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Samizdata quote of the day “You will take possession by military force, of the printing establishments of the New York World and Journal of Commerce… and prohibit any further publication thereof… you are therefore commanded forthwith to arrest and imprison… the editors, proprietors and publishers of the aforesaid newspapers”
Order from Abraham Lincoln to General John Dix, May 18, 1864.
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Quickly, change the author of the quote from Lincoln to George W. Bush. Then we can have a bit of fun and see if we can spot it at the next left-wing anti-this-and-that rally.
Part of the govts response to a forged presidential proclamation published by the organ in question
http://www.civilwarhome.com/fakeproclamation.htm
” I think the authors will be detected, and I need not add that I shall in that case arrest and imprison them for trifling in so infamous a manner with the authority of the Government” – General Dix
Yep. Just what one would expect from a Statist. If there were a fraud case, then there are courts. There do not seem to be any references to court cases here… ah, but that is because Abe suspended Habeas Corpus for the entirety of his reign and tossed people into what would today be called concentration camps. No trial. No appeal. And that was just for citizens of the North!
Those were not the only newspapers who were bullied, threatened, trashed, had editors imprisoned without trial… the list is fairly long.
Talk about suppresion of dissent? Lincoln used State power to utterly *crush* the peace movement of his era.
Given the history of the time, I find the purported forgery quite humorous. They were taking the piss out of a tyrant.
I think this compares favorably to the events that brought down a certain well known TV news anchor. Obviously fraudulent documents about a president during war time that slip past vetting and are published… and then the media installations at fault are taken over by the military and the news staff and management taken military prisoner… oh, wait… that didn’t happen this time!
Well, to be perfectly fair, you should investigate the manner in which the Confederacy stifled dissent as well.
Just as, if not more so, as draconian as Lincoln.
That wasn’t a happy time. Obviously.
We should be glad that nowadays, we have other, better, non-statist means of rebutting fraudulent claims. Back in the day, there was no internet, no blogosphere to check things over. The word of the paper was accepted as fact. Still is by many people, even now.
What was Lincoln to do? Endure it, and have his authority and the will to wage the war be undermined by these folks? Going to court would take a while, and I wager the paper had already taken such an action into consideration.
As always, we can compare to present times. Bush could had taken Dan Rather and gang to court, you say. Well, what are the consequences? He’ll be depicted as petty-minded, and the left would be screaming at him of using the courts to suppress their freedom of speech. What that would have done to his re-election chances, is anybody’s guess. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
And the same thing would have happened to Lincoln. Taking the piss out of a tyrant might be fun, but the way they did it left no doubt that they were trying, in rather underhanded ways, to undermine the war effort and rally public opinion against Lincoln.
TWG
Oh, but wouldn’t they love to keep a hold on the Web.
A democracy is pretty resiliant. I don’t think I’m gonna lose much sleep over this issue.
Actually it probably would not have happened to Lincoln. Any one who crossed him was in prison without bail, charges or warrant.
Yeah, how terrible, shutting down a newspaper that was obviously trying to foment further anti-draft riots. The previous years riots having caused numerous deaths, and parts of New York city burnt to the ground.
(Draft Riots)
Ah, yes. The riots by the Irish who were being drafted straight off the boat and sent to fight in a war while anyone with money could buy their way out of enslavement. Are those the riots you mean?
BTW, I was a draft rioter meself back before that form of slavery was finally abolished in the US.
If you read to the very bottom of the fake proclaimation page, you’d see that the perpetrators were reporters hoping to make a killing on gold futures by phreaking the markets with this fraudulent story. Absolutely no concern for possible damage, injury, or death had draft riots resulted.
In short: they perpetrated fraud. True libertarians oppose BOTH the use of Force AND Fraud. I see too many who feel that fraud is okay if justified by political or other motivations. Fraud is not a victimless crime.
And your solution to fraud would be to send the army in??? As Dale said, so let him use the courts if there was fraud.
And who would you propose would have dragged in suspects for questioning, investigation, and arrested perpetrators? That was the middle of the 19th century in the US. Police agencies back then were little more than paid thugs of politicians. Ideas of investigation did not exist among police forces beyond beating what passed for what police wanted to hear out of their suspects. Try not to apply modern television ideas of CSI to fit your prejudices.
