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Abe’s 200th birthday It is the bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. I came across this powerfully argued article stating what a great man he was. I strongly recommend it, particularly as it wrestles directly with the accusation, made by some writers in the libertarian camp, that Lincoln was some sort of demon. The author, David Mayer, argues that with some exceptions, the accusations made against Lincoln were and are unjustified.
Update: Well that was a bracing set of mostly hostile responses about Lincoln! A question that I would put to those who claim that the secessionists were justified and Lincoln was a monster is why are some libertarians so willing to give the benefit of the doubt to a group of men who kept slaves and defended the practice? Several commenters argue that slavery was never what the civil war was about, but that is a bit like saying that the English Civil War was never about religion. Plainly it was a factor. Not necessarily as big as the Unionist defenders always claimed, but a factor nonetheless.
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No sale (but thanks for the link.)
I’ve been a student of Lincoln since I was 8 years old. In terms of deconstructing the Man, this fellow nails it:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Lincoln-Abraham-Agenda-Unnecessary/dp/0761526463/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1234444588&sr=8-1
James, Di Lorenzo wrote a good recent book on capitalism, which I enjoyed and have cited on this blog before, but I have problems with his coverage of the civil war. He has been hammered(Link) for some of his allegedly shoddy scholarship, so I would treat him cautiously, at least on the Lincoln issue.
Why elect judges?
Legislative appointment for limited terms; no repeats.
Remember, when we elect appointers, we are affecting our judiciary composition.
Read the Obama criteria !!!!
No sale either. I have been studying and teaching history and I am quite able to judge the use of sources by a historian.
Apart from a few minor mistakes DiLorenzo in his books about Lincoln is right on the mark!
I would treat what the Claremont Institute has to say on Lincoln very cautiously.
In this PC age, Abraham Lincoln is like FDR and Martin Luther King. They are secular saints and critics of them have to be denounced as racists, reactionaries, and anti-American.
M, the Claremont Institute is a bastion of conservatism. Not PC at all!
Dutch Guy: the reviewer at the Claremont Institute raises a whole raft of problems – mostly serious ommissions – in DiLorenzo’s book. These are hardly minor flaws or the odd error in sourcing. They are fundamental weaknesses to the case.
A much better critique of Lincoln was written by Jeffrey Hummell, who avoids the mistake that so many Confederacy sympathiser makes of glossing over the slavery issue or downplaying its importance.
And you think all conservatives are not PC?
Perpetually indivisible? What?
Perhaps a review of the likes of Lysander Spooner who wrote topically, not some form of revisionism, stated that a State had a constitutional right to break from the Constitution and that the Civil War was mostly an economic war of the North over the South. This coming from an abolitionist who said blacks had a right to rebel against their masters, and anyone who cared to assist was in the right as well. Perhaps simply being consistent, as any good libertarian ought to be.
Also one apparently needs to read the Debates on the Constitution before a broad statement that it was meant to be perpetual for ever and ever, amen. The Constitution was a compromise between Federalists (those who wanted to replace England’s overbearance with their own) and the Anti-federalists who wanted no such thing. Jefferson also knew that it was filled with landmines and predicted that within 70 years there would be a reckoning over what was wrong with it, and he was about right. And the Federalists won.
Perhaps also people need to comprehend just what the Republican Party was at its foundation. It was, in part, the Party of the communists that fled Germany after 1848. It was the Party, that once it wasn’t radical enough, spun off the Progressive Party which the remnants of make up the dyed in the wool Statist liberals we have today. The super radical nature of Lincoln’s Cabinet is well documented. Supporters like Horace Greely with his wonderful European Correspondents Marx and Engels. The likes of Joseph Weydemeyer, Union Colonel and one time editor of Die Revolution, a wonderful communist periodical in New York circa the 1850’s. Certainly not the sum total, but certainly indicative of the overall trend.
Couple all this with the immediate suspension of Habeas Corpus, people whisked off the street, the acts commited by Burnside under General Order Number 38, all with the left leaning, Statist radicalism within the Republicans and I don’t see how anyone who considers themselves even remotely libertarian can excuse it “because he wanted to preserve the Union and Republican Government”. Sure. HIS way. People seem to want to give Obama high marks because of his earnestness, just like his idol (supposedly) Abe Lincoln. Well, if nothing else, Hitler was earnest. It makes a big difference earnest about what.
