On this day in 1864

[Bull Snipe]

Leading elements of Union Major General George G. Meade's Army of the Potomac cross the Rapidan River. With a few hours they would clash with General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in the Battle of the Wilderness. Lieutenant General Grant's Overland Campaign had begun.

[DoodleDawg]

I think we all know the war didn’t go the way President Davis wanted.

And arguably, the war went exactly the way President Lincoln wanted.

"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."

[OIFVeteran]

You lost losers love claiming how “racist” Lincoln was. In that day and age almost everyone was racist. Only the most hardcore abolitionist believed in full equality between the races.

Here’s another one the lost losers love to us, but usually with the last line omitted.
Executive Mansion,
Washington, August 22, 1862.

Hon. Horace Greeley:
Dear Sir.

I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptable in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.

As to the policy I “seem to be pursuing” as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.” If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.

Yours,
A. Lincoln.

Pay attention to the last paragraph. Morally that puts him head and shoulders above everyone in the leadership of the southern rebellion, and most people of the time.

[DoodleDawg]

"I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything.”

What you constantly overlook in your attempts to blame Lincoln for every crime in humanity is his quotes like that. The position of Douglas and every Southern leader you care to name was that the negro should be denied everything. Everything from education to the ability to work how and where they wanted to the very citizenship that white people enjoyed.

And in the first debate when Lincoln said, " I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that, notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man." You, and people like you, will fixate on the first part and claim it's proof of Lincoln's bigotry while totally ignoring the second part and realizing that if your life depended on it you could not name a single Southern leader who believed black people were his equal in any way at all, or who believed that black people had any rights whatsoever that a white man was bound to respect. You judge Lincoln by 21st century standards because if you judged him by the standards of the times you would be forced to admit he was far more accepting than his peers. And where is the fun in that?

[DoodleDawg]

Read what one revered expert taught

Or what Southerners believed: "No man, no association of men, no state or set of states has a right to withdraw itself from this Union, of its own accord. The same power which knit us together, can only unknit. The same formality, which forged the links of the Union, is necessary to dissolve it. The majority of States which form the Union must consent to the withdrawal of any one branch of it. Until that consent has been obtained, any attempt to dissolve the Union, or obstruct the efficacy of its constitutional laws, is Treason--Treason to all intents and purposes."

That was from the Richmond Enquirer, November 1814.

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: " continue to believe it is unwise to play the racist card against figures in the 19th century.
Here's one reason why:"

Sure, "Lincoln the racist" is a favorite Lost Cause meme, but there are no men of that time who would meet today's standards, even the Great Emancipator, Lincoln himself.
But Lincoln lead the effort to pass the 13th Amendment in Congress and his party passed the 14th & 15th after the war.
They also enforced those laws until 1876 when political compromise with Southern Democrats withdrew Union troops and allowed, in effect, nullification of the amendments for the better part of 100 years.

"I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly those who desire it for others."
The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume VIII, "Speech to One Hundred Fortieth Indiana Regiment (March 17, 1865), p. 361. "

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "The word “pretext” is not exculpatory."

Sure, but a pretext can't work unless some people take it seriously.
I am suggesting that what you call "pretext" was in fact taken very seriously by many, indeed arguably by most.
Further, if a "pretext" is indeed believed by enough, then it ceases to be mere "pretext" and becomes actual reason.

So, you've confessed that "freedom and equality" was used as mere "pretext" by some, will you also confess those words were taken very seriously by many more?

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "You and I share common ground here.
We both know that 'indifferent to their (own) opinions about the constitutionality . . . almost every Unionist . . .'
They just didn't care about the constitution.
Unionists just didn't care.
Or if you prefer, they were 'unmindful of.' "

I have to admire your talent for using even dictionary definitions to misrepresent & distort.
But if your lie is so obvious even a child could see through it, how does it benefit your point?

The fact here is that Northerners had various views on the constitutionality of unilateral, unapproved declarations of secession at pleasure.
For example, Democrats like outgoing President Buchanan believed it was unconstitutional, though Federal government should do nothing to stop it.
But when push came to shove at Fort Sumter, even Buchanan stood for Union and supported Lincoln's war effort.

Other Democrats like former President Pierce opposed the civil war, thus morphing from Doughface to Copperhead.
But Pierce represented a small minority.

Most Northerners believed secession itself wrong and war against the Confederate force which provoked war, started war, declared war and waged war even in Union states was necessary to fight & win.
They liked the Union general whose name stood for Unconditional Surrender.

