Lincoln Enough

Time, and history, will tell if Donald Trump is “better” or “greater” than Abraham Lincoln. But if he is re-empowered in 2020 to actually make great Republican principles work, Trump would be the Lincoln we deserve.

recent poll, widely reported, found that a slight majority of self-described conservatives say Donald Trump is a better president than Abraham Lincoln. God only knows what such a response means, in an age when our mass media considers it their democratic duty to dox and fire ordinary people for their opinions, and when most historians regard it as unprofessional to teach American history in a way that leaves students with a favorable impression of America.

As a university teacher of American politics and American history, I wouldn’t say that Trump is a better president than Lincoln. More useful would be to ask how the principles Lincoln stood for and the policies the Republicans of his era favored can be adapted to the United States of today. After all, it is more than a century and a half after a Democrat and celebrity actor decided to sacrifice his life and career to star before a D.C. audience in actual assassination porn.

The Republican Party—from Lincoln to Ford—had a constitutional vision and a policy agenda. Republicans in Congress enacted pro-growth, pro-equality, domestic policy: civil rights for African-Americans, the Morrill Land Grant that subsidized higher education for the children of farmers and workers, fiat money, and the Homestead Act. Republicans enacted tariff and antitrust protection of American industries, and immigration restriction to protect American workers, so that “cheap goods” did not make “cheap men.”

And the history of The Civil War is simply this: The South launched a violent secession

This is factually incorrect. Secession wasn't violent. It was relatively peaceful. It only became violent when the government being separated from decided to send warships to create a military confrontation.

A war they intended to win in order to preserve an economy based on the use of slave labor

And this is a lie. It implies a change from the status quo under the Union.

Nothing regarding slave labor would have been different had they remained in the Union, and so your vituperative hatred of slavery in an Independent South should be just as shrill when talking about the normal conditions of the Union.

Slavery was the normal condition of the Union at that time, so trying to whine that the "South had slavery" is a deliberate attempt to deceive the fact that the North had it too, and the entire Union would have kept it!

Hell, the mostly Northern congress even passed a constitutional amendment to keep it!

Those are the undeniable, inarguable and immutable facts.

I have denied them, and furthermore I have proven them to not even be accurate, let alone "facts."

Legislation trying to weaken the fugitive slave acts in the wake of the Prigg v. Pennsylvania increased.

The "fugitive slave act" merely requires the states to adhere to the Constitutional agreement they made in 1787. It simply reiterates what the Constitution already required, but through a congressional law so as to deprive the states from the excuse the courts have given them for not enforcing it.

LOL! You do so love spouting your opinions as if they were facts, don't you?

I keep asking you for a different opinion, but you would rather repeat that I am offering an opinion instead of proving it by offering a different opinion of your own.

If it's an opinion, you tell me how your opinion is different.

It was a futile, knee-jerk reaction to restore the Union by giving the South at least part of what they were seceding over.

This side steps the question. The question is how the Congress advanced the best interests of the slaves by passing this amendment in Congress?

Again, my "opinion" is that the Corwin Amendment demonstrates that Congress didn't give a sh*t about the slaves. Your "opinion" needs to rebut my opinion, so your "opinion" has to argue Congress did give a sh*t about the slaves when they passed this amendment.

I agree in large part with your opinion that Congress didn't care about slaves.

Oh, so both our "opinions" are that Congress didn't care about the slaves. Sounds to me like this is a long ways to becoming a "fact."

But for the sake of argument, can anyone conceive of any other way to interpret the Corwin amendment as Congress being interested in the condition of the slaves?

Anybody? Anybody? Bueller? Anybody?

I think if no one can contradict it with a reasonable argument, it graduates into the category of "fact."

