Debate continues over 'The Real Lincoln'

Editor's Note: WorldNetDaily talk-radio host Geoff Metcalf recently interviewed Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo, author of "The Real Lincoln." In his book, as in the interview published April 14, DiLorenzo claims the 16th president was far more concerned with economic centralization than the abolishment of slavery. The interview elicited strong responses from readers, about half of whom disagreed with the author's assertions. Among them was Dr. Richard Ferrier, president of the Declaration Foundation. According to Ferrier and scholars at the foundation, the evidence DiLorenzo uses to back his claims actually proves the author wrong. Ferrier, who calls DiLorenzo's scholarship "sloppy," explains the quandary in his interview with Metcalf.

Metcalf's daily streaming radio show can be heard on TalkNetDaily weekdays from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern time.

A: Falsehood, basically. Falsehood in details, sloppiness of scholarship and a fundamentally wrong-headed view of the role of Lincoln and the Declaration of Independence, and American history and our political philosophy.

Q: One of the key items DiLorenzo focused on was his suggestion that the debate between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton was won for Hamilton by Lincoln. Was he wrong?

A: Yes, I think he's wrong. I think Jefferson and Hamilton fundamentally agreed, and Jefferson is the one DiLorenzo will pick as being on his side – that the American Union began not with the Constitution but with the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson said so in a letter to the board of governors.

A: What that means is that we are a people with a limited but sovereign federal government under the rule of law whose spirit is given in the Declaration of Independence. I think on that point Hamilton and Jefferson agree, and they both disagree with Calhoun and Jefferson Davis and the people who started the rebellion of 1860-61. He's just wrong on that, but he's wrong on more gross and obvious matters.

Q: What I am specifically concerned with is what you claim are his factual errors.

A: Suppose I said to you, "Jesus said, 'I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones where I will store all my grains and all my goods, and I will say to my soul, soul you have ample goods laid up for many years. Take your ease and eat, drink and be merry.'" Is that true?

A: He did. It's in a parable. He has somebody else say it. Jesus tells the story about the rich man, and those are the words of the rich man. So in a way, it's true that Jesus said that; he said it in quotation marks. He didn't say it himself.

A: So listen to this from Tom DiLorenzo's book: "Lincoln even mocked the Jeffersonian dictum enshrined in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal. He admitted that it had become a genuine coin in the political currency of our generation but added, 'I am sorry to say that I have never seen two men of whom it is true. But I must admit that I never saw the Siamese twins and therefore will not dogmatically say that no man ever saw proof of this sage aphorism.'" That is supposedly from Lincoln. DiLorenzo goes on to add, "So with the possible exception of Siamese twins the idea of equality, according to Lincoln, was a sheer absurdity." This is in stark contrast to the seductive words of the Gettysburg Address 11 years later, in which he purported to rededicate the nation to the notion that all men are created equal.

Q: There is a footnote in DiLorenzo's book regarding that quotation, citing the first Lincoln-Douglas debate.

A: Yes, and when I was researching the book, I dutifully followed up the footnote and read the passage. Rather, I didn't find the passage because it isn't there. It is nowhere in the first debate. It is nowhere in any of the debates. Where it is is in an 1852 eulogy of Henry Clay, and Lincoln is quoting a Virginia clergyman with whom he disagrees. In other words, it's a lie. Lincoln never said those words in his own voice. It is not only a lie, but it is either an incompetent or malicious inference that Lincoln contradicts himself in the Gettysburg Address when he declares his solemn faith in the American creed that "all men are created equal."

Q: DiLorenzo quotes Lincoln from the Lincoln-Douglas debates, saying, "I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between white and black races, and I have never said anything to the contrary." Did Lincoln ever say that?

A: He did say that. But DiLorenzo has the citation wrong there, too. It is from a speech Lincoln gave in Peoria in 1854. Lincoln, who was a lawyer and was careful with his words, did not say "I do not believe in that equality. I do not think it is a good thing." He said, "I have no purpose to introduce it." Those are the words of a careful lawyerly politician who knows perfectly well how much good you can accomplish in your time and how much (if you espouse it) will ruin your career and keep you from accomplishing the good you can accomplish. So yes, it's perfectly true that Lincoln said, "I have no purpose," meaning, "I don't at the moment intend to bring about such equality." And if he had said anything else in Illinois in the 1850s, he couldn't have been elected to dogcatcher.