If the Army was not to do it, the other proper jurisdiction for investigation of the counterfeiting of presidential orders would have been the Secret Service, which had a well earned reputation as a torture first, ask questions later type of organization at the time.
Given the times, I would say the Army was probably the tamest and safest group to do the arresting and investigating. Their officers were all well educated in the public institution of West Point, typically trained in the sciences and engineering. They all were answerable and accountable by military law to civilian leadership.
Additionally, if you follow the correspondence going on between Dix and Seward, it is quite clear that it was the military officer who was counseling moderation while Seward was hot under the collar, suspecting insubordination and a refusal to follow orders.
Whether better prepared or not, the actions were utterly totally unconstitutional and illegal. Perhaps Dix was trying to waffle on this because he was worried there might be repercussions after the war.
Maybe I’m obtuse, but it seems to me that Lincoln is saying that anyone who prints the false proclamation after the government has declared it to be fraudulent is to be arrested, and the newspaper offices seized.
The fire-eating Stanton is the one who sends the overreacting order, and General Dix at the other end takes a more moderate view, although naturally unable to prevail against his lawful superior, Stanton.
Lincoln gives orders to “arrest and imprison” “after public notice has been given of the falsehood of said publication,” “all such persons as” “print and publish the same.” Lincoln is saying that further publication is to be punished, but Stanton, a harsh and hasty man, takes the bit between his teeth.
I don’t think Lincoln’s order is ambiguous, just not so clear as Grant’s orders famously were. But I have to add that one of the duties and perils of being an officer is interpreting ambiguous orders from above, orders that one suspects have been made ambiguous in order to let the blame fall on the subordinate should things turn out badly.
Let’s put it in context. If George Bush had given orders to Condi Rice to have the military arrest Dan Rather, Betsy West, Josh Howard and Mary Murphy and they had then seized thepremises of CBS news for some period of time, what would be your reaction?
I suggest it would not be to argue they were even faintly justified in their actions. There would be a impeachment conviction and possibly criminal actions.
This did not happen to Lincoln because he had already cowed those who would have dared call the government actions criminal.
Dear Dale,
Thanks for the nudge.
I’ve re-read the order and see that the two newspapers and their editors are singled out, the editors to be taken into custody and the offices to be locked to prevent further publication. Lincoln did not mention the telegraph office, but the Dix’s concern about of the dissemination of the false proclamation by departing steamers (“Please answer immediately for steamer”) probably led Stanton to think of the telegraph offices as the other means of dissemination.
So Lincoln did act decisively to quash the chance of a repeat of the New York Draft Riots and to prevent further spread of defeatist black propaganda. That’s war for you. We had a number of states barely hanging with the Union, Copperheads in Congress, and a population (including spies) that was able to pass fairly readily between the territories of the two contending powers. The home front was in its own way a battle field.
Lincoln did save his country, but he wasn’t superhuman.
And thanks to Coinin for his swift posting of interesting and relevant material.
Imagine if Bush had a general who made direct attacks against civilian targets.
Ah, yes. The riots by the Irish who were being drafted straight off the boat and sent to fight in a war …
Whatever view one takes of conscription, there’s some dodgy logic at work here. The idea that there is something especially justifiable about recent immigrants seeking to evade an existing draft is extremely morally dubious. What defence is there for such a policy beyond the belief that they cannot be trusted and their loyalty is in doubt – in which case why let them into the country at all?
Lincoln was the worst tyrant and hypocrite in America’s history, and ever since his death he has been held up by statists as the model of a ‘strong’ leader.
Generations of gullible kids have been taught that the war of 1860-65 was fought ‘to free the slaves’, and that the Union was an eternal and unbreakable compact rather than a free association of sovereignties.
For the whole of his political career, Lincoln, a disciple of Henry Clay, was a shill for bankers and big business hand in glove with government, a protectionist and a racist who wanted emancipated blacks to be shipped out of the country following the war.
There has always been a minority among historians who know what Lincoln did to American constitutional traditions, and what a Pandora’s Box of encroachments on freedom he opened.
Here’s a good recent study:
http://tinyurl.com/rma36
And here the black economist Walter Williams weighs in against the ‘Great Centralizer’:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/w-williams1.html
Sic semper tyrannis!
