Defending Lincoln

Cerfdom Weekly Commentary ^ | May 22, 2000 | Richard Allen Vinson

[ravinson]

This gives the lie to claims that a righteous North went to war in 1861 to free the slaves. Moreover, it undermines the claim that the South seceded to preserve the institution of slavery. If that had been the South's goal, then what better guarantee did it need than an unrepealable amendment to the Constitution to protect slavery as it then existed?

Nice try, but the Radical Republicans did go to war to abolish slavery, and eventually they convinced most of the rest of the Northern citizenry than abolishing slavery went hand in hand with winning the war.

The Confederates were always all about preserving slavery. That's why they rejected all compromises and insisted on writing their own Constitution to establish a government of the slaveholders, by the slaveholders, and for the slaveholders, so that slaveholding would not perish in the South.

[My2Cents]

Your flowery rhetoric about wanting freedom doesn't impress me, because as I wrote earlier in this thread, despite all the talk about how the south was motivated by "liberty," "love of the republic," "freedom," the real motivation for the southern states leaving the union was the perpetuation of the perverse institution of slavery. Someone has successfully deluded you into thinking the succession was honorable. Had it actually been for liberty, freedom, and the republic, it would have been honorable. But the heart of the matter was protecting slavery from a deteriorating political position in the nation, for which the election of a President from the free-soil, anti-slavery Republican Party was the breaking point. And as I said in an earlier thread, your defense of the Confederacy based on so-called noble motives is a sham, and is frankly embarrassing 140-plus years after the fact.

[My2Cents]

Get out. Get out of this thread while you still can....You just won't believe the invective and the irrationality you'll encounter.

I now see your point. I repent of trying to engage entrenched lunacy in a rational discussion. I suppose if these neo-Confederates had the chance, they'd withdraw from the United States again.

[x]

Other people will know more about the time table. It does seem to me that you're only looking at part of the question. The bigger part was the formation of a powerful opposing nation, Davis's call for a large army, and the Confederacy's dispatch of commissioners to other states to bang the drum for secession. The situation might have taken a different turn had their just been a few states in the Deep South which declared their independence and stopped acknowledging the federal goverment. If it was just a matter of Mr. Lincoln's tariff, Northerners would have eventually gotten tired of trying to collect it. But it was the fate of a continent which was to be decided.

[ravinson]

For one thing, it is indisputable that slavery was a doomed institution by 1860, whether or not the war was fought.

If anything, it was "doomed" by the moral force of the abolitionists, but the war certainly accelerated the process by making it clear to the Northern fence-sitters how destructive slavery was to the whole character of the white citizens of the slave states.

None of us can really say how long slavery would have continued had not the abolitionists and Unionists challenged the Confederates to fight for their "liberty" to keep others in chains. We do know that the Confederates were awfully stubborn re slavery and digging their heels in deeper and deeper as they came to identify the South with its "peculiar institution". No doubt they could have found alternative uses for slave labor if it ever became less valued in the cotton producing industry.

Under the circumstances, the most significant modern consequence of the war is the decline in legal significance of the constitutional relationship among the states and the federal government. The compact of individual freedom that was the foundation of the War of Independence was effectively abrogated.

You couldn't be more wrong on this. Individual freedom was greatly enhanced by the passage of the 13th and 14th Amendments. Certainly the Confederates gave "states' rights" a bad reputation and that shifted public confidence from state government to the federal government, but the size and degree of intrusion of government into individual liberty in the decades following the Civil War was not substantially increased. That would not happen until the influence of Lincoln's best Supreme Court nominee (Stephen J. Fields) waned in the 1930's following his resignation from the Court.

It is also beyond any argument that the significant motivating factor that led to initiation of armed conflict in the war was collection of tarriffs [sic] which were devastating to the economy of the southern states

Beyond argument only among silly Confederate glorifiers. The Confederates expressed no concern whatsoever about tariffs in their declarations of secession, nor in making their decision to attack Fort Sumter. Tariffs were a pittance compared to the value they placed on slavery ($3 billion). Source. The entire 1860 federal spending was only $63.1 million (2% of GNP).Source. Because they were stealing the labor of negroes, Southerners enjoyed a 2-1 advantage over the North in per capita income (source), so even if the Southern citizens were paying twice the taxes of Northern citizens, the slaveholders would still be getting off cheaply by more than making up for it in stolen labor. And after all, it was their legalized theft of labor and their insistence on keeping it legal that necessitated the Civil War.

...the kind of abuse of the collective power of the majority to exact benefits from the minority that the state power provisions of the constitution were designed to give the minority the power to defeat...

Who was abusing whom? The Southern slaveholders were heinously abusing their collective power of the majority to exact benefits from a minority (i.e. the slaves). That was the kind of abuse that the principles of the Declaration of Independence were designed to prevent.

