EMANCIPATION AND COLONIZATION:
VIEWS OF JEFFERSON, CLAY AND LINCOLN
If it be urged that Virginia had reached the conclusion that without
the dispersion or colonization of the whole or a large portion of her
slave population emancipation was impracticable, it may be
acknowledged that to a qualified extent this was true. The position,
however, did not involve an abandonment of the principle of
emancipation, but rather the insistence that with emancipation should
go the work of solving the race problem by a method which gave some
assurance of complete success.
That this attitude of Virginia cannot be regarded as wholly
unreasonable or reactionary will appear when we consider the views of
some of the leading friends of negro emancipation. From the number of
those whose sanity kept pace with their zeal, we select Thomas
Jefferson, Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln.