I would rather fly this flag but I haven't purchased one yet:
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 ...
I would rather fly this flag but I haven't purchased one yet:
Personally, I think those governors should have eagerly cooperated with Madison (on their own respective authorities) against the Brits but the usual gang of banking, commerce and industrial suspects, pining miserably over their lost business opportunities with Great Britain would not hear such a legitimate appeal to patriotism and they actually held a convention at the Old State House in Hartford with an eye toward seceding over their business interests. Meanwhile, the Brits were sacking and burning the White House.
Fortunately, Andrew Jackson and the pirate Jean Laffite routed the Brits at New Orleans and put an end to the last Brit invasion of our nation. Laffite provided naval support but NOT as militia. One might call Jackson's troops militia but they served on land only.
By the time of the War of Northern Aggression, the United States Navy was well-established as a standing navy, a professional fighting force, in no way subject to state governors and fully under the lawful authority of POTUS and Congress. However, blockading ports it claimed to be its own was not lawful.
And I really don’t care much about the confederate flag and see the issue as one where certain politicians can pretend they’re doing something brave and important (that costs them nothing) and certain anti-flag activists can pretend they’ve won some kind of meaningful victory. Meanwhile, nothing really changes, which is what both sides want. And I think things like Bubba Watson saying he’s going to repaint the Dukes of Hazzard car and Apple pulling Civil War game apps because they include the flag are just dumb.
As I peruse Lincoln’s most important speeches again, I detect no sign of political incompetence. Quite the contrary. They’re politically masterful.
Since I posted the first inaugural speech, I might as well post the second. It’s a master work, second only, perhaps, to his Gettysburg Address. A whole lot of very dark water had passed under the bridge in four long years of war.
President Abraham Lincoln, second inaugural:
Fellow-Countrymen:
AT this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres32.html
Lincoln's response to your view, from his second inaugural:
"On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came."
-- Abraham Lincoln, second inaugural speech
Eleven Southern states seceded. That power was reserved to those states. From the point of secession forward those states were no longer under the jurisdiction of the Union. They were free and independent. Some will say that they could not thereby avoid responsibility for their share of the national debt. Would that also give them claim to their share of national assets such as naval vessels, land, forts (including Sumter?) military equipment, debts owed to the Union and whatnot calculated as of the time of secession? Perhaps SCOTUS might make a decision based upon the evidence on the distribution of national debt and national assets?
As to efforts to avoid the late hostilities that killed 600,000 soldiers and sailors, I have always thought that former POTUS John Tyler, a Virginian but a Whig, made the best effort expending much of his personal fortune to call a national convention of American leaders of all persuasions in a distinguished but failed effort to avoid war. It was simply too late.
Both Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson opposed Virginia secession from the Union but, regarding themselves primarily as Virginians rather than Americans (as most Americans of the time identified with their states), chose not to make war upon their fellow Virginians. Lee refused the offer of being appointed commanding general of all Union armies. When Lincoln made war against Virginia, Lee and Jackson took up arms against the invaders on behalf of their state and its citizens. It was much the same throughout the Southland.
So it’s your contention that the government can summon the militia to suppress insurrections, but it cannot call upon the active duty military to suppress those same insurrections?
That power was NOT reserved to those states.
Fixed it.
It was, sadly, a fatal error by two fine Christian gentlemen, men who are without a doubt among the greatest generals in American military history, when they refused the wise counsel to all who would follow him of our greatest general, and the greatest Virginian, George Washington.
"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."-- President George Washington, Farewell Address
I say this as someone whose roots in Virginia are as deep as anyones.
Admittedly, these was and remains great sympathy for the position adopted by Lee. Which is probably why he was not hung as a traitor, but instead allowed to return to civilian life as a free, albeit beaten, man.
You may wish to reference the Wikipedia article on the Trent Affair which is overly exhaustive and does not support my story of the cabinet vote. Given today's time constraints, it is the best I can do. Enjoy!
I take it you disagree with my assertion. Just because a country has a lot of land doesn’t mean it has to have big government. I am militantly in favor of limited government. And I also believe the Louisiana Purchase (just like “Seward’s Folly”) was one of the best deals in history.
Are you serious? All kinds of stupid bills come up. Maybe thats why it failed. Because it was redundant.
