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 ...
No, I did not make it up. The surprising thing is that Secretary of State William Seward and Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, both of whom normally acted like grownups, did not join Lincoln on this. It did not matter since he had the power and the cabinet did not. Lincoln just wanted to know their minds on the subject.
Well that’s real interesting. Perhaps you could offer up a link that speaks to this vote?
What article is that?
It is the next logical political unit.
But is it the only entity that has the self-evident right to declare itself a country? What about places that don't have states? Do they have no right of self-determination? How does a natural right only attach to a certain arbitrary political entity and not others?
You are espousing anarchy which would be well down the totem pile in a societal collapse scenario.
No, I'm asking that you resolve the apparent contradictions in your political theory. On one hand you claim a God-given right, but then you claim it belongs not to individuals but to one particular class of man-made political entities. You believe, if I understand correctly, that Rhode Island can declare itself to be a different country, but Harris County, Texas, with a larger area and four times the population, cannot. This seems a very arbitrary distinction and a difficult one to explain in terms of natural rights theory.
Secession by a state is logical and can be voted on by the people as the levers of government are already in place.
An election can be held just as easily at the county, municipal or precinct level.
The authority comes from Article 1, Sec. 8, Clause 15, which provides for "calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions" and from the Militia Act of 1795.
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.
Supporting nascent industries in late 18th/19th century America with protective tariffs was a worthy endeavor. In their absence, the US would never have become the industrial powerhouse that made us prosperous and great. We would have remained an economic backwater selling cotton from the south and timber from the north to England. Did these tariffs benefit the wealthy and well-connected? Sure, but the interests of those wealthy and well-connected coincided with the national interest, because the same policies built up our infrastructure and provided (by 19th century standards) high-paying factory jobs for millions of people. That remained the case into the middle of the 20th century, i.e. "what's good for GM is good for America." The problem with TPA and much of our trade policy from the late 20th century on is not that it benefits rich people, but that the interests of those internationalized elites (offshoring) do not coincide with the national interest. Again, I find it strange that you (rightly) attack trade policies that lead to offshoring and tax havens for an internationalized elite, while in the next breath attacking the ideological precursors of the policies that would prevent offshoring.
Both the Hamiltonians and the Jeffersonians represented the interests of a wealthy elite, just different wealthy elites. Hamiltonians represented the interests of northern industrialists and bankers, Jeffersonians the southern planter aristocracy. The "caste system" in the latter was probably more rigid than in the former - if you weren't in the planter elite, there were fewer opportunities for you as a disposable day laborer in the south (a much lower station in life than a peasant, and in the eyes the planter elite a notch below a valuable slave) than as a worker in the industrial north, where there was substantially more social mobility. The "working middle class" of early 20th century America was the outcome of northern industry (nurtured by tariffs), not of southern planters.
This doesn't mean that I support a war of aggression to topple the planter elite of the south or to "free the slaves" - the Civil war "cure" was far worse than these alleged diseases, but I do believe that those who think the interests of the planter elite were somehow "the voice of the common man" seems like a very naive and overly romantic perspective.
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..."
You are quoting only part of the Declaration and not considering what was stricken out of Jefferson's draft and how one of Jefferson's charges against the King was changed to address a problem the Founders faced with a then current British action concerning slaves. I'll repost something I posted over ten years ago in a thread that was later pulled because of a flame war. Because the thread was pulled I can no longer provide a link to it:
Thomas Jefferson very probably meant "all men were created equal" to apply to slaves, but I don’t think the Continental Congress did, and it is their document that finally issued, not Jefferson’s draft.
The Continental Congress (hereafter "CC") removed Jefferson’s charges against the King that "He has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow citizens …" and replaced it with "He has excited domestic insurrection among us …" The CC probably didn’t consider slaves to be fellow citizens.
The insurrections that both Jefferson and the CC may be referring to may be things like the Royal Governor of Virginia’s 1775 proclamation freeing slaves of the rebels [Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t original]:
And I hereby further declare all indented servants, Negroes, or others (appertaining to Rebels) free, that are able and willing to bear arms, they joining His Majesty's Troops, as soon as may be, for the more speedily reducing the Colony to a proper sense of their duty, to this Majesty's crown and dignity. [Source: Lord Dunmore's Proclamation as Governor of Virginia, November 14, 1775]
The CC also removed the charges against the King in Jefferson’s draft that "He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither." Why would the CC take that out if they felt that "all men are created equal" applied to slaves?
