Posted on 02/01/2002 3:56:20 AM PST by shuckmaster
We will soon find out whether it is possible to dislodge a well-entrenched political myth. Next month Prima Publishing, a division of Crown Publishing and Random House, will bring forth a devastating critique of America’s most famous president: The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and An Unnecessary War, by Thomas DiLorenzo.
Much if not most Lincoln "scholarship" is really an effort to shore up the precious myth of "the Great Emancipator," a man driven by moral passion to abolish slavery. According to the myth, Abraham Lincoln hated slavery from boyhood, biding his time until he became president of the United States, had to suppress a rebellion of slave states, and finally took the opportunity to do what he had always yearned to do: issue the Emancipation Proclamation, ending slavery once and for all.
Honest scholars know better. In his recent biography of Lincoln, David Herbert Donald quietly presents a multitude of facts that undermine this heroic view, but he doesn’t challenge the myth head-on. DiLorenzo does. His goal is not to undermine the Fantasy Lincoln, but to demolish it. And he succeeds.
DiLorenzo wisely anchors his book in a positive fact. Lincoln entered politics as a champion of Henry Clay’s "American System" of internal improvement, protective tariffs, and centralized banking – a program for expanded, centralized government. The American System, an agenda of dubious constitutionality, sounds pretty boring compared to fighting for freedom, but that’s just the point. The real Lincoln was a politician of humdrum concerns, not humanitarian aspirations; yet his seemingly modest goals bore their own potential dangers. Unless we understand what his career was really about, we are apt to fill the vacuum of knowledge with pleasant but irrelevant imaginings.
The subject of slavery didn’t interest Lincoln one way or the other for decades, and even then only very ambiguously. As a lawyer he once tried to help a slaveholder recover his runaway slaves; he lost the case, and the blacks gained their freedom, little suspecting that the attorney who had tried to restore them to captivity would go down in history as the Great Emancipator. Lincoln the lawyer, by the way, never represented a runaway slave.
When Lincoln finally did grab the slavery issue in 1854, he again followed Clay in advocating gradual emancipation, combined with a program of colonization – resettling former slaves outside the United States. He expressly opposed political and social equality for Negroes in this country. They could be equal, all right -- but not here. Let them have their equality in Africa or Central America.
This remained Lincoln’s position as long as he deemed it feasible. As president he vigorously pushed his own colonization plan even during the Civil War and after he had signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
Lincoln’s segregationist views are soft-pedaled, shrugged off, explained away, or simply ignored in the works of scholars like Garry Wills, Harry V. Jaffa, and James McPherson. The Fantasy Lincoln must be maintained at all costs.
But DiLorenzo’s challenge to the Fantasy Lincoln goes further. He takes up such matters as the right of secession, war on civilian populations, Reconstruction, and presidential powers under the Constitution – including Lincoln’s claim of dictatorial authority to suspend constitutional rights. In every case he shows that Lincoln’s claims and arguments were simply specious, contradicted by logic and history. Lincoln’s conduct of the Civil War, moreover, was remarkably cruel.
DiLorenzo never takes his eye off the ball. As an apostle of the American System, Lincoln began his career fighting for centralized government. By the end of his career, thanks to the war, he had achieved a degree of centralization beyond his wildest youthful dreams. That is his real legacy.
DiLorenzo isn’t content to show that Lincoln was wrong; he also wants to show that Lincoln was consistent, and to explain why. By showing the continuity of Lincoln’s agenda from start to finish, he throws new light on American history. In place of the Fantasy Lincoln, he reveals, as he says, "the real Lincoln" – a man with definite political purposes, which have previously received little attention.
The huge and lawless centralized government we now take for granted was latent in Clay’s American System, but it took Lincoln to begin to realize it. And it took this remarkable book to show the connection between Clay’s vision and Lincoln’s destruction of constitutional order.
The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln
It is the meaning of the Civil War...period.
By the end of his career, thanks to the war, he had achieved a degree of centralization beyond his wildest youthful dreams.At least he was goal oriented.
1: Lincoln was Gay, also.
2: He fathered a Black Child.
And the next increment will be:
3: He was a student of Marx.