Dale, ah yes, your beloved Irish immigrants who went around New York lynching free blacks. I’m sure you positively supported their actions, right? After all, you sound like you supported the actions of the Irish immigrants in ALL their actions during the New York city anti-pulling-their-weight-as-Americans-riots. I realize that you think that Irish-Americans should somehow be exempt from the very obligations expected of all other Americans.
I realise Americans often do not ‘get’ irony, but in the war said to be against slavery, you think that conscripting people against their will into an army is okay (it is just an ‘obligation’) but conscripting people into agricultural work (i.e. slavery) is not okay?
Read more of the history. The North was racist to the core, although it was somewhat against slavery, so long as they stayed in the South afterwards or, as Lincoln wanted, sent back to Africa. The Irish were on the bottom of the heap in New York right along with the blacks there. If you read just about anything from the time (outside of the minority abolitionists) the racialism sounds like something you expect from the Nazi’s, and in fact all the Nazi’s ideas were was an extension of that same long ‘tradition’ of ‘we are the superior race’. (About the only good thing you can say about the Nazi’s was that they made those ideas unfashionable in polite society).
You focused on the fact that they were Irish and not on the fact that was really important. A draft is SLAVERY. I have nothing against serving in the military or those who choose to do so, but I have exactly the same feeling about rounding up people and forcing them to be cannon fodder as I would towards rounding up people and forcing them to dig ditches or farm cotton. No difference in my mind.
So what we have is that Lincoln abrogated the Constitution; he goaded the South into War; then he took the country into a bloody contest which took 600,000 lives and laid waste to half the country.
If freeing the slaves had been his goal (it was NOT), he could have let the Confederacy go; repealed the Fugitive Slave Act and let it be known that any slave who made it across the border was free. Something like 1000 a year were escaping to Canada even with the law enforcement returning them. With active assistance the numbers would have skyrocketed.
This happened in other parts of the world where there was some place for slaves to escape to. The slaveholders capital just upped stakes and took itself elsewhere.
Given where the markets were, if the US had remained the sort of nation it was intended to be, with a weak central government handling little more than the coordination of national defense using voluntary forces provided by the States and enforcing free commerce amongst the States, it is likely the couple southern states which had left the union would have eventually returned.
Note that it was not until Sumter that other States (Virginia among them I believe) left the Union.
So why was the US the only place where slavery was ended by war that was not only bloody, but was one of the bloodiest in history to that time?
One problem: to be a citizen of a particular nation means taking on the obligations and duties of a citizen. If that includes serving in the army, then so be it.
I’m a draftee in my country’s army. I can leave, get another citizenship, should I choose to. But I don’t, and by accepting my citizenship I also willingly accept the duties and obligations I’m due to my country. I gave up almost 3 years of my life. I didn’t have to, I could immigrate elsewhere, but that is the price I have to pay for my citizenship.
If people didn’t want to serve, then they can get out of the US and go to Canada. But no, they want their cake(their citizenship) and eat it at the same time(no draft, no obligations, no nothing).
I agree with Dale that military drafts are a form of slavery. They also result in a poor quality military. Which is perhaps why you never hear UK or US generals these days calling for the reintroduction of national service.
The US civil war was immensely destructive. My suspicion is that economic considerations could’ve ended slavery without tearing the US to bits. It was largely economic considerations which ended slavery in the British Empire.
Any comment on the war of 1861-1865 that is not proUnion is going to get attacked as pro slavery or just “racist”.
However, the Federal government has no right to prevent a State leaving the Union.
Such a right can not be found in the Constution anywhere (which is why Lincoln did not want the any case on this to go to the Supreme Court).
Besides which Texas (to take one example) had reserved the right to leave the Union in the very treaty by which it joined the Union (the treaty that Congress approved).
On the slavery point.
Simply refusing to enforce fugitive slave laws (which would hardly be valid in relation to a State that had left the Union and become a different country) would have brought the evil practice to its knees in time (as happened among the states of Brazil).
Remember the border was many hundreds of miles long and had few natural defences.
However, if one has decided upon war (and sometimes war is not avoidable) then, of course, there is likely to be censorship and the killing of civilians (and so on).
Such things are unfortunate, but it is silly to act shocked if they come.
A real “I suspect that there is sex going on in this brothel” attitude.
This does not mean censership should not be opposed, or that the killing of civilians should not be punished.