Q: DiLorenzo includes the Lincoln letter to Horace Greeley in 1862. Is that accurate?

Q: Hold on, here's the quote: "My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union; it is not to either save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it." What's the rest of it?

A: He continues, "I say nothing about my well-known desire that all men everywhere should be free." In other words, he's speaking as a public man with respect to his constitutional duty, which is to preserve the Union. Now it should be said that Lincoln thought the Union wasn't just a legal entity or a practical entity but an entity like a human being – a body and a soul. And the soul of that entity was the truths that are expressed in the Declaration, including the truth that all men are created equal.

I was a vice chair of the Proposition 209 [California's anti-discrimination law] campaign and a friend of Glynn Custred. This principle of human equality and treating people according to skin color or race is more than dear to me. I have labored in the vineyards for it. Lincoln thought the American Union was not just a matter of laws and conventions and agreements, but it was a kind of spiritual compact. He drew that from the Declaration that, itself, goes back to our Protestant colonial forebearers who believed from Scripture and reason that all men are created equal. So when Lincoln wanted to save the Union – and told Greeley that in a letter – Lincoln is thinking, "I will save the Union, whose heart and soul are the truths that are spoken of in the Declaration." In fact, if it was unwise in the short term to issue an Emancipation Proclamation, he would hold it off. When it was the right time to do it, he would do it.

Q: I asked Dr. DiLorenzo if, in his opinion, Lincoln was a dictator. He said that even some of the most pro-Lincoln historians had called him a dictator. Do you consider Lincoln a dictator?

A: No, I don't. That is a vexed question. By the way, it's a good question for both sides of the Civil War. One of the unhappy things about DiLorenzo's scholarship is that he pays no attention to broad historical context and doesn't look for example at the actions of Jeff Davis and the Confederate government. He finds fault with Lincoln for the suspension of habeas corpus, for various measures taken to suppress sedition in the states under control of the Union, and pays no attention …

Q: I didn't realize so many American citizens were thrown in the slammer just for disagreeing with him.

A: They weren't thrown in the slammer for disagreeing with him. They were thrown in the slammer for encouraging sedition and desertion. There is a long and complex scholarship on this, and you won't get much of it or a balance of it from the book. There was suppression of newspaper editors in Richmond, declaration of martial law in numerous areas of the Confederacy. The Confederacy instituted conscription in advance of the Union. Tom is a libertarian, and he thinks economic issues dominate everything. He thinks personal liberty is the absolute trump card in every argument. He's entitled to think that, but he applies that to Lincoln and the Union without a glance at the corresponding actions in the Confederacy.

Both parts of the American republic in that unhappy war did similar things, and they both did them with respect to sustaining the integrity and security of the Confederacy or the Union. Lincoln is consistently modifying the actions of his subordinates in the direction of liberty and leniency. He has hotheads he has to keep under his control – notably Ambrose Burnside and Ben Butler, who are responsible for unwise actions. And down the line, Lincoln reverses those actions in the direction of liberty. He did that because he conceived of the war and of his sustaining of the Union as a defense of fundamental human rights as expressed in the Declaration.

Q: I was intrigued by Tom's book, because I don't have a dog in this fight. My litmus test is the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Q: Fine, we'll make it the troika. Several of the things Lincoln did were specifically designed to abrogate, eviscerate and destroy the very document to which he swore an oath. To say, "Well, gosh, the other guys were doing it too," is not an adequate defense.

A: That is fair enough. In a way, you almost want to look at what Davis and company said. Davis and company argued like Hamilton, and so did Lincoln. That is to say both men, Lincoln and Davis, saw their fundamental duty to support the integrity and security of the republic to which they saw themselves belonging. Of course, Lincoln never saw the Confederacy as a republic; he thought it was an insurrection. They looked at the sections of both the Confederate and U.S. Constitutions, in which the executive is given fairly broad powers with respect to seeing that the laws are upheld and that the public peace is maintained. They both made appeals of that sort. You can hammer out the details ad nasuem.