It is a well known fact that after Lincoln’s State Funeral and all that went with it, he began to fade from people’s minds. So the Progressive elements forged a campaign to deify the man in the 1880’s. That is where the myth was formed about the man. I think that is the revisionism that stood for decades until people who saw what the Civil War was actually about decided to puncture holes in the mystique. So I think people need to ask themselves WHY these endeavors were undertaken to deify the man. What mentality forges massive monuments of his image? Perhaps a Statist one? The same mentality that creates Cults of Personality around political figures? Indeed Lincoln was used as a touchstone for the ramping up of Statism in the US in the 1890’s which has pretty much gone on full steam ahead since then.
Southern secessionists, by firing on Fort Sumter and by declaring war on the United States in the Confederate Congress, were indeed the beginners of the Civil War.
Why, then, did the North vacate every other Fort but this one, peacefully, when asked to? The author of the blog entry starts out by pointing out the “lawyer picking” of the Lincoln bashers, yet he engages in it himself. The North knew the strategic advantage the Fort held against the South, and knew that they couldn’t brook its existence. They knew that it would have to be taken. But they COULD have vacated it and no shots being fired.
So, overall, the author simply wants to support the concept of Federal Government without end. Apparently no matter what it does it cannot be overthrown lest Republican governance of Majority Rule no better than a direct Democracy. So if someone who champions liberty can tell me how a man who was not even on the 1860 Presidential ballot in nine southern States, and carried the massive sum 2 of 996 counties of the South gets to dictate to them without recourse, then I must have a pretty fuzzy understanding of Liberty. I guess we need to remedy that whole 1770’s period.
God Save the Queen! How do I sign up for my NHS card? Do I have to start liking soccer now?
Perpetually indivisible? What?
Perhaps a review of the likes of Lysander Spooner who wrote topically, not some form of revisionism, stated that a State had a constitutional right to break from the Constitution and that the Civil War was mostly an economic war of the North over the South. This coming from an abolitionist who said blacks had a right to rebel against their masters, and anyone who cared to assist was in the right as well. Perhaps simply being consistent, as any good libertarian ought to be.
Also one apparently needs to read the Debates on the Constitution before a broad statement that it was meant to be perpetual for ever and ever, amen. The Constitution was a compromise between Federalists (those who wanted to replace England’s overbearance with their own) and the Anti-federalists who wanted no such thing. Jefferson also knew that it was filled with landmines and predicted that within 70 years there would be a reckoning over what was wrong with it, and he was about right. And the Federalists won.
Perhaps also people need to comprehend just what the Republican Party was at its foundation. It was, in part, the Party of the communists that fled Germany after 1848. It was the Party, that once it wasn’t radical enough, spun off the Progressive Party which the remnants of make up the dyed in the wool Statist liberals we have today. The super radical nature of Lincoln’s Cabinet is well documented. Supporters like Horace Greely with his wonderful European Correspondents Marx and Engels. The likes of Joseph Weydemeyer, Union Colonel and one time editor of Die Revolution, a wonderful communist periodical in New York circa the 1850’s. Certainly not the sum total, but certainly indicative of the overall trend.
Couple all this with the immediate suspension of Habeas Corpus, people whisked off the street, the acts commited by Burnside under General Order Number 38, all with the left leaning, Statist radicalism within the Republicans and I don’t see how anyone who considers themselves even remotely libertarian can excuse it “because he wanted to preserve the Union and Republican Government”. Sure. HIS way. People seem to want to give Obama high marks because of his earnestness, just like his idol (supposedly) Abe Lincoln. Well, if nothing else, Hitler was earnest. It makes a big difference earnest about what.
It is a well known fact that after Lincoln’s State Funeral and all that went with it, he began to fade from people’s minds. So the Progressive elements forged a campaign to deify the man in the 1880’s. That is where the myth was formed about the man. I think that is the revisionism that stood for decades until people who saw what the Civil War was actually about decided to puncture holes in the mystique. So I think people need to ask themselves WHY these endeavors were undertaken to deify the man. What mentality forges massive monuments of his image? Perhaps a Statist one? The same mentality that creates Cults of Personality around political figures? Indeed Lincoln was used as a touchstone for the ramping up of Statism in the US in the 1890’s which has pretty much gone on full steam ahead since then.
Southern secessionists, by firing on Fort Sumter and by declaring war on the United States in the Confederate Congress, were indeed the beginners of the Civil War.
Why, then, did the North vacate every other Fort but this one, peacefully, when asked to? The author of the blog entry starts out by pointing out the “lawyer picking” of the Lincoln bashers, yet he engages in it himself. The North knew the strategic advantage the Fort held against the South, and knew that they couldn’t brook its existence. They knew that it would have to be taken. But they COULD have vacated it and no shots being fired.
