Abraham Lincoln, Stepfather of Our Country

The New American ^ | 11/11/2012 | John J. Dwyer

[Sherman Logan]

I did not say Lincoln did not know about the deportation, I said he didn’t know about V’s original arrest. Once the arrest had taken place, Lincoln didn’t want to try him, and also didn’t want to release him, so he was deported to his friends in the CSA.

I also never said V’s deportation had anything to do with gerrymandering. I said he was no longer a member of Congress when arrested (or deported) because the Republican OH legislature had gerrymandered his seat out of existence.

The article says he was deported for statements made on the floor of the House. This is flatly untrue.

Here’s the sequence:

V is member of House, and violently opposes the President there. Left strictly alone.

OH legislature, with cooperation of war Democrats, gerrymandered his district so he couldn’t be reelected. He lost 1862 election.

V returns to OH and (probably intentionally) violates Burnside’s (unconstitutional) Order 38.

Burnside has V arrested. Lincoln is flummoxed what to do with him, as his being imprisoned is hurting the Repubs. So he has him deported.

If you have a disagreement with something I actually said, rather than with things I didn’t say, post them and I’ll be happy to respond.

[Sherman Logan]

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Vallandigham is how he died.

In defending his client against a murder charge, he was demonstrating in court how the victim’s gun might have accidentally gone off. The demonstration worked perfectly. Unfortunately, the demonstration was probably more realistic than V intended, and it killed him.

Don’t know if his client was acquitted.

[IbJensen]

I think I’d rather drink the rest of my after church martini.

[IbJensen]

Happy President’s Day.

[Redmen4ever]

For a long time, the debt of Virginia to be assumed by West Virginia needed to be resolved. I suppose you know about this, given your reply. So, why don’t you tell me how that turned out. Did West Virginia simply seize the assets of Virginia within its territory and deny that it shared in any of the liabilities of Virginia, like a bunch of slaveowning hooligans, who by reason of being slaveowners show that they deny that everybody is created equal and deserving of fair treatment?

If you’d want to refresh your memory on the debt of Virginia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_v._West_Virginia_(1911)

[rockrr]

My family history is similar to yours with Scot and Welsh ancestors settling in the south

[Redmen4ever]

>Each state was a voluntary member of the nation. They were under no constitutional obligation to stay under the federal system.

>And yet when the New England states were mulling over secession during the days of the Essex Junto and the Hartford Convention, Southerners accused them of “treason” for wanting to dissolve the Union.

Two wrongs don’t make a right, although they often make a hypocrite.

Those who enter into a partnership owe the other parties to that partnership notice and a process of determining what is equitable in their departure. That is all. For example, Louisville can leave the Big East. Just because we’re talking government doesn’t really change anything. Government is nothing sacred. It’s a man-made institution that enables us to take advantage of the tremendous economies of scale in self-protection and to obtain other advantages on an essentially ad hoc basis.

The South, therefore, only needed to make an offer to the federal government, to account for any relative excess of federal property within their territory, for the assumption of a fair portion of the national debt, to provide free transit on, for example, the Mississippi (the reciprocal duty of the North being to not divert the waters originating in their territory from flowing into the Mississippi), and to allow those persons in the South who want to leave on fair terms.

After that, the North - uninhibited by the Constitution - could invade and colonize or do anything they wanted to the South for the grave violation of human rights known as slavery. Also, to collect the many debts of Southern states to Northern and European capitalists on which they were in default.

With regard to the New England states during the War of 1812: They remained neutral in terms of the fighting. So, while the rest of the country was disappointed in their lack of enthusiasm for invading Canada, on what basis would they invade New England? Because New England didn’t have slavery, or because New England didn’t default on their debts?

[x]

If you are against the Patriot Act, Guantanamo, waterbording, drone strikes, and death lists, we can have a discussion about Lincoln and civil rights. If you're not, though, you accept the basic principle that countries and governments do have a right to protect themselves, so there's not that much to argue about.

