Secret Message in Lincoln’s Pocketwatch, 1861

‘In 2009 the Smithsonian found a “secret” message engraved in Abraham Lincoln’s watch by a watchmaker who was repairing it in 1861 when news of the attack on Fort Sumter reached Washington, D.C.

‘In an interview with The New York Times April 30, 1906, 84-year-old Jonathan Dillon recalled he was working for M.W. Galt and Co. on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, where he was repairing Lincoln’s watch. The owner of the shop announced that the first shot of the Civil War had been fired. Dillon reported that he unscrewed the dial of the watch, and with a sharp instrument wrote on the metal beneath:

‘The first gun is fired. Slavery is dead. Thank God we have a President who at least will try.’

‘He then signed and dated the inscription and closed the dial. Dillon told The New York Times in 1906 that to his knowledge, no one ever saw the inscription.

‘After being contacted by Dillon’s great-great-grandson, the museum agreed to remove the dial to see if the watchmaker’s message was inside. The museum did find a message inscribed on the brass underside of the movement. The wording was slightly different from Dillon’s own recollection. The actual engraving says:

‘Jonathan Dillon April 13-1861 Fort Sumpter [sic] was attacked by the rebels on the above date J Dillon April 13-1861 Washington Thank God we have a government Jonth Dillon

‘“Lincoln never knew of the message he carried in his pocket,” said the director of the National Museum of American History. This inscription remained hidden behind the dial for almost 150 years.’

“a war waged against the United States Of America”

Wait a minute. I thought you liberal yankees said the North invaded the South to free the slaves, but here you say the South invaded the North.

Of course, the North held onto their slavery all the while invading the South in order to free the...sla..waitaminute, you’re just too bigoted to say anything straight.

You simply don’t know history past some racist views taught to you by the public school system that the South were all slave owners and the North was pure as the wind driven snow and that the North invaded the south to free the slaves...and it is all the white man’s fault.

Hiya ‘toad - good to “see” you again!

Nice job on the “you liberal yankees” ad hom....nice touch. As a launchpad for misinformation I suppose it’s appropriate, however inappropriate.

I don’t know of anyone except southron partisans who ever claim “the North invaded the South to free the slaves” and I’ve certainly not seen it on this thread.

And you’ve been schooled on the fallacy that “the North held onto their slavery all the while invading the South” so I do wonder why you persist. Oh, and nowhere have I seen anyone other than Lost Causers suggest “the South were all slave owners and the North was pure as the wind driven snow and that the North invaded the south to free the slaves...and it is all the white man’s fault.”

We all know that this is silly strawman stuff that is untrue and unworthy of you.

Talk about knowing no history.

The North -- aka the United States of America -- didn't "invade" the South. Rebels in a Southern State fired on and then seized the property of the United States of America, which started a war. This after stealing from the Federal treasury and wringing one concession after another in bad faith negotiations for eight decades.

The United States of America didn't "hold on" to any slaves. Contrary to the idiotic statement in your post, Lincoln was a Constitutionalist, who did not believe either he, or Congress, had the authority to free slaves. You will note if you ever bestir yourself to read some history beyond the lame nonsense written by Southern (Gone With the Wind, Birth of a Nation) "historians," that the Emancipation Proclamation only freed those slaves in territories which had declared themselves outside of the Constitution. Emancipation was not necessary in most of the Northern US, but because the Constitution remained, so did slavery in the border States. North of the MD line, Americans did not own slaves.

Nobody claimed the Americans were "pure as the wind-driven snow." But what history shows was that 1) The Republican Party was founded to abolish slavery 2) When a Republican President was elected, the slave States decided to secede 3) When the Civil War ended, the Constitution was amended freeing 1/8 of the US population from Slavery 4) That Constitution was amended by, and the blood was shed to do that by white, male, Americans.

You can pretend these facts don't exist. But facts are stubborn things.

Nobody seceded over the tariff, nor over any "States Rights" issue. The claim of "States Rights" is easily enough silenced by a simple question: over what "right" did the slave States secede? [Hint: What Ayn Rand correctly described as a "right" that no state possesses: the right to buy, sell, and own other human beings.]

There's no more "racism" in these facts than the legitimate criticism of 0bama. But I'm not surprised to find you in bed with the Commies in that regard. Politics makes for strange bedfellows, and the multi-culties have always been in bed with the slave-masters in maintaining the preposterous fantasy that AmeriKKKa is far too racist to ever have abolished black slavery. The truth is that, as Thomas Sowell pointed out at some length in Race And Culture, [Paraphrasing] "The fact that Americans owned slaves is not remarkable. Slavery has existed (and continues to exist) throughout human history. What is remarkable about the Anglo-American civilization is that it abolished slavery."

Go and actually read the contemporary news editorials written in Southern papers during the Antebellum and Civil War. If you're honest with yourself, you'll very quickly disabuse your mind of the lie that the Civil War was fought over anything but slavery.

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