A: The one that is most plain and reasonable to think about, I think, is the suspension of habeas corpus. That is authorized in the United States Constitution. DiLorenzo and his friends niggle on a small point: that it's Article 1, Section 9, and not Article 2 under the executive power. But the whole first article is about the power of the United States government. Section 10 of Article 1 prohibits the states from doing a number of things. It is not restricted to the powers of Congress. The complaint, if I'm being obscure …

A: What I'm saying is this: The complaint is Lincoln suspended habeas corpus for the sake of the security of the national capitol. When the bulk of the active powers in Maryland were about to prevent him from being inaugurated, prevent the United States Congress from meeting, organizing military forces to oppose the national government and the like, Lincoln cited Article 1, Section 9. Namely, that habeas corpus could be suspended in the case of insurrection or rebellion in defense of the Constitution and laws that he was sworn to uphold.

The confederates suspended habeas corpus, too, and for the same reason. Namely, that they were concerned with security within the Confederacy. I think in their own lights, both men were right. If the Confederacy was a government and had real independence, it couldn't put up with insurrection in the Confederacy. And there was insurrection in the Confederacy.

Q: What about the repression of all those newspaper editors? The numbers vary; I've heard from 13,000 to a gazillion.

Q: No, but were the incarcerated people all preaching desertion and sedition, or were they merely critical of Lincoln and as a result got thrown in stony lonesome?

A: There were blockade runners. There was an extensive Confederate spy network. There were plans to disrupt public meetings in Ohio and Indiana. To look at that fairly, you have to look at the scholarship on it. There was an organized seditious campaign, especially in Ohio and Indiana. It was run in part by exiles from Canada in Canada, across the Great Lakes, with actual plans for violent acts and the encouragement of desertion from the United States armed forces. Among those people were newspaper editors. How would you have felt about that during the Vietnam War? What if there had been in Vancouver an organized pro-Viet Cong movement with financial arrangements to the North Vietnamese paying and organizing newspaper writers, agitators on the ground, and planning to disrupt American political meetings?

Q: I wouldn't tell or involve my government, but I'd take about four A-Teams and covertly visit and counsel the offenders with extreme prejudice.

A: Yes, but we didn't want to invade Canada. I feel kind of the same way. But that was the actual situation. When his generals went over the line on that and suppressed people who shouldn't have been suppressed, Lincoln was consistently on the side of clemency. It is an old and ugly grudge that is held against Lincoln and the Union for various reasons. I think partly regional sentimentality, partly racism sometimes and various other reasons make people state a one-sided case against a man who sustained the founding principles of this country.

Q: You are accusing DiLorenzo of sloppy and disingenuous scholarship. Can you give me an example?

A: In support of his thesis, he says, "In virtually every one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln made it a point to champion this corrupt economic agenda …"

A: It's like chartering canal companies and banks and things. He gives a footnote to that, and it's to the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Go look in those debates; there is not a word about this economic agenda. Not a word! Let me read from the Oxford history of this period. It's called "Battle Cry of Freedom," written by Dr. James McPherson, and it is a very respectable book. It's sort of the standard work on the matter. He talks about the Lincoln-Douglas debates:

"Desiring to confront Douglas directly, Lincoln proposed a series of debates." The famous debates that school kids used to read back in the days when we actually taught them something about American history. "The stakes were higher than a senatorial election. Higher even than the looming presidential contest of 1860 … for the theme of the debates was nothing less than the future of slavery and the Union. Tariffs, banks, internal improvements, corruption and other staples of American politics received not a word in these debates."

A: Nothing. I teach this at my college. I must have read and re-read seven debates 20 times. Trust me, Geoff, there is not a word about tariffs in those debates. Nothing.

Q: There is no argument that the tariffs imposed by the North on the South were draconian. You wouldn't refute that, would you?

A: The tariff of 1857, which was the existing tariff at the time, had bipartisan support. The South Carolina delegation voted for it. It was the lowest tariff in 20 years. That's not to say there wasn't debate about tariffs.

Q: The tariffs went from about 15 percent to 40 percent. I'd call that a big hike.

