HISTORICAL IGNORANCE II: Forgotten facts about Lincoln, slavery and the Civil War

We call the war of 1861 the Civil War. But is that right? A civil war is a struggle between two or more entities trying to take over the central government. Confederate President Jefferson Davis no more sought to take over Washington, D.C., than George Washington sought to take over London in 1776. Both wars, those of 1776 and 1861, were wars of independence. Such a recognition does not require one to sanction the horrors of slavery. We might ask, How much of the war was about slavery?

Was President Abraham Lincoln really for outlawing slavery? Let's look at his words. In an 1858 letter, Lincoln said, "I have declared a thousand times, and now repeat that, in my opinion neither the General Government, nor any other power outside of the slave states, can constitutionally or rightfully interfere with slaves or slavery where it already exists." In a Springfield, Illinois, speech, he explained: "My declarations upon this subject of Negro slavery may be misrepresented but cannot be misunderstood. I have said that I do not understand the Declaration (of Independence) to mean that all men were created equal in all respects." Debating Sen. Stephen Douglas, Lincoln said, "I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes nor of qualifying them to hold office nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality."

What about Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation? Here are his words: "I view the matter (of slaves' emancipation) as a practical war measure, to be decided upon according to the advantages or disadvantages it may offer to the suppression of the rebellion." He also wrote: "I will also concede that emancipation would help us in Europe, and convince them that we are incited by something more than ambition." When Lincoln first drafted the proclamation, war was going badly for the Union.

London and Paris were considering recognizing the Confederacy and assisting it in its war against the Union.

The Emancipation Proclamation was not a universal declaration. It specifically detailed where slaves were to be freed: only in those states "in rebellion against the United States." Slaves remained slaves in states not in rebellion — such as Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware and Missouri. The hypocrisy of the Emancipation Proclamation came in for heavy criticism. Lincoln's own secretary of state, William Seward, sarcastically said, "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."

Lincoln did articulate a view of secession that would have been heartily endorsed by the Confederacy: "Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. ... Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit." Lincoln expressed that view in an 1848 speech in the U.S. House of Representatives, supporting the war with Mexico and the secession of Texas.

Why didn't Lincoln share the same feelings about Southern secession? Following the money might help with an answer. Throughout most of our nation's history, the only sources of federal revenue were excise taxes and tariffs. During the 1850s, tariffs amounted to 90 percent of federal revenue. Southern ports paid 75 percent of tariffs in 1859. What "responsible" politician would let that much revenue go?

I’ve read the Roe decision, and I think its determination that a fetus is not “a person” within the meaning of the Constitution and its amendments is correct.

First of all, the Roe decision NEVER says that the unborn baby isn't a person, it says that there's no case law saying that it is:

The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a "person" within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well-known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment. The appellant conceded as much on reargument. On the other hand, the appellee conceded on reargument that no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.

There is NOTHING to stop a law or executive order recognizing the personhood of the unborn.

Nevertheless, what's most disturbing is that YOU don't believe that the baby is a person. What is the baby if not a person?

Certainly none of the Founders had any idea they were prohibiting abortion, which was widely practiced at the time.

Patently FALSE!

Abortion was illegal in every state at the time of the Constitution. Granted, it was only a misdemeanor before the "quickening," but this has more to do with the understanding of development.

I respect those who believe otherwise, but that’s my opinion.

So, in your opinion, you believe the Founding Fathers were fine with abortion and would be delighted to see 4000 babies being slaughtered each day?

By the way, your claim that unborn children are not protected by the Constitution is wrong not only because of the things I’ve already pointed out to you, but because what you’re saying is also an explicit violation of the principles contained in the Ninth Amendment, which is basically that just because a right is not enumerated in the Constitution that doesn’t mean that the people don’t retain it.

Again, the individual, equal right to life is enumerated, in multiple amendments, but even if it wasn’t, that right would still be intrinsic to every single innocent person.

Because our God-given, unalienable rights precede and supersede all man-made laws and constitutions.

Madison and Hamilton and others didn’t want a bill of rights in the Constitution originally, because they feared that some would do exactly what you are doing in this exchange.

They lost the political argument on that with the anti-federalists, and agreed to help pass the first dozen amendments, as long as the Ninth Amendment was included.