Secessionists and Confederates accepted the basic principle as well. Jefferson Davis didn't regard the states in his union as divisible and didn't have much sympathy for minority rights when they undercut his rule. The rights of the African-American minority certainly didn't exist for him.

He didn't stop short of suspending habeus corpus or imprisoning hostile journalists. Davis didn't like it when such tactics were applied to his own supporters in union areas, but he accepted the principle.

Nor were supporters of secession, the Confederacy, and state's rights great opponents of imperialism or great supporters of Indian rights, as the Mexican War and the "Trail of Tears" indicate. Consequently, I suggest giving the whole "Tyrant Lincoln" thing a rest -- at least until we figure out a way around these inconvenient facts.

[BroJoeK]

from Dwyer's article: "Even Massachusetts’ Senator Charles Sumner, one of the spearheads of the Radical postwar Reconstruction and certainly no friend of the South, said:

“When Lincoln reinforced Sumter and called for 75,000 men without the consent of Congress, it was the greatest breach ever made in the Constitution, and would hereafter give the President the liberty to declare war whenever he wished, without the consent of Congress.” "

I can't find a source or context for this quote, but...
Massachusetts' Senator Charles Sumner was your typical radical abolitionists Republican who suffered possibly the first serious casualty of the Civil War, on May 22, 1856, when beaten unconscious by South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks on the Senate floor.
Sumner's injuries took two years to fully recover, and probably scared him mentally against any future sympathy for the southern slave-power.

President Lincoln considered Sumner a valuable adviser, though did not always take Sumner's advice.

Sumner was a powerful figure in Congress and post-war tangled bitterly with President Ulysses Grant, over especially Grant's plan to annex Santa Domingo, now Dominican Republic.
Sumner opposed what he saw as American imperialism.
When "President Grant sent in the U.S. Navy to keep the Dominican Republic free from invasion and civil war,... such military action was controversial since the naval protection was unauthorized by the U.S. Congress."

So I'm guessing this could be the context of Sumner's words condemning presidential power to intervene militarily without Congressional approval.

The problem with Sumner's words quoted above: Sumner was factually wrong.
From the very beginning of the Republic, every president, including Founders, used the military in many instances short of all-out declared war, with and without congressional authorizations.

Here is a listing of major military operations since 1775.

So Lincoln's actions were no more "unconstitutional" than those others, were clearly in accord with Founders Original Intent and with previous historical precedent.

[Zionist Conspirator]

I've got a great idea for how to pull this great nation back from the brink.

You Dixiecrat palaeocons should infiltrate the Democrat party, the historic party of Jeffersonian strict constructionism and take it back.

Republicans will kick out the pragmatists and become a party of moral reform, as it was in the beginning.

With this country represented by one libertarian party and one moralist party, I think we'll do all right.

Either that or someone needs to revive the Prohibition Party as a major political player.

[x]

I can't find a source or context for this quote, but...

That comes from Mildred Lewis Rutherford, a Georgia Daughter of the Confederacy who wrote "A True Estimate of Abraham Lincoln, and a Vindication of the South" in the early 20th century.

More about her here:

The leader of the school-book crusade was Mildred Lewis Rutherford, historian-general of the Confederated Southern Memorial Association, who maintained that Southern children must be told the truth about Abraham Lincoln. Among the "truths" she herself purveyed in a series of pamphlets were these: that Lincoln was a slaveholder; that as a quartermaster in the Mexican War he tried to starve American soldiers; that he contributed $100 to the support of John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry; and that Ulysses S. Grant, as commanding general of the Army, in 1867 imposed a forty-five-year censorship on all important newspapers, prohibiting any abuse of Lincoln.

[rockrr]

In other words it is pure fabrication that has since been incestuously spread about by the lost causers.

[Zionist Conspirator]

If you are against the Patriot Act, Guantanamo, waterbording, drone strikes, and death lists, we can have a discussion about Lincoln and civil rights. If you're not, though, you accept the basic principle that countries and governments do have a right to protect themselves, so there's not that much to argue about.

