Lincoln sought to deport freed slaves

The Washington Times ^ | February 9, 2011 | Stephen Dinan

[concernedcitizen76]

The Great Emancipator was almost the Great Colonizer: Newly released documents show that to a greater degree than historians had previously known, President Lincoln laid the groundwork to ship freed slaves overseas to help prevent racial strife in the U.S.

Just after he issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Lincoln authorized plans to pursue a freedmen’s settlement in present-day Belize and another in Guyana, both colonial possessions of Great Britain at the time, said Phillip W. Magness, one of the researchers who uncovered the new documents.

[DiogenesLamp]

Based on his “definition” that a tyrant is “someone who wants to make me do something that I don’t want to do” you and I must be tyrants because we want poor DL to try to use his brain for once.

Still not past the need to throw insults eh?

[dmz]

Just my opinion, you are welcome to yours.

<><><><

OK. Would it be ok to ask on what you have based your opinion? Have you read any of the books about John Wilkes Booth?

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Given the fact that the writers and signers of the Declaration continued to keep slaves, it is patently dishonest to claim that the document was intended to apply to slaves.

I guess the slaves should have invoked self-evident natural law and declared themselves free.

[DiogenesLamp]

I guess the slaves should have invoked self-evident natural law and declared themselves free.

You mock the point because you have absolutely no legitimate answer against it. You are an emotional debater, not a logical one.

This is why these discussions of the Civil War are pointless; Too many emotional people substituting feelings for reason.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

I've covered this topic with others. Did whatever passes for the Confederate constitution prohibit this activity? The US Constitution certainly did. Jefferson Davis may have been in full compliance with his governing document when he took such actions. Lincoln obviously wasn't.

The confederate constitution is probably 95% word-for-word identical to the US Constitution. You can find clause-by-clause comparison here.

Perhaps you can find the parts that give Davis more power than Lincoln to do all these bad things Lincoln haters hold up as examples of his tyrannical atrocities.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

You mock the point because you have absolutely no legitimate answer against it.

No, I mock you because you present as absolute truth positions that you aren't willing to defend when their self-contradictions or real-world ramifications are pointed out to you.

But let's take it step by step:

Did slaves have a natural right of self-determination?

[DiogenesLamp]

Perhaps you can find the parts that give Davis more power than Lincoln to do all these bad things Lincoln haters hold up as examples of his tyrannical atrocities.

Let us say your assertions are correct. Congratulations! Jeff Davis is just as bad as Lincoln. Does this make you feel better?

[DiogenesLamp]

No, I mock you because you present as absolute truth positions that you aren't willing to defend when their self-contradictions or real-world ramifications are pointed out to you.

You mean like the fact that the people who wrote and signed the Declaration of Independence kept slaves afterward? Self-Contradictions and real-world ramifications like that?

But let's take it step by step:

Did slaves have a natural right of self-determination?

Sure. They never should have been kidnapped in the first place. I will once more point out that this is the Morality of Islam, not the Morality of Christianity.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Still not past the need to throw insults eh?

I'm beginning to think that you're just far too sensitive and thin-skinned to be presenting yourself as the superior thinker on these boards, then complaining when everyone laughs at you.

[Sherman Logan]

ALL men are created equal, etc., etc. Pretty clear and not suspect to much interpretation.

If you accept it as the basic principle of America, and at the same time defend the practice of slavery, you have only two logical options.

1) You can deny that those who are enslaved are “really” men, heading off down the road that leads to Auschwitz.

2) You can decide that the Founders were mistaken. All men are NOT created equal. As for instance, Calhoun and Stephens defended so eloquently. Of course, once you accept this argument, there is no particularly logical reason to assume that black/white is the only divider between the unequals. Why not rich/poor, nobly vs. ignobly born, etc.

Which of course gets us right back to the world most of humanity has always lived in.

I personally think that the DoI had a short-term negative effect on the interaction of Americans with both blacks and Indians. Since both were obviously not equal to white men, they couldn’t really be men at all, so must be some species of animals with no rights that “real” men had any obligation to respect, as Taney put it.

Only two categories allowed, men and not-men. And not-men could never become men, as Taney also said.

Meanwhile, the Spanish tradition provided for an infinite variety of gradations of status and freedom and rights between the slave and the King. In Latin America the slave or native could be viewed as simply an inferior man, not as some sort of talking animal.

[DiogenesLamp]

I'm beginning to think that you're just far too sensitive and thin-skinned to be presenting yourself as the superior thinker on these boards, then complaining when everyone laughs at you.

