Revisionist attempts to reframe old debate don't wash

The recent flurry of letters from neo-Confederates asserting that slavery had no role in the Civil War is troubling, as they seem doggedly determined to force counterfactual information on the public. The trend towards "true Southern history," minimizing the slavery issue by insisting that all of America was racist, and that slaves fought for the Confederacy is a spurious and disingenuous argument. Using half-truths and outright misinformation, they try to avoid what any serious historian of the Civil War recognizes as a major issue of the war.

Having studied the Civil War since my early teens and teaching it on a college level here in Hagerstown and at George Mason University, I feel qualified to point out a few holes in their argument. First of all, yes, much of America was racist, at least by today's standards, but that does not mean that slavery was not an issue in the war.

The controversy was not on a humanitarian basis, but was political and economic. Many states outlawed slavery soon after the Revolutionary War, and slave-state representatives were determined to "force" slavery into the newly acquired western territories. There was no political effort to eradicate in existing states, but a strong attempt to halt the spread of it to the new territories in the West.

The much-cited proposed 13th amendment in 1861 was intended as a compromise to reassure the southern states that their property rights were not in jeopardy due to Lincoln's election, and it did pass in Congress. Because of their insistence of spreading slavery, southern states chose to leave the Union and fire upon Fort Sumter rather than take that assurance. The actual 13th amendment did indeed outlaw slavery and end the institution, but the claim that three southern states ratified it before Lee surrendered is disingenuous.

The three state legislatures cited by the author of a recent letter were not the same ones that had decided to secede. They were Union-occupational legislatures dominated by Unionists that had little connection to Confederate states. Surely the author does not suggest that the Richmond legislature was approving United States Constitution amendments while still maintaining their Confederate independence!

Another writer cites a large number of blacks who aided the Confederate cause, some in combat. This too is stretching a point. Prof. Smith's estimate of 90,000 blacks who served the Confederacy in one way or another is just that, an estimate. Since the author who cites this number then states that there were 250,000 free blacks in the South, these numbers present a problem. Either there was an unusually high rate of volunteerism, 90,000 men out of 250,000 men, women and children, or many of these 90,000 blacks serving the Confederacy were slaves. If most of them were slaves, which most historians think is the case, then they are not exactly willing participants. Even if a couple of thousand free blacks did volunteer and did participate in armed conflicts, it is still a miniscule proportion of the roughly 1 million men who served the Confederacy. Most references to blacks in the Confederate army cite them as servants, cooks, teamsters, etc. Many of them were, and remained, slaves and unless someone can find testimony from them stating their willingness to do so, we must consider the possibility of them being forced labor.

As for Robert E. Lee being "an abolitionist," as Michelle Hamlin stated, the notion is ludicrous. The term abolitionist was a highly pejorative and emotionally charged word, and Lee would have been very insulted to have it applied to him. He did indeed free the slaves inherited from his father-in-law, as required by his father-in-law's will. It is not a true indicator of Lee's personal feelings, although we know he stated he disliked the institution.

This manumission does not make him an abolitionist because he never advocated freeing anyone else's slaves, and is unclear whether he would have freed these particular slaves if it were not required.

If Lee and the South were not fighting for slavery, why in the world did Lee's army hunt down hundreds of free blacks in Pennsylvania and drag them southward in chains? This is an established and accepted fact of the Gettysburg campaign, and taken with Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens' famous speech where he described slavery as the "cornerstone" of southern society, makes any logical person wonder how the South could not be fighting for slavery while fighting to preserve that society. If nothing else, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was designed to make slavery an issue of the war, not on humanitarian terms, but on political, military and economic terms. If the South was not fighting for slavery before January 1, 1863, at which time the proclamation went into effect, they certainly were doing so after that date.

Latter day denials of the facts will not change them. Slavery was part of the war, deeply intertwined in Southern economy and society, and the focal point of much of the debate that led to the war. While it is incorrect to attribute the entire cause of the war to slavery, it is equally incorrect to deny its influence.

