Few U.S. presidents are as well-known as President Abraham Lincoln.

Recently, a series of internet blogs have claimed President Lincoln had plans for freed slaves after the Civil War.

Bloggers say, “Lincoln was fervently making plans to send all freed slaves to the jungles of Central America once the (Civil War) was over.  The only thing that kept this from happening was his assassination.”

Our partners at PolitiFact Florida took a look at the claim to see if it was accurate.

PolitiFact writer Joshua Gillin says the statement rated False on the Truth-O-Meter.  “Everything about this is wrong,” he said.  “Historically, like a lot of people, President Lincoln was actually for colonization.  He was for allowing freed slaves to be able to leave the country and go live somewhere else.  Live pretty much wherever they wanted.  There were some ideas… for going back to Africa.  There were some ideas of going to places in South America.  That’s accurate in that sense.”

President Lincoln, however, changed his mind entirely when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation.  “He never spoke publically about colonization again.  It became the idea of an integrated America after the (Civil) war was over,” Gillin said.

 

SOURCES:  Did U.S. President Abraham Lincoln plan to send freed slaves to Central America? 

  • Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, 2010
  • Email interview with Michael Burlingame, historian who at the University of Illinois at Springfield, June 25, 2015
  • Email interview with James M. Cornelius, curator of the Lincoln collection at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill., June 25, 2015
  • Email interview with Bruce Levine, historian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, June 25, 2015
  • Email interview with Ronald C. White Jr., author of A. Lincoln: A Biography, June 26, 2015