So, overall, the author simply wants to support the concept of Federal Government without end. Apparently no matter what it does it cannot be overthrown lest Republican governance of Majority Rule no better than a direct Democracy. So if someone who champions liberty can tell me how a man who was not even on the 1860 Presidential ballot in nine southern States, and carried the massive sum 2 of 996 counties of the South gets to dictate to them without recourse, then I must have a pretty fuzzy understanding of Liberty. I guess we need to remedy that whole 1770’s period.
God Save the Queen! How do I sign up for my NHS card? Do I have to start liking soccer now?
When it comes to Lincoln I belong to neither the hagiography nor the demonization school, but if pushed I would fall closer to the latter. I don’t subscribe to the view that Lincoln was trying to establish a socialist state (indeed, the Civil War was upon him so quickly after taking office, and consumed the whole of his administration, that I don’t think anyone can say anything definitive about Lincoln’s economic philosophy.) However, while I understand the “exegencies of war” argument, the fact remains that Lincoln honored the Constitution more in the breach than in the observance. (Mayer acknowledges that Lincoln “ben[t] some of the rules of the Constitution even to the point of almost breaking them . . .”, to which my reply is to question why the word “almost” appears in the sentence.) Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus and jailed journalists who disagreed with his policies; instituted a clearly unconstitutional income tax; and presided over a massive expansion of the federal government and its concommitant usurpation of traditional state powers.
But my real gripe is with Mayer’s cavalier dismissal of the Confederacy’s right to secede. Citing a Reconstruction-era Supreme Court decision does nothing to advance the argument. The “compact” theory of the Constitution is not only a legitimate viewpoint but (I believe) the correct one. The United States was intended to be a confederation of sovereign states, who banded together for mutual protection other limited and carefully defined purposes (regulating interstate trade, etc.). At the time the Constitution was ratified most states clearly understood that, and clearly believed that they had the absolute right to dissolve the “compact” should it become necessary. My recollection (although I haven’t researched this) is that at least some of them specifically reserved that right in their ratification resolutions. Clearly the concept was not disputed when the New England states were contemplating secession in the early years of the 19th Century (when many of the Framers were still alive).
When the Constitution was ratified the states were not merged together; they did not relinquish their sovereignty. While the Constitution is more than a treaty, it nonetheless bears some similarities to one. All nations have the right to withdraw from treaties (witness the United States’ repudiation of the ABM treaty with the Soviet Union), and the southern states had the legitimate right to withdraw from a union which no longer served their interests. Lincoln unlawfully thwarted that right, by force of arms. (He also triggered the fight by arming Fort Sumter in violation of a formal agreement with South Carolina, but that’s another matter.)
Lincoln sought to preserve the Union, and I don’t dispute that his heart was in the right place. But there were other means of trying to do so, and in any event the preservation of a union which no longer served the needs of all of its members was by no means an absolute good (especially at the cost of so many lives). He was a decent man, but flawed. He made mistakes both strategic and tactical. In other words, he was human. And, like it or not, he was responsible for putting the federal government squarely on the path to becoming the monster it now is. You take the good with the bad.
I go back and forth on the issue, but I finally decided that there is enough blame for 620,000 dead people and 412,000 wounded people to go around.
” a formidable internal rebellion or insurrection that not only threatened the legitimate authority of the U.S. government”
There is no point reading past that line. The whole issue being argued over was WHERE the legitimate authority of the US government ended. He assumes the conclusion to that question right from the start.
Actually I did read past that line, a little, and I find this:
“nevertheless is one of the foundational principles of American government: that in a republican government, the reasonable will of the majority must prevail and, thus, the minority must acquiesce in the legitimate decisions of the majority. ”
where again we run into him assuming the answer to the question: whether or not the actions taken on each side were reasonable.
If the Declaration is valid, then states have a right to secede. If they don’t have that right, 1776 was illegitimate, as England was the majority at the time and certainly thought its policies reasonable. You can’t have it both ways. This guy’s intellectually dishonest – or maybe just fooling himself.
Rollory, perhaps you should address this paragraph of Mayer’s, which I think rebuts your last point:
In other words, he is saying that whatever grievances the South had, they were not remotely comparable to the grievances of the original Revolutionaries, and to compare the two is a mistake.
I think he has a point.
I have to say one thing about the article and the comments here. They are pretty honest about the North fighting to preserve the Union and not “free the slaves.”
Defending the North’s decision to fight a war that cost 1,000,000+ casualties for the purpose of preserving the Union takes some backbone.