The Declaration of Independence is a great document, not perfect perhaps, but really great, monumental, and worthy of respect.
Interestingly, the preamble of the Confederate Constitution removed the "promote the general welfare" clause of the preamble of the US Constitution that seemed to favor unlimited powers for the central government while the body of the Constitution wisely limited federal power. The Confederates also made it clear that each state was acting in its sovereign and independent character to create the federal government. No more self-serving Lincoln fantasy that the Union created the states. From Wikipedia:
The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
The Preamble to the Confederate Constitution: "We, the people of the Confederate States, each state acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity — invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God — do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America."
Actually, the Union did create the States, out of former British colonies.
No State won its independence all by itself. It was a joint, unified effort of all the Colonies/States, acting as one. This is obvious.
The Declaration itself memorializes the above fact, when in the first paragraph it refers to us as “one people,” and when in the last paragraph, it directly says that independence was being declared by “the united States of America.” Furthermore, it was done “by Authority of the good People of these Colonies.” That’s the whole body of the people, of all the Colonies, not by the authority of only one Colony or State. Then, again, it directly makes reference to “these United Colonies.” Only then does it begin to refer to them as “Free and Independent States.”
We won independence as one people. Then for a time the States had the power to become independent themselves if they saw fit. Nobody was going to stop them if that’s what they wanted.
Right up until they signed on to the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union and later the U.S. Constitution.
Subsequently, for any State to leave, they’re going to have to get the consent of We the People, the whole body of the people, to break up the Union.
By the way, it doesn’t go without saying to point out that after the original thirteen, the rest of the States were particularly the direct creation of the Union.
Well, except maybe Texas. They were already a free republic, and voted to allow the U.S. to annex them and then make them a State in the Union.
And you base that on what?
Government by consent.
So if a state has a referendum and votes to secede then is that government by consent?
Two more thoughts on the Union, one having to do with foresight, and the other with hindsight:
George Washington foresaw the incalculable value of the Union in terms of defending liberty. I’ll add some of his wise words from his Farewell Address at the bottom of this post.
What if the Union had been destroyed? What would have happened to the world in the Twentieth Century without a united, strong America standing against and defeating German aggression, Japanese Imperialism, and Nazi and Soviet tyranny?
Please listen to the father of our country very carefully.
President George Washington:
“The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.
For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.
But these considerations, however powerfully they address themselves to your sensibility, are greatly outweighed by those which apply more immediately to your interest. Here every portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and preserving the union of the whole.
The North, in an unrestrained intercourse with the South, protected by the equal laws of a common government, finds in the productions of the latter great additional resources of maritime and commercial enterprise and precious materials of manufacturing industry. The South, in the same intercourse, benefiting by the agency of the North, sees its agriculture grow and its commerce expand. Turning partly into its own channels the seamen of the North, it finds its particular navigation invigorated; and, while it contributes, in different ways, to nourish and increase the general mass of the national navigation, it looks forward to the protection of a maritime strength, to which itself is unequally adapted. The East, in a like intercourse with the West, already finds, and in the progressive improvement of interior communications by land and water, will more and more find a valuable vent for the commodities which it brings from abroad, or manufactures at home. The West derives from the East supplies requisite to its growth and comfort, and, what is perhaps of still greater consequence, it must of necessity owe the secure enjoyment of indispensable outlets for its own productions to the weight, influence, and the future maritime strength of the Atlantic side of the Union, directed by an indissoluble community of interest as one nation. Any other tenure by which the West can hold this essential advantage, whether derived from its own separate strength, or from an apostate and unnatural connection with any foreign power, must be intrinsically precarious.
While, then, every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations; and, what is of inestimable value, they must derive from union an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves, which so frequently afflict neighboring countries not tied together by the same governments, which their own rival ships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.
