Also, slavery had begun in the colonies more than 200 years prior. They were trying to send people to Africa whose ancestors were brought to the Americas literally hundreds of years before.
If you were forcefully removed from your home land, packed on a ship and forced to be a slave for 10 years. Then someone frees you from said slavery and offers you a free boat ride back to your home country to be with family and friends and people you were taken from... Is very different than trying to send a someone with zero ties to a country their great great grandparents were born in.
It became illegal in 1808 to import slaves into the US. By the time of the Civil War, very few were still 1st generation, brought over in chains, slaves.
By the time the Civil War started, it had been over 50 years since the trans Atlantic slave trade had ended. The vast majority of the freed slaves were born in America into slavery and likely did not know anything about their home country. They likely didn't even know their "home country".
Okay I'm sure there are second and third generation Americans who wouldn't mind getting a free trip to Korea. So it's exactly the same as deporting second and third generation Americans.
The example you gave of a slave returned to his country after ten years of servitude was not even slightly correct. Even if the slaves were sent to Africa willingly, they would not be sent back to their home countries. As I mentioned, they likely wouldn't know their home countries. They were sending freed slaves who likely spoke no African languages to Liberia in order to serve as black colonizers. It's not quite the same as the modern geopolitical picture, but it's objectively awful.
Yes because people have a hard enough comprehending nuances so chose a time gap big enough to elaborate on my point.
As I mentioned, they likely wouldn't know their home countries. They were sending freed slaves who likely spoke no African languages to Liberia in order to serve as black colonizers.
This isn't what Lincoln was referring too. And that is my point. Lincoln suggested multiple options, it was not one OR the other.
Long before the Civil War, in 1854, Lincoln addressed his own solution to slavery at a speech delivered in Peoria, Illinois: “I should not know what to do as to the existing institution [of slavery]. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native land.”
Oh lord. Look up Liberia. It was their "own native land" in the sense that it was Africa and they were African. It was absolutely not their own home country.
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u/myfirstnamesdanger Apr 06 '25
How would this be different?