But the war was a great waste in American history and the argument that the country is worse off today because it was fought has great merit.

"Waste" compared to what? The South freeing the slaves between 1861 and 1865 without a war? Not very likely. How long are you assuming that slavery would last if Lincoln and the abolitionists had said "go ahead and take your slaves and start your own country", and what value are you placing on each of the 4.5 million people years of slavery? What would you be willing to pay to keep your family members from enduring even one year of slavery?

[AmishDude]

I scanned this thread. The straw men are out in force as well. They frame your beliefs in their own way and then argue with the straw man they themselves have created.

[wardaddy]

Reasonable reply X!.....you do a far better job than some of your peers on this forum.

[wardaddy]

Not bad Arnie..

[stainlessbanner]

The death of over 400,000 Americans was simply not necessary to enforce the ultimate end of slavery

Out of 20 or more slave-holding countries, Haiti and the United States resulted in mass violence/war.

The cost of the WBTS was $6.6 Billion (1860) - that dollar amount is said to be enough for the North to buy freedom for every slave in these United States and give them 40 acres and a mule. Of course the other cost was human life - estimates say one dead soldier to every six free slaves.

Lincoln was foolish for going war - the costs in terms of human life, individual and states rights, money, and destruction were harmful to the Union he fought so hard to preserve.

[ravinson]

Out of 20 or more slave-holding countries, Haiti and the United States resulted in mass violence/war.

Tocqueville also commented on the uniqueness of Antebellum Southern society:

"In the South there are no families so poor as to not have slaves. The citizen of the Southern states becomes a sort of domestic dictator from infancy; the first notion he acquires in life is that he is born to command, and the fist habit which he contracts is that of ruling without resistance. His education tends, then, to give him the character of a haughty and hasty man, irascible, violent, ardent in his desires, impatient of obstacles..." Democracy in America (Vintage Books Ed. 1990), Vol. 2, p. 394.

The cost of the WBTS was $6.6 Billion (1860) - that dollar amount is said to be enough for the North to buy freedom for every slave in these United States and give them 40 acres and a mule.

It is true that the war was expensive, but so was slavery to the slaves -- and the Confederates were adamant about not wanting to negotiate anything, particularly slavery. As Jefferson Davis explained:

"No human power can save the Union, all the cotton states will go."(See Battle Cry, p. 254.) Even the broder states refused Lincoln's overtures to negotiate a buy out of slavery, and that's when he became a confirmed (uncompensating) abolitionist and proposed the 13th Amendment.

[Restorer]

There is little doubt that slavery would have collapsed eventually--economics drive everything and the cotton gin made slavery uneconomic--the end was in sight in the near term.

Sorry, you've got this exactly backward. The cotton gin's invention in the early 19th century was the root cause of the Civil War. It allowed short staple cotton, for the first time, to be economically separated from its seeds. This led to a massive expansion of cotton cultivation into upland areas of the South and thus to slavery becoming profitable.

Slavery was indeed a dying institution in 1800. It was uneconomic and unprofitable. There was little demand for more slaves.

Almost all prominent southerners (including the Founders) opposed its continuance in theory, but none knew how to get rid of it. Once slavery began to become profitable in the 20s and 30s there was a gradual shift, till by the time of secession there was a consensus in the South that slavery was a positive good.

Amazing how financial incentives can change a people's moral philosophy.

I don't believe effective mechanical cotton-picking machines were developed till the 1960s. Picking cotton was the major use for southern slaves.

[Restorer]

The cost of the WBTS was $6.6 Billion (1860) - that dollar amount is said to be enough for the North to buy freedom for every slave in these United States and give them 40 acres and a mule.

Quite possibly true. However, the slaveowners had no intention of allowing such a buyout, so your argument is a little silly.

How do you fit the $6.6 billion spent to preserve the Union into the theory that the war was spent simply to protect perhaps $40 million per year in tariffs on southern imports?

Does not compute.

[Colt .45]

"We Hold These Truths" by Stephen B. Presser - 'Is the Declaration of Independence part of the federal Constitution? The short answer, of course, is "no." For the Declaration to be part of the Constitution, it would have to have been included in the original document ratified by at least nine of the conventions held in the original 13 states between 1787 and 1789, or added by amendment, which requires a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress and the assent of three quarters of the state legislatures. The Declaration was never ratified by either method. It is also possible to add amendments through a new national constitutional convention, with ratification by state legislatures, but this has never happened.

