POLITICALLY CORRECT HISTORY - LINCOLN MYTH DEBUNKED

LewRockwell.com ^ | January 23, 2003 | Thomas J. DiLorenzo, PHD

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Politically Correct History by Thomas J. DiLorenzo The political left in America has apparently decided that American history must be rewritten so that it can be used in the political campaign for reparations for slavery. Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., of Chicago inserted language in a Department of Interior appropriations bill for 2000 that instructed the National Park Service to propagandize about slavery as the sole cause of the war at all Civil War park sites. The Marxist historian Eric Foner has joined forces with Jackson and will assist the National Park Service in its efforts at rewriting history so that it better serves the political agenda of the far left. Congressman Jackson has candidly described this whole effort as "a down payment on reparations." (Foner ought to be quite familiar with the "art" of rewriting politically-correct history. He was the chairman of the committee at Columbia University that awarded the "prestigious" Bancroft Prize in history to Emory University’s Michael A. Bellesiles, author of the anti-Second Amendment book, "Arming America," that turned out to be fraudulent. Bellesiles was forced to resign from Emory and his publisher has ceased publishing the book.) In order to accommodate the political agenda of the far left, the National Park Service will be required in effect to teach visitors to the national parks that Abraham Lincoln was a liar. Neither Lincoln nor the US Congress at the time ever said that slavery was a cause – let alone the sole cause – of their invasion of the Southern states in 1861. Both Lincoln and the Congress made it perfectly clear to the whole world that they would do all they could to protect Southern slavery as long as the secession movement could be defeated. On March 2, 1861, the U.S. Senate passed a proposed Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution (which passed the House of Representatives on February 28) that would have prohibited the federal government from ever interfering with slavery in the Southern states. (See U.S. House of Representatives, 106th Congress, 2nd Session, The Constitution of the United States of America: Unratified Amendments, Document No. 106-214, presented by Congressman Henry Hyde (Washington, D.C. U.S. Government Printing Office, January 31, 2000). The proposed amendment read as follows: ARTICLE THIRTEEN No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State. Two days later, in his First Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln promised to support the amendment even though he believed that the Constitution already prohibited the federal government from interfering with Southern slavery. As he stated: I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution . . . has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose, not to speak of particular amendments, so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable (emphasis added). This of course was consistent with one of the opening statements of the First Inaugural, where Lincoln quoted himself as saying: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." That’s what Lincoln said his invasion of the Southern states was not about. In an August 22, 1862, letter to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley he explained to the world what the war was about: My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, 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. Of course, many Americans at the time, North and South, believed that a military invasion of the Southern states would destroy the union by destroying its voluntary nature. To Lincoln, "saving the Union" meant destroying the secession movement and with it the Jeffersonian political tradition of states’ rights as a check on the tyrannical proclivities of the central government. His war might have "saved" the union geographically, but it destroyed it philosophically as the country became a consolidated empire as opposed to a constitutional republic of sovereign states. On July 22, 1861, the US Congress issued a "Joint Resolution on the War" that echoed Lincoln’s reasons for the invasion of the Southern states: Resolved: . . . That this war is not being prosecuted upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those states, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and all laws made in pursuance thereof and to preserve the Union, with all the dignity, equality and rights of the several states unimpaired; and that as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease. By "the established institutions of those states" the Congress was referring to slavery. As with Lincoln, destroying the secession movement took precedence over doing anything about slavery. On March 2, 1861 – the same day the "first Thirteenth Amendment" passed the U.S. Senate – another constitutional amendment was proposed that would have outlawed secession (See H. Newcomb Morse, "The Foundations and Meaning of Secession," Stetson Law Review, vol. 15, 1986, pp. 419–36). This is very telling, for it proves that Congress believed that secession was in fact constitutional under the Tenth Amendment. It would not have proposed an amendment outlawing secession if the Constitution already prohibited it. Nor would the Republican Party, which enjoyed a political monopoly after the war, have insisted that the Southern states rewrite their state constitutions to outlaw secession as a condition of being readmitted to the Union. If secession was really unconstitutional there would have been no need to do so. These facts will never be presented by the National Park Service or by the Lincoln cultists at the Claremont Institute, the Declaration Foundation, and elsewhere. This latter group consists of people who have spent their careers spreading lies about Lincoln and his war in order to support the political agenda of the Republican Party. They are not about to let the truth stand in their way and are hard at work producing "educational" materials that are filled with false but politically correct history. For a very different discussion of Lincoln and his legacy that is based on fact rather than fantasy, attend the LewRockwell.com "Lincoln Reconsidered" conference at the John Marshall Hotel in Richmond, Virginia on March 22. January 23, 2003 Thomas J. DiLorenzo [send him mail] is the author of the LRC #1 bestseller, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (Forum/Random House, 2002) and professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland. Copyright © 2003 LewRockwell.com Thomas DiLorenzo Archives Really Learn About the Real Lincoln Now there is a study guide and video to accompany Professor DiLorenzo's great work, for homeschoolers and indeed anyone interested in real American history. http://www.fvp.info/reallincolnlr/

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[GOPcapitalist]

According to Toombs that conversation took place when the cabinet issued the orders to take Sumter.