A: Yes, but that's two-and-a-half years later, in 1861. Democrat president James Buchanan signed that tariff, and it had bipartisan support. He called for its passage; he didn't just support it. In the '58 Senate contest and their seven famous debates, Douglas and Lincoln did not cross swords once over tariffs or the bank or internal improvements. I'm sorry to say this, Geoff, but what DiLorenzo says is a lie. These debates are available online. The books are widely published. Your readers should just go out and look. Also, the Declaration Foundation has a number of articles and a forum discussing this very matter of DiLorenzo's book and the legacy of Lincoln.

Q: DiLorenzo includes references to Frances Key Howard and Rep. Vallandigham. What can you tell us about them?

A: I don't know about the first one, but Clement Vallandigham was a Democrat from Ohio. When I mentioned Ambrose Burnside, Vallandigham was the congressman who gave speeches calling for the end of the war and for resistance to conscription …

A: That's right, but there was an income tax when he gave the speech that got him in trouble.

Q: My question is about congressional immunity. Unfortunately, Congress critters can get away with saying anything they want, as long as they say it in the well of Congress. How did Vallandigham end up getting his front door kicked in by federal soldiers?

A: He gave his speeches out in his home area in Ohio. The local general, Ambrose Burnside, thought it was treason and put him under arrest right away. When the facts came back to Lincoln, he thought it was unwise and possibly illegal, and he undid Burnside's action. What they offered him was a free pass through Confederate lines. And it's Vallandigham who wound up in Canada organizing seditious anti-Union, and sometimes violent, groups in the period of '63-'64, to undermine the national war effort. But Lincoln let him out. Lincoln turned the key. Burnside is the guy who did that, and Lincoln didn't think it was the right thing to do.

Q: What about the Morrill tariff bill, which bumped the tariff from 15 percent to 47 percent?

A: That bill would never have passed if the Southern states had not seceded. It passed in the Senate – before Lincoln was president, by the way – because 14 Southern senators were out of the Senate. They could have blocked it, but they walked out in advance.

When the neo-Rebels say the tariff was the cause of the war, they conveniently overlook the fact that South Carolina withdrew on December 20th of 1860 – not because of any tariff that had been passed or signed, but because Abraham Lincoln, who declared that slavery was a moral wrong, had been elected president of the United States. The Morrill tariff that you are referring to was not passed until three months after South Carolina and six other states went out.

Q: So if they blame secession on the tariff, they are being more than a little disingenuous.

The colonies did not "secede" and they had no right under British Law to do so. They Rebelled which was their right under Natural Law when faced with oppression.

Secede (v. i.) To withdraw from fellowship, communion, or association; to separate one's self by a solemn act; to draw off; to retire; especially, to withdraw from a political or religious body.

They did seceed. The fact that the British used force to attempt to deny the rights of the Americans to secede is not justification for the United States to do so. Oppression by the British does not justify oppression by the United States.

The Declaration of Independence says,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The people of the South believed that the "Form of Government" under the Constitution had become destructive to their rights to "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Therefore, they had the right to change their government -- to secede. And the North had no right to try to prevent it.

Secession and revolution differ. The supposed right of secession is the claim of a right recognized by the compact to withdraw from it. The right of revolution is a natural, not a compacted right, and is the subject of the Declaration. Had the South wished to invoke the right of revolution in the Declaration, they needed only to argue that a long train of abuses had made the purpose of tyranny in the national government manifest, and that they accordingly had a duty -- to vindicate the equal rights of all man -- to alter or abolish it. For some reason, they shied away from that argument, and argued instead for the Constitutional (supposedly) right of secession. These are different questions, it seems clear to me and many others.

The distinction you draw is illusory. You appear to be saying that if the Confederacy had called their act a "Revolution", they would have been within their rights to leave the union, but since they called it "Secession", they had no such right.

Surely this is putting form over substance. Surely you cannot justify fighting a long and bloody war over a word. This is absolutely absurd.

Take, for instance the Tennessee Ordinance of Secession. It reads in part,

"We, the people of the State of Tennessee, waiving any expression of opinion as to the abstract doctrine of secession, but asserting the right, as a free and independent people, to alter, reform, or abolish our form of government in such manner as we think proper, do ordain and declare that all the laws and ordinances by which the State of Tennessee became a member of the Federal Union of the United States of America are hereby abrogated and annulled, and that all the rights, functions, and powers which by any of said laws and ordinances were conveyed to the Government of the United States, and to absolve ourselves from all the obligations, restraints, and duties incurred thereto; and do hereby henceforth become a free, sovereign, and independent State."

