Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 12/03/2009 7:45:40 AM PST by mkboyce
So — he’s a lawyer from Illinois with no political or military experience ... and Lincoln is the parallel he comes up with? There are a lot of inexperienced lawyers from Illinois that are complete schmucks. Good grief.
SnakeDoc
Don't sell Barack short. He used his law license to speed the sub-prime lending mess along.
I’d like to see the application for and the results of the exam with which he passed to receive said law license.
Indeed, how many times was the charm. Here in Delaware, it takes most a few cracks at the State Bar to get it right.
What about Illinois?
“There are a lot of inexperienced lawyers from Illinois that are complete schmucks. Good grief.”
To be fair, not many of them have ever been president.
Three legitimate points of comparison: Illinois, highest previous office in Congress, and limited experience. But there’s limited experience and there’s limited experience. Lincoln was a true-blue practicing lawyer and a militia captain. Obama was tossed around the Chicago leftists agit-prop scene and promoted by the Democrat machine.
As for the speechifying, if you tell me Obama was elected because of what he said, I have a bridge to sell you. Aside from deft vagueness and wishy-washy centrism, itt was all image. As for Lincoln, if you think Obama’s speeches will be read 150 years from now, I have an intriguing investment opportunity involving a Nigerian prince to sell you.
“Abe had 3 months and 3 days in the militia.”
Lincoln served in the Black Hawk War 1837 along the IL-WI border. I don’t think he fired a shot and was not engaged in any battle.
Weird, I seem to remember Lincoln was, in fact, in a skirmish or two.
You mean the 14th amendment thing which ratified some 4 years after the war?
4 years? Guess it must have been a pressing issue of the day. /s
The 13th Amendment which freed all slaves was passed by Congress in January 1865 largely due to the efforts of Abraham Lincoln. President Lincoln well deserves the honor he receives as the “Great Emancipator” both for the proclamation and the 13th Amendment.
That's why Lincoln put so much effort into permanently destroying slavery through constitutional amendment.
if for that, I guess. Still emancipation was an afterthought or outgrowth of the war and not a primary motivation for cause of action between the states.
“You mean the 14th amendment thing which ratified some 4 years after the war?”
No, actually, I meant the 13th amendment, which passed in 1865 and is seen by most—and certainly was seen by many at the time—as a peacetime extension of the Emancipation Proclaimation. I prefer not to confuse the two, but it’s undeniable that the Proclaimation making the abolition of slavery not only a practical but also a moral cause in the theater of war rendered the peacetime abolition of slavery somewhat inevitable upon the North’s victory.
Also, the Union army did, indeed, free slaves it came across after the Proclaimation’s issuance, even if slaves in territory under their control were not immediately manumited.
Did the Congress ever authorize Lincoln to go to war with the South or did he just order the army into action?
“Still emancipation was an afterthought or outgrowth of the war and not a primary motivation for cause of action between the states.”
No, it was not. In a larger sense, it was “about” slavery, among other things. But if you asked Southerners and Northerners in 1861, they would have pointed to other matters. But it officially became about slavery part of the way through, and the slaves were freed as a result of the war, and Lincoln in particular. We can’t rob him of that.
“Did the Congress ever authorize Lincoln to go to war with the South or did he just order the army into action?”
I don’t know if any resolutions were ever passed, but bear in mind that the civil war was not a “war,” so to speak, and therefore required no “declaration” or authorization. Succession was looked upon as illegal, and the rebels domestic insurrectionists.
Yes. Congress was not in session when the Confederates fired on Ft. Sumter. Lincoln acted under terms of the Militia Act of 1795(?), which allowed the executive to act in cases of invasion, rebellion or insurrection. He called on the states to supply volunteers to put down the insurrection and also called Congress back to session. When congress returned, they affirmed all of Lincoln's actions and appropriated the necessary funds for the military.
The only real constitutional question was if Lincoln had the authority to suspend habius corpus on his own, (as he did in Maryland in the days after Sumter when civil authority was breaking down) or did it require an act of congress? The issue has never been resolved by the courts.
Shouldn't the question you should be asking be did the confederate congress authorized Davis to go to war with the U.S. by attacking Sumter? Or did he just start the war all on his own?
That statement is incorrect. The Emancipation Proclamation freed every slave still in territory held by the forces of the rebellion. It may have taken a while before many of those slaves could take advantage of their freedom, but that doesn't change the fact that they were legally free and were illegally kept in bondage by their former masters.
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