That's nice and all, but it does not make your argument valid. To Davis in 1861 and to Toombs for that matter, it was a prediction. It turned out to be an accurate one later on, but the simple fact that the prediction was made in no way necessitates your conclusion that Davis "knew" it would come true. To suggest so, as I noted, is a non-sequitur.

[GOPcapitalist]

You don't quote Jefferson on legal secession. You can't.

Put down the hookah, Walt. It's distorting your sense of reality.

I have twice quoted Jefferson on the subject of secession, defined as legal separation of parts of the union on their desire to separate. You have willfully ignored them both. Here it is again though:

"The future inhabitants of the Atlantic & Missipi States will be our sons. We leave them in distinct but bordering establishments. We think we see their happiness in their union, & we wish it. Events may prove it otherwise; and if they see their interest in separation, why should we take side with our Atlantic rather than our Missipi descendants? It is the elder and the younger son differing. God bless them both, & keep them in union, if it be for their good,but separate them, if it be better." - Jefferson, August 12, 1803

You've seen all this before.

Yes Walt, and its still an incoherently selected cut n' paste bonanza that may as well have been achieved by pinning various Jefferson texts to a wall and proceeding to throw darts at them under the shade of a blindfold. Not one of those quotes, Walt, supports anything you claim it to support. They might as well be picked at random from a hat.

[GOPcapitalist]

The concept of legal, peaceful, secession belonged to Calhoun's generation.

History says otherwise. If secession did not emerge until the Calhoun era, talks of legal separation could not predate that era. Yet they do. Therefore both you and The Lincoln are fibbing in your usual fashions.

[GOPcapitalist]

Your position is straight from "1984". "Hostile Army". What a joke.

I suppose that is also why the Harriet Lane waved "no war in Iraq" posters at the Nashville and stuck a giant sunflower in its cannon the day before the battle.

[GOPcapitalist]

Oh he did, all right.

Good for him then. That doesn't make his statement an endorsement of the type of union you espouse though. What Washington said and what you think he said are two different things entirely, Walt. But such is frequently the case for those under the heavy influence of combustable-inspired hallucination.

[mac_truck]

Read the ratification declarations of Virginia, New York, and Vermont.

Its been argued here that Amendment X of the US consitution is the legal mechanism for secession. Do you disagree?

[GOPcapitalist]

The -people- preserved the Union.

No, not really. That statement implies a collective action of general consensus by the people of the nation. In reality there was sharp division, leading some people to invade the land of other people and proceed to kill them in order to advance their cause and power.

[WhiskeyPapa]

Its been argued here that Amendment X of the US consitution is the legal mechanism for secession. Do you disagree?

Jefferson Davis put no store in the 10th amendment.

He said the federal government had no right to coerce the states, but said he had the power as president of the so-called CSA to coerce Georgia based on language identical to that of the U.S. Constitution.

Look:

"In reply Jefferson Davis donned the mantle of Hamilton. The Confederate Constitution, he pointed out to [Governor]Brown, gave Congress the power "to raise and support armies" and to "provide for the common defense." It also contained another clause (likewise copied from the U.S. Constitution) empowering Congress to make all laws "necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers." Brown had denied the constitutionality of conscription because the Constitution did not specifically authorize it. This was good Jeffersonian doctrine, sanctified by generations of southern strict constructionists. But in Hamiltonian language, Davis insisted that the "necessary and proper" clause legitimized conscription. No one could doubt the necessity "when our very existance is threatened by armies vastly superior in numbers." Therefore "the true and only test is to enquire whether the law is intended and calculated to carry out the object...if the answer be in the affirmative, the law is constitutional."

--Battle Cry of Freedom, James McPherson P.433

Now, amazingly -- although it is not hard to get a deer in headlights look from neo-rebs, Davis' stand was -very similar- to language in the majority opinion in McCullough v Maryland from 1819.

"The subject is the execution of those great powers on which the welfare of a nation essentially depends. It must have been the intention of those who gave these powers, to insure, as far as human prudence could insure, their beneficial execution. This could not be done by confining their choice of means to such narrow limits as not to leave it in the power of Congress to adopt any which might be appropriate, and which were conducive to the end...to have prescribed the means by which the government, should, in all future times, execute its powers, would have been to change, entirely, the character of the instrument, and give it the properties of a legal code...To have declared, that the best means shal not be used, but those alone, without which the power given would be nugatory...if we apply this principle of construction to any of the powers of the government, we shall find it so pernicious in its operation that we shall be compelled to discard it..."

