Posted on 12/07/2010 11:31:03 AM PST by presidio9
On a recent pilgrimage to Gettysburg I ventured into the Evergreen cemetery, the scene of chaotic and bloody fighting throughout the engagement. Like Abraham Lincoln on a cold November day in 1863, I pondered the meaning of it all. With the post-Tea Party wave of libertarianism sweeping the nation, Lincoln’s reputation has received a serious pillorying. He has even been labeled a tyrant, who used the issue of slavery as a mendacious faux excuse to pummel the South into submitting to the will of the growing federal power in Washington D.C. In fact, some insist, the labeling of slavery as the casus belli of the Civil War is simply a great lie perpetrated by our educational system.
First of all, was Lincoln in fact a tyrant? For me the root of such a characterization centers on the man’s motivations. A man of international vision that belied his homespun image, Lincoln saw the growing power of an industrialized Europe and realized that a divided America would be a vulnerable one. “The central idea of secession,” he argued, “is anarchy.” Hence, maintaining the Union was his prime motivation, not the amassing of self-serving power.
It is true that Lincoln unilaterally suspended the writ of habeas corpus. From a Constitutional standpoint, the power of the federal government to suspend habeas corpus “in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety” is clearly spelled out in Article 1, Section IX. And an insurrection of eleven states would certainly qualify as such. Whether or not Lincoln had the authority (Article I pertains to Congress) most significant to me is that the Constitution does allow for the suspension of habeas corpus in times of severe crisis. So, doesn’t the question distill down to a more wonkish matter of legal procedure, rather than the sublime notion of denying the rights of man?
Constitutional minutia aside, the question remains whether or not Lincoln’s actions made him a tyrant. Consider the country in 1861-1862, the years in which the writ was suspended, re-instituted and then suspended again until war’s end. The war was not going well for the North, and Southern sympathies were strong in the border states and the lower Midwestern counties. The federal city was surrounded by an openly hostile Virginia on one side and a strongly secessionist Maryland on the other. “Copperhead” politicians actively sought office and could only sow further seeds of discord if elected. Considering these factors, one wonders what other course of action Lincoln could have taken to stabilize the situation in order to successfully prosecute the war. “Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts,” he asked, “while I may not touch a hair on the head of the wily agitator who induces him to desert?”
It seems that one’s appreciation for Lincoln’s place in history is largely an off-shoot of one’s position on the rebellion itself.
If the South was within its rights to secede, then Lincoln was a cruel oppressor. If not, then he had no choice but to put down a major insurrection.
What most glib pro-Southern observers of the war’s issues forget is that there were three million Americans enslaved in that same South, who would have been dragged into a newly formed Confederate States of America. “How is it,” asked Samuel Johnson as early as 1775, “that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?” Can any true libertarian argue that using the power of the federal government to end a state’s perpetuation of human bondage is an act of tyranny, regardless of the reason? And whether or not either side was willing to admit it, slavery was indeed the core issue of the war.
For those who believe otherwise then I ask you: In 1861, if the entire country was either all free or all slave states, would war have still come? If secession was about securing the South’s dearest rights, I must ask a follow-up: the right to do what exactly? We know the answer of course.
Was the North without sin? Certainly not, as anyone who understands the economic symbiosis of the two regions can attest. But in the end it was a Northern president using Northern troops who freed the slaves, and erased from the American experience what Lincoln himself referred to as “the base alloy of hypocrisy.”
A common blasé position among the Lew Rockwell’s of the world (a man who never felt the lash himself of course) is that slavery would have eventually died out as modernization overtook the antebellum Southern way of life. Yes it can be argued that it was economically inefficient – but it’s Marx not Mises who argues that systems of production necessarily dictate political forms. Consider that the de facto servitude of Blacks in the post-reconstruction South lasted well into the 1960s, and South Africa’s apartheid into the 1980s…both of which were ended by external pressures rather than internal catharsis .
Given the cost in dead and treasure, would it have been best to let the South go and hope for the best in slavery’s natural demise? As Patrick Henry, a southerner, once asked: “Is life so sweet or peace so dear as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?” Certainly Lincoln’s steadfast prosecution of the war revealed his feelings on this fundamental question.
So when I look at Lincoln I see a man who, for myriad reasons ranging from realpolitik to moral imperative, released three million people from the shackles of slavery. I see a man who may have over-reached his legal authority by making the suspension of habeas corpus an executive rather than legislative initiative, but did not act outside the spirit of the Constitution regarding its position on whether such a right was untouchable.
