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Posted on 05/03/2011 9:29:20 AM PDT by OL Hickory
Were you trying to be sarcastic, or do you really believe that? Lincoln put over ten thousand civilians in jail without trial for opposing his war. He shut down every single opposition newspaper, putting many of the editors in jail. He jailed opposition politicians and even deported one of them (who then got reelected while in exile).
Lincoln's America was a horror show. The Union was a military dictatorship during and after the war. Lincoln's only foreign ally was the Tsar (who offered to send him troops). Keep in mind the Union was not being invaded. It's ports were not blockaded. It faced no existential threat, nor any threat at all except the loss of tax revenue from the South. Yet Lincoln used marshal law against his own civilians and did so for purely political reasons.
I should first tell you my late mother-in-law was a proud member of the Daughters of the Republic. Their family exemplified an early example of American penchant for the conspiracy theories, commenting for years that Appomattox never happened. My ex-wife exemplifies southern pride. Personally, I am a transplanted northerner who appreciates more and more the states right fight that the south projected during the Civil War. I only give this as a background for a recent conversation I had with my kids.
My Son and Daughter and I were watching Pickett’s charge during the movie Gettysburg. My Son is studying the Civil War in his middle school history class. We discussed the different aspects of the charge, but my 13 year old Daughter’s final comment on it was “Things would have be a lot different for us if Stonewall hadn’t been shot at Chancellorsville.” The “us” rolled off her tongue like she was talking about something that happened last week to her volleyball team.
The south will never die.
Have you ever actually studied law? If a contract doesn't specify its termination conditions and has no apparent implied termination conditions then it is an "at will" contract and either party may terminate it at will. Haven't you ever been employed? That is a contract but one doesn't need the employer's permission to end it.
No, it did not.
Executive Order - Arrest and Imprisonment of Irresponsible Newspaper Reporters and Editors
May 18, 1864
Major-General John A. Dix,
Commanding at New York:
Whereas there has been wickedly and traitorously printed and published this morning in the New York World and New York Journal of Commerce, newspapers printed and published in the city of New York, a false and spurious proclamation purporting to be signed by the President and to be countersigned by the Secretary of State, which publication is of a treasonable nature, designed to give aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States and to the rebels now at war against the Government and their aiders and abettors, you are therefore hereby commanded forthwith to arrest and imprison in any fort or military prison in your command the editors, proprietors, and publishers of the aforesaid newspapers, and all such persons as, after public notice has been given of the falsehood of said publication, print and publish the same with intent to give aid and comfort to the enemy; and you will hold the persons so arrested in close custody until they can be brought to trial before a military commission for their offense. You will also take possession by military force of the printing establishments of the New York World and Journal of Commerce, and hold the same until further orders, and prohibit any further publication therefrom.
A. LINCOLN.
Horray for the Bonny Blue Flag..
Come on it’s not like they weren’t under a bit of pressure. The south was dealing with an invasion. Not normal..
I absolutely agree that we, as a nation, inherited slavery from Britain, absolutely agree that the federal government essentially enslaved the South following the Civil War with it’s intrusion on states rights and absolutely agree
that the North greatly economically benefited from slavery.
I would add that there were(still are) Northern hypocrites regarding the issue of slavery.
However, my disgust over keeping a people, based on race, enslaved is a human rights issue and not a Southern bashing/pro North issue.
great thread, best I’ve seen here—surprised.
If this is a question of what was feared in the Federalist Papers, that the Federal Govt would become too big, too powerful and far too overreaching, then you bet I’m a States Rights gal.
Wait ‘till the haters show up.
I assume you were being sarcastic. Here are some online references for you:
You will notice in the first link, all Democrat newspapers being excluded from a state by a Union commander. How many papers might that have been? And before Lincoln's 1864 election too.
The best review of Northern treatment of the press during the war is "Lincoln and the Press" by Robert S. Harper, copyright 1951. Some say 300 Northern papers were suppressed or destroyed during the war. I've found documentation for over 100 myself. At that point I stopped counting. Some references such as Richard Franklin Bensel's book, "Yankee Leviation" correctly note that the Union used suspension of the writ and marshal law to "close down dissident newspapers or influence their editorial policy."
In contrast, Bensel notes only two papers suppressed or destroyed in the South. I've seen reference to maybe two or three additional Southern newspapers in the old wartime newspapers (my hobby), nowhere near what happened in the North.
Yeah but oneside does not get to change the contract however it wishes, like is happening now and was happening then.
“About half the yankees would join the south today if they could”
Back in the 1980’s it seemed that about half of the Yankees *did*.
“I eagerly await the justification of slavery.”
In the context of the time it was not slavery that needed to be justified, but the far more radical proposition of abolition. Slavery had been a facet of every human culture for millennia and it was accepted as a norm until the late 18th century.
The Civil War was not started over slavery and as proof of that is the fact that slavery was not abolished in the Northern states until December of 1865 - several months after the end of the war.
I have to disagree. Slavery was under pressure all over the western world and several perfectly valid justifications for abolition were widely held, even in the South. For instance, it is often overlooked that the Dred Scott decision overturned a southern court's decision to free DS.
The tough issue of the day was what to do with the negros. No one, North or South, thought that this alien African population would or should ever be integrated into American society. So what do you do with them after freeing them? The South looked to the western territories as the answer to the question, states like Illinois were willing to go to war to kill that idea.
I did.
“The north on the other hand, had a vigorous press throughout the war.”
True, if you don’t include the papers shut down by lincoln.
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