American Colonization Society

Some edits of "Birth of A Nation," of which there are many, end with a title card praising Lincoln and his plan to repatriate the Africans if only he had lived.  Lincoln was indeed a member of the American Colonization Society, one of the few topics slave owners and abolitionists agreed on.

Abolitionists believed the plan to return Africans to Africa was the kindest possible plan.  Since they were taken from there, returning them there offered the best possible outcome for these people who had been wronged by enslavement in America and the Caribbean.  Southerners supported the plan because if slavery ended, there would be millions of now-free Africans in their territory that might be angry about the treatment they received as slaves and pose a threat to the safety of their white former owners.  

These are people who really knew very little about Africa, and what they did know was a hundred years before.  In the 19th century, Ottomans and Europeans were divvying Africa up between them, and with the death of Shaka Zulu, there was nothing but each other to prevent it.  If you go to Africa now, most of the countries that are now Christian were colonized by Europeans, and the countries that are now Muslim were colonized by Ottomans.  Even in their own country, Africans were not safe from our control.

ACS members didn't consider that, with very few exceptions, most former slaves didn't know what part of Africa they came from and to whom they were related or owed allegiance to in Africa. So once they got there, there were rejected by both the whites and the blacks.  They were men without a country. 

The colonies set up by the ACS had even less funding than Rowanoak, and having lived in America for two hundred years, many of these people had lost whatever immunity they had to African diseases.  

Had Lincoln lived, this is probably the plan the country would have followed, either sending the Africans back to Africa or to areas set up for them in Central America.  It would have been a disaster and brought about a human crisis almost as bad as the war itself.