Posted on 07/05/2015 3:24:11 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
GETTYSBURG, Pa. — “Lincoln hated Thomas Jefferson.” That is not exactly what we expect to hear about the president who spoke of “malice toward none,” referring to the president who wrote that “all men are created equal.”
Presidents have never been immune from criticism by other presidents. But Jefferson and Lincoln? These two stare down at us from Mount Rushmore as heroic, stainless and serene, and any suggestion of disharmony seems somehow a criticism of America itself. Still, Lincoln seems not to have gotten that message.
“Mr. Lincoln hated Thomas Jefferson as a man,” wrote William Henry Herndon, Lincoln’s law partner of 14 years — and “as a politician.” Especially after Lincoln read Theodore F. Dwight’s sensational, slash-all biography of Jefferson in 1839, Herndon believed “Mr. Lincoln never liked Jefferson’s moral character after that reading.”
True enough, Thomas Jefferson had not been easy to love, even in his own time. No one denied that Jefferson was a brilliant writer, a wide reader and a cultured talker. But his contemporaries also found him “a man of sublimated and paradoxical imagination” and “one of the most artful, intriguing, industrious and double-faced politicians in all America.”
Lincoln, who was born less than a month before Jefferson left the presidency in 1809, had his own reasons for loathing Jefferson “as a man.” Lincoln was well aware of Jefferson’s “repulsive” liaison with his slave, Sally Hemings, while “continually puling about liberty, equality and the degrading curse of slavery.” But he was just as disenchanted with Jefferson’s economic policies.
Jefferson believed that the only real wealth was land and that the only true occupation of virtuous and independent citizens in a republic was farming. “Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people,” Jefferson wrote.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
To quote Lincoln:
"Just because you call a tail a leg, doesn't make it so."
The irony is that your misuse of Lincoln’s quote redounds AGAINST your position, not mine.
I think they would have eventually folded on the question of slavery when the economics no longer supported it. Mechanized Farming coupled with social opprobrium, and make no mistake, there was much and growing sentiment in the South against the institution of slavery, and it would have eventually brought it down.
It has been pointed out to me that cotton farming didn't become mechanized until the 1940s, but I very much doubt that slavery would have lasted till then. I think a few more decades and the social opposition would have built up to the point where a cascade would have occurred.
Yet, the lingering aftereffects caused by the creation of FedZilla are still with us today. The 14th amendment has caused especially great damage to our subsequent laws. It is why abortions are legal, it is why we cannot stop "anchor babies" and "birth citizenship", the 14th is why prayers were kicked out of public schools, and why states can no longer have official state religions.
From what I can see, the Damage caused by fighting the Civil war did eventually exceed the damage which would have been caused by doing nothing. I think everyone would have been better off in the long run if they had simply let the Southern States go.
We are still suffering from Fedzilla, and now we are all tied together in a massive currency suicide pact, all thanks to the civil war and misguided social movements.
The Fourteenth Amendment explicitly and imperatively requires equal protection for the right to life of every person, in every state.
It’s not the Amendment that is the problem, it is the dehumanization of the child, contrary to the principles of the Declaration and the stated purposes of the Constitution, identical to the dehumanization of black slaves that occurred a couple of centuries prior.
But I’m not in the least surprised that you would would like to throw the Amendment, even if properly interpreted, on the rubbish heap along with the Declaration and the Constitution’s Statement of Purpose.
It’s par for the course.
Well, you certainly are not inspired to respond to factual and legal arguments. Laugh all you like but your and Dishonest Abe’s position may be summarized as Might Makes Right.
Perhaps, it made sense to protect industries in their infancy but today's Hamiltonians want to protect the ability of the wealthy and well-connected to screw the American workers who helped them become wealthy by closing American industries, laying off the workforce, selling off the machinery and setting up with what amounts to slave labor in the Third World. The purpose remains the same: government of, by and for the wealthy.
The new wrinkle is the repeated tactic of secrecy until legislation is passed. Nancy Pelosi on Obamacare: You will have to pass it to see what is in it." TPP: Text only available in one room in the Capitol, heavily guarded and open only to members of Congress who are not allowed copies or to take notes. In both cases, the bills are incredibly complex and thousands of pages long. We, the general public, are not allowed to see the details until it is law. Is that to keep us from organizing and pressuring Congress against these bills? What other excuse can there be? We may be paranoid but we peasants DO have real enemies and they are in charge of BOTH parties.
Jefferson was an agrarian vs. Hamilton who was an elitist joined at the hip with the moneyed banking, commercial and industrial "interests."
Reading your subsequent posts leads me to believe that you an I are not that far apart.
Now you're just talking nonsense.
I suppose he didn't sign the First Bank of the United States into law???
And your idiotic “Dishonest Abe” quip reminds us of the fallacy of “Might Makes Right”. That was exactly what the south’s attitude and demeanor was. Look where it got them.
Now you make me feel like such a fool. If you had said something like this in the very beginning, I would not have bothered arguing with you.
There weren't much to be found in your post. But if you insist...
NOTHING IN THE CONSTITUTION authorized:
1) A military draft; - the Constitution gives Congress the power to raise and support armies in Article I, Section 8. Congress passed conscription laws to do that, and the Constitutionality of conscription has been upheld by the Supreme Court in any number of cases stretching from the 1860's to the 1960's.