Yes, the South did, in part, fight the war to keep slavery. It is possible that the two sides had differing motives in the conflict. The North wanted to preserve the Union and the South wanted to keep slaves. The South certainly should not have gone to war for that. But it takes two to tango.
Johnathan, I disagree with your last post. Mayer’s quote from the Declaration of Independence is selective. Nowhere did Jefferson state that “a long train of abuses and usurpations” was the only justification for revolution; that was merely the specific justification then at hand. Earlier in the document he makes a broader statement: “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” The Confederacy made that judgment.[1]
The American Revolution was in truth a “revolution” because the colonies had no say in their government and were not considered sovereign entities by anyone. Conversely, the attempted withdrawal by the southern states was not a “revolution” but merely the recission of a compact. The standards for recission are properly much lower. If the UK decided to withdraw from the EU (as many on this site have advocated) would that constitute a “revolution”? I suggest not. The situation at the time of the US Civil War is directly analogous: a group[2] of sovereign states decided to sever their relationship with another such group, for reasons sufficient unto themselves. They should have been permitted to do so, pleacefully. Everyone would have been much better off.
[1] Furthermore, in its “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union“, South Carolina (at least) did in fact make a long list of the reasons for its withdrawal from the Union, which would seem to satisfy even Mayer’s objection.
[2] Actually, it wasn’t a “group”; each of the withdrawing states did so by itself, as a single sovereign entity. Only later did they join together into the Confederate States of America. C.f. the South Carolina “Declaration” linked above.
Not really. Most of the “grievances” our forefathers had were bullshit. First and foremost was the notion that it is wrong to tax people who have no representation in the government. It was far more moral for George III to levy a modest tax that amounted to maybe 16% on American colonists than it is for the federal government to levy its maximum 50%.
In most respects, our ancestors seceded just because they wanted to be on their own. There is nothing wrong with that. Perhaps the jackass you cited is fine with the majority imposing association on the minority at gun point. I suppose he also thinks that Yeltsin is a great man for his handling of Chechnya.
The only threat to the Union was that half of it wanted to leave and form a new national government. The worst case scenario for the Union was that Lee would have broken the Army of the Potomac, invaded DC, then invaded Maryland and freed the Maryland legislature to vote for secession as they had originally planned before federal troops shut them down.
Now, if that happened, Delaware, Missouri and Kentucky might have decided to go along too at that point. If that had happened, the most likely outcome would not have been the destruction of the Union or its occupation by southern troops, but that most of the Union would have agreed to hold a new constitutional convention with the Confederacy.
Interestingly, Bill Clinton praised Boris Yeltsin as Russia’s Abe Lincoln.
Greenbacks? Unconstitutional, potentially disastrous as the Founding Fathers feared. (Modern equivalent: Federal Reserve notes, now worth pennies, if that, on the 1913 dollar.)
Income tax? Unconstitutional at that time, even now if you take into account that the 16th Amendment was not ratified by the requisite number of states, and DATFFF.
The worst president by far was Wilson, a man with no real-world experience. Lincoln happened not to get away with the same twin evil deeds of adopting an income tax and dropping the gold (or silver) standard, so perhaps we can forgive him these.
Lincoln was a competent executive, despite some perhaps-unavoidable corruption resulting in part from his policies, under difficult circumstances, but his fidelity to or understanding of the Constitution were quite deficient. I think I’d give him a pass on habeas corpus; perhaps he could’ve gotten there legally sooner than he did. His one saving grace, a big one, is, of course, that he effectively ended slavery in the US. Too bad Reconstruction without him turned the South into a hotbed of hatred for generations.
I suppose that if the war hadn’t started at Sumter it would have started in the West, but with DC abandoned in enemy territory. It’s done, with no more choices to be made, so there would be little point in dwelling on debates over its moral base, if secession weren’t an interesting idea today.
The Declaration of Independence did not require secessionists to suffer a long train of abuses and usurpations; rather, it pointed out that people are inclined to suffer them, avoiding painful action, and it adduced them in both PR and justification. However wrong they were w.r.t. slavery, the people of the Southern states had the right to secede, just not the power.
This is Darwin’s Birthday, as well! Darwin believed in change, Lincoln in preservation. Those darned Aquarians always cause trouble, whatever they support!
Slavery was NOT the issue over which Lincoln started The War to Enslave the States. Read his first inaugural address and disabuse yourself of the notion that slavery had anything to do with Lincoln’s causes in the War. He made it plain: he had no desire to end slavery or even to interfere with it.
