Posted on 12/15/2012 3:17:01 AM PST by IbJensen
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it—all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.
I have always wondered why historian omit this little piece of history.....
I have also thought Lincoln needed to get that out there to relive his conscience....
Absolutely, Lincoln could have allowed the troops there to starve to death. /sarcasm off. What nonsense.
This comment pertains to your check list of the wars we have gotten into.
By the time the fascists had ascended to power in Germany and elsewhere, the U.S. and remaining democratic countries of the world were correct to conduct themselves as though warned of imminent danger. The Nazis were national socialists, and hated democratic capitalism, as well as hated democratic socialism. So, all democrats were imperiled.
Were we to turn the clock back, to the vindictive Treaty of Versailles, I agree with the Republican analysis that had opposed that treaty (also John Maynard Keynes).
Having said this, most wars are indeed miscalculations. The French, nowadays, being an effete nation, and knowing that couldn’t fight any real war, play geopolitical games without much risk of getting sucked into war. We, not yet realizing we are fast becoming like France, run the risk of getting sucked into war when we play geopolitical games.
Now I will connect your rundown of wars to your original post (on the Civil War):
In your rundown of wars, I don’t see an argument that it was O.K. for South Carolina to bomb Fort Sumter. Why, if getting into war is usually a bad thing, wasn’t it a mistake for South Carolina to bomb Fort Sumter? You’re not saying that states that secede from the Union can violently seize the property of the Federal government within their territory, without offering compensation? Is it that you believe only property in slaves warrants compensation, not property in land and buildings?
Finally, I will ask you about sovereign default as a justification for war. At the time of the U.S. Civil War, Mississippi was in default of its debt to Northern and European creditors. Under the Constitution, the Federal government and all the other states are pledged to defend all the states of the Union from invasion. Accordingly, Britain did not invade Mississippi for default on its debt, which it was in the habit of doing back in those days. Once Mississippi left the Union, its creditors, among them Northern capitalists, were free to invade them.
Of course, in line with the doctrine of states rights, Jefferson Davis, when he was a Senator, said states could repudiate state bonds. The doctrine of states rights, as expressed by Davis, is a doctrine of state power over the doctrine of God-given individual rights, and is not to be confused with endorsement of a federal system of government. Do you agree with Davis? Property in state bonds isn’t sacred, only property in slaves?
The above summarizes well the consequences of "comprehensive immigration reform."
Absolutely, Lincoln could have allowed the troops there to starve to death. /sarcasm off. What nonsense.
Your rehash is the one most blatantly absurd. Lincoln was not protecting the Constitution.
Each state was a voluntary member of the nation. They were under no constitutional obligation to stay under the federal system.
Killing hundreds of thousands of citizens, impoverishing the people and shredding the Constitution did nothing to preserve this nation.
Neither of these claims is a valid criticism of the Union Army.
The South started using conscription first.
The percentage of foreign-born Union soldiers was less than their percentage in population of the Union states.
The moral high ground of these anti-Lincoln tropes is always undercut by the fact that the south had slaves.
Drives the Lost Cause nuts when you bring that up.
To American traitors, he was, indeed. Good on him.
Bingo!
The interests of Republicans and Democrats in comprehensive immigration reform are very different:
Our interest is that immigrants be able to live as citizens of a free society. So, we want people to actually demonstrate that they are law-abiding and self-supporting.
The other party’s interest is to increase the percent of voters who are looters and moochers.
insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation.
I have always wondered why historian omit this little piece of history.....
Could it be because of the very next sentence, which accurately describes the situation?
Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish.
This attitude in the CSA continued till the very end of the war. In a meeting with Confederate emissaries in February of 1865, when even the most idiotic of southerners could see the war would be lost shortly, Lincoln had only two non-negotiable points: emancipation and return to the Union.
Even at this late date, the CSA insisted on independence as its precondition for peace. Presumably the CSA would have also insisted that Union troops withdraw from the considerable majority of its territory that had been conquered. Obviously this would have been impossible for any president, to just turn and walk away after hundreds of thousands had died.
Much to comment upon what you have posted.
As long as the USSR was involved in the ‘war’ against Germany, along with France and Britain, et al, who were either deeply entrenched in socialism as was the USSR in communism, or playing with the idea excludes these doubful allies from being considered Democratic.