According to the theory you set forth above, Tennessee had the right to leave the union.

While South Carolina did not because their ordinance read:

We, the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, That the ordinance adopted by us in convention on the twenty-third day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and also all acts and parts of acts of the General Assembly of this State ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed; and that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of the "United States of America," is hereby dissolved.

This appears to be an arbitrary distinction.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

This speaks of prudence. A virtue to be sure. But not a requirement. Remember that the sentence before that said,

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Surely the people have the right to decide when the form of government has become destructive to those ends. The people of the South decided that the United States government had become destructive to their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. While you may not think they acted prudently, it is not for you to decide. Nor was it for Mr. Lincoln to decide.

Secession, as Calhoun invented it, simply said they could walk away for any reason or no reason. The Declaration made it perfectly clear that breaking established ties was a last resort, under "Nature's Law," not man's law, and only when faced with intolorable oppression and after failure of government to address their grivences. Did the Confederacy even meet one of those conditions?

Again, you confuse what Jefferson said was a prudent course with the only acceptable course. Read what the Declaration says again. It describes the right and then says that prudence will keep people from exercising it "for light and transient causes". It does not say that they may not do so.

Remember, governments "deriv[e] their just powers from the consent of the governed". The people of the South no longer consented. Therefore, the power to govern was no longer operative.

It was no such thing and the Framers would laugh at anyone who suggested it was.

Jefferson on secession: "If there be any among us who wish to dissolve this union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments to the safety which errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason ios left free to combat it."

Jefferson when Northern states threatened to secede: "If any state of the Union declares that it perfers separation to the continuance in the union, I have no hesitation in saying 'Let us separate'."

John Quincy Adams on Secession: After saying there may come a time when the states no longer agree, he says, "Then will be the time for reverting to the precedents which occurred at the formation and adoption of the Constitution, to form a more perfect Union by dissolving that which could no longer bind, and to leave the separated parts to be reunited by the law of political gravitation to the center."

I don't think they laughed at Jefferson or JQ Adams.

Wrong. Three states signed the Constitution but their agreement was conditional that Congress add a Bill of Rights to the Constitution. Congress did so in their first session, 14 amendments, 10 of which were approved by the states. Not one of those 3 states got all the amendments they asked for in their ratification documents, but none attempted to withdraw their approval. The 10 amendments that survived ratification satisfied the conditions in their ratification documents. The Congress upheld their end of the agreement so there was not right to rescind agreement or "secede" as the Calhoun fanatics later misinterpreted those conditions.

From Virginia's Ratification: "WE the Delegates of the people of Virginia, duly elected in pursuance of a recommendation from the General Assembly, and now met in Convention, having fully and freely investigated and discussed the proceedings of the Federal Convention, and being prepared as well as the most mature deliberation hath enabled us, to decide thereon, DO in the name and in behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression, and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will: that therefore no right of any denomination, can be cancelled, abridged, restrained or modified, by the Congress, by the Senate or House of Representatives acting in any capacity, by the President or any department or officer of the United States, except in those instances in which power is given by the Constitution for those purposes: and that among other essential rights, the liberty of conscience and of the press cannot be cancelled, abridged, restrained or modified by any authority of the United States."

New York's Ratification said: "That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness; "

Rhode Island's said: "That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness. "

As you can see, these did not say that the people could not dissolve the government if there was a Bill of Rights. These are unconditional statements that the people reserve this right.

Virginia cited their reservation of this right in their Oridnance of Secession.