Secessionists and Confederates accepted the basic principle as well. Jefferson Davis didn't regard the states in his union as divisible and didn't have much sympathy for minority rights when they undercut his rule. The rights of the African-American minority certainly didn't exist for him.

He didn't stop short of suspending habeus corpus or imprisoning hostile journalists. Davis didn't like it when such tactics were applied to his own supporters in union areas, but he accepted the principle.

Nor were supporters of secession, the Confederacy, and state's rights great opponents of imperialism or great supporters of Indian rights, as the Mexican War and the "Trail of Tears" indicate. Consequently, I suggest giving the whole "Tyrant Lincoln" thing a rest -- at least until we figure out a way around these inconvenient facts.

Great post.

As I've said, as descendant of Southern Unionists I have learned and admitted that the Union wasn't lily pure as I'd always thought. But the Confederate apologists don't seem to have the ability. Do they really think the leaders of the Confederacy were supermen without flaws? Maybe. I'd rather think this overreaction is due to a hundred and fifty years of pro-Northern history working itself out, but some of them may actually believe that.

White Southerners are the Blacks of the Right. The Left regards Blacks as something more than human, as virtual avatars of Social Justice without the slightest flaw of our universal human nature. Never mind their rural Southern origins, their Southern speech, their Fundamentalist religion (in style if not in substance), and the fact that most of them if white would be labeled "rubes" and "hicks" (if not "rednecks"). Social Justice looked down and in pity incarnated itself in our world as The Black Man.

For palaeoconservatives Southern Whites fill this same role. White Southerners are without fault. They are "gxds" on earth. The whole point of J*sus coming to earth was to create Medieval Western European civilization of which the Old South was the last outpost. Christianity is all about brandy and cigars on the veranda while the darkies (who are all subversive Marxist scum who shouldn't be here) sing in the background.

I am very Southern in the sense of influenced by the rural Biblical Fundamentalist culture, but I must confess that the feudal society of the plantation South is alien to me.

Come to think of it, these two attitudes are so similar that they should both be in the Democrat party. Certainly I as a Republican would believe no such thing.

[BroJoeK]

from Dwyer's article: "When Lincoln reinforced Sumter and called for 75,000 men without the consent of Congress, it was the greatest breach ever made in the Constitution..."

BJK: "I can't find a source or context for this quote, but..."

x: "That comes from Mildred Lewis Rutherford, a Georgia Daughter of the Confederacy who wrote..."

rockrr: "In other words it is pure fabrication that has since been incestuously spread about by the lost causers."

So apparently I am guilty of taking that fool Dwyer's neo-Con propaganda seriously?

[rockrr]

I can’t say either way ;-)

All I can say is that what I saw in my search was a circular reference of one lost site referring to another lost cause site which pointed to yet another lost cause site - all without a primary source.

[donmeaker]

By contrast, Jeff Davis had previously called up 100,000 men to support the insurrection, demanding that soldiers serving as militia be provided.

In violation of article 3 requirement that controversies between states and the federal government be resolved at the Supreme Court.

[donmeaker]

New England was not neutral in the war of 1812. Rather, they provided large numbers of privateers.

[donmeaker]

http://www.lhaasdav.com/learningcenter/privateers.html

Had some to me interesting information on privateers in the war of 1812.

[Louis Foxwell]

Does not mean it is not treasonous. By definition it is. Secession is, however, consistent with freely joining the other states. If they freely joined they can freely leave. This independence was taken away by the war.

[Zionist Conspirator]

Does not mean it is not treasonous. By definition it is.

Since you didn't quote anything, I have no idea what that statement is referring to.

Secession is, however, consistent with freely joining the other states. If they freely joined they can freely leave. This independence was taken away by the war.

And Southerners accused New Englanders of treason for wanting out of the Union during the Essex Junto/Hartford Convention days.

It's really strange that a "sovereign state" has the right to permit slavery, to secede, and to legalize marijuana (according to the Birchites) but doesn't have the right to forbid slavery within its borders. I suppose some states are more "sovereign" than others.