Lincoln: Tyrant, Hypocrite or Consumate Statesman? (Dinesh defends our 2d Greatest Prez)

thehistorynet. ^ | Feb 12, 05 | D'Souza

[TexConfederate1861]

Without importation of African Slaves, slavery would have eventually dwindled.

[Non-Sequitur]

Without importation of African Slaves, slavery would have eventually dwindled.

In theory you had not had any importation of African slaves for more than 50 years. Yet slavery grew steadily during that period. In fact, of course, there was a brisk trafficking in illegal slave imports, and demand for slaves regardless of source was undiminished. So what makes you think that would have ended simply because the confederate constitution said it was illegal?

[Non-Sequitur]

The official purpose of Dahlgren's raid was to free prisoners from Libby Prison, period. None of Dahlgren's superiors or any of his staff were aware of any plan or issued any orders to burn Richmond and kill Davis and his cabinet. Some sort of proclamation stating that goal was supposed to have been found on Dahlgren's body, allegedly in his false leg, but even then there was nothing that indicated that the Union Army command authorized such actions, much less that Abraham Lincoln personally ordered it. There is nothing in the OR to indicate that the assassination of Davis, or even his capture was ordered. Yet you have no problem stating with perfect certainty that Lincoln ordered the murder of Jefferson Davis, so that somehow makes Booth's actions acceptable.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

Abe Lincoln said he was from Illinois.
That Scamp was from Kentucky.

[Ditto]

They assume that slavery was wrong and the South couldn't have been wrong, therefore slavery couldn't have been an important part of what the war was about.

Excellent summation.

I have also noticed the tendency of many to personalize the discussion even to the use of the first person --- "I" and "we" not "they". Any criticism of the 150 year old southern cause is taken as a personal affront.

[basque]

The Confederate soldier probably was from West or Middle Tennessee. If he was from East Tennessee, it would have been more likely that he would have welcomed the Union army as liberators from overbearing rule centered in Richmond and restorers of the ties to the old flag. Here's a typical East Tennessee reaction to the Union army that occurred in Bradley County as related by a man of Illinois.That was also true for Western Virginia and the mountain regions of Georgia and Northern Alabama. On the other hand, no army in American history did more with less thn did the rebs (remember Chancellorsville).

[Iris7]

Don't believe whatever you please. From all accounts Bennett's piece is seriously intended. The book I can't find is a collection of Lincoln's speeches and writings, which bears out Bennett's thesis.

My recollection is that Lincoln figured the Blacks to be eager to leave the USA. How much he would have embraced Bennett's "deportation" so obviously needed to move all Blacks out of the USA is open to question. Probably Lincoln saw this as a carrot and stick situation, and Bennett sees it as more a pure stick operation.

You asked me to provide some evidence for my statement, and I have. That you care to reject it out of hand is no concern of mine.

[rustbucket]

Do you know where I get my best information on the Civil War? It's not from reading history books, per se, or from reading opinion piece editorials (even good ones like D'Souza's). I look at the newpapers (North and South) of that era, the music of that era, the personal journals and correspondence of that era, and the international reaction to our Civil War. Which is not to say that newspapers back then were any more accurate or any less partisan than newspapers today.

I'll second that. I'm glad to see someone else into the old newspapers. One of our local libraries has microfilms of perhaps 15 different newspapers of that era. I have copied hundreds of pages from them and have barely scratched the surface.

I have some large (i.e., full page) volumes of collections of WBTS newspapers North and South, but I find it is more interesting and informative to just dig into the microfilms. Usually I go down to the library to look up a certain event but end up spending all afternoon going through stuff on the reel that wasn't what I had come to research. Pure serendipity.

[Drennan Whyte]

From all accounts Bennett's piece is seriously intended.

I've never doubted his seriousness, just his research. He has an agenda and he picks and chooses quotes which appear to support it.

The book I can't find is a collection of Lincoln's speeches and writings, which bears out Bennett's thesis.