You skipped by this part:

It having pleased the Divine Providence to dispose the hearts of the most serene and most potent Prince George the Third, by the grace of God, king of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, defender of the faith, duke of Brunswick and Lunebourg, arch- treasurer and prince elector of the Holy Roman Empire etc., and of the United States of America, to forget all past misunderstandings and differences that have unhappily interrupted the good correspondence and friendship which they mutually wish to restore, and to establish such a beneficial and satisfactory intercourse , between the two countries upon the ground of reciprocal advantages and mutual convenience as may promote and secure to both perpetual peace and harmony; and having for this desirable end already laid the foundation of peace and reconciliation by the Provisional Articles signed at Paris on the 30th of November 1782, by the commissioners empowered on each part, which articles were agreed to be inserted in and constitute the Treaty of Peace proposed to be concluded between the Crown of Great Britain and the said United States, but which treaty was not to be concluded until terms of peace should be agreed upon between Great Britain and France and his Britannic Majesty should be ready to conclude such treaty accordingly; and the treaty between Great Britain and France having since been concluded, his Britannic Majesty and the United States of America, in order to carry into full effect the Provisional Articles above mentioned, according to the tenor thereof, have constituted and appointed, that is to say his Britannic Majesty on his part, David Hartley, Esqr., member of the Parliament of Great Britain, and the said United States on their part, John Adams, Esqr., late a commissioner of the United States of America at the court of Versailles, late delegate in Congress from the state of Massachusetts, and chief justice of the said state, and minister plenipotentiary of the said United States to their high mightinesses the States General of the United Netherlands; Benjamin Franklin, Esqr., late delegate in Congress from the state of Pennsylvania, president of the convention of the said state, and minister plenipotentiary from the United States of America at the court of Versailles; John Jay, Esqr., late president of Congress and chief justice of the state of New York, and minister plenipotentiary from the said United States at the court of Madrid; to be plenipotentiaries for the concluding and signing the present definitive treaty; who after having reciprocally communicated their respective full powers have agreed upon and confirmed the following articles.

Correct me if I'm wrong but it looks like the treaty was with the United States of America. and not with the individual states.

I don't mean to be offensive when I say that I don't understand why this is so hard to see. Perhaps you can tell me what about the distinction is unclear.

The right to revolution is not a right to alter or abolish one's government any old time one pleases. The right to self-government can be legitimately claimed only by men willing to grant it to others. Southern secession/revolution was illegitimate because it was a claim to exercise the sovereignty of a self-governing community -- to alter a fundamental political order -- precisely in order to avoid granting the right of self-government to others.

The Declaration is absolutely clear that revolutionary alteration or abolition of government is a profoundly serious act, justified ONLY by the honest judgment that the current government has manifested an undeniable resolve to tyrannize over a people. Tyranny is defined, in the Declaration, as a government which has become destructive of the rights government is instituted among men to secure, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, rights which follow from men's equality before the Creator.

It is either naive or intentionally misleading to interpret the Declaration as declaring an absolute right to change governments at pleasure. It declares a right to change them, as a profoundly serious measure, when such a step is the only means remaining by which to secure the rights that are due to all men because of their equality.

It is no accident, in my opinion, that the Southern states do not make such a claim, having as they did no conceivable right to appeal to the rights of man, in order to alter their government to secure the right to own slaves.

It is simply a fallacy, a cheat of reason, to attempt to substitute the arbitrary right to change government for the right of revolution articulated in the Declaration. The South Carolina assertion of a right to leave the Union is a lawyers claim, presuming that acts of ratification are revocable at pleasure. The Tennessee document assumes that the right of revolution requires no defense in natural law, such as the Declaration clearly demands. Neither document, as quoted, offers any reason for the step taken. Neither was justified or licit. I would distinguish between them only by saying that South Carolina claims a non-existent legal right to alter the national government by departure, while the Tennessee document invokes the genuinely extra-legal right to revolution but omits to make a claim in justice to support such invocation, which is the whole point to the Declaration. Neither is, finally, more than acts of political will in the service of passion, as is clear from their careful avoidance of any REASON for the action taken.

...the war between the states was not a "slaveholders' rebellion".

Then how do you explain this?

"In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course. Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery -- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin." (Emphasis added; From the opening paragraphs of the Mississippi Declaration of Secession.)

Most of the people in the Southern Confederacy did not own slaves.

Roughly 1/3 of Southern white families were slaveholders. They were the richest people in the South and called most of the shots for the Confederacy. They also went to great lengths to try to convince the poor, nonslaveholding white Southerners that if negroes were free they would threaten the poor whites' social status and have sex with their daughters and sisters.