Moreover, it’s naive in the extreme to think that Lincoln, as president, had anything like the ability to instigate the situation; it was brewing for years before Lincoln’s dog-ugly face showed on the scene.
As with ALL of America’s wars since that one, the bloodshed and chaos had a purpose: diversionary. To divert the people’s attention from what the mercantilists wanted to do.
One witnesses the same modus with the US military (and taxpayers’) entry into both world wars. The same goes for the U.S. troops’ entry into both Iraq wars, and Afghanistan. There is an entire library of work on the military/industrial and ‘Neocon’ players who pull for these conflicts.
It is the insolent, ignorant student of history indeed, who still adheres to this pap and legend, that Black slavery was the primary cause of that war.
Might America have had to wait ten years instead of five to end slavery peacefully (as almost 20 other nations did during the period)? Perhaps; but that wouldn’t have served the interests of those mercantilists whose only grail was always the American purse. Their goal was to only have ONE legislature to buy off, rather than 34 of them!
Lincoln was just the ugly puppet, not the prime instigator, for all his highfalutin’ oratory.
By staying out of Lincoln’s War to Enslave the States (the most accurate moniker to convey the goal and lasting impact of the conflict) we could have saved between 650,000 and 1 million lives, Black and White, North and South.
We could have saved Article IV Section 4, guaranteeing all the States, “a republican form of government” in perpetuity – and thus saved the proper functioning of 50 sovereign States in a republic.
We could have preserved 50 checks against the cancerous Leviathan of today: regulating all of life…tracking your travels, e-mails, and toilet flushes.
We could have spared this culture the seething animus between the ‘races’ in America, now exacerbated by a centrist, race-baiting bureaucracy and two insipid, cheerleader party machines whose coin of the real is incessant strife!
Dishonest Abe Lincoln as a president was the moral equivalent of Saddam Hussein. He lied through his teeth to sucker the Union into his War to Enslave the States, and leaving Black Americans far worse off than would have been the case if war had been avoided.
One of the perennial frauds sold as “history” – not unlike English children’s tales of King Arthur – are these apotheotic legends of Lincoln…idolised in marble and worshipped as a false god on earth!
DiLorenzo’s two exposes on the dog-faced butcher have withstood the withering attacks from Lincoln-worshippers over the years.
As Jonathan suggested, one can also read Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men by Hummel.
For the purely economic analysis of the war’s causes, I recommend Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: the Economics of the Civil War by Thornton & Eklund.
For a huge raft of primary-source quotations on the personal side of Dishonest Abe, I recommend America’s Caesar by Durand.
Dishonest Abe’s friend, Republican abolitionist Wendell Phillips said of Lincoln that he was “a more unlimited despot than the world knows this side of China” and “a low, cunning clown.”
Alfred Wooten, Delaware attorney general and another Northern abolitionist, called Dishonest Abe “an insult to the flag, and a traitor to their God.”
William Herndon, Lincoln’s “friend and partner for 20 years”, said of America’s Mohammed that “He was a deep-grounded infidel. He disliked and despised churches; never entered a church except to scoff and ridicule…Before running for any public office, he wrote a book against Christianity and the Bible. He showed it to some friends and read extracts. (Mr.) Hill was was greatly shocked, urging Lincoln not to publish it…urged it would kill him politically. Hill took the book in his hands, opened the stove door, and up it went in flames and ashes. After that, Lincoln became more discreet…often (using) words and phrases to make it appear he was a Christian…But he lived and died a deep-grounded infidel.”
[Wm. H. Herndon, quoted in Geo. Edmonds, Facts and Falsehoods Concerning the War on the South Memphis, TN, 1904, pg. 54-55]
Dishonest Abe was mendacious enough to make Bill Clinton appear a choirboy. The sheer number of American deaths places him on a moral plane with Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.
Read Lincoln’s own words; emancipation was never his goal. It was mere political gravy, on top of the obliteration of the 9th and 10th Amendments.
Having said all that, I think We the People should celebrate anyway.
In his 1799 KY Resolution, Thomas Jefferson laid down the principle of constitutional law enforcement that NONE of the sovereign States considered using back then. WHY does talk of the War always come to secession, even now? To dissolution of the union?
Fine, slavery was wrong and many in the South defended the indefensible. But that issue is off the table now…where is the 9th Amendment, and the 10th? What are modern secessionists thinking? That where a Confederation of States failed, a single-State action will succeed? Folly, that.
The Confederacy foolishly split themselves as our domestic enemies planned, along sectional lines. Divide and conquer, Mr. Lincoln’s mercantilist pupeteers said. Lincoln did as directed, to our shame these 148 years!
