Lincoln assassinated

[Paisan]

On this date in 1865, Good Friday, Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. The 16th president died the next morning.

[x]

But the social ostracization of pro-Confederates, to me, violates both the spirit of 1776, and the Constitution. as well as any sense of elemental fairness. It also illustrates the hubris always present when one generation assumes the right to pass judgment on others who walked in different times, in ways that reflected their own experiences, not the shallow & myopic experiences of their later critics.

I don't see anybody "ostracizing pro-Confederates." It seems like the accursed varmints run rampant here.

"Hubris" cuts both ways. People attacking Lincoln and the Union troops here are also the ignoring the ideas and conditions of the time and judging 19th century people by a (faulty) late 20th century version of libertarianism. If you don't see hubris in neo-Confederate writers like DiLorenzo, you've missed an awful lot of what they're saying.

[jmacusa]

He wasn’t think he’d be shot. Booth was a coward.

[jmacusa]

And with you Johnny Reb wannabes it ‘’States rights’’. To do what? Own slaves. How come you never finish that sentence?

[x]

Your comment can be applied to virtually every war in human history. Actually no one at any time understands all of the (even major) consequences of any significant conflict, civil or military. You could make up an interesting parlor game as to any major event, having your guests compete as to whom can identify the most unintended &/or unstated consequences.

So can we finally stop saying that one comment in one letter written towards the beginning of the war gives the one and only one reason for the fighting and the whole meaning of the conflict?

[DiogenesLamp]

Boothe did get a metal(sic) for what he did....it was bullet shaped.

I have to admit, that was a good one. :)

[laplata]

Right.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

I’m always curious about the difference between “The people” and just “People,” and what it is that makes the state the fundamental molecule of sovereignty, able, according to some, to declare itself to be a different country now, with others morally blocked from forcible objection by invocation of natural law (however that’s defined), but which is denied to counties, towns, the Elks Club or individuals.

[Crim]

As someone who's family was on both sides...

I can understand southern pride......

but then my other side chimes in with "you lost butter cup...suck it up and join us in the 21st century"

[rockrr]

Convenience. Certainly not principle.

[Ohioan]

So can we finally stop saying that one comment in one letter written towards the beginning of the war gives the one and only one reason for the fighting and the whole meaning of the conflict?

Find any place in the archives, either of Free Republic or at my web site, when I ever suggested such a thing. The conflict to which you refer had a multitude of causes; and the participants on each side had a great many different motivations, some, obviously, more important than others.

Now that you and I have acknowledged context & complexity, perhaps we can turn the discourse back to a reasoned philosophic analysis, which does not seek to demonize those either of us disagrees with on historic issues. While I profoundly disagree with many aspects of Lincoln's approach to the issues in 1860 to 1865, you will not find where I demonized or denounced his motives or integrity. I only weigh in to these threads, when I see supposed Conservatives demonizing Southern & Conservative icons or role models, whom I respect; that is, I respond to aggressive attacks on people who fought for their heritage.

[Ohioan]

I don't see anybody "ostracizing pro-Confederates."

The pro-Confederates, I refer to are long since dead. Slandering Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson or Jefferson Davis, because they fought for their homeland--or disagreed with someone hereabouts' theories of what should or should not have been done over a century and a half ago, is a form of ostracization.

The writers, to whom I refer, would deny these long honored men, their previously accepted place in history.

Curiously, one does not read where the self-righteous detractors of Robert E. Lee, who did not own slaves, have the consistency to denounce the Patriarchs in the Bible, who did. (A minor point, perhaps. Personally, I agree with the way Douglas MacArthur paid tribute to both the Blue & Gray in his classic address: Duty, Honor, Country.)

[ek_hornbeck]

Curiously, one does not read where the self-righteous detractors of Robert E. Lee, who did not own slaves, have the consistency to denounce the Patriarchs in the Bible, who did.

Or, more to the point, if the Confederacy was so evil for defending the right to own slaves, doesn't that by implication mean that the United States at the time of its founding was equally evil, since slavery was legal in most states and many of the Founding Fathers owned slaves? That's certainly what the Left wants you to believe: they start by slandering the memory of the Confederacy, because that's an easy target. Once you're numb to their politically correct interpretation of the Civil War, you're halfway to buying into the rest of their agenda, which is defaming the United States and Western culture as "racist" and "oppressive" in general.

This is why you don't have to be a neo-Confederate (I am not) to recognize the campaign of vilification against the Confederacy for what it is: the first front in a PC attack on the US and Western culture generally. The unacknowledged agenda is basically "Down with Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis today. Down with George Washington and Thomas Jefferson tomorrow."

[Zionist Conspirator]

The pro-Confederates, I refer to are long since dead. Slandering Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson or Jefferson Davis, because they fought for their homeland--or disagreed with someone hereabouts' theories of what should or should not have been done over a century and a half ago, is a form of ostracization.

The writers, to whom I refer, would deny these long honored men, their previously accepted place in history.

You're being terribly hypocritical. Neo-Confederates constantly slur and defame Abraham Lincoln, who has been rightly considered a hero and one of our greatest presidents for a century and a half. And you want to wine about how people treat Davis and Lee?

