Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom

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You miss the forest for the trees.

Any attempt to right the ship will be seen as contentious.

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The truth is that Lincoln repudiated the dictum of the Declaration of Independence that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. He also unequivocally denied that "all men are created equal." "I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races," he said in the August 21, 1858, debate with Stephan Douglas. "Free them [slaves], and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this . . . . We cannot, then, make them equals," he continued.

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Those Lincoln quotes are taken out of context from his Peoria Speech during the Lincoln/Douglas debates on October 16th 1854 concerning the Kansas-Nebraska Act and repeal of the Missouri Compromise(which outlawed slavery above the 36°30' parallel.

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Here is that bit with all those dots filled in:

Quote: What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially, our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment, is not the sole question, if indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, can not be safely disregarded. We can not, then, make them equals. It does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted; but for their tardiness in this, I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the south.

In what way does you additional context change anything? If anything it confirms the subtext I quoted earlier. Further you have a lifetime in politics you're going to have to refute if your goal is to make Lincoln any more than a white supremist. He supported an ammendment to the constitution codifing slavery.(as an example)

I really think that there is a lot more to Lincoln then just being a white supremacist(and I think the quotes posted from his speech were put up in support of that). Even if you posit that his views never evolved at all, and that the constitutional amendment in support of slavery that was unsuccessfully offered as a compromise to the south represented his long term views on the subject, you at least have to grant that he wasn't a very a successful white supremacist, since his polices resulted in the exact opposite of the situation such belief system desires. If he blundered into removing slavery, then by all means lets have more such blunderers.

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom
I know you're repeating what you've read and feel you have an informed opinion on the subject, I once would have replied in kind, but with all due respect your conclusion defies all evidence.

Hah! Yeah, right.

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom
Walter Williams Article

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As DiLorenzo documents – contrary to conventional wisdom, books about Lincoln, and the lessons taught in schools and colleges – the War between the States was not fought to end slavery; Even if it were, a natural question arises: Why was a costly war fought to end it? African slavery existed in many parts of the Western world, but it did not take warfare to end it. Dozens of countries, including the territorial possessions of the British, French, Portuguese, and Spanish, ended slavery peacefully during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Countries such as Venezuela and Colombia experienced conflict because slave emancipation was simply a ruse for revolutionaries who were seeking state power and were not motivated by emancipation per se.

Abraham Lincoln’s direct statements indicated his support for slavery; He defended slave owners’ right to own their property, saying that "when they remind us of their constitutional rights [to own slaves], I acknowledge them, not grudgingly but fully and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the claiming of their fugitives" (in indicating support for the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850).

Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was little more than a political gimmick, and he admitted so in a letter to Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase: "The original proclamation has no...legal justification, except as a military measure." Secretary of State William Seward said, "We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free. " Seward was acknowledging the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation applied only to slaves in states in rebellion against the United States and not to slaves in states not in rebellion.

The first paragraph here takes the notion that the Civil War was fought to end slavery and says that since the fight wasn't taken to other countries it wasn't about ending slavery. This goes more to exposing the sense that Americans have that things end at our shores than to anything else. The Civil War was fought to end slavery in the United States.

The second paragraph is premised on the notion that Lincoln's beliefs remained static throughout his lifetime. It asks the reader to believe that Lincoln thought the same way about slavery in 1864 as he did in 1850. It affords no room for the possibility that Lincoln might have changed his mind in light of new information or changing circumstances.

The third paragraph focuses on the first draft of the proclamation but rather than follow up on subsequent drafts it shifts to quoting the SoS rather than Lincoln.

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom
So Lincoln freed the slaves he had no authority over and kept in slavery the ones he could have actually freed. It was war propaganda. Lincoln acknowledges that very claim.

Where does Lincoln acknowledge that it was war propaganda? A military measure does not automatically mean war propaganda. The emancipation went to depriving the South of it's work force.

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom
DiLorenzo's reply to National Review

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The Gettysburg Address was brilliant oratory, but it was also political subterfuge. As H.L. Mencken pointed out, it was the Southerners who were fighting for the consent of the governed and it was Lincoln’s government that opposed them. They no longer consented to being governed by Washington, DC.

Lincoln’s admonition that government "of the people, by the people, for the people" would perish from the earth if the right of secession were sustained was equally absurd. The United States remained a democracy, and the Confederate States of America would have been a democratic country as well.

It does not appear that DiLorenzo thinks slaves were people. Mencken too forgets that when he claims that Southerners were fighting for the consent of the governed. It bears asking, when was the consent of the slave ever sought? In that light, the claim that the CSA would have been a democratic country is absurd.

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom

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Lincoln’s notion that secession would "destroy" the government of the United States is also bizarre in light of the fact that after secession took place the US government fielded the largest and best-equipped army and navy in the history of the world up to that point for four long years.

