Posted on 09/24/2012 11:57:08 AM PDT by iowamark
Countless school children have been taught that Abraham Lincoln was the Great Emancipator. Others have been taught — and many have concluded — that the Emancipation Proclamation, which Abraham Lincoln announced on Sept. 22, 1862, has been overemphasized, that it was inefficacious, a sham, that Lincoln’s motivations were somehow unworthy, that slavery was ended by other ways and means, and that slavery was on the way out in any case.
The truth is that Lincoln’s proclamation was an exercise in risk, a huge gamble by a leader who sought to be — and who became — America’s great liberator.
Since before his election in 1860, Lincoln and his fellow Republicans had vowed to keep slavery from spreading. The leaders of the slave states refused to go along. When Lincoln was elected and his party took control of Congress, the leaders of most of the slave states turned to secession rather than allow the existing bloc of slave states to be outnumbered.
The Union, divided from the Confederacy, was also divided itself. Many Democrats who fought to stop secession blamed Republicans for pushing the slave states over the brink; some were open supporters of slavery. And if the Democrats were to capture control of Congress in the mid-term elections of November 1862, there was no telling what the consequences might be for the Republicans’ anti-slavery policies.
The Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t always part of the plan. Republicans, Lincoln included, tried push their anti-slavery program by measured degrees, since they feared a white supremacist backlash. That was what made Lincoln’s decision to issue an emancipation edict, and to do it before the mid-term congressional elections of 1862, so extraordinarily risky...
After Lee’s invasion of Maryland was stopped in the battle of Antietam on Sept. 17, Lincoln made up his mind to go ahead...
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com ...
I daresay the confeds were way more ruthless than the colonists or the unionists and that they were the ones that were more willing to kill people than was George II OR Lincoln.
More like irrelevant to a “them bad, Us good,” characterization.....eh?
If Lincoln had walked away from the slave states, WWI would have included a Civil War like blood bath with the slave south and the industrial north allied variously with England and Germany during the First World War. Germany attempted to get little Mexico to soak off US forces during WWI, they would certainly have done the same with anyone else they could have.
The successful suppression of the rebellion prevented what could likely be a string of wars between various rump states.
I actually find it irritating that I am put into a position of appearing to defend those bastards, but the fact remains that Lincoln used extra legal methods to exert his will on that group of people, and as a result we've had to live with an excessive Federal government ever since.
It may be that we live in the best of all possible outcomes, but it occurs to me that it might have been possibly better if 600,000 people didn't have to die as a result of that arrogant pissing contest which got out of control.
The Federal Government is out of control, and as I look back in History while trying to figure out how we got here, the arrows keep pointing to Lincoln as the beginning of our Modern day Federal Leviathan. That it was being used at the time to beat up a lot of really bad people doesn't change the fact that it is currently being used to beat up a lot of decent people now.
I was responding to Bubbas claim about the North invading the South. Nice try a triangulating. Point was the South opened the ball. It was their first act of aggression in a war to maintain their slave economy. Secession was about arrogance as well. I’m well aware of Lincolns views.He freed the slaves none the less. Fulminate all you want and spin the history. The South started the war and lost.
I don’t think so.
Even if the impossible had happened and the confederacy had attained official recognition I doubt that they would have lasted long. They had a proven track record of being liars and thieves so no country would ever be able to trust them.
They craved the same territories as the union so conflict with them would be inevitable. They were like the proverbial grasshopper - enjoying the fruits of other’s labors so without any infrastructure to speak of they would be at the mercy of any number of interested predators.
I suspect that the Brits would be first in line to dispose of the slavocrats and reap the spoils.
And what did the Colonists commit when they killed those 73 British troops during the battles of Lexington and Concord? I'm just trying to get on the same page with you here, and understand clearly the distinction between what the Colonists did, and what the Confederates did.
Is this too hard for you? Too many big words?
Naw, the words are easy. Your attempts to split hairs with them? Not so much. Again, explain to me how the Colonists were right in what they did, while the Confederates were wrong for what they did.
Is this too hard for you? Too many difficult concepts?
Slavery and secession was an arrogant pissing contest which got out of control’’? Interesting take on it. I’m no fan of this current administration but I love my country. As far as ‘’Federal Leviathan’ that would seem to me to be the Democrats(Dems again) under Roosevelt and his New Deal’’ government socialism and LBJ with his ‘’Great Society ‘’ which created the modern day welfare plantation.
Try that with your wife. She'll end up with way more than half your stuff.
If the South really wanted out, they could have worked through congress to dissolve their relationship with the other states on an amicable basis and seen to it that all debts and obligations were satisfied. They chose instead to grab all of their stuff along with the stuff that rightfully the other states had a claim on and play macho and say 'come and get it.'
Well the other states came and got it. Tough s**t.