Civil War threads on Free Republic always turn in to Civil Wars

After may debates here.. while the south supporter do make good point... they are also wrong on may things

Fact. The Federal government from its founding had the power to restrict the spread of slavery..the North west Ordinances band slavery in US territories both Before & After the Constitution’s ratification

The Constitution itself banned the import of slaves ..acknowledge slavery was “the peculiar institution that should be restricted....the South
should of never signed on to the Constitution and join the United States in the 1st place of it didn’t accept these facts that was going to get restricted as United States spread

The crisis was triggered by Dred Scott which was an Activist’s Supreme court ruling interfering in Northern States rights to not acknowledge slavery in their territories it was the South that was anyy States right... They wanted federal troops used to enforce Dred Scott in northern States

Lincoln never was going to interfere in establish Slave States

A bug up the South’s ass was Lincoln was not going to enforce Dred Scott in the anti slave northern States the south with piss off because the federal government was not going to stomp on not slave States rights

The South wanted their slavery right to enforce throughout all US states and territories by the federal and Lincoln was not about to do that that’s why the South said then we’re going to leave... Even though the Constitution the south sign on to had allowed the federal to restrict slavery spread through from day one

I doubt there is any credible citation for Diogenes lamps claim. I've read extensively on the Civil War and never come across anything like that. Lincoln really did have much to do with the Corwin amendment and also believed even if the Amendment was passed it had no effect on the constitutionality of limiting the expansion of slavery which is what the republican platform called for.

Your absolutely correct that Lincoln hated slavery and from all indications he had despised it from a young age. However as President his duty was to preserve and protect the constitution, which meant suppressing the rebellion.

These neo-confederates always try to paint Lincoln as some sort of racist. One of their favorite attacks is this letter to Horace Greeley from Lincoln, but for some reason they always leave off the last paragraph. That paragraph shows that Lincoln's position on slavery was morally superior to any of the leaders of the pretend confederacy, and also many northern leaders.

Executive Mansion, Washington, August 22, 1862.

Hon. Horace Greeley: Dear Sir.

I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptable in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.

As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.

Yours, A. Lincoln.

You are without a doubt the most historically ignorant person when it comes to the cause of The Civil War.

This is incorrect. I am one of the most historically knowledgable people when it comes to the cause of the Civil War.

The cause was money. Money that would be lost by the wealthy and powerful "Robber Barons" of New York and their pet congressmen and government lackeys in the Deep State.

They moved the entire government to start a war to prevent the monetary losses they would have suffered if nothing was done to stop the South from trading directly with Europe.

You make up your own facts and present them as truth.

I do not make up any "facts." I learn of them by research, and then I attempt to make others aware of them. I went through most of my life never knowing that Lincoln had sent warships to attack the Confederates, and *THAT* is why they felt they needed to attack Sumter.

All my life I had been told they did it merely because they were unreasonable hotheads, and for no other reason.

I had also been taught that the Union went to war with the South over slavery and of course the Corwin amendment alone demonstrates that is completely incorrect.

Others here have pointed this out to you and you refuse to learn.

I refuse to accept attempts to drill into me the popular propaganda that doesn't actually make any sense. I would rather know an unpleasant reality over a pleasant fiction.

The truth is what I said previously.

What you want to be the truth is what you said previously. I understand that you want this to be true, but I also understand that it isn't in fact true. It's just what you've been taught your whole life, same as I was taught it my whole life.

Sometimes you just have to wake yourself up and realize you are being fed baloney.

Yes, thanks. I have been familiar with the full text of the Greeley letter for longer than I can remember. I had to weigh DL’s assertions against what A. Lincoln himself stated in his First Amendment, (italics by me):

“I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution—which amendment, however, I have not seen—has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”

I believe it is possible that Lincoln could have been involved with drafts of the Corwin Amendment, but he most certainly was not the author of the final version as he he plainly states he has not seen it. I opted to go with what Lincoln plainly stated rather than pursue the man with the Lamp down some dark back alley of obfuscation. The man with the Lamp is obliquely claiming that Lincoln lied in his First Inaugural.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.