Posted on 02/12/2024 11:09:57 AM PST by Rummyfan
Today is the anniversary of the birth of America’s great or greatest president, Abraham Lincoln. As a politician and as president, Lincoln was a profound student of the Constitution and constitutional history. Perhaps most important, Lincoln was America’s indispensable teacher of the moral ground of political freedom at the exact moment when the country was on the threshold of abandoning what he called its “ancient faith” that all men are created equal.
In 1858 Lincoln attained national prominence in the Republican Party as the result of the contest for the Senate seat held by Stephen Douglas. It was Lincoln’s losing campaign against Douglas that made him a figure of sufficient prominence that he could be the party’s 1860 presidential nominee.
At the convention of the Illinois Republican Party in June, Lincoln was the unanimous choice to run against Douglas. After declaring him their candidate late on the afternoon of June 16, the entire convention returned that evening to hear Lincoln speak. Accepting the convention’s nomination, Lincoln gave one of the most incendiary speeches in American history.
Lincoln electrified the convention, asserting that the institution of slavery had made the United States “a house divided against itself.” Slavery would either be extirpated or become lawful nationwide, Lincoln predicted, provocatively quoting scriptural authority to the effect that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” Demonstrating how it “changed the course of history,” Harry Jaffa calls it “[t]he speech that changed the world.”
(Excerpt) Read more at powerlineblog.com ...
Hurray for the Southern Uninoists!
In this you are correct. More than a third of the South supported the Union.
"Am I the first American to note the fundamental nonsensicality of the Gettysburg address?"
You call Lincoln an atheist and an anti-chrstian but then invoke H.L. Mencken???
Of course Mencken was a "paleocon" so it's perfectly okay for him to be an atheist and call Fundamentalists "gaping primates who believe degraded nonsense."
None of this Lincoln hate has anything to do with tyranny. It's about "race-mixing," period.
Lincoln arrested more people by all accounts. Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus - unconstitutionally. Lincoln signed an arrest warrant for the chief justice of the Supreme Court when the chief justice ruled in ex parte Merryman that this was unconstitutional. Lincoln stuffed ballot boxes. Lincoln shut down over 100 opposition newspapers by force. Lincoln arrested a sitting US Congressman. Lincoln banished a sitting US Senator. Lincoln censored all telegraph traffic. Lincoln presided over the only mass execution in American history. Lincoln also presided over the infamous union death camps including the infamous Camp Douglas which produced the largest mass grave in American history. Lincoln presided over the ethnic cleansing and genocide committed against native peoples in Minnesota. This was after he refused to honor the treaty the US Government had with the Santee Sioux and pay them the money they were owed so they could avoid starving. Lincoln also deliberately started the war without the consent of Congress.
He was by any measure, a bloodthirsty tyrant.
Lincoln sent ships which repeated invaded South Carolina's sovereign territory. He then sent a heavily armed fleet which was to threaten Charleston. This forced the Confederates to open fire to evict the illegal squatters.
If your author does not acknowledge what Jefferson Davis himself confessed -- that Davis didn't need a provocation at Fort Sumter to start Civil War -- then it's all just another pack of Lost Cause lies.
If you don't acknowledge that Lincoln deliberately started the war according to his own letter to his naval commander and according to both of his personal secretaries, then it is just another PC Revisionist lie.
That's nonsense, since by his own confession, Davis was going to start war at Forts Sumter and Pickens, regardless of what Lincoln did or didn't do:
No its not. Lincoln sent federal forces which invaded the sovereign territory of the CSA. They did this before the Confederates opened fire to drive them away. But for the invasion of their territory, they wouldn't have opened fire.
Make me! Oh and LOL! at BroJoeK being "more knowledgeable" than I or others on this board about this subject. He's gotten repeatedly stuffed when he tried to post his PC Revisionist lies on this board and his lies will continue to be refuted with direct sources every time he posts them. You're a complete idiot.
My ancestors were Southern Unionists, and we've been Republicans since the Civil War!
There were many Southern Unionists, though most people don't know this. I read somewhere that every seceded state (aside from South Carolina) had a substantial Unionist population.
BTW, when New England was threatening secession in the days of the Essex Junto and the War of 1812, Southerners called them "traitors."
When you’ve dug yourself a hole...
Keep talking stupid. You’re a hoot.
Why don't you keep blabbering moron? You go miles out of your way to show your stupidity in every one of these threads. Why should this one be different?
You messed that up again. You accidentally conflated the situation in 1776 with the situation in 1861. You meant to say, “they were only concerned about the right to leave the Monarchy and form their own government. (A Union.)
Leastwise, you have come to accept that in 1776 they were “colonies” and not “states”.
We know it was a majority. I seem to recall everyone on the committee of five was against including such inflammatory commentary in the document. It benefited them not at all, and alienated states they would need.
But that Jefferson wrote it and most of the delegates don't seem to have objected indicates that many of the Founders were well aware of the contradiction between slavery and the "most sacred rights of life & liberty."
Well they had Jefferson right there telling them this, but this does not mean that the representatives of the states, or the people of those states had given it any thought until well after the Declaration had been written and signed.
Yes, the committee of five were well aware of Jefferson's view on the issue of slavery, but they also understood the concept of what Lincoln said many years later. "One war at a time."
Their goal was to gain independence, not become embroiled in a philosophical fight that would wreck their chances of independence.
