Lincoln on the Fourth of July, 1861 [Answer to Lincoln Bashers]

Polyconomics ^ | July 3, 2002 | Jude Wanniski

[B.Bumbleberry]

Memo To: Thomas DiLorenzo, author, The Real Lincoln
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: Defending Abraham Lincoln II

First of all, professor, when I wrote a memo defending Lincoln last week I left the impression to you and to others that I criticized your Lincoln book without having read it. What I tried to say in my memo directed at Prof. Clyde Wilson, who wrote a commentary on your book for Lew Rockwell's website, is that I did not think I had to read your book because I'd read so much about it at the Rockwell site. But when someone sent me a copy, I did at least get into it far enough -- 53 pages -- to see that in rejecting at the outset Lincoln's motive in preserving the union, you set forth an imagined hidden agenda on his part that could never have justified the death and destruction of the Civil War. I put the book aside with no plan to comment on it at all, until I read Prof. Wilson's commentary, with the Lincoln quote that "Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them."

Where Professor Wilson thought he cornered Lincoln with the 1848 quote, I said it is entirely consistent with Lincoln's behavior regarding the Southern rebellion. The Confederates tried and did not succeed because while they were inclined, they did not have the power. In the few days after my defense appeared at my website and on the Townhall site, I got several dozen e-mails from fans of yours and critics of Lincoln who strenuously disagreed with my approach. A number argued that I was saying that "might makes right," an idea with which I basically agree.

All of history is testimony to that axiom, which is that the stronger defeat the weaker. It was Lincoln himself who said that "right makes might," in his 1860 Cooper Union speech, which makes the argument seem circular. But both the North and the South believed they were in the right on the issue of secession, yet it was the Union that had the might. At the outset, the Confederates never imagined there would be such a struggle, but they certainly did believe they would be victorious. It's easy now to say the North had more manpower and material, but that was known at the time. Most recently, Iraq with 20 million people defeated Iran with 60 million. Our Army War College concluded that Iraq simply had better generals, for one reason or another. The South clearly had better generals than the North, but it was Lincoln's superiority as a political leader that held together the will of the free states to provide the men and material through the awful carnage on both sides.

He could never have succeeded if he was as crass as to fight for the protective tariff favored by the north, a possibility you spend an entire chapter on. Nor could he have rallied the North to end slavery in the South, as only a small fraction of Northerners believed the "inferior" Negro was worth fighting and dying for. As an economist, not a historian, you suggest Lincoln could have asked Northern taxpayers to buy the freedom of the 3.5 million slaves, which is the idea that led me to dismiss your book as "trivial and sophomoric." In my memo last week, I mentioned the 1952 Benjamin Thomas biography of Lincoln, which I've listed on my website for years as one of the most important books I have ever read, but was not in your bibliography. Here is Thomas getting to Lincoln's core, in Chapter XIII, A War for Democracy:

Lincoln did not flinch from a decision for civil war; some things in life and history are worthy of death and suffering. From his boyhood he had sought the meaning of the story of America. He found it in the political philosophy of Thomas Jefferson as it extolled the rights of man.

Lincoln often let his mind dwell on Jefferson and those other earnest patriots who met at Independence Hall and brought new hope to all mankind with the vow 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." How noble and far-seeing those men were, he thought, as they built a national structure on such foundations that if some man, some faction, or some interest in time to come should set up the doctrine that none but rich men or none but white men, or none but Anglo-Saxons, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might find in this great human document a source of faith and courage to keep up the fight for truth, justice, and mercy among men! Lincoln believed that in this affirmation of democracy lay the great hope of the world. America must demonstrate that in these principles mankind would find the surest way to peace, prosperity and happiness.

One day when young John Hay brought some papers to Lincoln's office, the two men talked about the issues of the war. "For my part," the older man explained, "I consider the central idea pervading this struggle is the necessity that upon us of proving that popular government is not an absurdity. We must settle this question now, whether in a free government the minority have the right to break up the government whenever they choose. If we fail it will go far to prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves.

