LINCOLN ON RECONSTRUCTION

Johnson was impeached by the Radical Republicans for trying to follow Lincoln's Plan of Reconstruction.

Google search Lincoln on reconstruction

This is not what it seems, on any side.........

He offered white Southerners slave emancipation, suffrage for freed negroes, and keep the negroes only down there, for no compensation (enormous losses), and they could come right back into the union on 10% loyalty oath, and that was supposed to be a good deal in 1863.

On the other hand, he was also afraid, quite justifiably, that his own brand of emancipation, and his moderate reconstruction, would get the Republican Party defeated real soon.

He was also worried about 100,000 armed trained Unionized freed negroes, back in the South, after the War.

The Radical Republicans gave those freed negroes the vote!
Why, do you suppose, they did that? Was it only for the Party?  Maybe there were other reasons......

Do you believe him, either way?

If there hadn't been white occupation troops down there, it would have been like the exposed, Lincoln inspired, negro slave Conspiracy at Second Creek, Tumult and Silence, but millions of people. 

Could very well have ended up like Spartacus, or Haiti, with armed negro forces then moving North.

Terms search: Haitian Revolution, Wikipedia,
grateful

Trust me, Haiti was still fresh in the historical memory of all American whites, North especially, but also South. 

Lincoln was elected partly on Northern white fear, fear he fanned, of negroes moving north in numbers.

It was a lot more powerful vote getter than mere fear of white migration, which had been the platform of other pre Civil War parties, North and South. 

The new Republican Party fed on that new and bigger fear.

Mary Todd Lincoln, slave owner to the end.

TODD FAMILY POSITIONS ON SLAVERY

Some members of the Todd’s extended family adopted approaches to ending slavery. Mary Todd Lincoln’s step-grandmother Mary Brown Humphreys arranged for the manumission (or emancipation) of her slaves over a period of years.  Jane Sanders was one of these individuals. However, Jane’s children born during her enslavement remained enslaved.

Although her motivations are unknown, Mary Humphreys’ arrangement to free her slaves over a period of years was in keeping with a political movement called gradual emancipation. The emancipationists were opposed to slavery in theory but unwilling to end it all at once, as advocated by the abolitionists.

Another movement among efforts to end slavery that young Mary Todd would have been aware of was colonization. Colonization was the practice of transporting freed slaves to colonies in Africa and other places rather than integrating free blacks into American society. Henry Clay, a Todd family friend, helped to found the American Colonization Society, and Robert S. Todd made a donation to the society in 1846.

In a state senate campaign, an opponent charged that Robert S. Todd was nominated by the emancipationist wing of his party and his record made him “no friend to the institution” of slavery. Robert defended his political positions and stated “I am a slaveholder. Were I an abolitionist or an emancipator in principle, I would not hold a slave.”  Unlike his mother-in-law Mary Brown Humphreys, Robert did not arrange to free any slaves following his death.

 MARY TODD LINCOLN’S POSITION ON SLAVERY

Mary Lincoln's stance on slavery is uncertain. Family stories suggest that she recognized the evils of slavery as a young woman and favored colonization but did not view the races as equal. Elizabeth Keckley noted in her autobiography that Mary was quick to donate to the Contraband Relief Association. The organization provided assistance to people fleeing slavery during the Civil War. However, Keckley’s memoir did not mention that the first lady spoke out against slavery in their many conversations. A letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune written by journalist and abolitionist Jane Grey Swisshelm following Mary’s death described her as “more radically opposed to slavery” than Abraham Lincoln, but Swisshelm does not explain how she came to this conclusion. 

Mary Lincoln’s own writings are ambiguous on the topic of slavery. She wrote sympathetically about the plight of black refugees in Washington and wrote letters on behalf of former slaves seeking government employment, including Elizabeth Keckley. But Mary Lincoln’s first apparent references to the Emancipation Proclamation—one describing it as “a rich and precious legacy for my sons”—was written a year after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in a letter to Charles Sumner.