But once one has opted for war, the door is open.
To be a citizen of a *free* country, you have a moral obligation to *volunteer* to defend your home when it is threatened. There can be a debate over what threatened means, but perhaps the best way to settle it is to simply let individual make up their own mind and join up or not join up depending on their own decision.
If the government can not get enough volunteers for its adventure, then perhaps it should rethink what it is doing. It is more likely the government is actually in the wrong than the people who are *not* volunteering.
Conscript armies were what made the industrial scale murder of the 20th century possible. Conscripts are cannon fodder to be thrown away and used up as their owners see fit.
What difference is there between a government with a slave army and a plantation holder with a slave work force? None that I can see. Except the slave will probably live longer and the conscript will eventually be freed if he lives long enough.
Texas is not the only one to put it in writing. The States of New York, Rhode Island and Virginia also specified the right of Secession in their ordinances of ratifcation of the US Constitution. The other 9 original States believed it the right of Secession to be self evident.
After all, State meant Nation in those days and everyone knew they were States. Except Pennsylvania, which called itself a Commonwealth instead.
Here is the relevent portion of the Virginia 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.”
You can find the rest of it here: http://www.usconstitution.net/rat_va.html
Presumably, then, Britain in 1939 should just have tried to fight Germany with a purely volunteer force and, if enough people didn’t volunteer, then presumably the government was wrong and it would have been right for Germany to invade and occupy Britain? After all, conscription is slavery, is it not? Better to live on your knees than die on your knees, hmm?
Some realism is needed here.
Fetishistic constitutional pedantry won’t win any arguments, although it’s almost as entertaining as reading the lunatic arguments of and exasperated court judgements against the tax protesters. The federal government in the civil war made the point that, whatever original intentions mights have been – and that’s a highly dubious and subjective line of enquiry – the federation is NOW intended to be permanent and any state seeking to secede had better be ready to fight for it. That’s the reality of it, and retreating to legalistic pedantry about clause so-and-so says otherwise simply makes you look foolish.
There is a difference between liberty in rhetoric and liberty in practice.
EG
Paul Marks: “Any comment on the war of 1861-1865 that is not proUnion is going to get attacked as pro slavery or just “racist”.
“However, the Federal government has no right to prevent a State leaving the Union.”
Quite right. Glad you didn’t call it the Civil War either, because it wasn’t. It was a war of conquest.
Slavery would have ended within a generation anyway. It was already becoming unaffordable: only 10pc of southern whites owned slaves, the plantations were like huge welfare states and the more repressive laws were falling into disuse as blacks became craftsmen and tradesmen. For instance, the Virginia law forbidding literacy was such a joke that Stonewall Jackson taught his slaves to read and write from the Bible every Sunday afternoon.
The forthcoming invention of the mechanical cotton reaper would have been the coup de grace for chattel slavery. The ‘peculiar institution’ had only been perpetuated accidentally by Eil Whitney’s cotton gin, which stoked demand for a plant which had to be hand-picked.
The United States were usually spoken of in the plural before the War, befitting a voluntary association of states which often called themselves ‘nations’. Republican government was often equated with the pluralism, cantonal independence and weak central administration of Switzerland, the foreign country most admired by Americans in the early 19th century.
After the War the USA became singular, in the ever-tightening grip of DC. The slaughter and spoliation did no lasting good to the blacks: they merely became sharecroppers, rigidly segregated and hemmed in by Jim Crow laws which it took their northern ‘benefactors’ a century to abolish.
Freeing slaves was as bogus and ex post facto a justification for the War as Bush’s reasons for going into Iraq. It was fought to preserve the industrial and commercial North’s unjust loading of taxes and tariffs on to the South, to keep it agrarian and docile, and to plunder the wealth cotton had given the southern states which threatened to let them industrialise and break free of the bankers’ grip.
All the CSA ever wanted was to depart in peace. Lincoln compelled half a million men to die to stop their self-determination.
On the whole I take a pretty cynical or realist line, rather than an ideological one, when it comes to explaining foreign policy (especially that of other countries). So I am quite happy to accept that Lincoln’s primary or even sole motivation was to keep the territory of the Confederate states under American control rather than see a strong independent nation form on her (new) Southern borders. I am sure plenty of anti-Lincoln commenters can provide quotations to support this view and to confute the view that the war was fought for the sake of Southern blacks.