Lincoln never professed learning in world history. Yet, from the very beginning he sensed the world significance of the American crisis. From the time of the American Revolution, Europe had looked to America as the proving-ground of democracy. Inspired by the example of that Revolution, European peoples had also striven for self-government, but despotism and autocracy had been too well entrenched. The privileged classes of Europe, who looked upon democracy as little better than mob rule, sneered at American political theories as sure to fail.

"This is essentially a People's contest," Lincoln explained to Congress when it assembled on July 4, 1861. "On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form, that substance of government, whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men – to lift artificial weights from all shoulders – to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all – to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.

Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it, our people have already settled – the successful establishing and the successful administering of it. One still remains – its successful maintenance against a formidable attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them to demonstrate to the world, that those who can fairly carry an election, can also suppress a rebellion – that ballots are the rightful, and peaceful, successors of bullets, and that when ballots have fairly, and constitutionality, decided, there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace: teaching men that what they cannot take by election, neither can they take it by a war– teaching all, the folly of being the beginners of war.

Lincoln's primary purpose throughout the war was to save the Union. But this was incidental to a far more important objective: for as he saw the issue in its broader aspects, upon the fate of the Union hung the fate of world democracy . He must not allow the Southern people to dissever the nation or to renounce the philosophy of human freedom and equality for the false concept of a master race.

Mindful of his own pedigree of toil, Lincoln explained to the Congress how free institutions had elevated the American people beyond any others in the world. So large an army as the government now had it at its command "was never before known, without a soldier in it, but who had taken his place there of his own free choice." And there was scarcely a regiment in that army from which a president, a cabinet, a congress, and possibly a supreme court capable of administering the government could not be chosen. Whoever chose to abandon such a form of government, warned Lincoln, had best think well of what might come in its place.

* * * * *

I've advised several of the people who wrote in to me on your behalf that I do think you have performed a most useful service. History never stops testing its heroes and its villains, looking for new insights about the way the world works. I really cannot quarrel with any of the facts you present in The Real Lincoln, as you seem to have everything properly foot-noted. If it had not been for your efforts, I would not have been spurred to re-read the Benjamin Thomas biography, to recommend it to you, and to recommend it to our audience. You really have to give Honest Abe credit. He did prove for all time that it is possible for ordinary people to maintain a popular democracy. Those men who fell in battle under the Confederate flag are just as much a part of that proof as those who died for the Union, and for that I honor the memory of the Gray as well as the Blue. History meant for there to be a Great War, not a simple skirmish, or the issues it resolved might still be in doubt.

[Rebelo3]

Well, I'm gonna jump into some deep water here. What we're dealing with is that unanswered question in the Bible: What is Truth? Much of what we believe is based on lies and propaganda. The infamous Chump Sherman served in South Carolina when he was a young soldier. At that time the Northern papers were filled with hateful attacks on the South and slavery. Chump read those papers and wrote that their view of slavery was "a delusion of the brain." Most of what is believed about the South and slavery is based on those "delusions of the brain". But our relativist friends would argue that perception is truth, it's all subjective, like morality, it's whatever you want to believe. The late CIA Director William Colby put it this way"...truth is in the mind of the beholder, if you affect what he believes, that's the truth." That is the philosophy of the government. the establishment, PC folks.......well, and others. But is truth a subjective perception that exist only in our minds, or is truth something that exist in objective reality out there in front of our faces? If we all just believe that the world is flat, would that make it flat? I believe that we should try to insure that our perceptions in our heads reflect what's out there in God's time-space creation. In Vietnam, I saw the conflict between propaganda induced percepitions about our defending freedom, etc, and the harsh objective reality that we were supporting a corrupt Saigon government which little popular support, a government created by the CIA; and we were fighting a war the Vietnamese would not fight. I came away with a clear understanding that our government is not our country. I believe in the Constitution, and I love my country, but since 1966, I haven't had any respect for the US Government. So, with all that said, I can not understand how anyone can read what Lincoln said and did, and believe that he was acting in accordance with the Constitution, the rule of law and the ideals on which this country was founded.

