Replies

FLT-bird: "Lincoln arrested more people by all accounts."

Relative to their population, Confederates arrested as many pro-Union Southerners as the Union arrested Copperhead Democrats.

FLT-bird: "Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus - unconstitutionally."

The CSA declared war on the USA on May 6, 1861 -- meaning any Union citizen who supported the Confederacy was then, by Constitutional definition, guilty of treason and subject to arrest & prosecution.

SCOTUS Chief Justice Crazy-Roger Taney:

Lincoln's constitutional authority to suspend habeas corpus was challenged in June 1861 by SCOTUS Chief Justice Crazy-Roger Taney, the same lunatic whose Dred Scot blatherings arguably caused the Civil War, but this time Taney babbled as a circuit court judge, not as SCOTUS, and so Lincoln properly ignored him.

The US Congress took up the issue in June 1861, but was blocked by Democrats from approving Lincoln's actions until December 1862.
The bill which finally passed in March 1863 authorized:

"That during the present rebellion, the President of the United States, whenever in his judgment the public safety may require it, is authorized to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in any case throughout the United States..."

In the meantime, Jefferson Davis happily declared martial law and suspended Habeas Corpus in the Confederacy whenever he saw fit.

FLT-bird: "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's body guard Ward Lamon, 25 years later:

Only claimed 25 years later by Lincoln's bodyguard, Ward Hill Lamon, confirmed by nobody else, ever.

FLT-bird: "Lincoln stuffed ballot boxes."

No, but FLT-bird has stuffed his own head full on nonsense.

FLT-bird: "Lincoln shut down over 100 opposition newspapers by force."

So often claimed by pro-Confederates, but actual records show only two Northern newspapers -- New York World and New York Journal of Commerce -- shut down by Lincoln's order in May 1864 after they published forged documents claiming the government was planning another draft.

Of course, many newspapers did open during the war, and some closed, for many reasons, including for having made their neighbors angry at their political opinions.
Claims that Lincoln was involved or responsible for many of these are not supported by facts.

FLT-bird: "Lincoln arrested a sitting US Congressman."

Democrat Copperhead Ohio Congressman Clement Vallandigham, arrested in May 1863, tried and convicted of, in effect, treason.
He was arrested on orders of Union Gen. Burnside, not Lincoln.

FLT-bird: "Lincoln banished a sitting US Senator."

CSA Gen. John C. Breckenridge:

Kentucky Senator John C. Breckenridge, in effect declared war against the United States, in October 1861, was then banished by the US Senate, not Lincoln.

" 'I exchange with proud satisfaction a term of six years in the Senate of the United States for the musket of a soldier.'[118][122]
He was indicted for treason in U.S. federal district court in Frankfort on November 6, 1861, having officially enlisted in the Confederate army days earlier.[26]
On December 2, 1861, he was declared a traitor by the U.S. Senate.[123]
A resolution stating 'Whereas John C. Breckinridge, a member of this body from the State of Kentucky, has joined the enemies of his country, and is now in arms against the government he had sworn to support: Therefore—Resolved, That said John C. Breckinridge, the traitor, be, and he hereby is, expelled from the Senate,' was adopted by a vote of 36–0 on December 4.[48][124][125]"

Copperhead Democrat Ohio Congressman Clement Vallandigham:

Back to Congressman Vallandigham -- Burnside's military court sentenced Vallandingham to prison for the war's duration.
Lincoln's order released Vallandingham from jail and exiled him to the Confederacy.
On arrival in the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis ordered Vallandingham held under guard as an "alien enemy".
In June 1863 Vallandingham traveled to Richmond, VA and may or may not have recommended another Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania, sources differ.
He then traveled to Ontario, Canada, from where he was nominated by Democrats for Ohio governor, and lost in a landslide.

FLT-bird: "Lincoln censored all telegraph traffic."

Well, Union Secretary of War Edwin Stanton:

"For the remainder of the war, Stanton controlled the Army’s communications and oversaw the censoring of telegraphic news dispatches."

Telegraphic news dispatches were not such a problem in the Confederacy, whose telegraphs were less extensive and often out of order.

FLT-bird: "Lincoln presided over the only mass execution in American history."