I’ll take a look for it. Thanks
He exercised the authority granted him by Article II section 2 of the Constitution. “The President shall be the Commander in Chief of the army and navy of the United States and of the militia of the several states, when called into service of the United States. A Naval blockade of a hostile or belligerent’s ports is recognized in International law as a legitimate exercise of Naval power during war. Lincoln’s legitimate use of this tactic was confirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case 67 U.S. 635 aka Amy Warwick v. the United States. In this case several New England ship owners sued the Federal government over their ships be seized by blockading forces and the cargos condemned and ships sold. The owners argument was that since no war was declared by Congress, the President lacked the authority to impose blockade. The Court found that even though no official declaration of war existed, the Confederacy, through two specific acts of war against the United States (the firing on Fort Sumter and the issuance of the Privateer Act which authorized letters of Marquis to Southern ship owner to seize U.S. ships) that a state of war existed between the United States and the Confederate States. Since a state of war existed de facto, Lincoln, as C-in-C could call for the blockade without an official declaration of way by the Congress.
The international community recognized the legitimacy of the Union blockade of Confederate ports. Every maritime country in Europe including England, the greatest maritime and Naval power of the century warned their merchant fleet
that they sailed at their own peril if they carried contraband cargos to the blockaded Confederate port. Over the course of the war, the U.S. Navy captured, sank or otherwise destroyed 1504 ships. A large percentage of those ships were of British owned, registered and crewed.
Only once did the British Government protest the capture of a British ship, and that was the RMS Trent. However, in a judicial opinion drafted by the Queen’s Advocate, The Crown Prosecutor and the Crown Solicitor for the Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, they found that Captain Wilkes had acted incorrectly. Had Wilkes put a prize crew aboard the Trent, sailed her to a U.S. port and submitted the seizure to an Admiralty court for adjudication the British would not have objected to the fates of Mason and Slidell. Wilkes would have been acted within the law as the British saw it. Wilkes however, did not do this. He searched the Trent, removed Mason and Slidell and their documents and allowed the Trent to proceed on its way. This is what violated the law as the British saw it. Be that as it may, Lincoln smoothed the ruffled English feathers and for the rest of the war, the greatest maritime and naval power on the globe allowed Abe Lincoln’s blockade to continue un hindered by British sea power. Both the Supreme Court of the United States and the British Empire found Lincoln’s blockade to be legal within the law as it existed at that time. On a side note, Davis’s issue of letters of Marquis to Confederate privateers was illegal under the Paris Declaration of 1856. This international pack outlawed privateers. The United States was not among the 45 signatory nations to this pact. Lincoln advised the British, French and Spanish Governments that the United States would strictly adhere to the provisions of that treaty, even though the U.S. was not a signatory.
Not sad at all. If Americans viewed themselves as citizens of their state and not wards of FedGov™ life would be much better and we would be freer. I, like Lee,Jackson and Davis, believe in the republic, you don't. You believe in centralized authoritarian government.
"Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It is to be justified upon the basis that the States are Sovereign. There was a time when none denied it. I hope the time may come again, when a better comprehension of the theory of our Government, and the inalienable rights of the people of the States, will prevent any one from denying that each State is a Sovereign, and thus may reclaim the grants which it has made to any agent whomsoever."
Jeff Davis, President CSA
Lincoln in his classic CYA mode.
You’re arguing with the great Virginian of them all.
Good luck with that.
You’ll do about as well as your forefathers did arguing with Abe Lincoln.
It’s pretty necessary to CYA when a bunch of insurrectionists are shooting at you.
That "No State" comment rankled me as a Texan, but at the end of your post you corrected yourself.
The Allied Command beat the Germans and the Japanese in WWII, but that doesn't mean that allies that band together to fight an enemy have somehow been forever and irretrievably absorbed into a wartime organization that they joined to defeat a common enemy. A step that major would require a formal procedure, guidelines for what is permitted and what not, and formal acceptance of such by the states and their people.
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.”
The "thirteen united States" should have given you a clue. Just because the Declaration called them states doesn't mean they were in your Union at that point rather than in a wartime alliance to fight a common enemy. If the states were free and independent and fully sovereign as the Declaration said, then they were not subject to any other state or to the Continental Congress for that matter, or else they would not be independent and sovereign.
You can't have it both ways. Either the Declaration, the Continental Congress, and King George III are wrong with respect to the independence and sovereignty of the states (note the use of the plural) or you and Lincoln are wrong in your arguments.
From the Declaration:
... all political connection between them and the State [singular] of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States [plural] may of right do.
From the Continental Congress to the states in 1777 asking that they agree to the Articles of Confederation. If the states were already your "Union" rather than simply in an alliance, why would the Continental Congress need to plead with them to agree to the first real act of formal Union?
...Let them [the Articles] be candidly reviewed under a sense of the difficulty of combining in one general system the various sentiments and interests of a continent divided into so many sovereign and independent communities, under a conviction of the absolute necessity of uniting all our councils and all our strength, to maintain and defend our common liberties . . .
