Blacks During Reconstruction (Study Guide)

Reconstruction study guide: What happened to Blacks?

Lincoln died before he could fully articulate his own vision, but we do have some glimpses.  Lincoln and his cabinet launched a plan to remove and colonize the ex-slaves somewhere in Latin America.  Lincoln told a group of groups visiting the White House: “There is an unwillingness on the part of our people, harsh as it may be, for you colored people to remain with us” [quoted in Johnson, AMERICAN, 497].  After failed negotiations with Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica, they settled 450 in Haiti in 1863.  Proved a disaster–the colony was whipped out by small pox and starvation.  Result: pretty much left alone, and blacks did incredibly well.  Followed the model of almost all other immigrant groups.  “Free from competitive counterpressures and strongly equipped to enforce compliance, public officials could discriminate pretty much as their pleasure or caprice might dictate.  Under these circumstances it was a definite blessing for the blacks that the governments of the post-bellum South were still quite limited in the range of functions to which they attended.  Such salvation as the black man found, he found in the private sector” (Higgs, Competition and Coercion, 133).

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