After the 1862 Dakota War in Minnesota, Lincoln reviewed the death sentences of 303 Dakota warriors and decided:

"I caused a careful examination of the records of trials to be made, in view of first ordering the execution of such as had been proved guilty of violating females.
Contrary to my expectations, only two of this class were found.
I then directed a further examination, and a classification of all who were proven to have participated in massacres, as distinguished from participation in battles.
This class numbered forty, and included the two convicted of female violation."

In the end, 38 of the 303 were lawfully executed.

Of 18 famous Civil War illegal massacres:

7 committed by Confederates against Union troops
4 committed by Confederates against Unionist civilians
1 committed by Unionists against pro-Confederate civilians
1 committed by Union troops against Confederate troops
1 committed by Union troops against pro-Confederate civilians
1 (multiple) committed by Indians against Minnesota civilians.
1 committed by Union troops against Colorado Indians
2 committed by Indians against Confederates

FLT-bird: "Lincoln also presided over the infamous union death camps including the infamous Camp Douglas which produced the largest mass grave in American history. "

There were about 15 POW camps on each side, the most notorious of which were:

CSA's Andersonville, Georgia, where 13,000 of 45,000 Union troops there died =29%
USA's Camp Douglas, Chicago, where 4,000 of 26,000 Confederate troops there died = 15%.

FLT-bird: "Lincoln presided over the ethnic cleansing and genocide committed against native peoples in Minnesota."

The Minnestoa Dakota War of 1862 resulted in around 150 Indians killed out of a population counted at 2,369 in the 1860 census.
The number of whites killed was 471, of whom 358 were massacred civilians.
Today Native Americans are about 1.2% of Minnesota's population, the same as they were in 1860 and 1880.

FLT-bird: "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."

In 1862, the US government was two months behind in its payments to Dakotas, possibly due to corruption among US Indian agents, and so merchants refused to offer the Dakota Indians credit, for fear of US government non-payments because of the Civil War.
Lincoln himself was not involved in any of this.

FLT-bird: "Lincoln also deliberately started the war without the consent of Congress."

CSA Pres. Jefferson Davis:

Jefferson Davis deliberately started Civil War, at Ft. Sumter, without a declaration of war from the Confederate congress -- as noted and quoted many times on these threads.

"There would be to us an advantage in so placing them [Lincoln] that an attack by them [Lincoln] would be a necessity, but when we are ready to relieve our territory and jurisdiction of the presence of a foreign garrison [Fort Sumter] that advantage is overbalanced by other considerations."

Relative to their population, Confederates arrested as many pro-Union Southerners as the Union arrested Copperhead Democrats.

No they didn't.

The CSA declared war on the USA on May 6, 1861 -- meaning any Union citizen who supported the Confederacy was then, by Constitutional definition, guilty of treason and subject to arrest & prosecution.

No it didn't. The CSA did not declare war. Objecting to starting a war is not treason as per Article III section 3 clause 1 of the US Constitution.

Lincoln's constitutional authority to suspend habeas corpus was challenged in June 1861 by SCOTUS Chief Justice Roger Taney, the same lunatic whose Dred Scot blatherings arguably caused the Civil War, but this time Taney babbled as a circuit court judge, not as SCOTUS, and so Lincoln properly ignored him.

Suspension of the habeas corpus at a time when the courts are functioning is unconstitutional. This has been the ruling of the Supreme Court and no, not just Taney. Lincoln acted unconstitutionally.

The US Congress took up the issue in June 1861, but was blocked by Democrats from approving Lincoln's actions until December 1862. The bill which finally passed in March 1863 authorized: "That during the present rebellion, the President of the United States, whenever in his judgment the public safety may require it, is authorized to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in any case throughout the United States..."

In the meantime, Jefferson Davis happily declared martial law and suspended Habeas Corpus in the Confederacy whenever he saw fit.

He did so less than Lincoln and arrest FAR fewer people.

Lincoln's body guard Ward Lamon, 25 years later: Only claimed 25 years later by Lincoln's bodyguard, Ward Hill Lamon, confirmed by nobody else, ever.

Read the Real Lincoln. Others confirmed it as well. Its documented and footnoted. He did it.

No, but FLT-bird has stuffed his own head full on nonsense.

Lincoln won New York state by 7000 votes "with the help of federal bayonets," wrote Pulitzer Prize—winning Lincoln biographer David Donald in Lincoln Reconsidered.