Brought to you by Thomas DiLorenzo, His Agenda, and an Unecessary Book.
As Lincoln once said:
"His name is Henry
Clay
Henry."
That said, I do not disagree with Mr. Lincoln on everything, just most things.
It's been observed that reporting of history is cyclical - i.e. it tends to go from one extreme to the other. In Lincoln's case in the history books, he started out being an almost deified saint. This was surely brought about in large part by his untimely death at the hands of an assassin.
Now, it appears he may be portrayed as simply an opportunistic politician. The true Lincoln, alas, probably resides somewhere in-between.
The republican party has gone from the high tariff party of the 1860's to no tariff free traders, for the benefit of the WTO and NWO and the detriment of our nation.
2: He fathered a Black Child.
And the next increment will be:
Ahead of you on 2 out of 3...
That shouldn't even be in question. That's factually supported by the papers published by the union shortly after the war. Unfortunately, many lincoln worshippers have spread the lie that he actually cared and that even if the atrocities did happen, we somehow deserved it.
Yes, much further. He's trying to set up yet another Fantasy Lincoln.
As I see it, states secceeded for one reason only. They saw their control of congress eroding. Note that Abe did not force them to secceed. No, they left the Union simply because he was elected, and before he took office, if memory serves.
Completely false.
Lincoln called slavery a torment to him personally.
Lincoln quote dump:
"I confess that I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down down, and caught, and carried back to their stripes and unwarranted toils; but I bite my lip and keep quiet. In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip, on a Steam Boat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there were, on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons. That sight was a continual torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border. It is hardly fair for you to assume, that I have no such interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable. You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the Northern people do crucify their feelings, in order to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution and the Union."
8/24/54
"If A can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B. -- why not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A.? --
You say A. is a white, and B. is black. It is --color--, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be the slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own.
You do not mean color exactly? -- You mean the whites are --intellectually-- the superiors of the blacks, and therefore, have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own.
But, say you, it is a question of --interest--; and, if you can make it your --interest--, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interst, he has the right to enslave you."
1854
"I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. [Loud cheers.] I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects---certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man."
August, 1858
"The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society. And yet they are denied, and evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them "glittering generalities"; another bluntly calls them "self evident lies"; and still others insidiously argue that they only apply to "superior races."
These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect. -- the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads, plotting against the people. They are the van-guard -- the miners and sappers -- of returning despotism. We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us.
This is a world of compensations; and he that would -be- no slave, must consent to --have-- no slave. Those that deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God cannot long retain it."
3/1/59
"I do not perceive how I can express myself, more plainly, than I have done in the foregoing extracts. In four of them I have expressly disclaimed all intention to bring about social and political equality between the white and black races, and, in all the rest, I have done the same thing by clear implication. I have made it equally plain that I think the negro is included in the word "men" used in the Declaration of Independence. I believe the declara[tion] that "all men are created equal" is the great fundamental principle upon which our free institutions rest; that negro slavery is violative of that principle; but that, by our frame of government, that principle has not been made one of legal obligation; that by our frame of government, the States which have slavery are to retain it, or surrender it at their own pleasure; and that all others -- individuals, free-states and national government -- are constitutionally bound to leave them alone about it.
I believe our government was thus framed because of the necessity springing from the actual presence of slavery, when it was framed. That such necessity does not exist in the teritories[sic], where slavery is not present. ...It does not follow that social and political equality between whites and blacks, must be incorporated, because slavery must not."
10/18/59
"But to be plain, you are dissatisfied with me about the negro. Quite likely there is a difference of opinion between you and myself upon that subject. I certainly wish that all men could be free, while I suppose that you do not... You say you will not fight to free negroes. Some of them seem willing to fight for you; but no matter. Fight you then, exclusively to save the Union...
Negroes, like other people act upon motives. Why should they do anything for us if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive--even the promise of freedom. And the promise, being made, must be kept....peace does not appear as distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to worth the keeping in all future time. It will have then been proved that, among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost. And then, there will be some black men, who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet they have helped mankind on to this great consumation; while, I fear, there will be some white ones, unable to forget that, with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, have strove to hinder it. Still let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy final triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let us dilligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the rightful result."