Lincoln's speeches and writings are online Here.

My recollection is that Lincoln figured the Blacks to be eager to leave the USA.

I think your recollection is wrong. Lincoln was a supporter of voluntary colonization, something many people in the U.S. supported. One supporter who put his money where his mouth was was Robert E. Lee, who paid passage to Liberia for several of his slaves in the 1850's. If you read Lincoln's speeches as writings on the topic in context, you see that Lincoln probably thought that emigration gave blacks the greatest opportunity for achieving the goals of the Declaration of Independence than remaining in the United States did. We were, after all, a country that did not treat blacks as equals, did not afford them the same rights as whites, did not allow them the same freedom as whites, and where many people, including the Chief Justice of the Suprmeme Court, felt that they were not even eligible to be considered citizens.

You asked me to provide some evidence for my statement, and I have. That you care to reject it out of hand is no concern of mine.

With all due respect you have not. Not one of your posts has included a quote from Lincoln saying where he supported the forced deportation of blacks.

[PeaRidge]

"Had not the South taken up arms to protect their "peculiar way of life" enslaving other human beings, Lincoln would not have had to defend the Union and the Constitution against the attack."

Normally one would be inclined to remark on the limitations on your educational system, but that one sentence is more than just stupid.

"Peculiar way of life"? You ignore the fact that the day that Lincoln was inaugurated, the Stars and Stripes were flying over Northern owned slave ships carrying slaves to Caribbean destinations.

It was also true that Lincoln's new job would pay a salary financed by money raised from the sale of slave produced goods.

"But Lincoln himself regretted with blood-laced sweat that Thomas Jefferson didn't take care of the immoral slave issue at the start."

Jefferson and others tried, but the New England interests were stubborn about their "peculiar trade". In the interest of Union, Jefferson and others acceded to the wishes of the North.

[sheltonmac]

FYI, Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri remained in the Union during the war and were also slave states. In addition, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamaion was written only for the slaves in the South. Those in the North were excluded. Of course, as everyone knows, the Proclamation freed no one; it was only used in an attempt to incite insurrection among the slaves.

[sheltonmac]

I think the consumate statesman is defined by one's propensity for tyranny and hypocrisy. So, in that regard, Dishonest Abe was all three.

[Darkwolf377]

Yeah. The slaves were freed by Jefferson Davis, I guess. Lincoln had nothing to do with it. Hooboy...

[Darkwolf377]

"The first of January, 1863, was a memorable day in the progress of American liberty and civilization. It was the turning-point in the conflict between freedom and slavery. A death blow was then given to the slaveholding rebellion. Until then the federal arm had been more than tolerant to that relict of barbarism. The secretary of war, William H. Seward, had given notice to the world that, "however the war for the Union might terminate, no change would be made in the relation of master and slave." Upon this pro-slavery platform the war against the rebellion had been waged during more than two years. It had not been a war of conquest, but rather a war of conciliation. McClellan, in command of the army, had been trying, apparently, to put down the rebellion without hurting the rebels, certainly without hurting slavery, and the government had seemed to coöperate with him in both respects.

Charles Sumner, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Gerrit Smith, and the whole anti-slavery phalanx at the North, had denounced this policy, and had besought Mr. Lincoln to adopt an opposite one, but in vain. Generals, in the field, and councils in the Cabinet, had persisted in advancing this policy through defeats and disasters, even to the verge of ruin. We fought the rebellion, but not its cause. And now, on this day of January 1st, 1863, the formal and solemn announcement was made that thereafter the government would be found on the side of emancipation. This proclamation changed everything."

--Life and Times, Frederick Douglass

I guess someone should have told Douglass that the Emancipation Proclamation did nothing to free the slaves.

[x]

I don't have an argument with what you say in this post. People do tend to want simple, partisan answers to things. Some people argue that "it wasn't all about slavery," therefore it pretty much wasn't about slavery at all, and others respond in kind, so you get a vicious circle of recriminations.