But now We the People can divide and conquer. We have the opportunity to bring every one of the 535 members of the US Congress to his or her hometown, and with a State Grand Jury holding in the wings for multiple counts of criminal indictment, We the People through the courts of our sovereign States, can do precisely what Jefferson said was our original right.
We can do it lawfully, peacefully, and with withering effectiveness. By holding the largest criminal trial in human history (in up to 535 courts, even if only the courts of public opinion on Independence Day), we can win back what the sovereign States lost under the boots and torches of Mr. Lincoln’s troops.
Will the American people rise to the occasion after 146 years of States’ impotence? It’s a very tall order in our day, when the average Taxpayer would rather work for ‘massuh’ and whimper about getting his “stimulus” in the rear end in a dark alley. (And don’t think Barry Hussein and the gang have pulled up their pants yet, Taxpayer; they’re not done.)
Will the average American stand for the rule of law, and bring his/her rep or senator home to face the music on Independence Day, with their own America Again! rally? Who knows; but it’s out there.
I pray that this coming Independence Day (or in 2010) will be the beginning of the most magnificent peaceful victory for the rule of law since Magna Carta.
And although I’ve been a law-abiding free Nontaxpayer for 11 years now and don’t feel it as badly as you Taxpayers do, I’ll be happy to take the first sledge hammer to that Lincoln Memorial, if ever given the opportunity.
Other than that? Lincoln was a great guy. Where’s my party hat and Lincoln idol?
http://www.america-again.blogspot.com
http://www.americanglasnost.blogspot.com
No one, here or in the article, has claimed that ending slavery was a cause of the Civil War (although it certainly was motivation for some of its participants). But territorial conflicts would have arisen in the West had the Civil War not occurred.
It is a historical fact that, whatever his vices, Lincoln effectively ended slavery, at least in the manner that that word is commonly understood, in the US. Not with his E.P. per se, but with his success in preserving the Union and with the consequences of these culminating in the 13th Amendment. Lincoln was the sine quo non.
It is unlikely that slavery would have ended anytime soon in the South by peaceful means. Governments there banned the freeing of slaves, evidence at that time that the voting populace would have continued sustaining slavery. It would’ve taken generations, if ever.
“tdh”,
Cast your theories up in the air, then.
None of us knows what would have happened, had Lincoln’s War not butchered a million Americans and created the sectional animus that festers to this day.
My point is, that’s over. A great many authors and historians agree; the damage to our constitutional form of government has never been fully assessed, much less repaired. It’s time to stop fighting that war, and stop the domestic enemies to which Lincoln gave birth!
Please read the 1799 KY Resolution by Jefferson, and Madison echoing the principle in his VA Resolution.
Abe Lincoln was unquestionably the most butcherous of all American presidents, and likely the most mendacious, as well. With his mercantilist cabal, Lincoln was the inventor of classical fascism two generations before Giovanni Gentile gave it a name in Mussolini’s Italy: the alliance of strong bureaucratic government, the military, and the corporations.
Lincoln brought fascism to America under cover of the War to Enslave the States. Our federal creature has been in perennial violation of Article I of the Constitution, and has willfully, arrogantly violated the 9th and 10th Amendments in every way, in every community, every week and month and year, since 1861 as a result.
We’re not taking it anymore. You can write false paeans to “the emancipator” — America’s Mohammed! — all you like. We intend to shut the criminal enterprise down! It may not happen overnight, but that’s fine. Millions of us are teaching our kids and grandkids at home, not in government schools. They read primary sources, not government propaganda. They will not work in corporate cubicles, but in small businesses and home-based endeavors, as our forefathers did.
If you want to fight defensively to begin with, visit my American Glasnost site. Don’t whine about the Obamanation of Desolation if you intend to keep letting them fraudulently skim your checks.
http://www.americanglasnost.blogspot.com
If you want to fight offensively — to restore the Constitution and the sovereignty we guaranteed ourselves through it — consider hosting the America Again! project in your community next Independence Day if you happen to live in the hometown of your US congressman or one of your US senators.
http://www.america-again.blogspot.com
Although it is not necessarily — and presumably not — an error to portray Lincoln’s political career as an overall evil, it is an error to portray his every political act as evil. Is ending slavery, per se, with no resort to distractions, good or evil, a silver lining in a possibly-dark cloud, or something living only in a pure heart of darkness?