Did that seem like a complaint? From my perspective it was just a statement that some people feel the need to toss insults instead of valid points, just as you have done above.

That is what these discussions generally devolve down to. Some people are simply too emotionally attached to what they want to believe. They can't even comprehend the other side, nor do they want to.

[DiogenesLamp]

ALL men are created equal, etc., etc. Pretty clear and not suspect to much interpretation.

You would think so, but the History says otherwise.

If you accept it as the basic principle of America, and at the same time defend the practice of slavery, you have only two logical options.

No one is defending the practice of slavery. I am pointing out that it was legal, and that the Declaration of Independence was not intended to change that condition.

I regard this as admitting unpleasant truths.

[onedoug]

...who refused to join his treason.

Note that Davis was held in prison without trial for two years before being released. He was never tried for Treason.

I happen to think that Jane Fonda committed Treason to a far greater degree then Davis. But she was never tried for it either.

To the victors(?) belong the spoils, eh?

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

You mean like the fact that the people who wrote and signed the Declaration of Independence kept slaves afterward? Self-Contradictions and real-world ramifications like that?

Yes, for a start.

Sure. They never should have been kidnapped in the first place. I will once more point out that this is the Morality of Islam, not the Morality of Christianity.

An irrelevant diversion. The fact that they had been enslaved--sometimes generations earlier--by Muslims doesn't mean they had less of a natural right to self-determination here among the Christians in the United States. You're simply attempting to blame shift.

So the next question is:

How should the slaves have invoked and realized this right?

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

They can't even comprehend the other side, nor do they want to.

After many years on these threads, I fully comprehend the other side. I simply reject it. And at the risk of invoking Godwin's law, I also comprehend Nazi Germany and the socio-political and economic forces that led to the rise of Hitler and the Holocaust, but I still think I'm allowed to call it hideous without being accused of being too emotional.

[rockrr]

Anyone can make any accusation they feeeeeeeeel like making but considering the Liberal Projection™ of the accuser it is simply laughable.

[DiogenesLamp]

An irrelevant diversion. The fact that they had been enslaved--sometimes generations earlier--by Muslims doesn't mean they had less of a natural right to self-determination here among the Christians in the United States. You're simply attempting to blame shift.

No, i'm simply pointing out that the Christian understanding of natural law is very different from that of the Islamic understanding. They are different moral frameworks.

This is what *CAUSED* the Dichotomy between slavery and the Christian version of natural law. The people of 1776 knew that the Declaration didn't apply to slaves, but it is as a result of this schism between their understanding of Christian philosophy (We are all Children of God) and what was existing law under the Declaration, that people started saying "Why doesn't it apply to slaves?"

I find it amusing that you regard this aspect as a "diversion". It is tantamount to admitting how much you don't realize that things are connected together; That it is a continuum, as opposed to an array of cubbyholes.

You may not get this, but "boundaries" between one concept and another are often the result of human desire to see them, not so much because they actually exist.

How should the slaves have invoked and realized this right?

How about a fair trade? You get to ask a question (which I have answered), and then it's my turn.

Did the Founders intend that the Declaration of Independence should apply to slaves?

[DoodleDawg]

Did the Founders intend that the Declaration of Independence should apply to slaves?

Did the Founders intend that the Declaration of Independence should apply only to free white people and not free black ones?

[DiogenesLamp]

After many years on these threads, I fully comprehend the other side. I simply reject it.

How contemporary of you. It's easy to "reject" the other side when it is the popular thing to do. It doesn't seem convincing that you just happened to analyze the entire subject, and come down with a position that is popular now, but wasn't even popular in the North at the time.

And at the risk of invoking Godwin's law, I also comprehend Nazi Germany and the socio-political and economic forces that led to the rise of Hitler and the Holocaust, but I still think I'm allowed to call it hideous without being accused of being too emotional.

So Imagine a history of World War II where our government was willing to sign a peace treaty with Hitler that would allow him to continue persecuting the Jews so long as he stopped fighting them.

Would that be hideous, or would that be okay? What would you say of government that would agree to such a thing?

[DiogenesLamp]

Did the Founders intend that the Declaration of Independence should apply only to free white people and not free black ones?

If it even occurred to them at the time, I would think some of them thought so, while others did not. It is not an easily answerable question without digging through all the writings of the participants at the time.

But what is not at all in question is that the founders didn't regard it as applying to slaves. Even by the time of the US Constitution, they were still making allowances for the condition of slavery.

US Constitution, Article IV, Section 2:

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.