And King George III:
His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and independent states, that he treats with them as such, and for himself, his heirs, and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety, and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof.
Are you sure you aren't Chief Justice Roberts arguing about the meaning of the word "state"? As Justice Scalia said in his recent dissent to Robert's opinion in King s. Burwell:
The Court holds that when the Patient Protection and Adequate Care Act says "Exchange established by the State" it means "Exchange established by the State or the Federal Government." That is of course quite absurd, ...
In ignoring the actual words of the Declaration, the words of the Continental Congress, and the King George II's words in the 1783 Treaty of Paris, you are making the same type of "interpretive jiggery-pokery" or "somersaults of statutory interpretation" (to use words from Scalia's dissent) that Roberts did.
Speaking of Obamacare, there was an insightful letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal recently by a Dave Ross of Cincinnati about Roberts' logic in King vs. Burwell. It refers to Roberts' promise to only call balls and strikes (rather than legislate from the bench) during his confirmation hearing as Chief Justice.
If Justice Roberts were calling "balls and strikes," the actual location of the ball would be immaterial since he'd know what the pitcher "intended."
If you argue that the Union formed by the Constitution was just a continuation of the Union under the Articles or even your mythical Union of 1775-76, then you ought to consider what George Washington told Congress on August 22, 1789:
The President of the United States came into the Senate Chamber, attended by General Knox, and laid before the Senate the following state of facts, with the questions thereto annexed, for their advice and consent:
... "As the Cherokees reside principally within the territory claimed by North Carolina, and as that State is not a member of the present Union, it may be doubted whether any efficient measures in favor of the Cherokees could be immediately adopted by the general government ..."
From Congress on September 12, 1789:
And be it further enacted, That all rum, loaf sugar, and chocolate, manufactured or made in the states of North Carolina, or Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, and imported or brought into the United States, shall be deemed and taken to be subject to the like duties, as goods of the like kinds, imported from any foreign state, kingdom, or country are made subject to.
Left to their own devices, Lords Palmerston and Russell would likely have recognized the Confederacy and worked to its benefit in various important ways such as allowing the Laird shipyard to complete CSS Mississippi and CSS North Carolina. It was in great Britain's interest to see the Union divided into two countries.
Queen Victoria's beloved husband Prince Albert of Coburg was on his deathbed and called for Palmerston and Russell with Victoria present, and begged them not to help the Confederacy and to thereby affiliate Great Britain again with slavery. Palmerston and Russell agreed to his dying wish.
The establishment of a blockade is itself an act of war but Lincoln usually wanted to operate under the fiction that the eleven Confederate states were still part of the Union. Unless, of course, he wanted to blockade Confederate ports which required recognition of the Confederacy as a belligerent but quite separate nation or when, without the concurrence of the Virginia legislature he proceeded to have Congress carve West Virginia out of Virginia's territory or when, after his death, the Radical Republicans REQUIRED of the defeated states of the Southland as a CONDITION OF "RE-ADMISSION" to the Union, those states were required to "ratify" proposed Amendments 13, 14 and 15 to the Constitution. How can a state be "re-admitted" when, according to Dishonest Abe the state could not have left? How does a nation make war against what it claims are its own people? That is not what is meant by war for purposes of justifying blockades.
How thoroughly Lincolnian to promise to obey the Paris Declaration of 1856 without, well, actually signing it!
The SCOTUS case you cite might be more persuasive if, instead of noting that Congress DID NOT declare war, it had taken into account that since the Union did not recognize the Confederacy as a nation, Congress COULD NOT declare war against it. This is a rare case in which the Chase SCOTUS joined the rest of the Union's leadership in becoming irrational whirling dervishes, wrapping themselves into pretzels to avoid the obvious: that the Confederay was a full-fledged nation whether Lincoln and his radical pals wanted to admit it or not.
600,000 combatants died because Lincoln was going to wage war to impose his ideology under cover of "suppressing insurrection" in a nation born in insurrection. Lincoln himself in his first Inaugural Address cited in full elsewhere in this thread conceded our revolutionary heritage that when government has become intolerable to its subjects they are entitles to rebel against that government and overthrow it.
The Southland sought to rebel on behalf of 11 states and to let the rest decide whether the rest were satisfied. South Carolina wanted to reclaim its freedom and let New Jersey decide whether it was satisfied with the existing government. It is fair to say that New York City NEVER supported Lincoln's war. They should have held a referendum.
One of the most important freedoms is the freedom to leave, whether as a state or as an individual. We ought to have aspired and we ought to aspire to be a society which does not seek to imprison its states or its citizens simply because either wishes to leave.
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