There are many people homeschooling their children. If they do this well, it will fortify their children against accepting hyperbole and bombast at face value, allowing them to look unswayed for any nuggets of truth that might underlie it, while maintaining a safe distance from a verbal manifestation of recklessness. (This point was still able to be brought home to me by Reading Lolita in Tehran, which in passing illuminated a book the repugnance of which had distracted me, while illuminating the utterly repugnant consequences of a naive and careless revolution. It is not at all an easily habituated stance.)
Don’t you just, um, love ataraxia?
If ever? So there would still be slavery today? That seems preposterous. It probably would have taken generations, a couple at most. Then the south would give up the slaves on their own instead of from the outside. Then there probably would not have been as severe of racial tensions and KKK and such. Also a million war casualties could have been avoided. Or the North could have bought all the slaves their freedom, which probably would have cost less than the war.
I don’t know, tdh, but I think the general spread of ataraxia would worry me.
If Republicans wanted to nominate someone for President with a long record of actively opposing slavery (as opposed to someone who does not seem to have even spoken against it before the 1850’s) and without suspision of hidden agenda of higher taxes on imports, “internal improvements” and the like – someone was available.
The “slaves lawyer” Salmon P. Chase – later Lincoln Tres Sec and later still Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
However, they went for Lincoln.
Lincoln faced a very difficult task – how to end slavery without causing a war. Other nations (even Brazil) managed this. But Lincoln failed – although, unlike many, I do not think he failed deliberatly.
Then his task changed:
It became how to win the war with a minimum number of deaths.
The Union had at least four times the free men of the Confeds – and had vastly more industrial power (not just guns – things like boots).
Somehow Lincoln managed to turn an overwhelming advantage into a terrible four year war which led to more than 600, 000 dead.
Well at least he won the war. Although if it had not been for the help of some Southerners (such as General Thomas of Virginia – and all those soldiers from places like Kentucky and what became West Virginia) I doubt the Union would have even managed that – at least not under Lincoln.
Of course no disrespect meant for Union soldiers from Northern States.
Monster Lincoln – no.
But “greatest President” – also no.
He was an Illinois politician facing problems that were too big for him.
Still better an Illinois pol whose idol was Henry Clay, than an Illinois pol whose idol is Karl Marx.
Lincoln was certainly not all bad – he would have shot down Barack Obama as if Comrade Barack was a mad dog.
If Republicans wanted to nominate someone for President with a long record of actively opposing slavery (as opposed to someone who does not seem to have even spoken against it before the 1850’s) and without suspision of hidden agenda of higher taxes on imports, “internal improvements” and the like – someone was available.
The “slaves lawyer” Salmon P. Chase – later Lincoln Tres Sec and later still Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
However, they went for Lincoln.
Lincoln faced a very difficult task – how to end slavery without causing a war. Other nations (even Brazil) managed this. But Lincoln failed – although, unlike many, I do not think he failed deliberatly.
Then his task changed:
It became how to win the war with a minimum number of deaths.
The Union had at least four times the free men of the Confeds – and had vastly more industrial power (not just guns – things like boots).
Somehow Lincoln managed to turn an overwhelming advantage into a terrible four year war which led to more than 600, 000 dead.
Well at least he won the war. Although if it had not been for the help of some Southerners (such as General Thomas of Virginia – and all those soldiers from places like Kentucky and what became West Virginia) I doubt the Union would have even managed that – at least not under Lincoln.
Of course no disrespect meant for Union soldiers from Northern States.
Monster Lincoln – no.
But “greatest President” – also no.
He was an Illinois politician facing problems that were too big for him.
Still better an Illinois pol whose idol was Henry Clay, than an Illinois pol whose idol is Karl Marx.
Lincoln was certainly not all bad – he would have shot down Barack Obama as if Comrade Barack was a mad dog.
I hate the way that comments here either appear several times – or not at all.
Oh well, type again……
If the Republicans had wanted to nominate a man who had a long record of actively opposing slavery (as opposed to a man who does not seem to have even publically spoken against it till the 1850’s) a candidate was available. And one who would not have raised doubts about a hidden agenda of higher taxes on imports and other corrupt pro politically connected business enterprise interventions (such as “internal improvements” and a “national bank”).
The “slaves lawyer” – Salmon P. Chase, later Lincoln’s T.S. and later still Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
But they nominated Lincoln instead.
Assuming that Lincoln wanted to end slavery (lets be nice) he had a difficult task before him – how to end it without creating a terrible war.
Difficult but not impossible – after all almost every other country (from Russia to Brazil) managed this.
However, Lincoln failed in this task and a war started – let us assume that this is NOT what he wanted.