[FirstFlaBn]

There was a war because the fire-eaters wanted it, and started it, to vindicate their so-called "right to secession," and to overturn the result of a constitutional election.

Piffle. There was a war because of secession. There was secession because of the plainly stated purpose, oft repeated, of the Republicans’ refusal to accept the US Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, a case they themselves had insisted on.

...we deny the authority of Congress, of a territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to Slavery in any Territory of the United States.

That’s from the 1860 Republican platform, three years after Dred Scott. It directly contravenes the court’s decision that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the territories. It is essentially the same as their 1856 platform plank. In 1856 it was a legitimate political stance to take. However, after the court made its decision, it was the party’s duty to obey it, though they were certainly entitled to complain about it and commit to work hard to reverse it. They chose not to. They had simply invested too much of their rhetoric in their opposition to do that and refused to reconsider even after South Carolina seceded, but before the rest of the Lower South decided (three months before Sumter). That’s statesmanship for you!

Now, here’s what Lincoln had to say as to the responsibility of interested parties on both sides while the case was pending in the Supreme Court:

I grant you that an unconstitutional act is not a law; but I do not ask, and will not take your [Democrats'] construction of the Constitution. The Supreme Court of the United States is the tribunal to decide such questions, and we will submit to its decisions; and if you do also, there will be an end of the matter.

But wait; he’s not quite finished. A year later, after his side loses (and recall it was his side that resurrected a moribund case), he begins to crawfish:

We believe, as much as Judge Douglas, (perhaps more) in obedience to, and respect for the judicial department of government. We think its decisions on Constitutional questions, when fully settled, should control, not only the particular cases decided, but the general policy of the country, subject to be disturbed only by amendments of the Constitution as provided in that instrument itself.

Gee, I reread his previous statement and I can’t seem to find any qualification in it. You don’t really suppose that if his side had won the case he would have recommended waiting for more cases to move through the system before accepting the decision, do you? Let’s look at what his other qualifiers are concerning this decision:

If this important decision had been made by the unanimous concurrence of the judges,

I see, now important decisions only count if they’re unanimous

and without any apparent partisan bias,

I’m starting to get the picture - shades of the Gore people’s hysterical reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision on the Florida 2000 election case. Now, to be valid, the justices have to pass a political test

and in accordance with legal public expectation,

Now that’s really cute. Apparently, per Lincoln, an opinion poll should be conducted before the Supreme Court can decide a case.

and with the steady practice of the departments throughout our history, and had been in no part, based on assumed historical facts which are not really true; or, if wanting in some of these, it had been before the court more than once, and had there been affirmed and re-affirmed through a course of years, it then might be, perhaps would be, factious, nay, even revolutionary, to not acquiesce in it as a precedent.

By my count that’s eight qualifiers. Shameful. Nobody forced Lincoln to make the unequivocal statements prior to the decision, he just thirsted for the political edge this goading of his opponents provided him. This episode alone provided the South enough evidence that they would be taking a big risk in trusting in ANYTHING a person capable of such an exposition as the above uttered. You can quote the First Inaugural all you want, and it is pretty spiffy as literature, but having seen Lincoln talk out of both sides of his mouth in the above case, there was enough of a track record to discount any soothing promises of good intentions. His words simply could not be relied upon.

To quote your words, "why is this so hard to see?"

[CyberCowboy777]

Which side made the first attack?

[GOPcapitalist]

Jude W. is somewhat silly on this matter,

Endorsement of the might makes right concept is the embodiment of silliness. It is my hope that he took the position he did without realizing the consequences of such a position.

Laws were set aside

So was the United States Constitution under Lincoln's "care."

