Posted on 11/06/2003 7:31:54 PM PST by republicanwizard
While I think that our friend nolu chan has the better of you by exposition of Gideon Welles's memorandum of Radicalism, I tend to agree with you that an elevation of Beast Butler would have been more.......clarifying........
Civilized men act in a civilized manner and look for laws to obey. What Welles describes is the spirit of ideological extremism, new to the world when he wrote, but wearily familiar to us both in its intellectual and moral seaminess and in its massively bloody consequences. It is the spirit of the adept thug, the bully, and the self-justifying murderer.
Hello, x. I see nobody has replied to you on this point, which they ought to have done.
Much of the argument about the American Civil War revolves around a key point made by the Southern apologists, that even the Northern Peoples never approved in convention assembled the changes Lincoln sought to impose on the Constitution and on the relationship between the central administration and the States. Lincoln sought to eclipse their authority as much as that of the Peoples of the South. Hence my argument elsewhere and earlier, that Iowa farm boys lost as much as Alabamians, by fighting for Mr. Lincoln -- they became their own worst enemies, and fought on the wrong side of the war. Failing all else, and granting you that Easterners by then were sufficiently deracinated in their understanding of individual responsibility and freedom to have lost the idea of America, having already compromised themselves, in vast droves, in millions of dirty little compromises with employers and ward heelers; Midwesterners nevertheless should have had more sense than to ratify anything like the Fourteenth Amendment.
If Lincoln had simply done nothing and let the rebels have their own way on all matters, he'd likewise be reviled by people today and blamed for what happened.
Not necessarily. He certainly would stand better with Southerners, 140 years of relentless schoolhouse propaganda notwithstanding. You must equate "people today" with the business interests of the East Coast, and what Ivy Leaguers think.
Go ahead. I'm waiting. Do your worst.
Of course YOU'RE wrong and of course that's why you wrote a broad/generalized, libelous, one sentence piece of crap instead of being specific,
What a blessed day that would be ... but all indicators are to the contrary.
It would have been priceless to see Thaddeus Stevens argue that secession was lawful. If Stevens were to have defended Jefferson Davis, he would have had to so argue as directed by the client. Not to worry, Charles O'Conor had it covered and there was no way the government was going to take the case to trial.
[GOP] Much better [as Lincoln's choice for VP] would have been Hannibal Hamlin again or even Lincoln's first choce, who turned him down -- Ben Butler.
In his time of need, Lincoln could indeed, have sought Thurlow Weed, or even William Tweed.
"Spoons" Butler was only a petty thief compared to those New York Yankee big-leaguers.
In Lowell Butler studied at Lowell High School; he also established a practice of stealing items from rooms of the boarding house tenants while they were at work according to one of Butler's biographers [Chester G. Hearn, When The Devil Came Down to Dixie: Bent Butler in New Orleans (1997), pp. 8-9]. Hearn goes on to suggest that Butler's early proclivities were life-long:
Butler died on January 11, 1893, an immensely wealthy man whose estate topped $7million. Nobody has ever been able to explain how Butler, who came from simple means and spent the bulk of his career alternating between law and politics, amassed so huge a fortune (Ibid., p. 6).
Hmm. I thought the Windsors were Hanovers. At least, I think I've seen the Georgian kings styled "the House of Hanover", from their style as the Elector of Hanover. George II fought in Germany in 1757 (the last time a British monarch appeared on the field in person) under his butterscotch-colored banner as the Elector of Hanover; and flags of the Georgian period sometimes show a butterscotch-colored flag with the Grand Union quartered (as in one representation of the signing of the Declaration of Independence) as a British color, representing the personal union in George I, II, and III (and perhaps IV?) of Hanover (and Hesse and Nassau) and the Kingdom of Great Britain.
I'll grant you that Victoria's children might perhaps rightfully have been called Saxe-Coburg; but withal, she was still a Hanoverian queen. Either way, the family changed its name during the Great War, just as the Mountbattens did during WW2 to expunge their Nazi family links (which Fleet Street still tries to dredge up).
Some knowledgeable Tory, please help me out if you know better.
Citing Grand Old Partisan or his deeds as an authority on anything is absurd.
I have spoken.
;^D
May I nominate your obvious oversight, The Rapist? He would be bound to be "worst" in some categories. I don't recall any other presidents selling their offices to the Chinese government, for example.
People have never thought much of Warren Harding, either -- whose personality type, btw, was very close to Slick's and FDR's. Only Harding and Roosevelt never got "caught" the way Slick did, with their breeches down, and neither ever sold his office or got caught lying to a jury.
Knowing that, would anyone ever have to explain? -- LOL!
In his time of need, Lincoln could indeed, have sought Thurlow Weed......
Knowing what he did about Weed, whom he used as a dirty-tricks errand-boy (e.g. in the days before Sumter), I think Lincoln would rather have paid him to stay out of town.
I had the same impression you did about the Hanover line.
As defense counsel, Thaddeus Stevens would have had no legal authority to dictate the defense. He would have been legally obligated to follow the will of the client.
Clearly, the defense set forth by Jefferson Davis and Charles O'Conor and the Dream Team of that day was the correct one. The Government, knowing they would lose, caved in.
As for giving away land, why not welcome the ex-slaves with a grant of land in the North or in the territories. There was plenty of land to be offered. When they could not unconstitutionally give away somebody else's land, they never did give up a square inch of their own land, now did they? Rather they passed laws to keep Blacks from settling in their states.
If Andrew Johnson was part of the Rebellion, please explain why Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party made him the Vice-President.
Welles offered a rather good description of the the plans and designs of the Radicals led by Thaddeus Stevens.
Some rebel. From the Memphis Avalanche as reported in the January 9, 1861, Jackson Mississippian:
Andy Johnson Burnt in Effigy in Nashville!HUNG AT GRAND JUNCTION
The defunct body shipped North after being shot, drawn, and quartered -- "unwept, unhonored, and hung," and will be hung at Jackson to-morrow.
Amen. Bump.
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