Secondly, he did not "push through" the 13th Amendment. He was killed before he could do any "pushing".

The Thirteenth Amendment was passed easily by the Senate on April 8, 1864, but it took a great deal of arm twisting by Lincoln to get enough Democrats in the House to pass it by the required 2/3 majority on January 31, 1865. (Source; see also McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 839.) John Wilkes Booth and his fellow Confederate conspirators saw to it that Lincoln did not live long enough to see it ratified by 3/4 of the states, but Lincoln's everlasting moral presence made that a mere formality which culminated on December 6, 1865.

"When the south seceeded, the laws of the United States did not apply to them."

As a hypothetical question, suppose secession was legitimate. Now, which branch or officer of the federal government would officially "certify" or notice this fact? Is the President supposed to be the one to decide? What if there is dispute in the "seceeding" state about the legitimacy of the action -- say, if a strong minority opposing secession claims the vote or convention was rigged -- is the President the judge of this? The Congress?

The question of the President's authority to determine that a state has left the Union is not a trivial one. It is difficult for me to understand how one can defend the claim that the President of the United States is supposed to abandon his oath to enforce federal law as soon as he decides that a state convention or referendum, having no explicit Constitutional standing at all, informs him that he should. It seems to me that at the very least he should await the confirmation of the Congress, as in the admission of new states. But that, at least, is a procedure which is defined in the Constitution.

Overall, it seems to me quite Constitutionally daring to suggest that the President can, on his own authority, recognize a secession without the Congress certifying it. But, of course, Congressional "certification" of secession is quite close to federal approval of secession. So I wonder what account secessionists give of how, actually, the federal government is intended by the Constitution to officially "notice" a secession?

In the absence of a clear answer to this question, it seems to me that the President had better keep enforcing federal law -- that, at least, is certainly his job.

This is, if you will excuse my saying so, an out of context snip. Are you quoting from your copy of the speech?

DiLorenzo quotes the same passage in his book, falsely suggesting that it supports a "right to secede." I wonder how many defenders of secession have ever - ever - even seen Adam's speech, much less read it.

First of all, he is speaking of a dissolution of the Union, not the secession of a state from it. In the preceding paragraph, he has said that the people of every state of the union possess "the same right . . . with reference to the General Government, which was exercised by the people of the United Colonies, with reference to the Supreme head of the British empire of which they formed a part." But he has made it completely clear that he is speaking of the right of revolution: "To the people alone is there reserved, as well the dissolving, as the constituent power, and that power can be exercised by them only under the tie of conscience, binding them to the retributive justice of Heaven."

Second, on the immediately preceeding page, Adams says this:

In the calm hours of self-possession, the right of a State to nullify an act of Congress, is too absurd for argument, and too odious for discussion. The right of a state to secede from the Union, is equally disowned by the principles of the Declaration of Independence."

I would be stunned if any of the authors who defend secession by quoting this one paragraph from one page of a 120 page speech by one the strongest defenders of national union in our history have ever read the entire speech. I had some trouble finding a copy -- it was published in 1839, and never, that I can find, reprinted until 1999, and Amazon has a five week wait to ship it. I don't think it's because of demand! Used copies of the reprint are non-existent, and of the 1839 issue are very expensive (I got one for $25 without a cover -- the next one was $60 and then up to $1000.)

I would love to ask DiLorenzo about his copy. I bet he's never laid eyes on it. His quotation from it in the book omits a key clause, without which the whole quotation is ungrammatical.

Sorry to go on about this. But this snip from a 163 year old speech that no one actually has or has read, contradicted (in its supposed meaning) on the facing page, is a kind of new low of secessionist "research."

DiLorenzo cites this one too, and then claims, as you do, that it is a defense of the right of states to secede, not of the advisibility of letting people say false things.

But what about this part: "or to change its republican form"?

