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.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Article IV, section 2.
It renders null and void all state laws that attempt to deny a slave owner the ability to recover a slave.
So long as that article remained in effect, no state law could free a slave held by the laws of other states.
I don't know why this is so difficult for you to grasp.
It's clearly written."

Fugitive slaves are one thing, on that everyone agreed.
But permanent residence of slave-holders with slaves in free states was never considered acceptable before the 1857 SCOTUS Dred-Scott decision.

So, there's nothing to "grasp", you've simply misinterpreted Founders' Original Intent.
And whether Roger Taney agreed with you is irrelevant, because he was a lunatic.

[DiogenesLamp]

Totally false, but what is true is that Dickens himself hated the North and loved the South.

You should read Dicken's castigation of the Southerners who owned slaves. He is quite vicious to them. You do know that Dickens was himself an abolitionist?

He had no sympathy for slave owners, he abhorred slavery. He was just telling the truth. The Squabble between the North and South was over who was going to collect and spend all that slave produced money.

[DiogenesLamp]

You keep focusing on the contemporaneous labels of "Democrat" and "Republican" without looking at the underlying behavior of the two groups. Republicans of that era believed in "mercantilism" which is a form of command economy. They believed in protectionism. They believed in liberal causes of the day. When they finished with the abolition of slavery, they picked up enfranchisement of women, then abortion, and on and on to all the other liberal causes of the era.

The Republicans were the liberals of the 19th century, and much of the 20th century.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "You have admitted this before, and I think it represents about the most you're willing to put forth as an 'admission against interest.'
1/4 of the citizens were responsible for at least 50%."

That's not an "admission against interest", it's a simple fact readily confirmed from public data.

But it was also not "1/4 of the citizens" responsible.
In fact, in 1860 the Deep Cotton South had only 10% of US white citizens and of those (including women & children) fewer than 10% owned the slaves who produced all that cotton.
So the real number was the top <1% owned the means of production for 50% of US exports, cotton.

And the question for DiogenesLamp is whether you believe that top 1% deserved more political power than they had in 1860, and if so, why?

[DiogenesLamp]

It's totally irrelevant how many warships the US sends to resupply or reinforce US troops at the US base in Guantanamo, Cuba, regardless of what noises the Commie Cubans make over it.

Guantanamo is not a major import harbor for Cuba. Morro Castle is a more analogous example. It commands the entrance to Havana harbor, and would have been a real problem if they had wanted to stop shipping into Havana.

The Cubans would have never agreed to a permanent presences of foreign troops in Morrow Castle. No sane nation would ever agree to foreign troops continuously occupying the entrance to one of it's most important harbors.

[DiogenesLamp]

Thanks for a great series of posts, very enjoyable & informative.

You're welcome. I just wish you would learn something from them.

[DiogenesLamp]

It was clearly an ad hominem.

[DiogenesLamp]

Except if that were thought necessary to preserve the Union.

There was no moral imperative to "preserve the union." If people want to leave, they should have the right to leave. By what moral argument should you compel people to stay with you against their will? Isn't that "Slavery"?

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Don't put words into my mouth.
I agree with neither of the two statements you make and that you wish to attribute to me as being my position."

Ah, but both statements are absolutely true and would be your opinion too if you ever tried to be logically consistent.
But as a Democrat-at-heart you are not allowed to be logically consistent and must happily hold onto self-contradictory beliefs.

Sucks, but there it is...

[DiogenesLamp]

Those would be the noble motives, but even gross economics can be dressed up as a noble war-cry, for examples: international socialism or national socialism.

Or to "Preserve the Union." In fact, wars for economic reasons are usually dressed up as "noble causes".

[DiogenesLamp]

Still missing my point. Virtually all the published books were from the North during that era. It is quite understandable that differing opinions would be censored. They were going to make it happen by the power of the press, the same way the modern media tries to force a narrative down our throats with the powers of their broadcasting systems.

Nowadays we are being asked to accept illegal aliens as the functional equivalent of citizens, and they are strongly pushing this "citizen of the world" bullsh*t.

If you control the narrative long enough, you eventually control history.

[DiogenesLamp]

The fact remains that no Republican majority could be found for any of the other candidates -- i.e., Seward, Cameron, Chase, Bates, etc.

Because Lincoln hirelings, specifically brought in on railroad cars through his connections with the railroad corporations, overwhelmed the convention and deliberately blocked access to Seward supporters.

Now which party buses in the Astroturf? Doesn't it start with a "D"?

Lincoln rose from 2nd place (after Seward) on the first ballot to first place on the third, after which a solid majority switched to Lincoln.

Sure, after conveying proposed bribes to sufficient delegates to get them to switch. Again, which party does that sound like?

Liberal corporate Lawyer from Illinois engaging in dirty tricks in the Corrupt city of Chicago? Sounds like a Democrat to me. Sounds like a fairly recent one in fact.

