re: Slavery was not the only issue the South was fighting for

Lincoln wanted to send the freed slaves out of the U.S.

Mash

Phillip Magness and Sebastian Page, the authors of Colonisation After Emancipation, discovered documents in the National Archives in Kew and in the US that will significantly alter his legacy.

They found an order from Mr Lincoln in June 1863 authorising a British colonial agent, John Hodge, to recruit freed slaves to be sent to colonies in what are now the countries of Guyana and Belize.

“Hodge reported back to a British minister that Lincoln said it was his ‘honest desire’ that this emigration went ahead,” said Mr Page, a historian at Oxford University.
The plan came despite an earlier test shipment of about 450 freed slaves to Haiti resulting in disaster. The former slaves were struck by smallpox and starvation, and survivors had to be rescued.

Mr Lincoln also considered sending freed slaves to what is now Panama, to construct a canal — decades before work began on the modern canal there in 1904.

The colonisation plan collapsed by 1864. The British were fearful the confederate states of the American south may win the civil war, reverse emancipation, and regard British agents as thieves. Congress also voted to remove funding.

Yet as late as that autumn, a letter sent to the president by his attorney-general showed he was still actively exploring whether the policy could be implemented, Mr Page said.

“It says ‘further to your question, yes, I think you can still pursue this policy of colonisation even though the money has been taken away’,” he said.

Mr Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865.