But surely those who loathe Lincoln should extend at least as much loathing towards James Madison’s governments actions in 1912? Both wars were probably fought for about the same reason: to ensure the United States was the absolute dominant power on the continent. But if Lincoln acting to keep the southern states under Washington’s control (and stop slavery in the process) was unjustifiable, how much less justifiable was the attempt to conquer Canada in 1812?
Doh – obviously that first date should say 1812.
Re: Off the Boat conscription
Citizens may be obliged to give military service (in a manner consistent with their conscience) in defense of their homeland. Were the recent immigrates and their families given immediate citizenship in exchange for their service?
Re: Specious Comparisons?
1) The memo that resulted in Rather’s resignation compared to the presidential proclamation in question. Was it the content and the source that was fraudulent in both situations?
2) The political and military situations facing Lincoln and Bush. Was the immediacy and extent of the threats faced, as well as the consequences of falling short of victory, truly comparable?
How exactly does one conquer territory that one already governs?
EG
The anti-Lincoln posters here again reconfirm my opinion that a shallow, cynical pragmatist is always preferable to short-sighted, zealous, idealogue.
What, honestly, were Lincoln’s options? Just to let the South go it’s own merry way? By the logic you’re employing George Washington had no right to put down the Whiskey Rebellion. Lincoln had a rebellion to put down, and felt justified in grinding whatever grist he had to in order to break the Confederacy.
I say bravo.
As a cynical pragmatist (but not a shallow one), I’d suggest the anti-Lincoln types ponder for a moment just what America would have become (or not become) if the southern states had been allowed to secede.
EG
Actually you will find many of us do indeed wish Washington’s troops sent into the Pittsburgh area had been routed and sent back with tar and feathers like the tax collectors had been.
L. Neil Smith has a lovely series of parallel universe SF books that explore his ideas of how the future might have panned out. Obviously you take such things with a grain of salt, but it was the first step down the road to a strong central government, which is something all libertarians oppose whole heartedly. We might disagree on what constitutes defense or agression, but we are all 100% on line as to the need to castrate Washington, DC.
Back to L Neil Smith’s books. They are more an exercise in showing what a fully developed libertarian society might look like. I highly recommend The Probability Broach for new comers; and if you just want a good fun light read, there is a book length comic book version of it with lovely artwork: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0974381411/104-3943115-0287969?v=glance&n=283155
I wuld like to butcher the old adage: “When libertrarians do not want to hang together, they can hang separately”. The power of the individual has grown, to be sure, but so has the power of any organized group. Sheer mathematics(the famous n-squared law) assures this, especially in war.
True enough, the line is very blurry, between pragmatism, survival, and ideology. Would things have turned out better? The funny thing about all this is that even with hindsight, we can’t say for sure that the action taken or not taken was for the best.
You know, there was a time when libertrarians ruled the world, so to speak… when we were living in caves.
“there was a time when libertrarians ruled the world”
Isn’t the point that libertarians are the only people who don’t want to rule the world?
Dale is, of course, correct that all the States that joined the Union either reserved their right to leave or regarded such a right as self evident.
Millard F. is certainly correct as regards the C.S.A. Vice President (a fine man who wished all caputured Union troops to be sent home), but I have my doubts about President Davis.
There are stories of dreams of Latin American expansion – but as the Confederate archives in Richmond were burned (along with a lot of other damage to the city) we will never really know.
One point I was expecting (but did not come) was the point about a State not be allowed to join another union – of course this meant not join another union without first leaving the United States of America.
It was quite acceptable for a State to first leave the U.S.A. and then join the C.S.A. – just not join the C.S.A. without first leaving the U.S.A.
President Lincoln had noted the crushing of the Roman Catholic Cantons in Switzerland in 1848 – and he thought he could he also create a stong central government without very many people being killed (he also noted the progress of Italian unification – another over praised enterprise as it led to higher taxes in much of Italy and such things as the introduction of conscription to Sicily)
Actually the war he created cost the lives of more Americans than all other wars put together (including both the World Wars).
On slavery – I know of no evidence that Mr Lincoln was even interested in the issue before the 1850s (when he understood that it would be a good way of advancing his political profile – getting know).
Let us say Lincoln had really been concerned with slavery (as his Treasuary Secretary Salmon P. Chase was).