Isn't it absolutely ironclad obvious that if you read this clip as defending the right to secede, you have to read it also as defending a right to "change" the "republican form" of the Union? BOTH are in the same SENTENCE, and those who assert BOTH are to be "let stand undisturbed." But it is absurd to say that Jefferson is defending the "right" to change the republican form of the Union! Nothing more impossible could be maintained (strong claim, but hey, this is Jefferson) than that President Jefferson, in his first inaugural, proclaimed the right to change the republican form of the Union. The Constitution commits the federal government explicitly to maintaining republican government in the states, and Jefferson would understand the alternative to republican forms to be monarchical, or tyrannical forms.

If he is defending the "right" to dissolve the union (not a secession, by the way, but a dissolution of the Union), then he is also defending a "right" to change its republican form of government.

How can people cite texts like this? I really don't understand. The really weird DiLorenzo quotes are not the ones he makes up, or lies about, but the self-refuting ones he leads with. This text is his exhibit A in the chapter on secession. Go figure.

Why would Lincoln listen to the Supreme Court, if he refused to abide by Taney's decision?

There is a huge difference in the weight that is given to a Supreme Court decision and that given a decision of a single judge in a single circuit court. And note that in Ex parte Milligan not a single Justice (not even the Democratic appointees) took issue with Lincoln's 1861 suspension of habeas corpus or his refusal to abide by Justice Taney's decision in Merryman.

Could the Court or Legislature order the arrest of Lincoln, or in any way force him to abide by that decision?

Had they objected to his actions, Congress could have threaten to impeach him and/or cut off all funding for military activities they did not approve of (eg. detaining suspected traitors without indictment). The Chief Justice would of course have presided over such impeachment proceedings (and something tells me he would not have been as fairhanded to Lincoln as Rehnquist was to Clinton). Theoretically, the Supreme Court could also raise an army of federal marshals to try to arrest a President for contempt.

...if Lincoln objected to Taney's decision, the burden was on Lincoln to challenge it.

He did challenge it by retaining the arrestees in custody. Refusing to obey a court's decision is always one option available for challenging that decision (albeit a risky one). That puts the burden on the other side to seek an order to arrest you for contempt of court. For some reason that did not occur in Merryman. It may be that Merryman chose to use the threat of a contempt of court citation as a bargaining chip to secure his evential release when things cooled down a little. In fact, he apparently was indeed released from military custody after seven weeks and then indicted in the circuit court -- though his case never came to trial because his conviction by a Maryland jury was unlikely. (See McPherson, Battle Cry, p. 289.)

...once the Confederacy had seceded I would not expect a Northern legislature to protest Lincoln's actions.

Nor would I, though they (and eventually the Supreme Court) did refuse to give Lincoln all the authority he sought with respect to military tribunals, as the Milligan case reveals.

Ex post facto legislation is prohibited.

I do not believe that a Congressional bill/resolution to approve of a Presidential suspension of habeas corpus protection would run afoul of the ex post facto restriction, but I'll try to take a look at the "Prize Cases" when I get a chance.

Thanks for raising some interesting issues.

I see a duty to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States", but I see no duty to preserve the Union. Mr. Lincoln ignored the Constitution.

Article IV provides that "The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several states." Note also the Full Faith and Credit clause of Art. IV, Section 1. In light of these provisions, it was only by preserving every state's membership in the Union that President Lincoln would be able to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States".

Unionists in the Confederate states were being persecuted for their loyalties to the U.S. and denied by the Confederates the opportunity to vote in U.S. elections, conduct interstate commerce, have debts to them recognized in all states, travel between states freely, etc. Lincoln had a Constitutional duty to attempt to relieve them of this persecution and restore their privileges and immunities as U.S. citizens.

He did things that were clearly unconstitutional.

Name one (and be sure to cite a U.S. Supreme Court decision, since the Supreme Court is the highest Constitutionally designated judicial authority in the U.S.)

Clearly the right to secession is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.

Lincoln most emphatically agreed that a right to revolution did exist, but persuasively argued that the Confederates' stated reason for seceding (i.e. to preserve slavery) was not a grievance which justifies revolution under the principles expressed in the Declaration.

Habeas Corpus is the writ that gets people in front of the court. By suspending Habeas Corpus, Lincoln made sure no cases would reach the court.

No, habeas corpus is the writ privilege which requires the government to obtain an indictment for an arrest. Anyone within the jurisdiction of the United States can obtain access to a federal court at any time, even when they are detained without an indictment.

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