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "Your use of the inflammatory phrase “shoot down President Lincoln” concerns me.
I don’t like it."

So you'd prefer a phrase like "trash President Lincoln"?
Fine, substitute that, but my point remains valid: you seem happy to trash Confederates if in doing so you can also trash President Lincoln, right?

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem to Bull Snipe: "I'm not following your claim 'it was the only way to get a constitution.' "

Not a problem: by 1787 four Northern states had already begun to abolish slavery -- Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire & Rhode Island -- but others did not.
In addition to the four Southern states you listed -- Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina & Virginia -- also Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey and New York still had legal slavery.
So it's unlikely in 1788 those eight slave states would ratify a US Constitution which abolished slavery.

That's why our Founders in 1787 put Union before abolition, as did Lincoln in 1861.

[jeffersondem]

“That was from the Richmond Enquirer, November 1814.”

I’m not familiar with the editor of the Richmond Enquirer in 1814. Was it Abraham Lincoln?

Remind me of the name.

[DiogenesLamp]

Lincoln had no constitutional authority to free those slaves in States that remained in the Union.

He had no constitutional authority to free any of them. In fact, the Constitution explicitly required that they be returned to the person to whom their labor is legally due under the laws of the state where they were held.

But we just gloss over Constitutional "law" when we don't like the law.

[DiogenesLamp]

there are some things that war cannot fix.

In this case, the corruption forces caused the war, and the war further empowered them.

[DiogenesLamp]

Yes.

[DiogenesLamp]

If the Confederates had won we would have had two corrupt national capitals instead of just one.

There may be some truth in this, though the possibility exists that the Confederacy would have eventually overwhelmed and absorbed the USA.

[DiogenesLamp]

The problem is if the Confederates had won, the government would have been in the business of supporting slavery which involves government big and intrusive.

The US Federal government was already in the business of supporting slavery. The Union was a union of legal slavery for "four score and seven years", and if the South had not left the Union, the Union would have remained a legal slavery union for another "four score and seven years."

The war gave them an excuse to ignore the actual law and do what they preferred.

[DiogenesLamp]

It would have died naturally. Without the need for nearly a million Americans to die.

They didn't die to free slaves. They died to create slaves. The War was fought because the South was leaving the financial control of the Washington DC/ New York influence cartel, and they were taking 3/4ths of all the European trade money with them.

They were offered complete protection for slavery, but that wasn't enough to convince them to stay in a system that siphoned off a huge amount of their production for the benefit of Washington DC and New York.

The claim that the war was fought to free the slaves was just propaganda to cover up the fact that the North invaded the South to stop them from taking away the European trade.

[jeffersondem]

“Not a problem: by 1787 four Northern states had already begun to abolish slavery — Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire & Rhode Island — but others did not.”

Had begun to abolish? But they were still slaves states?

Along with the other slave states of Maryland, Delaware, New York, New Jersey. And let's not forget the South had slave states: Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia.

I think I'm beginning to see the problem with the vote count and it is not quite the picture painted earlier.

In any event, everyone of the original states voted to enshrine slavery into the U.S. constitution. Everyone. Even those that had determined slavery was morally wrong. And they included a provision that would make it difficult, but not impossible, to remove using the peaceful constitutional amendment process.

Today we must come to grips with the fact all the original states voted to include slavery in the constitution. But only for a very good reason: it was determined it was in their own best economic and political best self-interest.

[DiogenesLamp]

The Union did not enter the Civil War to free the slaves. The Union entered the Civil War because the southern slavocracy went to war against them.

By taking away their money stream from Europe.

[jeffersondem]

“Fine, substitute that, but my point remains valid: you seem happy to trash Confederates if in doing so you can also trash President Lincoln, right?”

You misunderstood and imagined more.

[DiogenesLamp]

The President's position as Commander in Chief gave him the power to seize the property of those making war on the United States.

That is nowhere in the US Constitution, but I will tell you what is. There is an explicit clause requiring the Federal government to return slaves to their masters so long as they are held by the laws of a state. (Article IV, Section 2)

So once again, we have liberals making up constitutional laws that do not exist, and ignoring very explicit laws that do in fact exist.

Lincoln was under pressure to take this action as soon as Fort Sumter was attacked.

Lincoln, with malice aforethought, did deliberately cause that attack by sending a war fleet against those surrounding fort Sumter, with orders to attack them.

In other words, Lincoln launched his attack first.

Congress passed Confiscation Acts, urging that slaves owned by Confederates be freed.

Congress cannot override constitutional law.