Lincoln would then have supported free trade and said things like “with the reduction of the tariff you need have no fear of using paid men, rather than slaves, to run your plantations”.
What did he actually do? He stood for an INCREASE in the tariff – and for the full corporate welfare package of high tariff, “internal improvements” (i.e. taxpayers money to politically conected construction companies – just like the corrupt deals in the home State of “Honest Abe”), and a national bank (i.e. subsidies and back up for fractional reserve banks and other politically connected corporations).
This hardly shows a desire to avoid war and end slavery peacefully (as almost every other nation on Earth did). Lincoln wanted war (and for reasons that were not connected with slavery) – he did not want the sort of war he got (he wanted an easy win), but when one opts for war one can not rely on the enemy not fighting back.
E.G. makes a point about 1939.
Well in 1914 there was a vast Constitutional Club network in Britain and a National Rifle Association that point at over a million armed and trained members.
However, the government decided to take these men and march them slowly towards Geman machine guns from 1914 to 1918 (there was a dispute over how long Germany would take to get out of Belgium, which it had invaded as a way of outflanking French forces when it went to war with France).
By the way I am aware that more men died due to artillery fire than machine guns in W.W.I. – that does not alter the folly of this sort of frontal attack on prepared defences (a folly that British observers noted in the Russo-Turkish war of 1878, and at the battle of 1815 against General Jackson in 1815 – long before there was any such things as barbed wire or machine guns).
Recovery was actually banned by law in Britain after the First World War – the gun control laws.
This is one of the reasons that the Home Guard were drilling with broom handles in 1940 (and why desperate appeals were sent to both the United States governement and to private associations such as the American National Rifle Associations).
A lot of British heavy equipment was sent to France in 1939-1940 (and lost when the Germans attacked in May 1940).
In short the government created the mess, and then demands things like conscription, and lend lease as a desperate effort to deal with the mess it has made.
Nor was there any learning process.
For example, Spitfires and other modern aircraft were not sent east to counter the Japanese threat (although they were repeatedly promised) – they were diverted to Stalin instead. Thus leaving areas under British protection (such as the various states of Malayia) wide upen to Japanese attack.
This was oddly similar to President Roosevelt – who first pushed Japan into war (via the taking of Japanese assets, the blocking of oil, and other measures) but kept American forces in the Pacific on a shoe string (because he was desperate to send supplies to Stalin instead).
Imperial Japan was very nasty indeed (although Mao murdered vastly more Chinese), but to provoke a war and make little preperation for the war is hardly sensible.
“Ah but F.D.R. knew that America was bound to defeat Japan so he could afford to divert supplies and equipment to other areas of the world” – perhaps this is so, but F.D.R. made it rather difficult for American forces in the Pacific and lot of extra Americans died because of his choices.
Trusting the government in national security matters is not sensible.
Keeping the government’s judements under close watch is not unpatriotic – nor is a matter of being a “back seat driver”. Nor is a matter of demanding to know secret battle tactics (that is a matter for commaders in the field – we are talking about the strategic i.e. the POLITICAL area here)
It is the duty of a person (be they subject or citizen) to keep up pressure on members of Parliament (in the United States members of the House and Senate) to keep the Executive’s policy under close review.
This is even more important in war than in peace.
The late Senator Strom Thurmond was no anarchist nor even a peace lover (he was an outstanding military man in war and not above going for racist votes in peace) – but he asked repeatedly what the plan of the government was for victory in Vietnam.
Thurmond did not say that victory was impossible, any more than Senator Goldwater (another man with a fine service record in W.W.II. – and who also went to observe things up close in Vietnam, at great risk to his own life) did, – but such men did say that the government had no plan for victory (trying to set up a Welfare State in the Republic of Vietnam was not a plan for victory – in fact it was just a waste or resources) and without such a plan, defeat was inevitable.
Regarding war two things must be kept in mind.
Is there a clear case for war? If there is no such clear case then one should not go to war in the first place.
And (if one is at war) – what is the overall strategic (not battlefield – tactical) plan to protect one’s own nation and defeat the enemy?
If there is no plan to defeat the enemy (if the fighting is just going on to “create an atmosphere for talks” or whatever) then the war is a farce.