Revisionist history is what has caused people to believe the Civil war was about slavery. When it was only part of the overall issue of states rights.

"Revisionist" is a tricky term. What it means depends on where you find the original "unrevised" view. But if you look at what happened after the Civil War, you find an effort to take slavery largely out of the discussion and replace it with "state's rights" as an explanation. People who had no trouble with slavery as an essential part of the South they were fighting for, refashioned their defenses of the Confederacy as a "state's rights" agenda. Therefore, I'd call that revisionism, more than later efforts to rediscover the role of slavery in provoking the war.

Slavery was fading out in the southern states until the invention of the Cotton Gin which made it profitable again.

True, but the cotton gin was invented in the 1790s and in the 1850s slavery was going stronger than ever. Opposition to slavery in the Southern states was less than it had been generations before. It strikes us as obvious that at some point slavery would have been abolished because we can't imagine slave labor lasting down to the present day on our continent. But when would it have ended? And in any case, people at the time, don't have the benefit of our hindsight. Slavery was a living option and a live issue at the time.

Also the south is constantly portrayed as evil for fighting this war for slavery but hardly a word is mentioned of the rape of the southern economy by the north during reconstruction. A travesty from which the south has just begun to recover from in the last 20 years.

Many of us grew up learning about how horrible reconstruction was. It was the old story of courageous Andrew Johnson fighting off the vengeful Radical Republicans. Whether you want to regard this as the original or a revised view it was widespread down to the 1980s. But attitudes towards Reconstruction have changed in recent years. Not to the benefit of Northern Republicans and capitalists, who are still seen in a negative light. You can still find historians who attack Northerners for allegedly crippling the South.

But historians have come to appreciate the positive side of Reconstruction as an effort to introduce greater racial equality into American political life. The notion that Reconstruction was a great crime perpetrated by the North upon the South that many of us learned in school has come to be reexamined and how much will withstand serious scrutiny remains to be seen.

Lincoln was well aware of the many aggressive southern provocations,....

You sound like a squealing schoolgirl.

.....such as seizing federal arsenals and revenue vessels, which had already occurred.

Pfffft. The States left the Union. They were exercising sovereignty rights -- same ones the Union had had, before separation. The United States doesn't have a right to operate Avellano AFB if the Italian Government withdraws from its agreements with the U.S.

That Lincoln was preparing for a likely conflict does not mean that he intended to start a shooting war; only that he was ready to respond to one.

Sophistry. He wanted a war. War solved his problem.

The United States was the product of the exercise of fundamental human rights.

So was the CSA, and with better reasons. Tell me anything the British tried to do in 1769-1776 that was a worse provocation than laying a blockade , as Lincoln did, or proposing to remove the ability of the Colonies to feed themselves, by abolishing, say, agriculture?

King George barred American colonists from passing the Appalachians. King Abe proposed to bar American citizens passage to the Territories. Both their reasons were rooted in Policy and raison d'etat, and both attacked Americans' rights.

The philosophical parentage of the CSA is ... well ... doubtful. "Bastard ...."

.....is what the neighbors called Nancy Hanks's boy, the one who resembled "Devil Anse".

Abraham Lincoln, savior of the Union and emancipator of American slaves, was born the illegitimate son of Nancy Hanks and businessman Abraham Enloe in western North Carolina. In order to get Nancy and her infant son away from the Enloe household, Mr. Enloe sent mother and son to Kentucky and arranged a marriage with Thomas Lincoln, a drunkard who beat his wife and "adopted" son and gave them a ramshackle hut with barely a floor to sleep on. He was paid in mules and cash.

Link to Genealogy Today article.

Did you think we'd forget?

The United States doesn't have a right to operate Avellano AFB if the Italian Government withdraws from its agreements with the U.S.

The U.S. doesn't operate an Aviano AFB. There is an Aviano Air Base which the U.S. has a joint use agreement with the Italian government. The base itself belongs to Italy. Unlike Sumter which was the property of the U.S. government.