Fort Sumter is a perfect example. It was a man-made island, built entirely by the Federal Government over the course of thirty years (at the insistence of the South Carolina delegation including your patron saint of disunion, J.C. Calhoon). It was a major boondoggle for those 30 years that pumped money from all the states into the Charleston economy.
Suddenly, South Carolina claims it as their property when they paid next to nothing for it! It would not have even existed left up to South Carolina. Even the wimp Buchanan who loved you slavers would not go along with that.
And how about the millions the Confederates stole from the other states in taking over US arsenals, mints, forts and other federal facilities even before the first shots were fired at Sumter? Your sainted ancestors tried to run away with the store because you thought those dough-faced mechanics from the North would never be men enough to fight you. Well, they ended you kicking your grand paps ass and you are not man enough to get over that fact.
I think Seward disagreed with you.
"We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free."
George Washington surly didn't think that when he put down the Whiskey Rebellion. Are you saying that a President today should be powerless to put down a rebellion?
No more so than a King confronting a Rebellion in his Colonies. Washington established the right of a people to break away from a government which they felt no longer served their interests, and Lincoln dis-established it.
Call it Rebellion, or secession, or whatever, it is still the same principle involved. The Nation was established by declaring it's right to self governance, but apparently it doesn't recognize that right as applying to anyone else.
Also the craziest West Virginian ever, and that's saying something. He was one strange unit, albeit, a fine battlefield tactician.
As to the greatest West Virginian ever, I'd vote for Gen. Chuck Yeager. He had the 'Right Stuff.'
I think you are just rattling in the wind now.
If you say so. I'm fast losing interest in this discussion. You and the other few commentators are not being very interesting or challenging. Attempting to Reason with a broken record is a futile pastime.
As with the Democrats, "Racism" is the answer to every criticism, so too with you few, "Slavery" is the rebuttal for every point. Boring.
And with one last yelp of indignation he cedes the field.
George III was that obsessed man and would have continued the war if it were his choice. His Parliament said enough is enough. They could no longer afford the fight and had more pressing problems in Europe. (Aside from the fact that most of the Tories in Parliament sympathized with the American cause.)
It was the first time the British Empire ever gave up colonies. The last time was nearly 200 years later.
Now that is an interesting observation. The only flaw in it is that it presupposes that Arch Duke Ferdinand would have still gotten shot in this alternate reality, but assuming all else stayed the same, it is quite possible that you may have a point. Of course, it also overlook the possibility that with a smaller USA, we wouldn't have gotten involved in that European war in the first place.
Woodrow Wilson might not even have become President. Hmmm... I think it's too chaotic to predict any of that with any degree of certainty.
The successful suppression of the rebellion prevented what could likely be a string of wars between various rump states.
I dunno, do we fight any wars with Canada? The two nations may have just gotten along fine. I think Slavery would have lingered for many decades longer, but I think eventually the tide of public opinion would have turned against it even in the South. After Mechanical farming equipment was developed, Slavery would have become far less lucrative, and the Southern Social Aristocratic elite would have eventually turned up their nose against it.
It probably would have taken far longer for Blacks to get equal rights, but I think it would have still happened. Of course, in this alternative universe, there is a good chance that neither of us would have been born.
One of us is being stupid. Pray tell how starting the war helped maintain their slave economy?
Secession was about arrogance as well.
What was arrogant about seceding? We did it from the British. Was that arrogant?
I’m well aware of Lincolns views.He freed the slaves none the less.
You missed the part about it being a cynical ploy to assist in the war effort? See Secretary of State Seward's comment further up the thread. Lincoln did not free any slaves where he had the power to do so, such as in Maryland.
Fulminate all you want and spin the history.
How is it spinning when I point out things about History which are factually correct? I think much of the history has already been spun, i'm just doing a little un-spinning.
The South started the war and lost.
And Lincoln left us with a Leviathan of Federal supremacy which is now working to restore slavery.
By the way, have you ever heard of the EMS dispatch? Of course it was the French that started that war, not Bismarck.
I just don’t think that President Theodore Roosevelt would have been able to keep out of a European war either, perhaps not so long as Wilson. Nor do I think that the assassination of Ferdinand was necessary. Germany had invested in its military, and spent more on that than they spent on trade with France, so they looked to their legions as a solution, rather than restraining their legions to retain trade with France. Britain had more trade with France than Germany, so would side with France.
Geeze, look at your view of history! Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Mason, etc.
We didn’t secede from the British. They made war on us, and we eventually fought back, and eventually we responded to the state of war with a Declaration of Independence.
By contrast, the slave power pretended to secession first, then complained about the crisis they created, as their justification, using secession as their justification to enslave all the poor white males US citizens by conscription (but exempted the wealthy slave owners from conscription).
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