Lincoln then faced the task of how to win the war with the least deaths.
He had the advantage of a Union which had more than four times the free population and about ten times the industrial might (not just guns – but even things like boots were rare things in the Confed army)
The Union also had the support of some Southern States (such as Kentucky and what became West Virginia) and noted Southern Generals – such as George Thomas of Virginia (one of the best generals the Union had).
Somehow Lincoln managed to turn these overwhelming advantages into a terrible war that cost over 600, 000 lives.
Well at least he won.
Lincoln a monster – no.
But Lincoln “the greatest President” – also no.
Lincoln was a Illinois pol who faced terrible problems – and did not prove to be able to deal with them very well (I am refusing the “he wanted this horror” school of thought).
Still he could have been a lot worse – better an Illinois pol whose idol is Henry Clay, than an Illinois pol whose idol is Karl Marx.
Lincoln was certainly not all bad – for example he would have shot Comrade Barack Obama dead as if Comrade Barack was a mad dog.
Whatever the faults of Lincoln (and I have listed some in comments that have twice failed to appear) let us not forget the following.
The Confederates arrested a much higher percentage of their population (and I am talking about the free population) than the Union did of its population – and so on. In fact the rule of law broke down in every Confederate State with the exception of North Carolina.
The Confederates printed much more money than Lincoln did.
And the Confederates imposed a more “progressive” income tax than Lincoln did.
Lincoln was no libertarian (although he was no socialist Obama type either) – he was a Henry Clay Whig.
But whatever the Confederate leadership (as opposed to the ordinary soldiers) was fighting for, small government was not it.
With some possible exceptions such as the Vice President of the Confederacy.
History is complicated.
Say what you will of Lincoln, he acknowledged that a amendment to the Constitution was a legal requirement to destroy the right to property in slaves, which contrasts his record with FDR’s destruction of the right to property in gold.
Paul,
Yes, history is complicated; too complicated, it would seem, for you to drop the false (sectional) dualism that Americans love to latch on to whenever the subjects of the War, or Lincoln, arise.
Try to grasp the thesis of my remarks.
“tdh” and Alan,
I carry no water for the Confederacy, as my remarks above clearly attest. Secession was tactically foolish and repugnant to the idea of the republic in the first place. My whole point was that Lincoln has become, in more ways than one, America’s own Mohammed; a false prophet whose actual life gives the lie to his present-day legends and worship songs.
Let’s get past it. If we want to restore the rights of the People and the States, and enforce the constitutional disabilities of the federal creature, we can. If we only will; see link below.
If any of you in a prosecuting attorney, I’d like to kinck the indictment strategy around a bit with you.
http://www.america-again.blogspot.com
Erratum.
Last sentence should read:
If any of you is a prosecuting attorney, I’d like to kick the indictment strategy around a bit with you.
To answer the update:
Freeing some slaves by enslaving everybody else is supposed to be a good thing? And make no mistake, that IS the practical outcome of Lincoln’s victory in the war. What is happening TODAY in government and society is a direct linear consequence of the federal government’s victory over the states and its centralization of power. The USA would not be in the fix it’s in without that. It might be in a different one, or a bunch of little ones varying by state, but this current condition would be impossible.
The philosophical basis of secession was defense of a principle. That principle might have later been extended. Instead it was replaced, with “the ends justify the means” – which never turns out to be true.
With all this Abe-bashing going on, I’d like to say a few things in his defence……. and as soon as I think up some, I’ll tell you!
The abiding fault of any democracy is Majoritarianism, that numbers are all that matter. The slogan ‘No Taxation without Representation’ has the seeds of the acceptance of taxes and majority rule, so did centralism set in at that point?
Perhaps you could keep government under a tighter leash if you moved to a different state every four years, and got rid of the permanent capital? Draw up an alphabetical list of states, and have Congress turn into a Conference of states?
Good point about that slogan, NG
Every argument as to a course of action ultimately reduces to something irrational (e.g. beauty), and thus of appeal limited to irrational people, or to the ends that it is expected to bring about. (The fact that the latter might be seen as beautiful is largely an irrelevancy but is not itself irrational, and an appeal to this can be counter-irrational.) It is an equivocation to claim that ends do not justify means; what is meant here, insofar as any thought has been applied, is that the intended, rather than the rationally expectable, ends do not justify the means.
Political principles are not apriorisms. They encode a connection between means and ends that is difficult to envision in their absence.
Lincoln is only partly to blame for his Zeitgeist. The end of Federalism, one of several combined and closely-spaced death knells to the Constitution, did not occur until the 20th century.