So was the CSA, and with better reasons. Tell me anything the British tried to do in 1769-1776 that was a worse provocation than laying a blockade , as Lincoln did, or proposing to remove the ability of the Colonies to feed themselves, by abolishing, say, agriculture?

Better reason? Slavery was a better reason? And check you time line. No blockade was imposed until after Sumter. So the blockade was a result of southern hostile actions. And when did Lincoln, or anyone else propose removing the ability of the south to feed itself?

Did you think we'd forget?

Of course not. No idiot theory is too stupid for you all to jump on so long as it is anti-Lincoln. Your 'Lincoln was a homosexual' theory has been discredited, your 'Lincoln was an athiest' theory has been refuted, now it's time to jump on the 'Lincoln was a bastard' bandwagon. This one is easier to disprove than the others.

The challenge to Lincoln’s paternity is a very old challenge beginning as early as his nomination for the presidency in 1860. In fact, there are currently a total of 16 individuals who various authors have claimed hold such a distinction, if distinction is the right word. Among these sixteen are such notables as John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Patrick Henry. More directly to the question of Abraham Enlow, there are actually four men with the name of Enlow, or a variation thereof, who are alleged to have fathered Lincoln. They are: Abraham Enlow of LaRue County, Kentucky; Abraham Enlows of Hardin County, Kentucky; Abraham Inlow of Bourbon County, Kentucky; and Abraham Enloe of Rutherford County, North Carolina. It is the latter individual that is currently making the rounds.

The Rutherford County claim stems from two early works that can be traced to author James Cathey (and later J. C. Coggins). According to these authors, Abraham Lincoln “...was born in Rutherford County, North Carolina about 1804,...” The extant record disproves this spurious statement.

The earliest record that we have for Lincoln’s mother, Nancy Hanks, is dated June 11, 1806, in Washington County, Kentucky. It is a bond for her marriage to Thomas Lincoln which occurred one day later on June 12, 1806. A second record, the marriage return of the minister who performed the marriage (Jesse Head), is also extant and lists the marriage as occurring on June 12, 1806, in Washington County, Kentucky. We can place both Nancy Hanks and Thomas Lincoln in Washington County, Kentucky at this time. According to the Enloe legend, Abraham would have been two years old at the time (born 1804).

The Enloe legend continues, “After that, Enloe found Tom Lincoln, an itinerant worker, and paid him a sum of money to marry Nancy Hanks and give her and the boy a home and name. Tom Lincoln agreed to the deal and left for Kentucky with little Abe and Nancy, whom he married in 1806”). This statement places Thomas Lincoln in North Carolina between 1804 (little Abe’s alleged birth), and 1806 (Tom and Nancy’s marriage in Kentucky). While written documentation proving Nancy’s whereabouts during 1804 and 1805 is lacking, there exist several oral traditions which place her in the home of Richard Berry in Washington County, Kentucky during this period, and here is precisely where we find her in June of 1806 adding credibility to those traditions.

More important, however, we do have documentary records which tell us exactly where Thomas Lincoln was living during this period, and considerably before and after this period. Thomas Lincoln can be located in Washington County, Kentucky from 1786 to 1803. From 1803 to 1806, we can document his location in Hardin County, Kentucky (Mill Creek farm near Elizabethtown, Kentucky), and from 1806 to 1808 (Elizabethtown, Kentucky), from 1808 to 1811 (Sinking Spring farm), 1811 to 1816 (Knob Creek farm), etc. Each of these locations is identified by a variety of records which are readily available (tax records, mortgages, jury records, deeds, bills of sale, records of debt, etc.).

During the crucial period of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, and Enloe’s alleged meeting with Thomas Lincoln, we can unequivocally place Lincoln in Hardin County, Kentucky. So if Enloe met with Lincoln to cut a deal, Enloe must have journeyed from Rutherford County, North Carolina to Hardin County, Kentucky to make the deal. This makes no sense. Enloe surely could have found another “...itinerant worker” in North Carolina to assume the task (for money) rather than undertake so long a journey to Hardin County, Kentucky.

