The 1619 Project’s outrageous, lying slander of Abe Lincoln

The New York Times’ 1619 Project has aimed at nothing less than a revolutionary re-interpretation of the entirety of US history, “re-centering” ­African-Americans as the sole banner-carriers of America’s principles, even as they have been ruthlessly smashed down, enslaved and obliterated from memory by more numerous and more powerful whites.

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison come in for bashing. So does Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln? Jefferson and Madison, we know, were slave-owners. But Lincoln? The author of the Emancipation Proclamation?

In project leader Nikole Hannah-Jones’ verdict, Lincoln, too, is guilty, largely because of one incident. In August 1862, Lincoln invited a committee of black men to the White House. He read to them a prepared statement, urging them to recruit volunteers for colonization outside the United States.

Colonization meant that once freed, former slaves would have to relocate, preferably for a reservation Congress would purchase in Central America. On those terms, Lincoln appeared to be asking the once-oppressed to volunteer to remove themselves from the place where they had been oppressed, so their oppressors could breathe more freely. “He believed,” adds Hannah-Jones, “that free black people were a ‘troublesome presence’ incompatible with a democracy intended only for white people.”

Some emancipation, right?