Some political theorists claim that the principles of the Declaration were incorporated into the Constitution during the Civil War, through some quasi-magical amendment process conjured up, through executive fiat, by President Lincoln. This occurred sometime around when he extraconstitutionally emancipated the slaves in the states that had seceded from the Union or, perhaps, when he delivered the Gettysburg Address. Some law professors have sought to find an incorporation of the Declaration through the Reconstruction amendments; while it is true that those amendments did bring us closer to some ideas found in the Declaration, they could not—either explicitly or implicitly—make the Declaration part of the Constitution. '

So much for your idea of Lincoln's basing his War of Aggression on the Declaration. No where in the Constitution did it ever construe to limit the power of the State ergo the people! The South was paying a disproportionate burden of taxes due to the documents signed in 1790 where the debt for the Revolution was reconsidered and the Southern states had to pick up the tab for the Yankee states who were insolvent. Conveniently the Federal government never set things to rights and the South became a milch cow for the Federal Government to leech off of. Slavery, while an abhorent institution, was merely a rallying cry for Lincoln when he was losing the war during 1862. He didn't give a damn about the slaves, despite your crys of protest, he wanted to preserve the Union, thereby setting aside that which the Founders had originally established ... a small limited Federal Government, with the States retaining the majority of rights of self determination! Stop smoking that Yankee crack, study your history and open your eyes.

[stainlessbanner]

Does not compute.

Exactly! It's not supposed to make sense.

[Non-Sequitur]

bump

[Non-Sequitur]

If you bothered reading the Confederate Constitution, slave trade was banned except for receiving slaves from the United States.

You're finally admitting it protected slave imports? You have improved a little, at least.

Perhaps he was closer to his yankee brethren in Conneticut that outlawed teaching a slave to read and write in 1836

Jesus, billbears, you crack me up. Connecticut passed a law forbidding the teaching of slaves to read? All 25 or so of them? Literate slaves were a big problem were they? And I suppose it was perfectly legal to teach slaves to read in Virginia or Mississippi or Georgia or South Carolina? Heck, in South Carolina it was illegal for a black man and a white man to look out the same window, so you want us to believe that they could be taught to read?

...versus men like Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee that not only taught their slaves but were training them for the day they would be released

Oh so now it's Jackson and Lee teaching them to read, is it? Preparing them for their release, were they? In a pigs ear, billbears. Jackson taught Sunday school, there is no evidence he taught them to read. Six of the slaves in the school were his own. And far from preparing them for freedom, Jackson saw them for what they were to him - property. An investment. He thought so much of their wellbeing that he had no qualms about selling a couple of his slaves in order to buy a house. Prepare them for freedom? Pull the other one, billbears, it has bells on it.

Do a little search on lincoln's 'root,pig, or perish' ideals. He could have cared less.

And what was he to do, billbears? If there hadn't been a rebellion, what could Lincoln had done? Could he have freed the slaves? No, that would require a Constitutional amendment. Could he have gotten such an amendment through the Senate? Hardly, there were 15 slave states, 30 senators. In order to pass an amendment over their objection would have taken 61 votes. That would have required 46 states, something that didn't happen until the very early 1900's. On the other hand there was a war. Would the southern slave owners free them on their own? Not hardly, they went to war to protect the right to do just the opposite. Would free blacks have any sort of rights or freedoms down south? History has shown us that no, they wouldn't. When you get right down to it, billbears, what Lincoln was telling them was that he could get them their freedom and that was about it. And that freedom would come in the face of the most vile racist hatred directed towards them, and it would be even worse for them down south. So all Lincoln could do was tell them that they would have to fend for themselves and make a go of it or die trying. And he was right, too.

[one2many]

Hey its real simple.

If you can't secede you are a slave.

[GOPcapitalist]

So much for your familiarity with the U.S. Constitution, history, and historical literature. For one thing, James McPherson (Battle Cry of Freedom , 256) discusses the amendment proposed in 1861.

McPherson's discussion of the Corwin amendment is shaky and incomplete at best. For a better analysis, see "Explicit and Authentic Acts" by David Kyvig (1995) or most thorough discussions of the secession crisis published prior to about 1940. Aside from that, you aren't going to find much of anything thorough or accurate.

He notes therein that 3/5 of the Republican Congressman (i.e. the "Radicals") voted against this amendment (which was passed by the House on February 28, 1861), even though it appeared to be the only thing that may keep the Southern States in the Union and avoid a war.

You fail to mention a key fact. The house passed it on february 28th, but most of the confederacy had already seceded as of the beginning of the month.

Secondly, Lincoln was not even President at that time, having not yet been inaugurated,

No, but he definately applied his industry to securing its passage. Lincoln even helped draft the thing back in December of the previous year, and personally met with Corwin to map out a legislative strategy to get the thing passed. He then endorsed it in his inaugural address and urged its ratification.