8/23/63
"...our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."
11/19/63 (from the Gettysburg Address)
"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel...I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation. In telling this tale I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the Nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God."
4/4/64
"it is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers."
April 11, 1865
Also consider:
"After the interview was over, Douglass left the White House with a growing respect for Lincoln. He was "the first great man that I talked with in the United States freely," Douglass said later, "who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself, of the difference of color."
--"With Malice Towards None, p. 357 by Stephen Oates.
"Lincoln had Douglass shown in at once. "Here is my friend Douglass," the President announced when Douglass entered the room. "I am glad to see you," Lincoln told him. "I saw you in the crowd today, listening to my address." He added, "there is no man in the country whose opinion I value more than yours. I want to know hat you think of it." Douglass said he was impressed: he thought it "a sacred effort." "I am glad you liked it." Lincoln said, and he watched as Douglass passed down the [receiving] line. It was the first inaugural reception in the history of the Republic in which an American President had greeted a free black man and solicited his opinion."
Ibid., p. 412
Other sources: "Abraham Lincoln, Mystic Chords of Memory" published by the Book of the Month Club, 1984
and:
"Lincoln, Speeches and Writings, 1859-65, Libray of the Americas, Don E. Fehrenbacher, ed. 1989 Also:
Also:
"When some suggested in August 1864 that the Union ought to offer to help return runaway slaves to their masters as a condition for the South's laying down its arms, Lincoln refused even to consider the question.
"Why should they give their lives for us, with full notice of our purpose to betray them?" he retorted. "Drive back to the support of the rebellion the physical force which the colored people now give, and promise us, and neither the present, or any incoming administration can save the Union." To others he said it even more emphatically. "This is not a question of sentiment or taste, but one of physical force which may be measured and estimated. Keep it and you can save the Union. Throw it away, and the Union goes with it."
...For the newly freed and the newly enlisted black men who served in the Union army--in the end more than 179,000 of them---perhaps the greatest moment was when they they too, shared the experience of paying their respects, of marching past their presidents in their new uniforms, looking as smart and martial as any. On April 23, 1864, and again two days later, newly mustered black regiments in a division attached to the IX corps passed through Washington on their way to the Virginia front. They marched proudly down Pennsylvania Avenue, past Willard's Hotel, where Lincoln and their commander, Burnside stood on a balcony watching. When the six black regiments came in sight of the president they went wild, singing, cheering, dancing in the street while marching. As each unit passed they saluted, and he took off his hat in return, the same modest yet meaningful acknowledgement he gave his white soldiers. He looked old and worn to the men in the street, but they could not see the cheer in his breast as he witnessed the culmination of their long journey from slavery, and pondered, perhaps, what it had cost him to be part of it. Even when rain began to fall and Burnside suggested they step inside while the parade continued, Lincoln decided to stay outdoors. "If they can stand it," he said, "I guess I can."
--"Lincoln's Men" pp 163-64 by William C. Davis
Of Lincoln Frederick Douglass said:
"Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical and determined."
Atempts to besmirch Lincoln's memory will always founder on the record.
Walt
Was John Wilkes Booth her jilted lover?
Tariffs were not an issue. Tariffs were lower in 1860 than they had been in 50 years.
Walt
Completely false. Lincoln proposed voting rights for black soldiers in a speech on April 11, 1865.
Walt
It is the meaning of the Civil War...period.
You mean that stuff about malice toward none and charity for all, as he was telling his generals to burn widows and orphans out of their homes?
ML/NJ (honest Yankee)
Hey rother, the Yankees will never hear the truth because they don't want to hear the truth! They would rather live their lives believing in the myth of the evil Southern Slaveowners, and believeing the Bovine Fecal matter of Yankee written history. Don't you know, when they won the war of aggression, that allowed them to put their own spin of "the truth" on those events.
It also allows the cretinous buffoons, that love to come on our threads and cast dispersions on our great men, to stand on their bully pulpits and puppet their well worn phrases that smell of Equine Fecal matter.
