In Agreement
Surprisingly, one of the most prominent supporters of the colonization idea was Abraham Lincoln himself, though his support did not last long. Between 1840 and 1854 or so, Lincoln advocated the ideals of the ACS, believing that freed slaves just wouldn’t fit in if they remained in the United States.
Historians have debated for decades whether or not Lincoln’s motivations behind support for the ACS was racially motivated or not. Historian Michael Vorenberg argues in the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association that Lincoln’s support of the ACS was more politically motivated. He writes that “His strategy was to propose colonization to sweeten the pill of emancipation for conservatives from the North and the border states, the slave states that did not secede during the Civil War; at the same time, he used political manipulation to prevent radicals from thwarting the colonization program and thus jeopardizing his ultimate goal of making emancipation an acceptable war aim to the Union cause.”
Whatever his motivations, he did in fact support the colonization of freed African-Americans for many years. That all stopped in 1854 when he gave a speech in Peoria, Illinois when he said that he believed that (while a great goal), colonization was simply too big a task for the country to undertake, and that complete emancipation and assimilation would be the only conceivable route available for the abolitionist cause.
In the end, the entire concept proved unnecessary, as the Civil War was fought not over what to do with freed slaves after emancipation, but whether or not to free them in the first place.
It is almost inarguable that after a certain point, the Civil War became inevitable. Despite the constant compromises, there was really little room on either side to negotiate. One side wanted to eventually end slavery while preserving the Union, while the other side was completely opposed to any mention of the end of slavery. Violence was going to happen, one way or another, as compromise was supremely unlikely.
Lincoln knew this. He knew while he was running for office, but from some of his speeches, you might think he didn’t care that much either way. His goal, especially once the war broke out, was to preserve the union at all costs. Emancipation was a secondary goal. Whether he continued to support eventual colonization after emancipation while President of the United States is something that historians disagree on. Some suggest that despite knowing that it was near impossible, he still believed that it was the right thing to do in the end; while others believe that he was a realist and dropped the matter entirely in 1854.
In the end, over 600,000 people were killed in the Civil War. Most historians will tell you that slavery (and economics) was the major cause behind the Civil War. It remains the deadliest war the United States has ever fought, and its aftermath is something that some argue is still being felt to this very day. Emancipation of African-American slaves, and their assimilation into American society and culture was something that took decades worth of effort. That effort culminated in the 1960s when their descendants brought forth the fight for equality during the Civil Rights movement.