That's the best point so far, but largest and best equipped?

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom

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The truth is that Lincoln repudiated the dictum of the Declaration of Independence that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. He also unequivocally denied that "all men are created equal." "I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races," he said in the August 21, 1858, debate with Stephan Douglas. "Free them [slaves], and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this . . . . We cannot, then, make them equals," he continued.

The South repudiated that dictum to the extent that it embraced slavery. And again, so too with notions of equality.

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom

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Lincoln opposed making jurors or voters of "Negroes;" he supported the Illinois constitutional amendment to prohibit the immigration of black people into the state; he supported a proposed amendment to the constitution (in March of 1861) that would have prohibited the federal government from ever interfering with Southern slavery; and was a strong supporter of colonization or deportation, as noted above. As Joe Sobran has remarked, his position was that black people could be "equal" all right, but not in the US. And yet Jaffa and his acolytes implausibly claim that Lincoln was somehow devoted to natural rights.

That amendment smacks of expedience. In March 1861 the war had just begun. That measure was likely an attempt at reconciliation before the war escalated.

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom

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Masugi ludicrously claims that Lincoln was an advocate of limited government, based once again on a few words of a political speech. In reality (as opposed to the mind of Masugi), Lincoln essentially declared himself a dictator by suspending the writ of habeas corpus and having the military arrest tens of thousands of his Northern political critics and opponents; launched an invasion of the South without the consent of Congress; blockaded Southern ports without first declaring war; censored all telegraph communication; imprisoned dozens of opposition newspaper editors and owners; ordered federal troops to interfere with Northern elections; unconstitutionally created the state of West Virginia to shore up his electoral college vote count; confiscated firearms and other private property; deported the most outspoken member of the Democratic opposition, Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio; and gutted the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. "This amazing disregard of the Constitution," wrote the distinguished historian Clinton Rossiter, "was considered by nobody as legal." Yet Masugi incredibly claims that Lincoln was "the greatest friend of the founder’s Constitution." He supposedly had to destroy the Constitution in order to save it.

The Constitution provides for suspending habeas corpus during a rebellion. The rest follows from that, but that's still quite a list. It would take some time to wade through it and evaluate each claim.

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom
... to make Lincoln any more than a white supremist. He supported an ammendment to the constitution codifing slavery.(as an example)

The Constitution codified slavery, remember the 3/5's compromise? How the consent of the governed could be wrangled out of that escapes me.

Some more data:

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But the Union, in any event, will not be dissolved. We don't want to dissolve it, and if you attempt it we won't let you. With the purse and sword, the army and navy and treasury, in our hands and at our command, you could not do it. This government would be very weak indeed if a majority with a disciplined army and navy and a well-filled treasury could not preserve itself when attacked by an unarmed, undisciplined, unorganized minority. All this talk about the dissolution of the Union is humbug, nothing but folly. We do not want to dissolve the Union; you shall not.

Abraham Lincoln, August 1, 1856

Quick summary: we have more guns, fuck the constitution, fuck freedom of association: fuck you. Its our way or the highway.

Thats years before any fighting actually broke out, but it is more lucid a declaration of war than any first blood could be.

If Lincoln was an evil white supremist, then certainly Thomas Jefferson was as well...if not worse.

But somehow 'Jefferson principals' are a good thing(TM).

Lincoln was a man of his times. That is to say he was a bigot as a default position, and thoroughly a follower of the current taboos.

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Lincoln wrote, "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that...I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free."

As further evidenced, research Lincoln's relationship with abolitionists, who were the people that actually ended slavery in America.

So the civil war certainly did have something to do with slavery, the moral onslaught of abolitionists made certain that it did. But Lincoln simply absorbed that moral imperative into the rest of his war propaganda. That the emancipation proclamation freed no slave that Lincoln could actually effect is a common sense proof of that. That Lincoln fully desired that freed slaves be deported is common sense proof of that. Lincoln's own words are common sense proof of that.

Britain bought all slaves and set them free, for a third the cost per slave and little to no bloodshed. Further they didn't deport them nor did they have plans to. Venezula did the same. This strategy was already proven effective, and would have been a faster and less bloody alternative.

The problem is that the civil war was not about slavery, slavery was just the moral justification for the larger issue, which was state's rights and the future of the republic.

Prior to the civil war the US was referred to as "these" united states, after it was rightly referred to as "this" united states.

So if nothing else one should throw aside the simplistic view of a war against slavery and adopt a more encompassing outlook.

If the history books frame Gulf War II as the great emancipator George W Bush invading Iraq to free the Shia slaves from the evil Saddam then 200 years from now the "great presidents" list will read Lincoln, Bush, Washington.