To the best of our knowledge, Thomas Lincoln was never in North Carolina, and can be traced from his place of birth in Rockingham County, Virginia to his place of death in Charleston, Illinois. He never “... left” North Carolina for Kentucky as these authors claim. This is the most damaging evidence against the claim.

What other information do we have which bears on this subject? Abraham Lincoln had an older sister, Sarah Lincoln, born in 1807 in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. If older, she must have been born in North Carolina according to the Enloe legend. Was Enloe also the father of Sarah? If born in 1807, Sarah would in fact be younger than Abe. Assuming Sarah was born in 1807, and was therefore younger than Abraham according to the Enloe legend, all subsequent information about this girl is confusing. She married Aaron Grigsby while living in Indiana with her family in 1828 (age 21) when Abe was yet 19 (or was he 24?). Surely the difference between 19 and 24 would have been obvious.

Equally confusing about this age difference (1804 vs. 1809) can be found in Lincoln’s own hand. The earliest record we have of Lincoln is dated 1824 and consists of his writing in a homemade school assignment book. These fragments of Lincoln’s school assignments contain a short rhyme which Lincoln wrote about himself as well as simple mathematical calculations. If born in 1804, he would be 20 years old at the time of the writings as opposed to 15 years old (1809). Although open to debate, it seems far more likely that Lincoln was 15 and attending school in 1824 rather than 20 years old. Lincoln did not attend school at the age of 20 or, at least, there are no claims that he was still in school at age 20. While a five year differential is not obvious in the “mature” years of a person’s life, it is very obvious during one’s early (teen) years.

When the Lincolns left Indiana and moved to Illinois in 1830, Abraham Lincoln helped his parents locate near Decatur (Illinois), helping to erect a cabin. He then proceeded to strike out on his own winding up in New Salem where he began his long climb to the presidency. This date is important because it represents his becoming 21 years old (the age of majority) and no longer under legal obligation to his father. If born in 1804, he would have been 26 years old, five years past his age of majority. Again, this is not proof, but certainly is more consistent with the accepted birth date of 1809 rather than 1804.

Of course, there are Lincoln’s own statements about his nativity. Lincoln wrote in an autobiographical sketch, “I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky.” A skeptic can ignore these statements by Lincoln under the presumption that one can never be absolutely sure where one’s paternity resides even with certain documentation. The only reason to reject the 1809 birth date is that the Lincoln’s can be unequivocally placed in Kentucky and not North Carolina.

But before we dismiss the currently accepted oral traditions and documentation that supports, and in some instances, proves those traditions, we should ask ourselves why the alternate traditions (Enlow, et. al.) are more believable, and whether they have any documentation to support them. The North Carolina tradition has no documentation (primary records) of any sort to lend credibility to it, and fails when challenged by all the existing documentation that does exist. It is based exclusively on one man’s writings decades after Lincoln’s death, and to nothing more. My recollection, without specifically checking the records, is that there were a total of sixteen Nancy Hanks living during the period in question. The person most often confused with Lincoln’s mother was her aunt (Lincoln’s great Aunt), also named Nancy Hanks, who was the mother of an illegitimate child named Dennis Hanks. Adin Baber, a Hanks genealogist, has placed several of these Nancy Hanks in North Carolina (as well as Virginia and Kentucky) during this period. In no instance does he place Nancy hanks Lincoln (or her parents) in North Carolina.

The legend that a man named Abraham Enloe fathered a boy whose mother was named Nancy Hanks may be true, but the woman clearly was not the Nancy Hanks who married Thomas Lincoln and the baby was not Abraham Lincoln who became the 16th President.