Although McPherson characterizing Lincoln as having "passively endorsed" the amendment

McPherson is incorrect. Lincoln was involved in the amendment from its very beginning when Seward introduced it before senate committee back in December. At first, he lobbied the committee members in great secrecy, urging Senator Trumbull not to share his involvement with anybody but the other two senators he had involved in the process - Seward and Hamlin. As the amendment progressed, Lincoln began to back it more directly. After Thomas Corwin brought it up in its final version on the house floor in late february, Lincoln's public lobbying on its behalf was covered extensively in the newspapers. He then devoted a large segment of his inaugural address to endorsing it after it had passed.

So extensive was Lincoln's involvement in the amendment that Henry Adams wrote of it in 1861 crediting its passage to the "direct influence of the new President."

that obviously wasn't a strong enough position to sway most of the members of his own party

Lincoln exerted his influence to gather every last vote he could in favor of the amendment. It barely failed the house on the first time up, and Lincoln worked extensively to switch enough votes to pass it.

and it is questionable whether the required 3/4 of the states would ratify it anyway.

Lincoln didn't think so. He indicated that much in his first inaugural address, going so far as to call it the law of the land.

In any event and perhaps fortunately for the cause of abolitionism, the Confederates refused any compromises

Untrue. In fact, if you study the events of the secession winter, you will find it to be indisputable fact that almost every single compromise proposal of any kind on any issue came from either the southerners, the border state unionists, the northern democrats, and the moderate republicans. The ONLY faction that voted at all cost against every single effort at compromise was the radical republican faction led by Charles Sumner. And in fact, one of the many reasons the Corwin amendment failed was its date - it didn't pass until almost a month after most of the south seceded, and even then failed to address all issues other than slavery. The reason it took so long to pass was obstructionism by the Sumner faction. At one point, Sumner was even inventing claims to have made unheard parliamentary objections during debates on the amendment conducted the day before in order to slow things down and force parliamentary votes.

Back to Sumner's faction, that it proved a major block to practically any form of compromise was a fact conceded even by the top Republican leaders in Congress. Charles Francis Adams (a leading GOP congressman and lincoln's future ambassador to Britain) heavily voiced his frustrations with Sumner. His son Henry remarked that "God Almighty could not move" him. William Seward (a leading GOP senator and Lincoln's future SoS) called Sumner a "damned fool." The southerners, ranging from fireaters to the moderates, repeatedly lashed out at Sumner's obstructionism. Some of them even cited the overall incivility of his faction (as in Sumner and company were using the senate floor for childish namecalling) as the reason why they left the senate.

and attacked Fort Sumter.

The attack on Sumter only came after Beauregard caught word that Lincoln had launched a fleet of warships to increase the fort's garrison by force. The confederates preempted Lincoln's fleet by a day. They fired on the 12th of April, and Lincoln's fleet, which had come to fight its way into the fort but couldn't because the confederates beat them there, arrived on the 13th.

[GOPcapitalist]

Post 58 may interest you on Lincoln's little pet amendment that so many yankee historians conveniently gloss over and ignore. Despite ravinson suggesting otherwise based upon the historically incorrect account of it by pop historian James McPherson, you are correct about it. It was a Lincoln project, thoroughly endorsed by Lincoln, who was involved in securing its passage literally from day one in committee all the way up to his inauguration.

Yankee historians don't like to say much about it because its a large and embarrassing blemish on their hero Lincoln. Those few who even mention it at all, like McPherson, are vague and get it wrong.

I would even go so far as to say that Lincoln's slavery amendment has been intentionally ignored, especially for the last fifty years. The only modern writings on it are obscure scholarly works, like Kyvig's book, and pro-southern writings like Charles Adams.

The contemporary 1861 accounts of it, almost all of them by yankees, haven't been reprinted in decades. Henry Adams' account was first published in 1909 (50 years after it was written) and has only been reissued once since them during the 50's. The main scholarly work discussing it, also from a yankee perspective, was published in 1892 in GERMAN by a professer at the University of Freiburg. In short, it's not there in the history books because the Lincoln cult would rather it not be there, and when it does appear, they spread disinformation about it.

[GOPcapitalist]

Unrepealable amendments to the Constitution aren't constitutional to begin with.

Actually, that issue was raised and thoroughly discussed at the time. It was concluded that such an amendment could be made "unamendable" based on the precedents of Article V, which not only prescribes the amending process, but also restricts its use by providing "that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate." Because the Constitution itself made portions of its articles "unamendable" by the prescribed terms of amending the document, it was reasoned that an amendment with a similar provision could be adopted. It should also be noted that by "unamendable" the language rendered it immune to the normal amendment process, though unanimous consent could overrule it.

Which is probably why it's currently known as the 'proposed 13th amendment'.

No, the reason it is known only as proposed is due to the fact that it never achieved ratification by 3/4ths of the states.