Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809

VA Viper ^ | 02/11/2018 | Harpygoddess

[harpygoddess]

It has long been a grave question whether any government, not too strong for the liberties of the people, can be strong enough to maintain its existence in great emergencies.

~ Lincoln

February 12 is the anniversary of the birth of the 16th - and arguably the greatest - president of these United States, Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). Born in Kentucky and raised in Illinois, Lincoln was largely self-educated and became a country lawyer in 1836, having been elected to the state legislature two years earlier. He had one term in the U.S. Congress (1847-1849) but failed (against Stephen A. Douglas) to gain election to the Senate in 1856. Nominated by the Republican party for the presidency in 1860, he prevailed against the divided Democrats, triggering the secession of the southern states and the beginning of the Civil War. As the course of the war turned more favorably for the preservation of the Union, Lincoln was elected to a second term in 1864, but was assassinated in April 1865, only a week after the final victory.

[rockrr]

That’s not what the confederates said...

[BroJoeK]

CodeToad: "Before the war of northern aggression: The united States are...
After: the United States is..."

An apocryphal fantasy repeated by, among others, Shelby Foote who should know better.
As early as the 1820s, "is" was used about 1/3 of the time.
By 1860 the use of "is" had been rising for 20 years.

In fact the change from "are" to "is" was grammatical, reflecting a change in American English usage, not political perspectives.
Here is an example, from the 13th Amendment (1865):

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

"An 1895 column in the Indianapolis Journal defended the usage of Secretary of State Richard Olney, who preferred 'the United States are.'
The writer insisted that this was correct usage on grammatical grounds: 'Thoroughly as one may believe in the idea of nationality, one cannot ignore the structural principles of the English language.'
As late as 1909, Ambrose Bierce was clinging to this grammatical defense of 'the United States' as plural."

It's true that "is" became more common after the Civil War, but not necessarily because of it.
We can note the 50% mark ("is" v. "are") was not reached until around 1885.
Here is a study of historical uses of "is" versus "are":

[DiogenesLamp]

The United States that help defeat the Kaiser in WWI.

Which was a terrible mistake. We should have stayed out of WWI.

The United States that helped extinguish the Nazi Regime and the Japanese Empire.

Had we stayed out of WWI, there would have been no Nazi regime, and the Japanese Empire would likely have never gotten so bold.

If we had stayed out of WWI, there would have likely been no Communist takeover of the Russian revolution, no Nazi regime, no Atomic bombs, no cold war, no Long March.

In other words, most of the horrible things that happened in the 20th century would not have occurred.

[GreenLanternCorps]

Read the Ordinance of Sucession for each state. The preservation of slavery is the primary reason given.

[DiogenesLamp]

Lincoln did more to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution than anyone of his time, or, arguably, since.

Except for Article IV, section 2 when he dictatorially discarded on his own authority. (Among other constitutional laws he ignored or broke.)

[DiogenesLamp]

You know the Constitution that permanently codified Slavery for 3 million people.

The United States constitution codified it for all the Slaves in North America, not just the ones in the South.

To complain about how the Southerners wanted legal slavery spelled out so specifically in their constitution after people constantly tried to bend and break the protection of slavery provision in the US Constitution, is rather hypocritical.

The US Constitution recognized legal slavery, and protected slavery in Article IV, Section 2. So don't be the pot calling the kettle black.

You need to accuse the South of something that wasn't already legal and protected in the Union for "Four Score and Seven Years".

[DoodleDawg]

I'm curious. Is Baltimore Plot an entry in the index? Does it describe "Honest Abe" standing up Mary Todd and guests on their originally scheduled wedding date?

No to both. It's a biography, not a work of fiction.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Yeah, like cutting the 75% of the taxes their 25% of the citizens were paying, while the Northern 75% of the citizens were only paying the remaining 25%."

And you can cite a source for that, or just your own vivid imagination?

[DoodleDawg]

You need to accuse the South of something that wasn't already legal and protected in the Union for "Four Score and Seven Years".

How about rebellion?

[DiogenesLamp]

No Southern or Northern citizen paid one red cent in taxes to the Federal Government.

Stop with the sophistry. You know exactly what I mean. The South paid the vast bulk of the Revenue for the Federal Government, even though they only had 1/4th of the citizens of the nation.

Today we call that "taxes."

Southerners were perfectly free to ship all of the cotton they wanted to Europe and use British or French, or Chinese merchant ships to carry that cargo to Europe.

And pay huge and ruinous fines to the Federal government for doing so. This is like Barack Obama saying people could build power plants, but he would make sure they went bankrupt if they did so.