BroJoeK gets it stuffed down his throat again.

In May 1861 the New York Journal of Commerce published a list of 100 Northern newspapers that opposed the Lincoln administration. Lincoln ordered the Postmaster General and the army to shut them all down.

May 18, 1864, Lincoln order that directly issued to General John Dix: "You will take possession by military force, of the printing establishments of the New York World and Journal of Commerce . . . and prohibit any further publication thereof . . . you are therefore commanded forthwith to arrest and imprison . . . the editors, proprietors and publishers of the aforesaid newspapers." For good measure, all telegraph communication in the North was censored as well.

FLT-bird: "Lincoln arrested a sitting US Congressman." Democrat Copperhead Ohio Congressman Clement Vallandigham, arrested in May 1863, tried and convicted of, in effect, treason. He was arrested on orders of Union Gen. Burnside, not Lincoln.

One of those imprisoned for fourteen months for simply questioning the unconstitutional suspension of habeas corpus was Francis Key Howard, the grandson of Francis Scott Key and editor of the Baltimore Exchange newspaper. In response to an editorial in his newspaper that was critical of the fact that the Lincoln administration had imprisoned without due process the mayor of Baltimore, Congressman Henry May, and some twenty members of the Maryland legislature, he was imprisoned near the very spot where his grandfather composed the Star Spangled Banner. After his release, he noted the deep irony of his grandfather's beloved flag flying over "the victims of as vulgar and brutal a despotism as modern times have witnessed" (John Marshall, American Bastile, pp. 645—646).

A military kangaroo court claimed sitting US Senator Vallandingham was guilty of treason and banished him from the US. Where was that provision allowing military tribunals over US Senators? I can't seem to find it.

BTW, no I'm not talking about Breckenridge.

Well, Union Secretary of War Edwin Stanton: "For the remainder of the war, Stanton controlled the Army’s communications and oversaw the censoring of telegraphic news dispatches." Telegraphic news dispatches were not such a problem in the Confederacy, whose telegraphs were less extensive and often out of order.

Long winded way of admitting, yes. Lincoln censored all telegraph traffic in addition to shutting down over 100 opposition newspapers.

FLT-bird: "Lincoln presided over the only mass execution in American history." After the 1862 Dakota War in Minnesota, Lincoln reviewed the death sentences of 303 Dakota warriors and decided: "I caused a careful examination of the records of trials to be made, in view of first ordering the execution of such as had been proved guilty of violating females. Contrary to my expectations, only two of this class were found. I then directed a further examination, and a classification of all who were proven to have participated in massacres, as distinguished from participation in battles. This class numbered forty, and included the two convicted of female violation." In the end, 38 of the 303 were lawfully executed.

38 Santee Sioux were publicly executed after "trials" that lasted on average, 10 minutes each.

FLT-bird: "Lincoln also presided over the infamous union death camps including the infamous Camp Douglas which produced the largest mass grave in American history. " There were about 15 POW camps on each side, the most notorious of which were: CSA's Andersonville, Georgia, where 13,000 of 45,000 Union troops there died =29% USA's Camp Douglas, Chicago, where 4,000 of 26,000 Confederate troops there died = 15%.

Its more like 6,000 who were murdered at Camp Douglas. Unlike the CSA, there was no shortage of food or medicine in the US during the war.

The Minnestoa Dakota War of 1862 resulted in around 150 Indians killed.

False.

It was determined that two of the 38 hanged men had been killed by mistake. One of these victims, Wasicuƞ, had been acquitted but somehow still ended up on the gallows and they hanged another man, Wicaƞḣpi Wastedaƞp, due to a mix-up with his name, according to The U.S.-Dakota War of 1862.

The rest of the Santee Sioux also suffered in the war's aftermath. The people of Minnesota wanted the Native Americans out of the state — the lands the whites had stolen — and the U.S. government agreed to these demands, per "The Great Father." The government revoked the earlier treaties and shipped the rest of the bands to a desolate piece of land in South Dakota, which was then known as the Dakota Territory, according to The U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. In the first year in their new home, more than 200 people died, mostly children. https://www.grunge.com/930169/the-true-story-behind-the-execution-of-over-3-dozen-native-americans-in-minnesota/

He specifically refused to pay the Santee Sioux of Minnesota the $1.5 million owed them by the U.S. government according to the terms of two major 1851 treaties (Traverse des Sioux and Mendota) and three additional 1858 treaties involving the sale of 24 million acres of land, including most of the state of Minnesota, to the U.S. government. Instead, Lincoln sought new treaties to dispossess Indian nations of additional lands as quickly and as cheaply as possible.