What truth is that exactly? Abraham Lincoln was still a great President, and a great man. Lincoln held the Union together during it's darkest hour. It is not surprising to see myths spring up around a historically significant figure like Lincoln.
One reason this crap keeps getting recycled, is that guys like billbears think it happened to them.
However, the American people in general were not willing to see the practice extended to the new territories, nor were they of a mind to allow slave owners to freely come and go in the free states as they wished.
The slaveholders soon saw that with expansion into the new territories and the inevitable entry of these territories into the union as free states, the balance of power in Congress would ebb until their "property rights" would soon disappear.
They came up with many schemes to try to shore up their power--including such wild-hair schemes as annexing Cuba and parts of Mexico--but the writing was on the wall.
With secession, they saw that they would be free to pursue their aims of expansion into the new territories immediately west of Texas, and especially in the Caribbean.
In short, secession was ALL ABOUT preserving slavery. The Romantic Myth that the "neo-Confederates" have concocted ignores this, but it is historical truth and documented extensively by the writings and speeches of the day.
OK, how about 'rebellion'? From Merriam Webster:
Main Entry: re·bel·lion
Pronunciation: ri-'bel-y&n
Function: noun
Date: 14th century
1 : opposition to one in authority
2 a : open, armed, and usually unsuccessful defiance of or resistance to an established government b : an instance of such defiance or resistance
Would rebellion be the better word?
"Civil War" is a very accurate description of what happened, particularly since there were pockets of resistance to the rebels in the Tennessee mountains for example.
Well it did happen to some of my ancestors(documented) and the atrocities that lincoln committed on the South left scars in the people and the land that are still evident today. So yes I do feel like it has affected me thank you very much
In essence, Lincoln was defending the Constitution when he sought as the Commander in Chief to put down the illegal rebellion against the authority of the central government.
Sounds consistent, to me.
This is what Alexander Stephens, soon to be confederate vice president, had to say on the subject of tariffs in a November 1860 speech to the Georgia Legislature: "The next evil that my friend complained of, was the Tariff. Well, let us look at that for a moment. About the time I commenced noticing public matters, this question was agitating the country almost as fearfully as the Slave question now is. In 1832, when I was in college, South Carolina was ready to nullify or secede from the Union on this account. And what have we seen? The tariff no longer distracts the public councils. Reason has triumphed. The present tariff was voted for by Massachusetts and South Carolina. The lion and the lamb lay down together-- every man in the Senate and House from Massachusetts and South Carolina, I think, voted for it, as did my honorable friend himself. And if it be true, to use the figure of speech of my honorable friend, that every man in the North, that works in iron and brass and wood, has his muscle strengthened by the protection of the government, that stimulant was given by his vote, and I believe every other Southern man. So we ought not to complain of that...Yes, and Massachusetts, with unanimity, voted with the South to lessen them, and they were made just as low as Southern men asked them to be, and those are the rates they are now at. "
Why do you say it was about tariffs when one of the leaders of the period makes it clear that tariffs were not an issue?
When a young actor named John Wilkes Booth read the text of that speech the following morning, he vowed that Lincoln would die. It wasn't Lincoln's successful prosecution of the war that prompted Booth to act, mind. It was the very notion that Blacks would have the vote.
Never had you acknowledge a single truth I've ever posted. Mostly from you, it's ad hominem, nothing more.
...love to come on our threads and cast dispersions on our great men...
Seems to me this thread is about casting aspersions--and defending--one of the nation's great men. Your non sequitur notwithstanding.
It's easy enough to quote the record. The cause of the war was the preservation of slavery:
"We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States... They have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
--from South Carolina Decl. of Secession
"...[the Northern States] have united in the election of a man to high office of the President of the United States, whose opinions and purpose are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that the `Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,' and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction."
--Texas secession document
And here is what Texans thought of the Republican party:
"They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States."
--Texas Declaration of Secession.
The Mississippi secession convention began their declaration of causes with the statement, "Our cause is thoroughly identified with the institution of African slavery."
Soon to be CSA congressman Lawrence Keitt, speaking in the South Carolina secession convention, said, "Our people have come to this on the question of slavery. I am willing, in that address to rest it upon that question. I think it is the great central point from which we are now proceeding, and I am not willing to divert the public attention from it."
