l incoln’s s hadow 69
observed in his fi rst debate with Stephen A. Douglas in 1858, and policy
had to take this sentiment into account. As Lincoln put it, “A universal
feeling, whether well or ill-founded, cannot be safely disregarded.” H e
had suggested it might be better if blacks were not permitted to enter
the newly opened western territories. Yet Lincoln had also confessed
then that he had no clear idea of what to do with former slaves once
they were freed. Returning them to Africa, a scheme that enjoyed some
support across racial lines, did not seem a practical alternative in the
short run. ^
With war and then his emancipation policy, the president now
confronted the enormous challenge of defining a future without
slavery in which its victims would need to survive and stand on their
own. War between free and slave states, he perceived, did not ease the
underlying prejudice against African Americans, which may have
been as deep-seated in the North as below the Mason-Dixon Line. In
1862 Lincoln met at the White House with a delegation of free blacks
and insisted physical separation was in the best interest of both races.
He urged them to consider leading an expedition to settle former
slaves in Central America, and charged that it would be selfi sh of
them to decline.
Th at Lincoln could for a moment entertain the hope that the prob-
lems of 4 million African American former slaves could be solved
through a new exodus of biblical proportions says much about his pes-
simism that emancipation alone could resolve the intractable dilemma
of race. For a short time after he endorsed emancipation, the president
still hoped exile for the freedmen might obviate the need to fi nd an
answer within the United States. It was a mark of desperation that he
signed an agreement in December 1862 to transport 5,000 blacks to an
island off Haiti. Once the Emancipation Proclamation went into
eff ect at the start of the New Year, however, he dropped all talk of colo-
nization as a solution. Lincoln’s decision to support black enlistment for
military service marked an implicit recognition that colonization had
ceased to be an option. Answers to the problems posed by the newly
freed black population would have to be found in the United States.
To the formidable challenges posed by race relations, we must add
another: the tension between Lincoln’s immediate objectives and the
long-term rehabilitation of the South. His proximate goal was clear—to