[BroJoeK]

editor-surveyor #190: "By 1860, it was no longer north/south.
The annexed territories were booming in the west, and by then the Salinas valley in California was producing more food than all the rest of the country combined.
That was what gave the railroads so much power."

editor-surveyor #380: "The abundance of the west is what made railroads fiscally feasible."

editor-surveyor #432: "By 1860 agriculture in the Salinas valley had been well established for over a century.
After the Guadalupe Hidalgo treaty, the land owners had greatly increased their investments in the land to avoid any claim of ownership by the greedy US government.
The same also applied to the San Joaquin delta “islands.”
You haven’t a clue what you’re talking about."

If you have now reduced your claims to the fact that some people did live in the Salinas and San Joaquin valleys in 1860, then I have no problem with it.
And of the two, Jan Joaquin would eventually be the vastly more important.
However, in 1860 there was no transcontinental railroad connecting California with the rest of the country, and so any food surpluses produced would not go East.

Do you disagree?

[DiogenesLamp]

Your pathetic ability to redefine those words to suit your own desires is ruled contemptible & out of order.

You aren't the judge, and you aren't in a superior position of power over those who disagree with you.

You will have to content yourself to winning by making good arguments, though I wouldn't put much stock in your chances based on your past performance.

When I was a boy we learned there were "strict interpretations" and "loose interpretations" of the US Constitution, and the "loose interpretations" always won, making the constitution mean whatever "progressives" of the time wished.

And which is exactly what they had done to Article IV, Section 2. They interpreted it to mean something other than exactly what it said. What it said was that NO STATE LAW could interfere with returning a slave to his master, so long as that slave was held by the laws of other states.

No wiggle room there.

[DiogenesLamp]

Second, the Declaration says no such thing as, "for whatever reasons they see fit."

Here is a refresher for you.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

[DiogenesLamp]

Anderson merely moved his troops from Union fort to another.

Once South Carolina seceded, it was no longer a Union Fort. The land belongs to the people who live on it.

South Carolinians then lawlessly seized the fort Anderson abandoned.

Apparently they had been led to believe that the Secretary of War was going to turn it over to them peaceably, as this account by a Union officer relates.

Silly people believed that the Union government would tell them the truth.

So what do you think, if Lincoln traded Fort Sumter for a promise by Virginia not to succeed, would that be just a "bargaining chip" or a "principle" preserved?

If he's letting several pieces of it go, (In exchange for Virginia staying) then "preserving" the Union must not be such an important principle. In fact, if it can be broken, it isn't even a principle. It's just a slogan.

Personally, I think it would have been a good bargain to preserve the Union.

Except for the pieces that didn't get preserved. How are you preserving the Union when you willingly let states go? Is it only a necessity to preserve it when it reaches some particular number wanting to leave, or doesn't the principle hold for all states, no matter how lowly or unimportant?

This thing doesn't make any sense. If you are willing to fight a war that kills 750,000 people to "preserve the Union", then aren't you really just fighting for Virginia? Cause you were going to let the rest of them leave, right?

Sounds like a made up excuse to justify a war after the fact of having started it.

Totally apocryphal, not vouched for by any reputable historian.

Maybe, but we do know that he offered to trade Virginia for the rest. I guess some states are more important to principles than are others.

[DiogenesLamp]

No, unlike the Confederate Constitution, when the US Constitution used a term like "Person held to Service or Labour", it could refer to African slaves, indentured servants or prisoners.

And do you whistle when you walk through a graveyard?

By contrast, the Confederate Constitution made clear when it referred specifically to African slaves.

Yes, the confederate constitution made it very clear, and I presume they did this because they were fed up with people pretending the US constitution wasn't also clear.

[DiogenesLamp]

But permanent residence of slave-holders with slaves in free states was never considered acceptable before the 1857 SCOTUS Dred-Scott decision.

What has that got to do with what the law says? Sanctuary cities and medical marijuana is considered "acceptable", even though both are clear violations of federal law.

The fact that nobody was enforcing it led people to believe it was "acceptable" to ignore it, just as Liberal kooks are trying to do nowadays with illegal aliens and weed.

So, there's nothing to "grasp", you've simply misinterpreted Founders' Original Intent.

That is easy to do when no stretch of the words can comply with what you claim was their "intent."

Their "Intent" was to get the Southern states to sign on, and so they put in protections demanded by the Southern states, and they put them down in writing.

[DoodleDawg]

Guantanamo is not a major import harbor for Cuba.

It wasn't that major of a port for the South. New Orleans, Mobile, and Savannah were all busier in terms of exports or imports. Charleston was an excuse for Davis to start his war, nothing more.

[DiogenesLamp]

That's not an "admission against interest", it's a simple fact readily confirmed from public data.

But it is clear you would rather pretend that the money component of the civil war didn't exist, because it bangs on your preferred world view.

So the real number was the top <1% owned the means of production for 50% of US exports, cotton.

You said that earlier, and so I suppose we are to believe that the other 99% of the Southern population were manikins or something that had no role in producing that output.

One would have thought that the other 99% would eventually get annoyed that only 1% was getting all the money.