Remember that the victor writes the history books. Think about it.




edit** I also think it's rather silly to take excerpts from a given political speech and assume that was the totality of ones philosophy. By that metric modern politicians are all Lincolns and Washington's. GW, by the text of his speech will be known as a great orator because his writers were competent.

Quote: Original post by MSW
If Lincoln was an evil white supremist, then certainly Thomas Jefferson was as well...if not worse.

But somehow 'Jefferson principals' are a good thing(TM).

Strict adherence to Jeffersonian principles preclude slavery. Perhaps Jefferson should have been a more strict adherent to his own stated principles.

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Britain bought all slaves and set them free, for a third the cost per slave and little to no bloodshed. Further they didn't deport them nor did they have plans to. Venezula did the same. This strategy was already proven effective, and would have been a faster and less bloody alternative.

This compromise was put forward several times, but the South was entirely opposed to it. How could they accept money for dismantling the cornerstone of their state? I dont think its reasonable to claim they were remiss in not applying a solution from an entirely different situation. That such a solution might have been forcibly imposed was one of the reasons the south seceded.

As to the Iraq analogy, if in 100 years Iraq is an extremely prosperous, democratic superpower, then by all means let GW's many fans rewrite the history books. I think we can agree that theres not much chance of that happening however.

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom

Quote: Original post by MSW
If Lincoln was an evil white supremist, then certainly Thomas Jefferson was as well...if not worse.

But somehow 'Jefferson principals' are a good thing(TM).

Strict adherence to Jeffersonian principles preclude slavery. Perhaps Jefferson should have been a more strict adherent to his own stated principles.

Perhapse!?

Why so charitable with Jefferson yet so unforgiveing on Lincoln?

Jefferson wrote at length in his 1785 book Notes on the State of Virginia of the inferiority of blacks and that their removal from the United States was the defacto goal of his idea of emancipation.

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Lincoln wrote, "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that...I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free."

That is taken from a letter to the editor of the New York Tribune, its a response to the abolisionist charge that he was acting too slowly on the issue of slavery.

Full letter:

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Executive Mansion,
Washington, August 22, 1862.

Hon. Horace Greeley:
Dear Sir.

I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptable [sic] in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.

As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.

Yours,
A. Lincoln.

Lincoln already had written the emancipation proclimation when he wrote the letter. Historians agree this was a political move to prepare the public for his "altered" view on emancipation. He had been trying to get the slave confederate border states like Kentucky to adapt a form of gradual emancipation, even hopeing the promise of federal compensation to slave owners would help seal the deal. But none would have it, so the emancipation proclimation was drafted inorder to drive home the idea of the nation abolishing slavery and setting the stage for the 13th admendment.

You have to realise that even in the northern free states, the very idea of social and civil equality between blacks and whites was heresy. And it was books like Uncle Tom's Cabin that helped fuel the abolishionist cause...same book we now view as racist for the sterotypes it introduced, forgetting that even such sterotypes were akin to modern enlightenment in a culture where it was permited a white person could OWN a black person.

Same slave culture Jefferson was unable or unwilling to abolish.

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom
As further evidenced, research Lincoln's relationship with abolitionists, who were the people that actually ended slavery in America.

You mean like receiving Frederick Douglas in the White House to discuss the war and slavery?

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom
The problem is that the civil war was not about slavery, slavery was just the moral justification for the larger issue, which was state's rights and the future of the republic.

States rights was and still is the excuse used by those who would exploit other people.

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom
Prior to the civil war the US was referred to as "these" united states, after it was rightly referred to as "this" united states.

That's incorrect. Prior to the Civil War the verb use with the United States was "are", as in "The United States are..." After the Civil War the verb used was "is", as in "The United States is..." From plural to singular. You would know this if you knew what you were talking about. It's ordinary today to come across the phrase "these United States". The phrase "this United States" still sounds awkward.

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom
So if nothing else one should throw aside the simplistic view of a war against slavery and adopt a more encompassing outlook.

You mean we should adopt your revisionist view of Lincoln?

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom
If the history books frame Gulf War II as the great emancipator George W Bush invading Iraq to free the Shia slaves from the evil Saddam then 200 years from now the "great presidents" list will read Lincoln, Bush, Washington.

Remember that the victor writes the history books. Think about it.

Are you kidding? The books will count GWB as a war criminal, who used a great national tragedy to justify indefinite detention, torture and illegal surveillance. He basically set up a framework for dictatorship.

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom
edit** I also think it's rather silly to take excerpts from a given political speech and assume that was the totality of ones philosophy. By that metric modern politicians are all Lincolns and Washington's. GW, by the text of his speech will be known as a great orator because his writers were competent.

There is too much footage available to support that fantasy.