These considerations speak a persuasive language to every reflecting and virtuous mind, and exhibit the continuance of the Union as a primary object of patriotic desire. Is there a doubt whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? Let experience solve it. To listen to mere speculation in such a case were criminal. We are authorized to hope that a proper organization of the whole with the auxiliary agency of governments for the respective subdivisions, will afford a happy issue to the experiment. It is well worth a fair and full experiment. With such powerful and obvious motives to union, affecting all parts of our country, while experience shall not have demonstrated its impracticability, there will always be reason to distrust the patriotism of those who in any quarter may endeavor to weaken its bands.
In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of serious concern that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations, Northern and Southern, Atlantic and Western; whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views. One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection. The inhabitants of our Western country have lately had a useful lesson on this head; they have seen, in the negotiation by the Executive, and in the unanimous ratification by the Senate, of the treaty with Spain, and in the universal satisfaction at that event, throughout the United States, a decisive proof how unfounded were the suspicions propagated among them of a policy in the General Government and in the Atlantic States unfriendly to their interests in regard to the Mississippi; they have been witnesses to the formation of two treaties, that with Great Britain, and that with Spain, which secure to them everything they could desire, in respect to our foreign relations, towards confirming their prosperity. Will it not be their wisdom to rely for the preservation of these advantages on the Union by which they were procured ? Will they not henceforth be deaf to those advisers, if such there are, who would sever them from their brethren and connect them with aliens?
To the efficacy and permanency of your Union, a government for the whole is indispensable. No alliance, however strict, between the parts can be an adequate substitute; they must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay, by the adoption of a constitution of government better calculated than your former for an intimate union, and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.
All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.
However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.
Towards the preservation of your government, and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown. In all the changes to which you may be invited, remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of other human institutions; that experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country; that facility in changes, upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion, exposes to perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion; and remember, especially, that for the efficient management of your common interests, in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable. Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian. It is, indeed, little else than a name, where the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction, to confine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property.”
Not without the consent of the whole sovereign body of the people of the United States, no.
I don't blame Lincoln for putting down the rebellion once the Confederate states seceded, nor do I buy the argument that putting down secession is in any way illegal or unconstitutional. I blame Lincoln (and even more so the radical abolitionists of the time)for allowing relations between northern and southern states to fester to the point that the southern states were backed into a corner and forced (in their opinion) into what was ultimately illegal acts of secession. Most of the disagreements between north and south could have been negotiated by a more adept and competent and less ideological government at the time.
Section 10 - Powers prohibited of States
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or CONFEDERATION; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.
The US Constitution is silent on the subject of secession. But your fascistic tendencies seem to see something that is not there. Bravo.
You southern haters are really at it. How many CBF’s you burn over the weekend?
I don't blame Lincoln for putting down the rebellion once the Confederate states seceded, nor do I buy the argument that putting down secession is in any way illegal or unconstitutional. I blame Lincoln (and even more so the radical abolitionists of the time)for allowing relations between northern and southern states to fester to the point that the southern states were backed into a corner and forced (in their opinion) into what was ultimately illegal acts of secession. Most of the disagreements between north and south could have been negotiated by a more adept and competent and less ideological government at the time.
Your response:
You southern haters are really at it. How many CBF’s you burn over the weekend?
I clearly stated that Lincoln and radical abolitionists were largely to blame for the initial conflict between the northern and southern states. I then proceeded to say that there was nothing in the Constitution that allows states to secede at will. To you, this makes me a "hater of the south" (in spite of the fact that I posted several threads defending the Confederate flag against NAACP-type race agitators).
It seems as though for some people, if you don't agree with them on every point, you're automatically a hater and an enemy.
Well if you miss the main point then what is the point of discussion? Will you acknowledge that the US Constitution is silent in the subject? Will you?
Shoot, I don't see why you should blame Lincoln for that, any more than any other American. Secession was in full swing by the time he even took the oath. There was no time for any "festering."
Government by consent is not fascistic. The opposite is true. Denial of government by consent is the denial of a God-given right.
There were at least two peace delegations, perhaps more, in DC on the day of Lincolns inaugural. He refused to parlay.
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