If the Executive is not really interested in protecting the country and defeating the enemy, then it is the duty of the Parliament or Congress to take action.
This bizarre conversation is surreal.
When you are finished having Millard Foolmore, a complete idiot, serve as the intellectual spokesman for this site, let me know.
I won’t be holding my breath for a return to sanity any time soon.
While Mr. Foolmore and I might have very strong disagreements on some subjects, his knowledge of the history of early American history seems fairly good. We aren’t talking any conspiracy theories here, we are talking about the day to day newspaper discussions of record from that time and the actual legal documents signed by the founders of these United States. Nothing is really hidden, it is all sitting out there. It is just that hardly anyone really reads it any more.
You should read about how neck-deep ‘Honest’ Abe was playing both ends of the deal with railroads.
I am, howeever, staying away from the proferred WWII discussion because that is a whole other topic and one on which I (and Perry) are quite well versed and hold more conservative historical opinions on.
E.G. asked what the United States would have become if States had been allowed to leave the Union.
Firstly no State would have have left the Union if Lincoln had not come to power – and he had not acted in the way he did (of course he wanted to provoke war).
Secondly only a small number of States would have left the Union (in spite of promises of tariff increases and so on), had Lincoln not called for armed force to attack States that left the Union (this why Virginia and other States left).
“How can one invade land one already govers?” – A Constitutional Federal government does not “govern” the States – it has limited powers (that do not much cover internal affairs).
The United States was not totally transformed by the war (that is a bit of a myth) – the Federal government was fairly ljmited till the 1930’s. But there were some changes in the role of the Federal government (such as internal taxes – the very things that Jefferson had got rid of).
However, “the what if no Lincoln question” is simple to reply to. The United States would have stayed a Constitutional Union – although slavery would have taken longer to die out.
So? Lincoln did come to power.
So? Lincoln did send the army in.
Are you going to answer the question or just pretend that inconvenient history didn’t happen or shouldn’t have happened?
What would the US have become if the states had seceded?
It still governs.
EG
Euan, I do believe you have missed the whole point of this historical discussion. It is rather obvious we are where we are because that is where we are. We are pointing out how we got here and what some of the key points in history were that got us into this fine Statist fix.
Had some things gone differently, that small part of the world covered by ‘these United States’ might have been far more to our liking.
So what is *your* point?
And it would almost certainly have been more backward, more divided against itself and certainly poorer. But I suppose that’s ok as long as you don’t have to pay tax, isn’t it?
To encourage the Lincoln-bashers to consider the likely true nature of a “more to our liking” America – consider the unintended consequences today of a more libertarian or quasi-libertarian order instituted 150 years ago.
EG
We very much have considered exactly that and find the small, weak state far more to our liking.
There is also a divergence of opinion here, as you seem to imply that the State is the source of advancement and creativity, with which clearly I do not agree. Quite the contrary, I consider the State to be a roadblock to progress, a wasteful beast that sucks resources out of the pockets of those most capable of using them wisely and placing them in the hands of bureaucrats who will instead use them to create more opportunities for bureaucrats.
Quite the contrary to your opinion, I believe we would have been far wealthier and more advanced today without the depradations of the State.
It has to be remembered that Lincoln did not just ‘come to power’- he was *elected*. It was his lawful, democratic election which provoked the Southern states to secede, because they were absolutely convinced that he would author the destruction of slavery. However disinterested some here are in democracy, it was no palace coup.
Some posters here have also waved off slavery as some sort of post-facto rationalization, when it was the very spine of the quarrel. Period rants about “black Republicans” and their ilk positively clot the historical record, because the southerners realized perfectly well that slavery did not just require the acquiescence of the central government, but its active cooperation as well. Even a man as ambivalent about human bondage as Lincoln was a mortal threat to their way of life because he would not exert the federal government on their behalf.
Painting them as some sort of noble smallholders with an imperfect model of race relations is fatuous. They did not want only to be “left alone”, they wanted to exist in a polity where slavery was an unquestioned good enforced by the government. They wanted low tariffs because they had no manufacturing base and wanted cheap imports, not because they were libertarians. They wanted a world in perpetual summer, with their human property and their aristocratic rule over the common folk. Slavery was emblematic of that, and the right to own men as property was the hard red core of their creed.