I can only conclude that to think Lincoln a tyrant is to support the Confederacy’s right to secede in the first place…and take its enslaved Americans with them. Given what a weakened state a split country would have placed us in as we moved into the industrial age, given the force for good that a united and powerful America has been in the world since Appomattox, and considering even his most brazen suspensions of Constitutional rights were temporary, and resulted in no one swinging from the gallows for their opposition to the war, I must support the actions of this great President who was ultimately motivated by love of country, not lust for power. As Shakespeare might have said: “Despotism should be made of sterner stuff.”
Umm, no. As I hold to the idea that the South was a soverign nation, I don’t see my ancestors as being insurgents, since they didn’t rebel against their native soverign State.
Even the very creation and adoption of the Constitution was not according to the rules set up in the Articles—rather created by the Constitutional Convention. If one tiny clause in the Articles are all one has to base keeping in union about, that’s shakey ground indeed!
That would also exempt subsequent states, outside of the original 13, from any imagined commitment to union.
Nice try, but Reagan was from California. That’s not considered part of Yankee territory so neither side gets to claim him.
We can claim Washington and Jefferson though. :P
Not from our point of view, but we all know that victors get to write the history books.
Anyway, I gotta run for the night. Have fun guys.
I've seen this claim made a number of times, but I've never seen any documentation.
Do you have a link?
Southern Armies made it into Union territory, in Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania several times, including to and from Gettysburg.
How many civilians in the Union were killed due to the actions of Confederate troops?
Exactly one, a farmer, by accident at Gettysburg. No other documented civilian deaths.
In the Northern Armies’ conquest and occupation of the South, how many civilians were killed, even murdered, due to the actions of the Union troops?
Many thousands...documented.
Calling me a fascist does not make me one. Apparently name-calling is the only argument you have. If so, you lose.
Um, yeah, New England is a region, just like the South you referred to is, check your elementary school geography...
My point is that states North and South had to answer for the slave trade, not simply those of a particular region.
Did the “South” own slaves or purchase them from New England shipping companies? Or was that a (rather small) minority of individuals in the South?
You are aware that FAR more slaves were taken to Caribbean plantations, and to points in Latin America, than ever made it to the southern USA, right?
Also, you never responded to the fact you posted plans of a British slave ship, and, that the slave trade to anywhere in the USA was long over before the Civil War ever began.
Here's the overview of Social Contract Theory from Wikipedia, which is as good a place to start as anywhere:
According to Thomas Hobbes, human life would be "nasty, brutish, and short" without political authority. In its absence, we would live in a state of nature, where each person has unlimited natural freedoms, including the "right to all things" and thus the freedom to harm all who threaten our own self-preservation; there would be an endless "war of all against all" (Bellum omnium contra omnes). To avoid this, free men establish political community i.e. civil society through a social contract in which each gains civil rights in return for subjecting himself to civil law or to political authority. Alternatively, some have argued that we gain civil rights in return for accepting the obligation to respect and defend the rights of others, giving up some freedoms to do so; this alternative formulation of the duty arising from the social contract is often identified with arguments about military service.The social contract and the civil rights it gives us are neither "natural rights" nor permanently fixed. Rather, the contract itself is the means towards an end — the benefit of all — and (according to some philosophers such as Locke or Rousseau), is only legitimate to the extent that it meets the general interest ("general will" in Rousseau). Therefore, when failings are found in the contract, we renegotiate to change the terms, using methods such as elections and legislature. Locke theorized the right of rebellion in case of the contract leading to tyranny.
If the South had won, the North would be being run over at the moment by grit-eating illegal aliens.
Contrary to what is actually happening now, with Yankee invasion of the South continuing from the last century.
Imagine that. Someone had to bring you out of the 18th Century.
That's a difficult question, just because you're basically getting into the Latin-via-French part of English vs the Germanic-via-Saxon part. There are some subtle differences based on ancient root words, but for the most part they're synonyms.
But I'm not sure where you're going with that question. My point was to show that there are obvious places where legal rights (e.g. owning slaves) conflict with obvious natural rights (freedom/liberty).
I'm sure if Jeff Davis had sent a letter to Karl they could have worked this little misunderstanding out and become best buds forever.
Oh, wait, you were talking about Lincoln. So sorry, the term “Goon” you threw around confused me.
Went back, read that second paragraph. Sorry, it doesn't say what you think. He was referring to the slaveowners choosing war. Which is, of course, the truth of the matter.
By the way, unlike Jefferson Davis or Robert E. Lee, Abraham Lincoln never had a slave whipped. Which I think disposes of the term “Goon”.
Yep, went back and read that second paragraph again just now. Definitely talking about the slaveowners.
LOL, best line of the thread.
Your point about Obama in those shoes is well taken.
Born and raised in Illinois. But regardless, California was part of the U.S. in 1861 and remained loyal to the Union. So either way Reagan was a Yankee.
And the losers get to write the myths.
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