A well-written essay about a crucial period in US history. Ironically, I've written about it as well, but I see the parallel more with MAGAs & their "stolen election" than anything to do with the Tallies. "Stolen election!!!" after all was the cry in 1876-7 as it is today. While religion played a role in the southern redeemer movement, the Taliban plan to impose theocracy.

Given this history, I have a hard time understanding why Lincoln is condemned for advocating colonization. Because I believe he foresaw it as well. Federal troops in the South failed to prevent the Colfax Massacre of 1873 or the Hamburg Massacre of '76. Furthermore it wasn't US custom to maintain large standing armies absent war. There was bound to be limits on how long & to what degree they would be deployed.

Granted that Lincoln's colonization plans failed to develop, he did approve Sherman's Special Order #15, which, at the request of freemen, provided land & separation from whites. It seems unlikely he would have rescinded it as Johnson later did. That might have provided freemen and women the opportunity to develop generational wealth. Like Lincoln, however, the freemen who met with Sherman & Stanton realized that they could not simply integrate into a society that had endured four years of bloody war to uphold white supremacy.