The colonization cause linked Lincoln’s antislavery hero to anti-Black policy.

Evidence

Abraham Lincoln was a political disciple of Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser, who had just engineered compromises of 1820 and 1850. One of the great causes of Clay’s political life was colonization. He spoke at the founding meeting of the American Colonization Society and presided over the organization from 1836 to 1849. When Henry Clay died in 1852, he became the first American to lie in state at the US Capitol. Not many abolitionists joined in the mourning. No man was a greater enemy to Black people, William Lloyd Garrison insisted. Lincoln called Clay “my ideal of a great man.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 538

Categorization

• DEFINE: Colonization is the pivotal assimilationist policy of the era — defined here through Clay’s career and the radical abolitionist verdict on it.
• QUESTION: Garrison’s flat denial that Clay was any friend to Black people offers a striking counterpoint to Lincoln’s reverence — a tension worth chasing about how antiracist contemporaries graded moderate antislavery figures.