"As soon, however, as the Northern States that prohibited African slavery within their limits had reached a number sufficient to give their representation a controlling voice in the Congress, a persistent and organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners of slaves in the Southern States was inaugurated and gradually extended. A continuous series of measures was devised and prosecuted for the purpose of rendering insecure the tenure of property in slaves. . . . Emboldened by success' the theatre of agitation and aggression against the clearly expressed constitutional rights of the Southern States was transferred to the Congress. . . .
Finally a great party was organized for the purpose of obtaining the administration of the Government' with the avowed object of using its power for the total exclusion of the slave States from all participation in the benefits of the public domain acquired by al1 the States in common' whether by conquest or purchase; of surrounding them entirely by States in which slavery should be prohibited; of those rendering the property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless' and thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars. This party' thus organized' succeeded in the month of November last in the election of its candidate for the Presidency of the United States... the productions in the South of cotton' rice' sugar' and tobacco' for the full development and continuance of which the labor of African slaves was and is indispensable.'
--Jefferson Davis
From the Confederate Constitution: Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 4: "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."
Article IV, Section 3, Paragraph 3: "The Confederate States may acquire new territory . . . In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and the territorial government."
From the Georgia Constitution of 1861:"The General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves." (This is the entire text of Article 2, Sec. VII, Paragraph 3.)
From the Alabama Constitution of 1861: "No slave in this State shall be emancipated by any act done to take effect in this State, or any other country." (This is the entire text of Article IV, Section 1 (on slavery).)
Alexander Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, referring to the Confederate government: "Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery . . . is his natural and normal condition."
[Augusta, Georgia, Daily Constitutionalist, March 30, 1861.]
A North Carolina newspaper editorial: "it is abolition doctrine . . . the very doctrine which the war was commenced to put down."
[North Carolina Standard, Jan. 17, 1865; cited in Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 835.]
Robert M.T. Hunter, Senator from Virginia, "What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?"
Alfred P. Aldrich, South Carolina legislator from Barnwell: "If the Republican party with its platform of principles, the main feature of which is the abolition of slavery and, therefore, the destruction of the South, carries the country at the next Presidential election, shall we remain in the Union, or form a separate Confederacy? This is the great, grave issue. It is not who shall be President, it is not which party shall rule -- it is a question of political and social existence." [Steven Channing, Crisis of Fear, pp. 141-142.]
Senator Hunter of VA. During the Negro Soldier Bill debate on March 7, 1865, the SOUTHERN HISTORICAL SOCIETY PAPERS notes him as stating his opinion of the Bill as follows:
"When we had left the old Government he had thought we had gotten rid forever of the slavery agitation....But to his surprise he finds that this Government assumes the power to arm the slaves, which involves also the power of enamcipation....It was regarded as a confession of despair and an abandonment of the ground upon which we had seceded from the old Union. We had insisted that Congress had no right to interfere with slavery, and upon the coming into power of the party who it was known would assume and exercise that power, we seceded....and we vindicated ourselves against the accusations of the abolitionists by asserting that slavery was the best and happiest condition of the negro. Now what does this proposition admit? The right of the central Government to put slaves into the militia, and to emancipate at least so many as shall be placed in the military service. It is a clear claim of the central Government to emancipate the slaves."
"If we are right in passing this measure we were wrong in denying to the old government the right to interfere with the institution of slavery and to emancipate the slaves."
"He now believed....that arming and emancipating the slaves was an abandonment of this contest - an abandonment of the grounds upon which it had been undertaken."
The cause of the war was slavery and proof of that can be found in the writings of the actual people of the day.
Walt
Speaking as one who grew up in the South, I can vouch for this. I have had friends who have moved here from the North, ask me with complete puzzlement: "What is all this about my being a 'Yankee'? I hear this all the time. I'm from Michigan not New England. What's up with that? And do they realize the Civil War was over more than a century ago?"
My response to them is that many Southerners, true to their Celtic roots (of which I also have part), are born losers, and born complainers.
Walt
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