Doesn’t help much though if folks like yourself pretend it doesn’t exist, and thereby violently strip tens of millions of innocent persons of their most important right, the right without which no other right can ever be enjoyed.

Amendment IX

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

"But point of entry is a good indicator where demand lies..."

NO, it is a good indicator of the most profitable route for the shipper and what the law required of overseas shippers.

PLEASE READ THIS VERY CAREFULLY DoodleDawg....this will answer all of the questions you have posed on this and one other thread.

Early and mid-19th century Atlantic trade was based on “packet lines” — which were groups of vessels under one company banner offering scheduled services. It was a coastal trade at first, but when the Black Ball Line started running between New York and Liverpool in 1817, it became a common way to do business across the Atlantic.

The reason for success was to have a profitable cargo going each way. The New York packet lines succeeded because they took in all the European bound cotton cargoes from the South, and Mid-West food exports.

The northeast did not have enough volume of paying freight on its own.

So American vessels, usually owned in the Northeast, sailed off to a cotton port, carrying goods for the southern market. There they loaded cotton, or occasionally naval stores, food, or timber, for Europe. They steamed back from Europe loaded with manufactured goods, raw materials like hemp or coal, and occasionally immigrants.

Since this “triangle trade” involved a domestic leg, foreign vessels were excluded from it under the 1817 law, except a few English ones that could substitute a Canadian port for a Northern U.S. one.

Since it was subsidized by the U.S. government, it was going to continue to be protectionist, and not subject to competition from any nascent Southern shippers.

By creating a three-cornered trade in the ‘cotton triangle,’ New York dragged the commerce between the Southern ports and Europe out of its normal course some two hundred miles to collect a heavy handling fees upon it.

This trade might perfectly well have taken the form of direct shuttles between Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, or New Orleans on the one hand and Liverpool or Havre on the other, leaving New York far to one side had it not interfered in this way. To clinch this abnormal arrangement New York developed the coastal packet lines without which it would have been extremely difficult to make the east-bound trips of the ocean packets profitable.

Even when the Southern cotton bound for Europe did not put in at the wharves of Sandy Hook or the East River, unloading and reloading, the combined income from interests, commissions, freight, insurance, and other profits took perhaps 40 cents into New York of every dollar paid for southern cotton.

The record shows that ports with moderate quantities of outbound freight could not keep up with the New York competition. Boston started a packet line in 1833 that, to secure outbound cargo, detoured to Charleston for cotton. But about the only other local commodity it could find to move to Europe was Bostonians. Since most passengers en route to England did not want the time delays in a layover in South Carolina, the lines failed.

As for the cotton ports themselves, they did not crave enough imports to justify packet lines until 1851, when New Orleans hosted one sailing to Liverpool.

Yet New York by the mid-1850s could claim sixteen lines to Liverpool, three to London, three to Havre, two to Antwerp, and one each to Glasgow, Rotterdam, and Marseilles. This was subsidized by the federal post office patronage procedure.

U.S. foreign trade rose in value from $134 million in 1830 to $318 million in 1850. It tripled again in the 1850s. Between two-thirds and three-fourths of those imports entered through the port of New York.

This meant that any trading the South did, had to go through New York. Direct trade from Charleston and Savannah during this period was stagnant. The total shipping that entered from foreign countries in 1851 in the port of Charleston was 92,000 tons, in the port of New York, 1,448,000. Relatively little tariff money was collected in the port authority in Charleston.

According to a Treasury report, the net revenue of all the ports of South Carolina during 1859 was a mere $234,237; during 1860 it was $309,222.

New York shipping interests, using the Navigation Laws and in collaboration with the US Congress, effectively closed the market off from competitive shipping, and in spite of the inefficiencies, were able to control the movement of Southern goods.

And here I always thought reversing Roe would mean returning the abortion issue to the states, which is where IMO it always should have been. In what way is that not a conservative position?

I know you've been banned, but I'm going to answer you on the chance you'll read it and ponder, or at least that someone will.

States' Rights do not trump unalienable rights. Especially the supreme right, the right to live.

Neither the state nor the general government have any rights in this area at all. All they have is the DUTY to protect.

After all, that is the primary reason those governmetns exist.

This is kind of like the ABCs of American republican self-government.

"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..."

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