"The principle of self-determination" is an idea whose content and limits have to be worked out by people as new cases come up. If the Founders did not believe that enslaved people had the right to self-determination, then it's already clear that they believed that that principle had its limits.
The ideas of self determination were derived from previous essays on natural law, and many learned men of the time saw the one consequence to be the natural descendant of the original postulates about natural law, as outlined by people like Rutherford, Locke and so forth.
They didn't give much thought of it applying to these people that had been brought to North America from a land they all considered to be backward, savage, and barbaric.
But I don't think you're being serious. The Founders had one thing to worry about: winning independence from Britain.
You don't think i'm serious about this? This is exactly the thing I am serious about. They weren't pondering the philosophy of equality with slaves, they were writing a justification for separating from England, and that is *ALL* they were trying to do.
And for this reason I say citing 1776 and the phrase "all men are created equal" is an attempt to redefine the purpose of the Declaration to be something it was never intended to be.
I.E. Dishonest.
They weren't going to jeopardize that by pursuing other goals
You gotta be kidding me.
Yes, they would very greatly jeopardize that by pursuing any criticism of slavery. The Southern states had to be cajoled into joining the effort to gain independence, because they were relatively satisfied remaining under British rule. It was only through the efforts of Francis Marion provoking the British to run roughshod over the peoples of these states that ever convinced the Southern states to go along with efforts at independence.
I've seen the debates on the slavery issue in the US Constitution, and they flat out admit that if they made an issue of it, there would be no Union, and the British would quickly conquer the un-unified Union.
The Northern representatives *SAID* so, and words to the effect that it would be better to have a Union with slavery, than no Union at all.
I might even be able to find a link to this discussion, but so too might you.
No, the 1776 people did *NOT* want to focus on anything but the single necessity of separating from Britain. Touching slavery in the states where it was profitable at the time would be like touching the third rail of the subway system.
Nobody was dumb enough to do that, except perhaps slave owning Jefferson from a slave owning state. :)
That’s 11 to 2, in case you needed numbers.
Well I do kinda need the numbers. Where do you get this 11 to 2 thing? The Committee of Five drafted the document. When did it ever get to the other representatives before it was written?
I seem to remember you bringing this same argument up a long time ago, and I seem to recall questioning how you arrived at this conclusion back then.
I don't think you gave me a good answer, because I don't recall it. I would think that if you proved your claim, I would remember it, but I don't.
*AFTER* Lincoln started a war with them.
That's fair game, *AFTER* someone invaded them first.
Don't be dishonest.
You know, or ought to know, given how many times i've covered this, that the fleet consisted of several ships, most of which were warships.
Those ships were:
Powhatan, the command ship, led by Captain Mercer.
Pocahontas,
Pawnee,
Harriet Lane,
Yankee,
Baltic, acting as a troop carrier and loaded with troops and munitions,
Thomas Freeborn,
Uncle Ben
The ships orders were sent to the Confederates, and they knew exactly what those ships orders said. "If resisted, Use Entire Force..." and they looked at it as an attack, which is exactly how Lincoln wanted them to see it.
So yes. WAR FLEET. SENT TO ATTACK.
Proved.
Everyone but Jefferson. He was the *ONLY* Southerner on the committee.
John Adams, representative of Massachusetts
Thomas Jefferson, representative of Virginia
Benjamin Franklin, representative of Pennsylvania
Roger Sherman, representative of Connecticut
Robert Livingston, representative of New York
Pretty hard sell when the Northerners are the majority and *THEY* are against what the Southerner wrote.
Clearly the vote was either 3/2 or 4/1, with the Northern majority voting to get rid of it.
I personally think the vote was 4/1 because none of those men were stupid.
Doesn't matter what they did. What matters is the fact that because of their official orders, the Confederates saw them as an attacking force, and this is exactly what Lincoln wanted them to believe was happening.
Lincoln was a clever manipulating bastard. He was good at it.
Look up how he won the nomination. Chicago mafia tactics. In fact, I have lately been wondering if *HE* made Chicago the organized crime center it became, or did it make him corrupt?
Seems like everything coming out of Chicago is corrupt, like Barack Obama.
When reading something which is well written and demonstrates a significant point, I don't go to the trouble to do a background check of the author, because I believe facts stand on their own merits regardless of who articulates them.
Lincoln, whether he was an atheist or not, (I believe he was) was a brilliant thinker and writer, and a brilliant manipulator of men. It is this intelligence and ability to manipulate people that made him such a fine lawyer in his day.
Mencken, whether he was an atheist or not, could still write some excellent commentary about the world he lived in during his time.
With Lincoln, pretending to be the wrath of God against the wicked, the matter of his disbelief in God becomes a valid point in arguing that his motives were not so pure as people have been led to believe.
You take away his "God" argument, and what is left but POWER? "Subjugation"?
Mencken was just a newspaper guy. He didn't kill 750,000 people while claiming to be God's sword on earth.
It's funny how the Atheists always end up killing hundreds of thousands of people when they get into power.
The Soviets, the Chinese, the Cambodians, and even the Nazis, were all atheists.
"Oh yeah? Your guy did the same bad things *MY* guy did!"
This argument does not justify your guy doing the bad things.
That's actually pretty funny and completely believable knowing what I know about human nature.
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