Timely: Lincoln's Sort Medication on Divine Will.

Thank you. You've probably seen this one---

Abraham Lincoln
Against Miscegenation
June 26, 1857
(…) There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people, to the idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races; and Judge Douglas evidently is basing his chief hope, upon the chances of being able to appropriate the benefit of this disgust to himself. If he can, by much drumming and repeat ing, fasten the odium of that idea upon his adversaries, he thinks he can struggle through the storm. He therefore clings to this hope, as a drowning man to the last plank. He makes an occasion for lugging it in from the opposition to the Dred Scott decision. He finds the Republicans insisting that the Declaration of Independence includes all men, black as well as white; and forthwith he boldly denies that it includes Negroes at all, and proceeds to argue gravely that all who contend it does, do so only because they want to vote, and eat, and sleep, and marry with Negroes! He will have it that they cannot be consistent else. Now I protest against that counterfeit logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either, I can just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of any one else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others.

(…) But Judge Douglas is especially horrified at the thought of the mixing blood by the white and black races: agreed for once-a thousand times agreed. There are white men enough to marry all the white women, and black men enough to marry all the black women; and so let them be married. On this point we fully agree with the Judge; and when he shall show that his policy is better adapted to prevent amalgamation than ours we shall drop ours, and adopt his. . . .

I have said that the separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation. I have no right to say all the members of the Republican party are in favor of this, nor to say that as a party they are in favor of it. There is nothing in their platform directly on the subject. But I can say a very large proportion of its members are for it, and that the chief plank in their platform - opposition to the spread of slavery - is most favorable to that separation.

In case anyone wonders the relevance to this thread, we were discussing the voting patterns, and the historically Solid South (which appears to be indeed now historical), and its differing culture and political ways. That lead to thoughts upon how we could have better protected our culture, and have had some semblence of political self-determination, if Lincoln had not been hypocritical in denying to the South, that very self-determination which he had espoused some years before. I don't refer to either slavery or racism, it's my belief that the South would have done away with it regardless. Very few Southerners, especially those who fought for the Confederacy and States' Rights, were slave owners.

It was in the 3rd year of Civil War, the Union losing, that Lincoln needed more enlistments and cash infusion, and decided upon the Emancipation Proclamtion, freeing the slaves.

Your comment is riddled with errors.

First off, it wasn't "the 3rd year of the war." Lincoln had begun discussing it as early as July, 1862. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued in two phases; the first on 22 September, 1862, and the second on 1 January, 1863. The timing of the preliminary proclamation was governed by the political need for a significant battlefield victory, which occurred at Antietam on 17 September. The war had been going on for quite a bit less than two years.

Moreover, the rationale for the proclamation was not economic as you imply. It was political, and also strategic. There was a significan foreign policy component to it -- in particular, it was aimed at the British and French, who realized that could not recognize the Confederacy without seeming to support slavery (which both had banned).

Third, although the initial Union war aims in the Civil War were not to "fight to free the slaves," the war was nevertheless about slavery. It is nearly impossible to conceive of a Civil War in which slavery was not a factor. The congressional Republicans in the North were always pro-abolition, and pushed hard to gain abolition as a war aim ... and they finally succeeded. The South always saw the Civil War precisely in terms of trying to avoid the abolition of slavery.

Fourth, your comment about Fr. Sumter is simply ridiculous. The issue for Fr. Sumter was resupply: the fort had supplies for perhaps 6 weeks; the South wanted the fort abandoned; Lincoln wanted to resupply it and thereby control the harbor.

The same sentiments he expressed in his Second Inaugural address in March of 1865.

Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!" If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether"

Is this the same Lincoln that said:

“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, —a most sacred right—a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government, may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with , or neat about them, who may oppose their movement. Such minority, was precisely the case, of the Tories of our own revolution.” —Abraham Lincoln, from the Congressional Record, Jan. 12, 1847.

>This is timely.

Indeed, a good read.

>Lots of talk of civil war and so forth, today.

Read the Declaration of Independence; it is amazing how many of the complaints can be paralleled with today’s government. The people are tired of injustice.

>Regardless of that,, there is certainly a contest.

As said in the New Testament, it is not against flesh and blood; but against powers and principalities. It is ideals against reality, and against other ideals.

>And both sides cannot be right.

Certainly. But as was pointed out; both sides might be wrong.

“Your comment is riddled with errors.”

Apparently it takes one to know one. Check out this NY Times archived article:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2134454/posts

Revisionists have grossly re-written history. They will, and are already doing it to Bush. Many of those who called him a liar believed Clinton’s claim of WMDs in Iraq and the need for regime change even with unilateral military intervention.

It is highly important that we not allow revisionists to do their Orwellian “clean-up” of history.

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