I have absolutely no sympathy with the Southern cause, despite all the men of heroic virtue that fought on its behalf. It was a Greek tragedy of a war with miserable suffering foreordained by the flaws of those same men and pushed to the bloody resolution by their unbending devotion to their cause. As Lincoln said, perhaps it was Providence that every drop of blood drawn by the lash would be met by one drawn by the sword. If my nation had to pay with seven hundred thousand dead to burn out the shame of condoning slavery, then I count the price fairly paid.
Slavery disappeared all over the world in the second half of the 19th century for economic reasons, but only Americans needed a bloody war to make it happen.
Pace Euan Gray, secession was entirely lawful and the USA since 1860 has been illegal n essence as well as increasingly lawless in behaviour.
Cardinal Ximenes:
If my nation had to pay with seven hundred thousand dead to burn out the shame of condoning slavery, then I count the price fairly paid.
That must make them feel it was well worth while.
Our point is not that the south was some glorious entity, only that insofar as secession was concerned, it indeed had the legal right to do so.
We also argue that slavery was doomed and it was not worth the death of 600,000 people to hasten its demise by a handful of years.
Lincoln was undoubtedly freely elected; but many of his actions after that were very much extralegal. He did not have to provoke the South at Sumter; he only had to let them seperate and then repeal all the acts which so mightily protected the institution by forcing the return of escaped slaves.
Aiding and abetting those escapes was a move which would have destroyed the institution quite quickly, without the incredible loss of life.
That option was open to Lincoln; however he was a true believer in Clay’s ‘American System’ from his earliest days in poltics and he saw a quick little threat of war as a way to get the strong central government, high tariffs, ‘internal improvements’ and central bank he had worked for his entire life.
When the South refused to fold, insted of backing down, he abrogated the Constitution for the rest of his term in office and ruled the country as a military dictator.
Cardinal: Would I presume for the sake of consistancy you would back an effort to immediately invade North Korea to free all the millions of people there who are living in starvation, slavery, daily terror and living lives that are almost too unspeakably horrible to contemplate? Should we blanch at the cost of perhaps a few hundred thousand American lives and a couple million Koreans so that this horror does not go on one day longer than necessary?
Lincoln was scrupulously keen to keep things from flaring into open warfare. The flashpoint was simple- South Carolina seceded, and then demanded that Fort Sumter and its contents be turned over to it. Neither Lincoln nor the great majority of the north even agreed that secession was legal, let alone that South Carolina had the right to all federal property within its borders. South Carolina opened fire on Fort Sumter first, and that was the spark that sent it up.
On a deeper level, Lincoln could no more simply wave his hand and bid his erring brothers depart in peace than he could fly to the moon. The south was seceding because a President had been elected that was unacceptable to their legislatures. Even if Lincoln and the north had believed that secession was legal, allowing a state to bail and collect all federal property within its borders every time an election went against it was utterly unacceptable.
All this leaves very much aside the question of simply letting slavery die out. It was already the province of the wealthy ruling class, and could have existed as a luxury feature long after the economics of it ended the use of owned men as fieldhands. This is also to assume that America would not have developed as, say, the Sudan has, where modern slavery is perfectly fine and lively. And most crucially for me, a system of rape, whipping, mutilation, and death must be cleansed by fire and with all haste, *especially* when it exists in my own country. I don’t wait for economics to make the murder of my neighbor impractical when I hear them screaming next door.
No, it isn’t. However, a thing that the state happens to be really good at – organised warfare – is an extremely potent source of advancement and creativity.
You’re discussing this on a general purpose computer, which traces its ancestry to artillery prediction and military codebreaking equipment in WW2, over the internet, which is the result of a military project to create secure communications in the event of nuclear war. Don’t underestimate the role of the state in spurring creativity, often at vast expense, in time of national emergency.
Once the massively expensive stuff is done and the knowledge obtained, the market is far better at developing things. But it’s not so good at funding expensive research into things when you cannot tell if it has a plastic bag’s chance in Hell of ever working out.
Would the market have developed nuclear power? Hardly likely when it’s much cheaper and more profitable to exploit oil and coal, and there’s lots of both, and you don’t know if nuclear will ever work.
Ignoring the role of the state in some of these things is a bit like Reg of the Peoples’ Front of Judaea asking what the Romans ever did for them. Once you start thinking about it, the answer is “quite a lot, actually.”
EG