Those who find it “...hard to believe that Tom Lincoln, who was stocky, of no more than medium height, low-browed, and with no particular intellectual gifts, was the father of the future President...”, should rest easy. All of these characteristics are polygenic, that is, not due to a single gene, but many genes in combination. Those who doubt this genetic fact should take a look at the average heights of the parents of NBA basketball players.

That Thomas Lincoln can clearly be tracked from 1786 through 1851, especially during the crucial period 1803 through 1809, seems proof enough that Abraham Enloe of North Carolina had no knowledge of, or contact with him. This in itself washes away the foundation of the North Carolina claim. Of course, at the time the claim first appeared, its prevaricators did not know records existed in the Kentucky courthouses which would eventually surface and challenge the claim. There are always a few guns that do not smoke until several years after they are fired. The current case is a good example of this.

While there is more evidence, it is circumstantial, and not as direct as the tracking of Lincoln’s father at the time of the alleged Enloe “arrangement.”

SOURCE

The Congress of the Confederation had outlawed slavery in the Northwest Territory (which eventually became all or part of six states).

Not completely. As I pointed out to you and you're studiously ignoring, the fugitive-slave language in Article IV of the Constitution is in the Ordinance.

This was in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which is pre-constitutional law. In fact, elements of that law are still in effect today, although those areas have long since ceased to be territories.

That would include the fugitive provisions that the antislavery statutes, as I pointed out, flouted.

The Congress of the Confederation, containing in one body the legislative and executive functions in that form of government,......

Oh, buncombe! Try another -- if you want a chump, try advertising on a street corner. There was no "executive" in the Confederation -- just the Congress.

.....established a legal precedent with that legislation, so far as organized territories were involved. One cannot correctly claim that the Northwest Ordinance was "unconstitutional," as it preceded that document.

Fine. They still had a fugitive provision.

Nor can one claim that subsequent law, such as the Constitution and its amendments, were intended to overturn the precedent of congressional control of the territories.

No, but if the Supremacy Clause has any meaning, it did.

Indeed, many of the same people involved with the development of the Constitution in 1787, and the 1st Congress of the Constitutional Union in 1789, were involved in drafting and passing the Northwest Ordinance.

Okay, fine, so what?

It was a given that Congress had the power to regulate slavery in the territories, and no amendment proposed in the 1st Congress was intended to address that issue.

The power to regulate the Territories was also written into the Constitution. But the Bill of Rights did amend the Constitution. And that provided for the continuation of American citizens' property rights when they moved from the United States into the United States' Territories.

You are the one who seems to be on the horns of a dilemma.

The only thing I'm on the horns of, is needing my breakfast.

First, thanks for the clarification about Aviano AFB. My original point still stands: Aviano stands on soil belonging to another sovereign country.

As for the other material, it was an interesting read, to which one has to pay close attention. It supplied a lot of additional information. But if it was a cut-and-paste, could you please show it with a blockquote and a link? Thanks.

Which is all very well, but unfortunately for your case, it simply isn't probative. It's suggestive that there is a problem with the Nancy Hanks story, but there is still room for the Enloe story to be true.

1. The necessary documentation must attach to Nancy Hanks and her son -- not Thomas Lincoln. Census, marriage, birth records would do it. They are conspicuously absent, as one would expect in a case of bastardy. No document thoroughly excludes Nancy Hanks from residing in North Carolina -- where is the census or birth information that locates her in early life? No information about Abraham, either, until -- when? Until 1824. Well, that's understandable -- especially understandable if the interests of the Hanks family were not served by leaving lots of documentation of an illegitimate kid around. If the story is correct, then they'd have lived off-the-books as far as Abraham was concerned. There aren't even any "I-remember-when-Abraham-was-born" stories from sister Sarah, who'd have been two if the traditional story is correct; but if Abraham were the one who remembered his sister's birth, and if she remembered him towering over her when she was just little, then that wouldn't get out, would it? Not from a proud Scots-Irish family trying to live something down, in a social group with a strong honor/shame-based ethic.

