Although Lincoln was, technically, a faux colonizationalist, pace Gideon Welles.
Lincoln preached negro colonization but believed only in getting himself elected.
During the course of his return to a political career, from 1854 to 1864, he learned fairly quickly how difficult, expensive, and politically impossible it would be to really seriously try to compensate for, and then to offshore, 4 million negroes. But he got himself elected and then prosecuted the war without ever having ultimately to face anything like really doing anything about this campaign pledge to his Republican base, who had elected him not as an abolitionist but rather as a moderate. Little did they know. If he really had been a moderate, then why did he free the negroes? It is a question that cannot be answered.
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