by Whites both in the North and South.

Although Lincoln gave assurances that the United States government would support and protect any colonies, the leaders declined the offer of colonization.

Many free blacks had been opposed to colonization plans in the past and wanted to remain in the United States.

President Lincoln persisted in his colonization plan believing that emancipation and colonization were part of the same program.

Lincoln was successful by April 1863 at sending black colonists to Haiti and 453 to Chiriqui in Central America ; however, none of the colonies was able to remain self-sufficient.

Frederick Douglass, a prominent 19th-century American civil rights activist, criticized that Lincoln was " showing all his inconsistencies, his pride of race and blood, his contempt for Negroes and his canting hypocrisy.

" African Americans, according to Douglas, wanted citizen rights rather than to be colonized.

Historians debate if Lincoln gave up on African American colonization at the end of 1863 or if he actually planned to continue this policy up until 1865.