Federal property taken

Property that resided firmly within the borders of confederate states most of it several hundred miles away from the nearest piece of northern territory. British property in the colonies was also taken when they rebelled. Does that mean Britain's "right" to garrison a fort blocking the entrance to American harbors was violated and has been in a state of violation for the last 200 years?

and finally, the flag fired upon.

But not until it was known that a fleet of warships lay just over the horizon ready to fight its way into Sumter on Lincoln's command and in fact specifically tasked to do so.

Secession, as R.E. Lee wrote his son, "is nothing but rebellion."

I would call it a formalized exercise of revolutionary rights conducted in a manner situated to ensure the greatest degree of legitimacy behind the choice to exercise that right and presented in a manner in which the turmoil and bloodshed of less-formalized exercises of that right are sought to be avoided.

There was a war because the fire-eaters wanted it and started it

Did they though? I don't recall any fire-eaters sending war fleets tasked to fight their way into new york harbor. Nor do I recall any fire-eaters raising an invasion army and marching it on Washington and in fact, Jefferson Davis specifically prevented such an action from occurring after the victory at manassas. Nor do I recall any fire-eaters organizing a massive blockade of northern ports on the grounds of revenue collection or any other reason. All three would have been blatant acts of war had they done so, yet they did not. But Lincoln definately did.

to vindicate their so-called "right to secession," and to overturn the result of a constitutional election.

Aside from the assassination in 1865 in which case presidential succession to the properly seated vice president occured, I don't recall any incident in which Lincoln's election was ever overturned. Nor would it have been had he simply allowed the south to leave in peace. Lincoln would have remained president without any questions asked.

[WhiskeyPapa]

Uh. We wouldn't have a country if Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and the boys didn't decide to secede.

Did Washington, Adams, Jefferson et al, act under law? No. Then you must agree that secession is inherently illegal. Right?

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

Lincoln took an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution; yet he threw the Constitution and the rule of law out the window and took powers delegated to the courts and to congress.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1862 that President Lincoln acted correctly. They referred to the "so-called Confederate states" as being in a state of rebellion that the federal government was empowered -- under law-- to put down. They further ruled in 1862 that the president was the proper agent within the Constitutional framework to put down that rebellion.

Facts are so inconvenient to the neo-reb rant.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

Wasn't about slavery,never was.

Four of the first seven so-called seceded states made plain that the cause -was- slavery

Walt

[GGGLLLFFF]

Those who deny the ultimate cause of the Civil War was slavery should read the reasons set out by the seceding states. Here is a link to them:
http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html

The Civil War was about slavery and it was caused by Lincoln's opposition to it.

[ml/nj]

Great post.

I think I've been reading quite a bit about Lincoln since I learned that I all we were taught in high school isn't all there is to learn, but there was quite a bit in your message that was new to me. And you tied it together nicely too.

I hope you don't mind my asking if this is your own analysis, or if it is a restating of someone elses work.

ML/NJ

[ml/nj]

Which side made the first attack?

We did.

ML/NJ (Honest Yankee)

[WhiskeyPapa]

Which side made the first attack?

We did.

ML/NJ (Honest Yankee)

Straight from "1984".

People think of Fort Sumter, which was the first overt act of the war. They should also remember that the rebels fired on the Star of the West, which was of course flying Old Glory, in January, 1861.

Walt

[ml/nj]

Did Washington, Adams, Jefferson et al, act under law? No. Then you must agree that secession is inherently illegal. Right?

The Founders believed in something called Natural Law. You know: "the laws of nature and of nature's God" and "We hold these truths to be self-evident." I think they were right.

These ideas were the basis upon which the United States was formed. We have moved so far away from this basis that I had been finding that all the stuff I quote from Madison, Jefferson, and others about what they intended our government to be, has become irrelevant. My search as to how it became irrelevant led me to the Hero, Lincoln.

He is the one, in my humble opinion, who acted illegally.

Resistance to tyranny is not illegal.

