North Carolina GOP Lawmaker Calls Abraham Lincoln a 'Tyrant' Like Adolf Hitler

Time ^ | 4-12-2017 | Alana Abramson

[brucedickinson]

Pittman replied, "And if Hitler had won, should the world just get over it? Lincoln was the same sort of tyrant, and personally responsible for the deaths of over 800,000 Americans in a war that was unnecessary and unconstitutional." Pittman did not respond to request for comment from TIME to clarify his remarks.

[central_va]

You and your ilk will never understand. The South hated the North and slavery was the excuse to break away. Think of Lincoln's election as a catalyst and an excuse for secession.

The average Southerner relished the thought of killing Yankees and ridding themselves of the moneyed holier than though overlords in the North. Slavery, whatever. Of course all the glamor went away by 1862 but the slavery issue really wasn't a motivating factor.

[DoodleDawg]

Slavery was the excuse to get a government furnished rifle, ammunition and all the Yankees you wanted to shoot.

So...the South's motivation wasn't slavery, it was homicide?

[rockrr]

I know that cva doesn’t speak for the south but I’m sure that there are a few a-holes that hold similar sentiments. Bigoted, small-minded, crass, and cruel - one can find them anywhere. They tend to stick out because they’re usually the sawed-off runts with the big mouths.

I got a good taste of cva’s southern hospitality while living in the south. My dad was involved with the space program in the early 60’s. As a consequence we moved around a good bit, including New Orleans, Orlando, and Huntsville. I was very young, and ignorant of the cultural sub-current in the south. Dad was busy figuring out how to put men on the moon so we were forced to fend for ourselves. I had two older brothers who weren’t keen on the idea of anyone bullying me around so they taught me how to fight.

It’s human nature to be wary of people you don’t know - I get that - but this was the first time I was witness to ostracism merely because of where you were born. Right wrong or indifferent, there it was and I had to deal with it. I fought a lot and kicked a lot of ass - all pointlessly, but out of immediate necessity. I fought them because they attacked me.

Eventually I established myself, and found ways to blend in, but I never forgot my initiation. Ironically, I went through a similar experience when my family moved back to Washington. By then I was familiar with the telltales and got down to business straightaway.

My point is that, when I moved into an area I found that people were hostile towards me and even at war with me - even when I wasn’t at war with them (until I was). There were elements within the antebellum south that spent their days agitating and inciting resentment and hatred toward everything and everyone northern. They highlighted the differences between us instead of looking at the commonalities. They were the ones that inspired otherwise indifferent farmers to put down their plows and take up arms. And a lot of them were happy to watch from the sidelines as others spilled their blood.

Thankfully people like cva are relatively few.

[KrisKrinkle]

Post 280: Slavery was the excuse to get a government furnished rifle, ammunition and all the Yankees you wanted to shoot.

Post 281: The South hated the North and slavery was the excuse to break away. Think of Lincoln’s election as a catalyst and an excuse for secession.

Meaning secession by the Southern States wasn’t for any high and mighty ideals but was intended as a provocation to start a war. Like a bar room bully provoking a fight. That’s an interesting view.

[BroJoeK]

” What makes you think jeffersondem et al. will listen to you, when they won’t even listen to the leaders of the Confederacy, who told everyone at the time that they were seceding from the Union in order to preserve slavery? “

Good point!
I’ve never seen a pro-Confederate change his/her mind here, but I still think it’s important to defend the facts whenever necessary.

[DoodleDawg]

I’ve never seen a pro-Confederate change his/her mind here...

You cannot reason a person out of a position that they weren't reasoned into.

[drjimmy]

And just how did that work out for the vast majority of average soldiers and citizens of the South?

It's funny (in a pathetic way) how jeffersondem et al. have been arguing throughout this thread about the terrible dictator Lincoln starting the war and Johnny Reb just fighting back against the evil conquering hordes of Northerners--and then cva comes on and "defends" the Confederacy by saying no, Johnny Reb was a bloodthirsty yob literally itching to kill anyone from the North.

[central_va]

For the South is was a war to get away form the North. There was never at any time a threat of Northern conquest. The thought is preposterous both then and now. So the Southerner relished going toe to toe with the Yanks but only if they kept coming "down here". Face it Lincoln's war was optional and he could have both prevented and stopped it at any time. He didn't want to.

You can pretend the North was in a death struggle for its very life during the Civil War but that is both silly and false. The South didn't have the desire or the resources to conquer the North. It isn't why it seceded in the first place.

[KrisKrinkle]

So, in Post 186 you wrote: “I still am waiting to see what moral right there was for the British colonials seceding from their mother government” to which I responded in Post 214: “And they used the Declaration of Independence to convey the moral right for their rebellion. What parts of the Declaration do you find immoral?”. Your response to that in Post 250 was “Arguably, referencing slavery as a justification for the Declaration of Independence was immoral”. In support of that you’re using Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation to support the position that the DOI words “He has excited domestic insurrections” means slave insurrections and such a reference to slavery as justification for the DOI was immoral. You didn’t mention the rest of the DOI so either you have unmentioned reservations about the morality of the rest of it, you no longer are “waiting to see what moral right there was”, or you believe the one reference makes the whole thing immoral.

As to Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation, he required “every Person capable of bearing Arms, to resort to His MAJESTY’S STANDARD” and declared “all indented Servants, Negroes, or others, (appertaining to Rebels,) free that are able and willing to bear Arms, they joining His MAJESTY’S Troops”. On the face of it, that doesn’t seem like a call for insurrection (although an inference might be taken), but instead a call to join the forces of one side in an already ongoing conflict. And it wasn’t addressed only to slaves, nor to all slaves.

In short (because I’ve other things to do), as far as I can tell, you haven’t presented anything convincing.

