Revisionists target Great Emancipator

Nola.com ^ | July 11, 2003 | James Gill

[stainlessbanner]

President Bush's speech in Senegal, wherein he credited Abraham Lincoln with a major role in eliminating American slavery, was not, perhaps, among his most controversial.

Not everyone, however, will have nodded in agreement, for revisionist historians have been ganging up on Honest Abe and depicting him as a white supremacist, who had no moral qualms about slavery but wanted to kick all black people out of the country.

[stainlessbanner]

for discussion

[Support Free Republic]

There's A Better Way To Beat The Media Clymers (And You Don't Have To Skate)!
	Donate Here By Secure Server Or mail checks to FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794 or you can use PayPal at Jimrob@psnw.com
STOP BY AND BUMP THE FUNDRAISER THREAD- It is in the breaking news sidebar!

[laweeks]

These cheesy historians have no concept of what Cultural Relativity means. To judge Abraham Lincoln or any of his contemporaries by our current life-standards and to then condemn them accordingly is plain stupid. Bottom line is that by most estimates, approximately 675,000 Africans were brought to the US in the slave trade. And the Civil War military-related deaths were around 660,000 white Americans. . . . almost one-for-one.

They can revise all they want, but this country paid a big price to eliminate slavery and was fortune to be led by someone with integrity and foresight.

[My2Cents]

Thomas J. Dilorenzo, an economics professor at Loyola College in Maryland, agrees in "The Real Lincoln" that the Proclamation had no effect whatsoever

I can't tell whether DiLorenzo's just a crappy historian, or a liar.

[vetvetdoug]

This article is written as if these charges are new, ie. the continued use of revisionist to describe those that are exposing Lincoln's deeds. The charges and accusations against Lincoln that have resurfaced are no different than those brought forth during the Civil War; they have only been brought up to light. One could make the same arguement that the history books written from 1865 to the present are revisionist.

[stevem]

The only mistake Lincoln made in respect to the 20th and 21st centuries was doing what he did while also being a Republican. If he had had the common sense and decency to have been a Democrat, most revisionists would be content to leave him to history and the ages.

As Bruce Catton said, the Emancipation Proclimation freed not one single slave because the only place where it had the slightest effect was any territory where Grant's or Sherman's or Thomas' armies were standing at that moment.

The Proclimation was a political document designed to keep England out of the war as an ally to the Confederacy. It succeeded.

I always harken to two points about the anti-Lincoln sentiment that is constantly surfacing, and has since 1861. Given Lincoln's goal of preserving the Union, what would revisionists have done differently? Then, if the revisionists think Lincoln was such a loser, do they think the Union as we know it is a worthy candidate for survival? If Lincoln had lost you wouldn't have two nations today, you would have many. In Georgia during the Civil War there was serious discussion of ceceding from the Confederacy.

[My2Cents]

Slavery could have been abolished without bloodshed in this country, as it was in the British empire and elsewhere, according to Dilorenzo

Yeah, right...Probably by 1900 or thereabouts, provided the slave states in the South had remained in the union and had let slavery die a peaceful death. That's a lot of "ifs," most of which became non-possibilities because of the fact of secession. DiLorenzo also makes it sound like the Union fired the first shots in the Civil War. Which side was the one that acted provocatively? All the Union did was conduct a constitutional election. Lincoln won, constitutionally. The South hated the results of a constitionally-valid election, and wanted to take their ball and go home. It galls me to hear an apologist for secession try to argue that Lincoln pushed non-constitutional policies.

Regarding my previous post, I think I've decided: DiLorenzo's a crappy historian.

[stevem]

Proclimation = Proclamation

[My2Cents]

As Lincoln biographer Stephen Oates has written, while it is true that Lincoln's main PUBLIC goal was preservation of the Union, he also realized that the Union could not be preserved as long as slavery continued to exist. Recall his famous pre-presidential speech on the nation not being able to continue half-slave, half-free. Lincoln, in his first inaugural, tried to calm the fears the South had toward a Republican President by emphasizing the prime objective of keeping the Union intact. They would have none of it. And of course, there was the problem of slave states (particularly Maryland) which chose to stay with the Union, and Lincoln's need to soft-peddle the slavery issue for the sake of keeping them in the Union. He also realized that if the Union were to be permanently divided, and the issue of slavery not dealt with by the nation, the Great Experiment set in place by the Founders would have proven to be a failure.

What infuriates me about the Lincoln revisionists is that they pick and choose what they wish to analyze about Lincoln. They never take his entire career, or term as President, into full account, and so they present an incomplete picture of Lincoln, one that is skewed to their agenda.