ML/NJ

[WhiskeyPapa]

That is why they called themselves, truly, "rebels."

For the neo-rebs, secession is legal and illegal by turns, as it suits them.

They cite the "secession" of the colonies from the Crown, clearly an illegal act under the extant laws and then call the so-called secession of the rebellious states legal. They want to have their cake and their Orwellian definition of secession too.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

Resistance to tyranny is not illegal.

Fuzzy headed.

Resistance to tyranny can clearly be --illegal-- under Man's law. God's law is another story as Jefferson indicated in the D of I.

Now, this is where I make my obligatory request for the tyranny of the government prior to 1860, which, sure as little green apples, you will ignore.

Walt

[ml/nj]

People think of Fort Sumter, which was the first overt act of the war.

What an unexpected response!

You know, I used to think the South started it too, but then I started reading a little bit of history, and started to apply a little bit of common sense. The history reading tells me that Lincoln cleverly manouvered to have people in South Carolina "fire the first shot," which I assume they did. And Lincoln was shocked. Shocked!

Blockades are also overt acts of war. Common sense tells me that if someone I don't know comes into my house and starts up the stairs while I am in my bedroom, and I decide to shoot him, that I am not the one to have initiated hostilities.

I guess you think David Koresh started things too.

(Lincoln's government does.)

ML/NJ

[ml/nj]

Now, this is where I make my obligatory request for the tyranny of the government prior to 1860, which, sure as little green apples, you will ignore.

US Constitution, Article I Section 8 Clause 1: all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

I cannot cite a source at the moment, but it is my understanding that during the glorious year of 1860, which you picked, more that 85% of the revenues collected from tarriffs came from the South. How close to 100% does the burden on a legislative minority have to get before you would call it tyranny?

Now you can say that the tarriff rate was uniform, but it wasn't the rate that was intended by the Framers to be uniform, but the burden. Consider:

James Madison to George Thompson, 29 Jan. 1789: The question to be considered then is which of the two systems, that of requisitions or that of direct taxes, will best answer the essential purpose of making every State bear it's equitable share of the Common burdens. Shall we put our trust in the system of requisitions, by which each State will furnish or not furnish its share as it may like? Reason tells us this can never succeed. Some States will be more just than others, some less just: Some will be more patriotic; others less patriotic; some will be more, some less immediately concerned in the evil to be guarded against or in the good to be obtained. The States therefore not feeling equal motives will not furnish equal aids: Those who furnish most will complain of those who furnish least. From complaints on one side will spring ill will on both sides; from ill will, quarrels; from quarrels, wars; and from wars a long catalogue of evils including the dreadful evils of disunion and a general confusion. Such is the lesson which reason teaches us.

You may think the 16th Amendment which legally overturned this requirement of uniformity enhanced our liberty. I think it helped move us closer to the tyranny the Framers sought to avoid.

ML/NJ

[agrandis]

Yeah - I guess my post didn't say much - it's just that I couldn't follow much of your train of thought - you're all over the board. That's okay, though, I suppose. :)

I don't live in GA anymore, but it IS a nice state, outside of Atlanta.

[agrandis]

Four of the first seven so-called seceded states made plain that the cause -was- slavery

Such a conveniently isolated point, since none of the invading states made plain that the cause was slavery.

[agrandis]

Your post 21 is good - thank you. Being born in 1968, I used to have a simplistic view of Vietnam, and thought the government had been doing the right thing, and was hamstrung by hippies and radicals. I still have no tolerance for hippies and radicals, but they were right about one thing: we shouldn't have been in Vietnam. That doesn't excuse Bill Clinton for actively supporting the brutal commies, while his countrymen were fighting in that nightmare.

As to Lincoln - I think people really get irate when you point out the truth, because the truth of that conflict is very, very uncomfortable for any American.

Stay well, work hard, and remain a true patriot. Deo vindice!

[agrandis]

Jolly good fighting, bloke! Good to see an honest (and articulate) Yankee.