In 1862, after a crop failure, famine broke out among the Indians of Minnesota. The conduct of the U.S. government turned a natural disaster into man-made tragedy. Local authorities refused to supply the starving Indians with the food stockpiled for them in accordance with the terms of the treaties. One Minnesota trading-post operator summed up the government's response: "If they're hungry, let them eat grass or their own dung."

Political expediency, not compassion, dissuaded Lincoln from having all the condemned hanged. He feared a mass execution would inflame public opinion in Europe and provide a pretext for the British and French governments to recognize the Confederacy. At the same time, Lincoln had to satisfy the Minnesotans' demand for justice if he was to maintain their support for his war against the South. So he crafted a compromise: Lincoln had only 38 Indians hanged but would later expel the rest of the Indians from the state. As part of that understanding, more than 300 Indians were immediately imprisoned for three years in Davenport, Iowa, where over one third of them died. Their families were incarcerated at Fort Snelling.

Volumes V, VI, and VII of The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler (Rutgers University Press), contain official correspondence on the 1862 Indian uprising in Minnesota and reveal Lincoln as corrupt and cowardly.

https://chroniclesmagazine.org/cgi-bin/magazine.cgi/Yr%202007/February/Contents.html?seemore=y

CSA Pres. Jefferson Davis: Jefferson Davis deliberately started Civil War, at Ft. Sumter, without a declaration of war from the Confederate congress -- as noted and quoted many times on these threads. "There would be to us an advantage in so placing them [Lincoln] that an attack by them [Lincoln] would be a necessity, but when we are ready to relieve our territory and jurisdiction of the presence of a foreign garrison [Fort Sumter] that advantage is overbalanced by other considerations." [Jefferson Davis to Braxton Bragg, 3 Apr 1861]

Lincoln deliberately started the war without the consent of Congress.

"Lincoln and the First Shot" (in Reassessing the Presidency, edited by John Denson), John Denson painstakingly shows how Lincoln maneuvered the Confederates into firing the first shot at Fort Sumter. As the Providence Daily Post wrote on April 13, 1861, "Mr. Lincoln saw an opportunity to inaugurate civil war without appearing in the character of an aggressor" by reprovisioning Fort Sumter. On the day before that the Jersey City American Statesman wrote that "This unarmed vessel, it is well understood, is a mere decoy to draw the first fire from the people of the South." Lincoln's personal secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay, clearly stated after the war that Lincoln successfully duped the Confederates into firing on Fort Sumter. And as Shelby Foote wrote in The Civil War, "Lincoln had maneuvered [the Confederates] into the position of having either to back down on their threats or else to fire the first shot of the war."

Here is Lincoln's Letter congratulating his naval commander, Fox for having started the war Lincoln wanted:

"May 1st, 1861. Washington Capt. G.V. Fox:

My Dear Sir, I sincerely regret that the failure of the late attempt to provision Fort Sumter should be the source of any annoyance to you. The practicability of your plan was not, in fact, brought to a test. By reason of a gale, well known in advance to be possible, and not improbable, the tugs, an essential part of the plan, never reached the ground ; while, by an accident, for which you were in nowise responsible, and possibly I, to some extent, was, you were deprived of a war-vessel, with her men, which you deemed of great importance to the enterprise.

I most cheerfully and truthfully declare that the failure of the undertaking has not lowered you a particle, while the qualities you developed in the effort have greatly heightened you in my estimation. For a daring and dangerous enterprise of a similar character, you would, to-day, be the man of all my acquaintances whom I would select. You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it should fail ; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result. Very truly your friend, A. LINCOLN."

Lincoln sent a fleet of heavily armed warships to invade South Carolina's sovereign territory which it duly did. This forced the CSA to either defend itself by opening fire or to allow itself to be invaded without firing a shot in its own defense. The Confederates did what any other country would do upon being invaded - they fired to drive the invaders away. An aggressor is one who invades the land of another - not one who fires to drive an invader away.