[Ajnin]

Here we go again with another 300+ post thread.

[My2Cents]

And even after 300+ posts, the South is STILL the loser in the Civil War.

[DonQ]

... wanted to kick all black people out of the country.

Until after Lincoln's death, the repatriation of American slaves to Africa was considered a very worthwhile proposal. Even at the time of the Civil War, there were still some slaves who had actually been brought from Africa, and a great many more - perhaps a majority of the slave population - who had been born in America to parents who had been born in Africa.

Additionally, there was considerable concern about what would happen to and with a million or so former slaves, turned loose with no education and in a country where they would be at many disadvantages. Restoring them to the land of their birth, or at least of their near-ancestor's birth, seemed not only entirely reasonable but even highly moral and proper. It was even suggested that keeping the black population in America after their release from slavery would be cruel; they would not be restored to their native land or their families in Africa, and they would be exploited here and subjected to considerable racial discrimination.

So supporting African repatriation, although it might seem racist now, was certainly neither malicious nor unenlightened back then.

[Gianni]

The South hated the results of a constitionally-valid election, and wanted to take their ball and go home

The same thing happened on the playground the other day. My 9-year-old was winning at four-square and another kid got frustrated and tried to leave.

My daughter gave a blood-boiling speech to the remaining kids, who then proceeded to run the deserter ('damed rebel') down, beat her mercilessly, torch her house, and force her to pay them half her lunch money for the rest of the schoolyear.

Old Abe would be proud.

[My2Cents]

Poor analogy.

[My2Cents]

Point well-made. Frederick Douglass opposed repatriation. Eventually, Lincoln abandoned the idea himself, eventhough some continued to promote it after his death.

[Ditto]

I can't tell whether DiLorenzo's just a crappy historian, or a liar.

I'd say both.

[Ditto]

As Bruce Catton said, the Emancipation Proclimation freed not one single slave because the only place where it had the slightest effect was any territory where Grant's or Sherman's or Thomas' armies were standing at that moment.

That's kind of like the Democrats static analysis of the effects of tax cuts on future revenues. The EP freed somewhere over 3 million of the 4 million slaves in the US as the Union Armies advanced. In some campaigns, Union troops were actually slowed by the masses of slaves running to their lines for freedom. By the end of the war, nearly 100,000 of those freed slaves served, with great distinction, in the Union Army.

The EP was announced in Sept of 1862 and gave a 3-month notice to the rebellious states that if they did not cease the rebellion by Jan 1, 1863, their slaves would be considered hostile property and subject to confiscation. It was not designed to immediately free any slaves. It was, among other things to serve notice to states still in rebellion that they would lose their slaves as the Union army advanced. That's exactly what it did. Lincoln had no constitutional authority to free slaves in any state or area that was under the jurisdiction of the US courts. If he had tried to do what Freemont did in Missouri, the courts would have rightly overruled him. That would not have been a constitutional act. But at the same time he issued the EP, Lincoln also initiated efforts to get a Constitutional Amendment through Congress to end slavery in the US forever.

To say that the EP freed no slaves is flat-out false and is often said by people who know that it is false, making it then a bald-faced lie.

[Ditto]

My daughter gave a blood-boiling speech to the remaining kids, who then proceeded to run the deserter ('damed rebel') down, beat her mercilessly, torch her house, and force her to pay them half her lunch money for the rest of the schoolyear.

Did the kid try to ride off with your daughter's bike, take her lunch money and blow up her tree house as she was leaving?

[colorado tanker]

You cannot read the Lincoln-Douglas debates and understand Lincoln as anything other than an ardent opponent of slavery.

Lincoln thought if slavery stopped expanding by prohibiting it in the territories it would gradually disappear. So did many southerners, which is why they seceeded before Lincoln was even sworn in.

Lincoln treaded very carefully on the emancipation issue early in the war because he didn't want to do anything to trigger border state secessions. Fremont acted without instructions and got the boot.

By the time of the proclamation, however, the border states were firmly in the Union (by occupation if nothing else) and northern opinion had swung around to dealing with the slavery issue once and for all before reuniting with the south.

Lincoln could not end slavery with a proclamation - that was done with the 13th Amendment. Lincoln could proclaim the freedom of slaves in confederate hands as "contraband" property. Still, the Proclamation made clear to all that slavery was ending in the U.S.

[hirn_man]

You left out the part of the other girl shooting at your daughter as she tried to leave.