2) A federal income tax; - I'll give you that one although the constitutionality of the tax wasn't decided until long after the war was over. So if your claim is that Lincoln deliberately violated the constitution by enacting one then your claim is baseless.
3) A military invasion of South Carolina and other states; - I would point out that had South Carolina and the other states not launched their rebellion then there wouldn't have been reason to invade anything. But for South Carolina to complain about the Union invasion is as ridiculous for Japan to complain about the U.S. invasion in 1945.
4) The ridiculous claim that a state, having joined the Union voluntarily, could not secede from the Union just as voluntarily as eleven states did; - exceeded only by the ridiculous claim that states can walk out without consulting the other states, leaving behind responsibility for debt and other obligations the nation entered into while they were a part, and taking every bit of property they could get their hands on and there was nothing the other states could do but sit still and take it.
5) The jailing of state legislators in Maryland who were believed to be intending to vote for secession; - that happened in September 1861 when the Southern states were rebelling against the government and the Maryland legislature wanted to join said rebellion. My question to you is what would you expect the authorities to do?
6) The suspension of the constitutional right to petition the courts for writs of habeas corpus; - a power that is allowed by Article I, Section 9 in cases of rebellion or invasion when the public safety requires it.
7) The jailing without trial of opposition newspaper editors, see the SCOTUS decision in Ex Parte McCardle; - this one makes no sense at all because the McCardle decision wasn't handed down until 1869 and McCardle was detained in 1867. I know you all will attribute every possible evil to Lincoln but I didn't know his evil powers extended from the grave.
8) The smashing of the presses of the New York Daily News for opposing Lincoln's tyranny and policies; - you have me at a disadvantage since I can't find anything supporting this claim.
9) The US Naval bombardment of the civilian population of New York City's Manhattan. - that's what happens when you depend on Gangs of New York for your sources.
10) It took SCOTUS years to clean up Lincoln's constitutional mess after he was shot under the remarkably candid and honest leadership of Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase of Ohio who had been Lincoln's Secretary of Treasury before Lincoln appointed him to succeed Roger Taney in the middle of the war to resurrect Hamiltonianism. - Yeah well whatever.
This is not an unrealistic way to view what has been happening. Apple, the pinnacle of leftist moralism, gets much of it's products from virtual slave labor facilities in foreign countries where they do not have to abide by those same rules the Liberals imposed on industry and workers in this nation.
As I have gotten older, I have realized that most people are perfectly content with slavery, so long as you don't call it that, and so long as no one notices their obscene profits and business practices.
Our lives do indeed seem to be decided by whatever the current crop of Plutocrats think. I think Globalization has made them less afraid to offend the domestic sensibilities of the countries of their origin.
Hard to do when you are constantly changing what you said. Have a nice day.
You sure do get things backwards. If I recall correctly, the nation with four times the population and double the states, almost all the industry, was the one that invaded the other.
"Might makes right" is the only conclusion which can be drawn from the activities of people who use their superior might to stop the independence of others.
You just aren't grasping the fact that most of those men that signed that document owned slaves.
This means they did not agree with you, and therefore their document was not intended to agree with you either.
The Japanese killed around 3,000 US Servicemen and did Billions of dollars worth of damage to our Assets, and then proceeded to threaten our allies and other foreign assets.
The confederates shelled some rocks, killed no one, and did it all on their own land.
You do something very ugly when you make such bald faced lying comparisons. What the Japanese did is orders of magnitude worse than what the Confederates did.
Any other parts of our foundational documents you would like to dispense with while you’re at it?
Personally, while I think we must keep all the ones you don’t like, I’d happily do away with the 16th and the 17th Amendments.
This means they did not agree with you, and therefore their document was not intended to agree with you either.
Forget about them for a minute.
How about you? Are black men men, or not?
Are they or are they not endowed by their Creator with certain UNALIENABLE rights?
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are CREATED EQUAL, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men..."
“These communities [the Fathers of the Republic], by their representatives in old Independence Hall, said to the whole world of men: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’
“This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to his creatures.
“Yes, gentlemen, to all his creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children, and their children’s children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages.
“Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, or none but Anglo-Saxon white men, were entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began, so that truth and justice and mercy and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built.
“Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence; if you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its grandeur and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal in those inalienable rights enumerated by our chart of liberty, let me entreat you to come back. Return to the fountain whose waters spring close by the blood of the Revolution. Think nothing of me — take no thought for the political fate of any man whomsoever — but come back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence. You may do anything with me you choose, if you will but heed these sacred principles. You may not only defeat me for the Senate, but you may take me and put me to death. While pretending no indifference to earthly honors, I do claim to be actuated in this contest by something higher than an anxiety for office. I charge you to drop every paltry and insignificant thought for any man’s success. It is nothing; I am nothing; Judge Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that immortal emblem of Humanity — the Declaration of American Independence.”
— Abraham Lincoln, speech in Lewiston, Illinois, August 17, 1858, four days before his first historic debate with Stephen A. Douglas, Printed in the Chicago Press and Tribune.
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