1865

The Republican Party in Congress had moved beyond its Whiggish origins, now augmented by Radicals.

 

Legislators who had once viewed colonization as a way to keep the slave population from moving north after emancipation, now found a party use for a southern black voting bloc.

 

This was generally neither what they, nor Lincoln, had been elected to do.

 

It was certainly not what Lincoln had run on, and been elected President by white voters in the Northern states, to do:

"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races,-- that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifyling them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality." Abraham Lincoln, 4th Debate.

 

 

 

 

But that is American politics for ya.