2. Thomas Lincoln was an "itinerant".......itinerant ..... worker. What sort of work? If he was a drover, or a mule-skinner, well, he might have traveled quite far. As a prospective stepfather, he would certainly be more attractive to someone wanting him to adopt/marry a woman and child if he came from well beyond the second ridge. Hardin County, Kentucky, is in west-central Kentucky, and that is the biggest barrier so far to the revisionist story -- but given the nature of Thomas Lincoln's work, not insuperable, particularly if he had relations in North Carolina, or work relationships left over from an earlier period, that could conceivably bring him back to North Carolina, where so many of these Scots-Irish families hailed from before they crossed over the Appalachians.

3. If Abraham Lincoln had been born illegitimately, his parents (stepfather) would certainly want to keep that information from him until a certain age, and this would be easily done with a boy on a remote farm. There may have been one or two people around who knew the real story, but they'd have dropped away with the passage of time, and many of them will have been dead before Lincoln became prominent in public life. As for the awkward teen years, with a boy as tall, thin, and angular as Abe Lincoln, that could have been "handled" and awkward questions "schlepped" until such time as it was necessary for Abraham to know. Lincoln being a very private man, this information would have remained extremely confidential and close-to-the-vest, and no reason for it to "get out". Then there was certainly the shame ethic that anyone in the family would have been obliged to observe.

In short, your author writes a mean paragraph and brawls with the best of them, but he simply doesn't have the necessary information to dispose of this story once and for all.

All of which, by the way, we wouldn't have discussed at all, if your amigo had simply kept a civil tongue in his head, and hadn't started throwing the word "bastard" around.

Now, breakfast!

First, thanks for the clarification about Aviano AFB. My original point still stands: Aviano stands on soil belonging to another sovereign country.

As does mine, which is that unlike Sumter, Aviano does not belong the the U.S. government and never has. Therefore if the Italian government decides to end the agreement they are not evicting the U.S. from it's property.

Which is all very well, but unfortunately for your case, it simply isn't probative.

Maybe you should read it again.

The necessary documentation must attach to Nancy Hanks and her son -- not Thomas Lincoln. Census, marriage, birth records would do it.

What the marriage record shows is that Nancy Hanks was in Kentucky being married to Thomas Lincoln in 1806. According to your theory Lincoln would have been 2 at the time.

No information about Abraham, either, until -- when? Until 1824. Well, that's understandable -- especially understandable if the interests of the Hanks family were not served by leaving lots of documentation of an illegitimate kid around.

The 1824 document is a school lesson that Lincoln did. Do the math. In 1824, according to your theory, Lincoln would have been 20, not 15. Lincoln would hardly be in school at that late date.

There aren't even any "I-remember-when-Abraham-was-born" stories from sister Sarah, who'd have been two if the traditional story is correct; but if Abraham were the one who remembered his sister's birth, and if she remembered him towering over her when she was just little, then that wouldn't get out, would it?

Sarah Lincoln died around 1828. Now I'm sure she was a nice lady and all, but why would anyone want to record any "I-remember-when-Abraham-was-born" stories about her teenage brother?

but given the nature of Thomas Lincoln's work, not insuperable, particularly if he had relations in North Carolina, or work relationships left over from an earlier period, that could conceivably bring him back to North Carolina...

Except that his whereabouts were known during the periods in question, as outlined by the website I linked to, and there is no evidence whatsoever that places him in North Carolina between 1786 and 1816.

In short, your author writes a mean paragraph and brawls with the best of them, but he simply doesn't have the necessary information to dispose of this story once and for all.

Based on what? Surely you have some evidence showing that the author's information was wrong or inaccurate, and which might support the idea that Enloe was Lincoln's father? Something? Anything?

All of which, by the way, we wouldn't have discussed at all, if your amigo had simply kept a civil tongue in his head, and hadn't started throwing the word "bastard" around.

Given your propensity for tossing Nazi, Commie, and Crypto-fascist lables at people you are about the last person in this forum to advise others on civility.

Hope you had a nice breakfast.

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