I don't know what if anything can be done about this. The last time the country decided to simply let bygones be bygones, it meant that African-Americans were left out of the resolution, and North and South agreed on a skewed view of abolitionism and Reconstruction. So beyond the fundraising potential of the issue for both sides, there are real concerns that important points of view would be left out of any resolution.

A generation or two ago, when the country was going through the civil rights movement and the Civil War Centennial, there was a feeling that we might be coming to understand the tragedy better and to do justice to the various sides concerned. Today it seems everybody wants to believe that their "side" was right, period, end of story.

But one can be right about some things and very wrong about others, or be right about the basics and still make a mess of things, or be right or wrong about many things, but also be so moved by the destruction that right and wrong have to be seen a larger context of human fallibility and suffering. That is what Lincoln -- and others on both sides -- were getting at by the end of the war.

The Civil War was such an overpowering experience for those who lived through it that few people wanted to fight it over again, and the enormous effect of the carnage is something that tends to get forgotten sometimes nowadays, as the war is reduced to legal axioms and to factoid flinging.

[hosepipe]

[ He is simply the greatest practitioner of democratic statesmanship that America and the world have yet produced. ]

Although he made the abolition of the republic(by the south) coded by law and never had the chance to re-enact the republic.. that is if he even intended to do that.. Since 1860 ther U.S. has been a defacto democracy.. solidified by amendments for the federal reserve and the womens vote(a states rights issue) and later by FDR's socialism...

The U.S. is completely now a democracy(2004) as opposed to leaning toward being a democracy after the civil war..

How did this happen.?. Even now many think this country is a republic still.. Socialism <-- called by many names over the ensueing years.. But Marx and Lenin had it right, they knew something, very few Americans to this day don't KNOW..

Democracy is the road to socialism. Karl Marx

Democracy is indispensable to socialism. The goal of socialism is communism. V.I. Lenin

The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.- Karl Marx

and Churchill did too...
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.~Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

NOTE....
ALL democrats, most Rinos, and a few real republicans are still clueless.

[basque]

The Emancipation could apply only to the states in rebellion against the Union. The border states had not seceded; ergo, slavery was constitutionally protected in them. Lincoln was acting as Commander-in-Chief quelling an insurrection and by the Emancipation gave the armed forces legal authority to free the slaves and recruit them into the armed forces over the duration of the war - which is what happened. Contrary to "the no slaves freed canard",on January 2, 1863 Jeff Davis lost his own slaves at Biloxi to the Emancipation

[My2Cents]

Why should you care? Is their cause your cause? My ancestors were Tories; moved from NY and founded New Brunswick during the War for Independence to get away from the crazy patriots. I don't feel a duty to defend the cause they stood for.

[SunkenCiv]

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[sheltonmac]

Sorry, but you're wrong for a number of reasons:

1. To say that Lincoln had the power to end slavery with the stroke of a pen is to assign dictatorial powers to the presidency, allowing him to override Congress as well as the Constitution.
2. The Confederate states that had seceded were no longer bound by the laws of the United States. They were a sovereign nation, thus beyond Lincoln's tyrannical reach.
3. If you don't accept that the seceding states were in fact sovereign, believing instead that they remained part of the Union, then their rights (see the Tenth Amendment) would still be guaranteed under the Constitution, denying Lincoln the power to free the slaves. This is demonstrated by the fact that he lifted no finger to free those slaves that were under U.S. control.
4. The Emancipation Proclamation was merely a public relations ploy. It was, as I mentioned, to incite insurrection among the slaves. It was an attempt to turn Lincoln's illegal war into a humanitarian mission and win over those who were sympathetic to the South's right to secede. It was also meant to drive a wedge between the Confederacy and its European allies who, had they intervened, would have been viewed as supporting slavery.
5. Anyone even remotely familiar with Lincoln's speeches and writings knows that freeing the slaves was never his objective. It wasn't until the war seemed to be going badly for the North that it even became an issue.