1862. Reply to Lincoln’s Colonization Plans
Aptheker p. 471-473
Abraham Lincoln proposed various Negro colonization schemes-always, however, opposing
compulsory deportation-during the Civil War. The law emancipating the slaves of the District of
Columbia, enacted April, 1862, provided $100,000 for such colonization.
On August 14, 1862, Lincoln invited a Negro delegation to hear his views on this subject. After
these were expressed, the Negro people responded on the whole in their traditional manner of
opposition towards all suggestions of colonization. Typical of this are the two documents
presented below. The first consists of the resolutions adopted at a mass meeting of Negroes held
on August 20, 1862, in Newtown, Long Island; the second consists of a published Appeal very
numerously signed by Philadelphia Negroes and dispatched to Lincoln in the same month.
[a]
The Newtown Meeting
We, the colored citizens of Queen’s County, N.Y., having met in mass meeting, according to
public notice, to consider the speech of Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States,
addressed to a committee of Free Colored Men, called at his request at the White House in
Washington, on Thursday, August 14, 1862, and to express our views and opinions of the same;
and whereas, the President desires to know in particular our views on the subject