[fortheDeclaration]

No, the right of revolution is recognized in the Declaration of Independence.

But there have to be a legitimate cause to do so.

The South just didn't like the results of an election.

The moral right for the colonies was laid out clearly in the Declaration, justifying the revolution.

[fortheDeclaration]

Lincoln hated slavery.

Lincoln's first priority was keeping the Union intact, not ending slavery.

[BroJoeK]

rockrr: "Eventually I established myself, and found ways to blend in, but I never forgot my initiation."

Thanks for a nice post.
K-12 I went to 13 different schools in 8 cities, North, South, East & West, always the new kid, usually the youngest & smallest, today we'd call me a "nerd", never very sociable.
But I was never bullied, never mistreated anywhere except for once in the 8th grade and there's a moral to the story worth remembering.

In South San Francisco -- somebody must have put another kid up to provoking me, because he had no other reason, but for weeks & weeks he sought me out to insult & challenge me to fight him.
And I have brothers too (!) and we did plenty of rough-housing (when parents not looking) so I was not in the least afraid of this kid, but had been taught not to get into fights.
Finally I agreed to meet him and we had a "fight".
But here's the funny part: the very second I touched him, he immediately turned from bully to victim and for the rest of the year I heard nothing from him except what a bully I am.

So where have we seen that story writ large?

[HandyDandy]

Why was Lee at Gettysburg? Was he just touring the monuments up North?

[BroJoeK]

central_va: "You and your ilk will never understand."

Sorry, I can't speak for your friend "Ilk", don't know him that well.
But for myself, I think I understand more than you care to admit.

central_va: "The South hated the North and slavery was the excuse to break away.
Think of Lincoln's election as a catalyst and an excuse for secession. "

Yes, somewhat true, certainly in states like South Carolina which had already threatened to secede under President Andrew Jackson way back in 1832.
But Upper South states like Virginia & Tennessee, not so much.
All first voted against secession when the only issue was Deep South slavery.
Upper South only came around to join the Confederacy and war on the United States after Lincoln's response to Fort Sumter convinced them they must chose sides.

Even then, huge regions in every Upper South state remained loyal to the Union -- West Virginia, East Tennessee, Western NC, northern Arkansas.
Point is: hatred of Northerners was far from universal throughout the South.

central_va: "The average Southerner relished the thought of killing Yankees and ridding themselves of the moneyed holier than though overlords in the North.
Slavery, whatever. "

Only "average" in certain regions.
In other areas, not so much.

central_va: "Of course all the glamor went away by 1862 but the slavery issue really wasn't a motivating factor."

Certainly not for non-slave-holding farmers in central Virginia, but for cotton planters in the Deep South who supplied the global cotton market, slavery was a matter of life & death, and current prices for slaves the difference between wealth & bankruptcy.

That's why it was so easy to convince them the anti-slavery Black Republicans would lead them to ruin if they didn't secede.
As for fighting Yankees, the former Senator from Mississippi who called the shots in 1861 had promised on Day One that he would start war if he thought Confederate "integrity" was "assailed".

And so it happened.

[BroJoeK]

central_va: "For the South is was a war to get away form the North.
There was never at any time a threat of Northern conquest.
The thought is preposterous both then and now. "

Here's why that's not true:

1. The Confederacy challenged the Union militarily in every slave-state & territory (except Delaware), whether it had voted to secede or not.
   There were seven: Union Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, New Mexico & Arizona.

2. Every Confederate, by nature & education believed (and still does) the best defense was a good offense, so Confederate forces fought in every Union state & territory they could reach, in addition to the above, seven more: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Kansas and even guerilla forces in Colorado, California and Vermont.

So sure, you can say "Confederates didn't want Northern conquest", but the Confederacy officially claimed three Union states (Kentucky, Missouri & West Virginia) three Union territories (Oklahoma, New Mexico & Arizona) and sent military forces into eight others.

That helped make the Confederacy an existential threat to the United States.

central_va: " Face it Lincoln's war was optional and he could have both prevented and stopped it at any time.
He didn't want to."

And Jefferson Davis could have ended his war on any day before April 9,1865 with much better peace terms than he fought on & on & on to achieve: Unconditional Surrender.

But, as you said, he didn't want to.

[central_va]

Good God nobody in the South thought the South could conquer the North. Like I said that is preposterous. The North had 3 times the people and all the industrial resources it needed. Everyone knew that then and knows that now looking back.

[BroJoeK]

central_va: "Good God nobody in the South thought the South could conquer the North.
Like I said that is preposterous. "

But now I know that you are closely related to Jefferson -- no, not the great Thomas Jefferson, the slimy William Jefferson, Clinton, the one notorious for publicly debating what the definition of "is" is.

So, oooooooh sooooooo cleverly, like BJ, you want to debate what the definition of "North" is.
The fact is:

1. Of 23 remaining Union states, the 11-state Confederacy claimed three more (Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia)
2. Of seven Union territories, the Confederacy claimed three (Oklahoma, New Mexico & Arizona)
3. In addition Confederates sent military forces into five other Union states (Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana & Kansas) and
4. Confederates operated guerilla forces in three more: Colorado, California & Vermont.

That's a total of 14 (almost half) remaining Union states & territories challenged in some way by Confederate military forces.

So, William Jefferson central_va, you can debate the definition "is" or "north" until your cows come home, but nobody's buying.

[central_va]

As a student of history you know the thought of the South conquering the North is ludicrous, right?

[rockrr]

The entire notion of the south taking up arms against their countrymen was ludicrous....but they did anyway.

[central_va]

It is only ludicrous if you think the South wanted to conquer the North. Fighting and killing to keep someone IN a union is ludicrous.