If there was a Southern owned ship that they wanted to hire to transport that cotton, they were free to do so.

Southern Shipping and ship building companies were forced out of business by subsidies paid by the Federal government to Northern owned shipping companies and a deliberate preference from the New York shipping companies towards using North Eastern ships and shipping companies.

The Northern power brokers were just as protectionist to their shipping industries as they were to their other industries, and they held the upper hand in congress. The South was never going to get equity in a system where the Northern interests could keep voting themselves money out of the Southern pockets.

[BroJoeK]

Salamander: "Why would I do that?
It was never implemented."

Both the Madison's War of 1812 and Lincoln's Civil War income tax proposals were wartime emergency measures only, which ended with their war's end.
Madison was a Founding Father, you may remember, sometimes called "the Father of the Constitution", and did not consider an income tax antithetical in wartime.
Neither did Lincoln.

The 16th amendment was a very different situation, fully supported by those allegedly "conservative" white Southerners:

Alabama, Kentucky, South Carolina and Mississippi were among the very first states to ratify the 16th amendment.

So don't blame Lincoln, blame the Jim Crow South!

[CodeToad]

Even the federalist #10 states the States have a right to dissolve the union. Lincoln dissolved the union and conquer Ed the States.

[DiogenesLamp]

There was some Federal money spent in the South, but compared to what was spent in the North, it was a pittance.

The South paid the bulk of the revenues, between 72% and 83% depending upon where you get your numbers, but virtually all of that money was spent in the North, and they knew it.

This man outlines the disparity in his speech before the South Carolina Secession convention.

[BroJoeK]

editor-surveyor: "And the deliberate twisting of the 14th is adding tens of millions of fraudulent voters."

By Democrats.
The same people who brought us the 3/5 rule, secession, Civil War, Jim Crow and KKK (Democrats) now bring us a permanent underclass of non-citizens who will permanently vote Democrats into office.

It's what Democrats do, it's how they make their livings.

[DiogenesLamp]

pure speculation.

The numbers support it. Even if it was speculation, the Northern Newspapers of the time repeatedly voiced it, and likely a lot of Northern people believed it.

Certainly the Robber Baron types believed it, and this was sufficient to convince these people that a war to stop the South from trading directly with Europe was necessary to protect their financial interests.

Blockade was nearly the very first thing they did. Blockade runners could get weapons through, but slow moving cargo ships certainly couldn't get shipments of Cotton or Tobacco through it.

Not much of a benefit to fighting a war, but absolutely essential to prevent the South from establishing trade with Europe.

[DiogenesLamp]

To defend the Confederate Constitution was to defend the institution of Slavery.

You are giving us a bait and switch. To defend the US Constitution of 1861 was to defend the institution of slavery, because the US constitution specifically protected the institution of slavery.

Stop trying to put slavery only on the South. Slavery was part of the Union, and it lasted six months longer in the Union than it did in the Confederacy.

[CommerceComet]

You’re right that jeff davis and the rest of the southron fire-eaters were no friends of either the Constitution or freedom.

I have always found it hypocritical that many of the Lost Causers criticize Lincoln but ignore that Jefferson Davis often did the same things.

[DoodleDawg]

Even the federalist #10 states the States have a right to dissolve the union.

Where?

[DiogenesLamp]

Read the Ordinance of Sucession for each state. The preservation of slavery is the primary reason given.

That keeps getting trotted out, and it is completely misleading. Only a few of the 11 states secession conventions issued such statements, and other statements that speak more to the real economic causes such as this one, are simply ignored because they don't fit the narrative that the Northern History book publishers prefer.

Also ignored is the fact that Lincoln repeated on several occasions his support for protecting slavery if the South would simply remain in the Union.

Since Lincoln had offered them all the slavery they could possibly want if they just remained in the Union, how can we say they wanted to leave because they wanted to protect slavery?

You are repeating propaganda created by the victors in an effort to justify the bloodshed for what they did. There was no intention of abolishing slavery for nearly two years into the war.

[DiogenesLamp]

And you can cite a source for that, or just your own vivid imagination?

I can, but I prefer to use your source, and the reason I prefer to use it is because you won't be able to dismiss it because you are the one putting it forth.

I've seen your numbers before. Even you have admitted the South was producing 50% of all the Federal revenue, so show everyone your numbers, and then we can go upward from there with the other sources of which I know.

You set the starting point for what you will admit.

These arguments always turn in to what you will deny, so I figure we should just start with what you will admit.