America, due to its clueless politicians, get sucked into global conflicts like dust to a vacuum cleaner. Our ‘allies’ didn’t care much for capitalist republics they only were interested in what our factories could deliver.
Your point about the evil Treaty of Versailles is spot on!
Paragraph 3 is also correct, in my view.
In respect to the balance of your observations that deal with the American Civil War, I agree that I disagree. This article I posted dealt mainly with the usurpation of power by a somewhat mad Abraham Lincoln. He was insanely grasping at everything and anything to increase his power as absolute wartime ruler. Imagine. Swearing out a warrant for arrest of the Chief Justice, for example.
Abraham Lincoln and the North deserved a defeat, but it would have been extremely difficult given that most of the South’s equipment was used for bailing hay or plowing fields.
Sherman is a valid criticism of the Union Army!
What was perishing? The USA would have survived and the newly formed CSA would exit had Lincoln not prosecuted his war. Seems to NOTHING was perishing. This twisted Goebellesque remark by the Illinois Butcher™ was typical BS from a hated President.
We there’s a lot of agreement, the confusion of evils in the Civil War understandably results in disagreement. Lincoln, after all, came over to the Republican Party from the Whig Part. Not from the Free Soil or Liberty parties.
I’ll also say this: If the South had freed the slaves (e.g., via compensated emancipation, along with an invigorated the property qualification for voting so as to prevent the outbreak of mobocracy) the North could not have prosecuted the war for long, and the South could have successfully wrested itself free of the tariff.
Very late in the game, the South did offer to free the slaves who joined the Confederate Army. So, by the end of the war, it became clear that the the South had miscalculated how Northern resolve could be mustered by the slave issue, at the beginning of the war.
I condemn Lincoln for waging a no-holds-barred war against the South. As far as releasing the slaves that was not his intent at the outset.
Secretary Seward was the first who strongly recommended that the negro slaves be shipped back to Africa. Lincoln, at that time, concurred, but later suggested that buying the slaves from their owners and then shipping them to Africa.
I am in practically complete agreement with your position on the slavery issue.
well, then feel free to come on down and have a nice glass of sweet tea then! :)
I have mixed feelings on this whole Civil War history. So sad that slavery was ever condoned and allowed here in the New World. But I also grew up hearing how the South was treated so badly after the war, how brutal Reconstruction was, and how the South still paid a heavy price for its rebellion and secession. Racial prejudice is not a Southern-only thing—it is EVERYWHERE! It’s just that the Southerner is the last “safe” target of reproach, since we’re all supposed to be toothless, dirty, uneducated, simple-minded, drunk on homemade moonshine, shoeless, and armed with any kind of firearm possible. Oh, and some of us are overtly Christian, pro-life, and for traditional marriage, so that’s also held against us.
Maybe everyone else is just plain jealous of our wonderful football teams...I dunno, but it seems that the friendly jesting that used to go on between sections of the country has gone by the wayside, and now every group clings to itself and considers everyone else as EVIL.
We don’t know true evil when we see it, or we are too afraid, too numb to say it.
Anyway, sorry for the rant. I’m just a fiercely proud Southerner (at least 10 generations on BOTH sides of my family—my ancestors came thru Virginia and Louisiana!), but more importantly, a fiercely proud AMERICAN! I see greater need every day for our country to pull together and to fight evil, to be willing to sacrifice for God and country. I see a dreadful future coming to this country as more and more of our civil rights are taken/given away...
Lincoln ranks right up there with Lyndon B. Johnson as one of the two worst human beings to ever live and have anything to do with leadership.
yes him and kerosene billy.
McClellan ran on a platform based on ending the war in a truce with the Confederacy that allowed the south to return to the Union and an agreement the south could keep slavery until the end of the century. In which time, the U.S. Government would purchase their slaves and repatriate said slaves to a colony in Africa (Liberia).
At this time, a war weary North was ready to end the war and Union soldiers who had served under General George B. McClellan admired him greatly, so Union soldiers voted almost entirely in his favor. However, these Union soldiers votes were counted by Radical Republican Union Officers, and surprise, surprise the fraudulently counted votes of the Union Army threw the election to Lincoln.
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