Although my own ancestors fought for the Union (and I believe they were correct to do so), I also deplore the revisionist history that turns the Confederacy into a sort of proto-Nazi Germany. I have to wonder, however, why the leaders of the Confederacy are admired for fighting waging war against the United States while anyone else who did so would be labeled a "traitor" and maybe even a "Communist." But the Confederacy, for some reason, is different.

I also wonder why white Southerners wanting to secede from the Union are "right wing" while angry Blacks who want to secede from the Union and create the "Republic of New Africa" in those very same states are "left wing." Does that make any sense to you?

[DiogenesLamp]

Basically that's what the Constitution means too according to Alexander Hamilton and John Jay (future first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court), two of the three authors of the Federalist Papers that explained what the Constitution meant. Here is what they and the New York Ratification Convention voted for, one of the clearest statements of original intent [my bold emphasis below]:

I think it was a common understanding of the time that if the Declaration of Independence granted states the right to secede from England, then the principles advocated therein also gave them the right to secede from any other political organization.

I recall reading editorials from Northern Newspapers for Southern states to go in peace with their blessings.

I believe that had the Southern States just refrained from provoking the Federals, secession would have been a fait accompli. There was little sentiment in the North to oppose them at the time.

[Lee'sGhost]

Ooooo... Ooooo... Mr. Carter. Mr. Carter. I’ll answer that. Because it would be stupid and wrong.

[DiogenesLamp]

We were--and are--being manipulated towards disaster by methodology that is easily recognized, once it is pointed out. It involves convincing people, who may or may not have a real grievance, that they have one, and they need to hate someone, in some way connected to that "grievance." This is reflected in what might be called The Blame & Envy Cocktail. That, for example, is one of Obama's stock-in-trades.

It is unfortunate that too often we humans are susceptible to appeals to our emotions more so than our ability to reason. I see the same sort of problem cropping up here at Free Republic all the time.

Another technique, closely related, which has been a common tool of would-be tyrants, and is clearly very evident among those who despise traditional Southern culture--which was actually the most tolerant in the Western World--is in what I would describe as The Compulsion For Uniformity.

This is one of the techniques which they have been successfully using to marginalize inquires into the legitimacy of Barack Obama. The media set the standard and the GOPe decided that they needed to fit in with the Media narrative. Anyone questioning his legitimacy was thereafter outside of the herd.

I have been fighting these techniques since graduating from High School, and deliberately enrolling in an historically egalitarian oriented college, which was famous for promoting hatred of the Old South, since its founding in the 1830s.

I think this goes right to the characteristics of human nature. These techniques work because they prey on the more primitive aspects of people. They work on the reptile brain level.

These things you describe, my and several of my friends have taken to calling "Monkey logic." This appellation is based on the study with monkey's cucumbers and grapes. We realized that the perception of unfairness is a basic human characteristic, and we also recognized there are many other similar concepts that resonate on a similar primitive level.

I have come to realize that many arguments which are considered logical fallacies, (tu quque, ad hominem, ad vericundiam, etc) are valid arguments when looked at from a "monkey logic" perspective. Even though they are logically fallacies, they are persuasive because they touch our emotions on a very basic level.

But I think you've developed a similar understanding.

[rockrr]

The pro-Confederates, I refer to are long since dead. Slandering Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson or Jefferson Davis, because they fought for their homeland--or disagreed with someone hereabouts' theories of what should or should not have been done over a century and a half ago, is a form of ostracization.

How can one ostracize a dead person?

Curiously, one does not read where the self-righteous detractors of Robert E. Lee, who did not own slaves, have the consistency to denounce the Patriarchs in the Bible, who did.

Could there ever, possibly, sometime in the universe, conceivably be a scenario wherein someone could point out something about Lee without them being either "self-righteous" or a "detractor" (or both)? BTW: Lee did own slaves.

[rockrr]

I think it was a common understanding of the time that if the Declaration of Independence granted states the right to secede from England, then the principles advocated therein also gave them the right to secede from any other political organization.

I've seen no writings that indicated that the DOL was anything other than a throwing down of the gauntlet to Great Britain. It had NOTHING to do with secession - it was openly and honestly about outright rebellion.

[DiogenesLamp]

Booth should have been honored as a hero for repaying mass murderer Lincoln.

I think Boothe did the Southern States and subsequent history no favors by assassinating Lincoln. I find it quite likely that the disasters caused by his pursuit of the war would have come back to haunt his legacy, but instead by killing him, it strengthened the power and increased the fanaticism of his political party. (As it did in the Kennedy Assassination.)

Just as Timothy McVeigh got Bill Clinton re-elected, so too did Boothe's bullet keep the horrors of Federal tyranny from getting a fair consideration. It was one more ill thought out move in a series of them.

I don't think History would have been kind to Lincoln had he lived.

[ek_hornbeck]

Could there ever, possibly, sometime in the universe, conceivably be a scenario wherein someone could point out something about Lee without them being either "self-righteous" or a "detractor" (or both)? BTW: Lee did own slaves.

Can you cite a source for Lee owning slaves? Regardless, even if he did, so what? Many of America's Founding Fathers were also slaveowners, including Washington and Jefferson. If you're going to be consistent, I suppose you should join the Left in condemning the United States at its founding if you're going to condemn the Confederacy. Alternatively, you could be consistent in the more reasonable way and acknowledge that it's possible for an honorable man to be a slave owner or to support the legal rights of slave owners, whether it was in 1776 or in 1861.