From McCullough v. Maryland, quoted in "American Constittutional Law" A.T. Mason, et al. ed. 1983 p. 165.

Davis is making the same point Chief Justice Marshall made 40 years before. But Davis ignored the concept --while he was under oath to the U.S. Constitution -- and enforced it once he donned his traitor's garb.

Walt

[rustbucket]

Thanks for your reply.

Congress in the Missouri Compromise seemed to be abrogating terms of the Louisiana purchase treaty.

Congress has the right to pass laws, rules, and regulations, as your point out. If these later laws, rules, etc. abrogate the obligations of a treaty, is the treaty broken?

I can just imagine France demanding the territory back because Congress broke the treaty. Not that France had (or has) the power to enforce anything over here, of course.

[WhiskeyPapa]

The -people- preserved the Union.

No, not really. That statement implies a collective action of general consensus by the people of the nation. In reality there was sharp division, leading some people to invade the land of other people and proceed to kill them in order to advance their cause and power.

Not well supported by the facts. What about over 3.5 million slaves? Not only that, over 100,000 men from the so-called seceded states fought for the old flag.

In this connection, consider this:

"The North had a potential manpower superiority of more than three to one (counting only white men) and Union armed forces had an actual superiority of two to one during most of the war. In economic resources and logistical capacity the northern advantage was even greater. Thus, in this explanation, the Confederacy fought against overwhelming odds; its defeat was inevitable.

But this explanation has not satisfied a good many analysts. History is replete with examples of peoples who have won or defended their independence against greater odds: the Netherlands against the Spain of Philip II; Switzerland against the Hapsburg empire; the American rebels of 1776 against mighty Britain; North Vietnam against the United States of 1970. Given the advantages of fighting on the defensive in its own territory with interior lines in which stalemate would be victory against a foe who must invade, conquer, occupy, and destroy the capacity to resist, the odds faced by the South were not formidable.

Rather, as another category of interpretations has it, internal divisions fatally weakened the Confederacy: the state-rights conflict between certain govern on and the Richmond government; the disaffection of non-slaveholders from a rich man's war and poor man's fight; libertarian opposition to necessary measures such as conscription and the suspension of habeas corpus; the lukewarm commitment to the Confederacy by quondam Whigs and unionists; the disloyalty of slaves who defected to the enemy whenever they had a chance; growing doubts among slaveowners themselves about the justice of their peculiar institution and their cause. "So the Confederacy succumbed to internal rather than external causes," according to numerous historians. The South suffered from a "weakness in morale," a "loss of the will to fight." The Confederacy did not lack "the means to continue the struggle," but "the will to do so." --BCF, P. 855

His sources:

Richard E. Beringer, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Still jr., Why the South Lost the Civil War (Athens, Ga., 1986), 439, 5S; Kenneth M. Stampp, The Imperiled Union: Essays on the Background of the Civil War (New York, 1980),255 Clement Eaton, A History of the Southern Confederacy (Collier Books ed., New York, 1961), 250

My emphasis

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

Oh he did, all right.

Good for him then.

Are you sure? After all, George Washington urged an "immovable attachment" to the national union.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

Not one of those quotes, Walt, supports anything you claim it to support. They might as well be picked at random from a hat.

They could be. They all support the same thing -- an immovable attachment to the national union.

Your quote from TJ, on the other hand, says not a word about the legality of secession under U.S. law, and you won't get Jefferson or any framer to say that.

Walt

[GOPcapitalist]

"[A]nything that argues me into his idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro, is but a specious and fantastical arrangement of words by which a man can prove a horse-chestnut to be a chestnut horse." - Abraham Lincoln

Speaking of 1984, Walt, it is evident that you have become quite skilled at that very same artform.

[GOPcapitalist]

Not well supported by the facts.

600,000 corpses show you are wrong.

What about over 3.5 million slaves?

What about them then? They assumed various roles in the conflict among a heavily divided population where nothing near the consensus or collective action you suggest existed.

To put it in other words, Walt, if what you say is true, there would not have been a war.

[mac_truck]

What IS a neo-reb?

Oh I don't know. A lot of people who believe what Southerners did, that government had violated its contract with the governed

sound familiar?

[GOPcapitalist]

Are you sure? After all, George Washington urged an "immovable attachment" to the national union.

A feeling of "immovable attachment" is not the same as destruction bent political achievement by coercion, Walt. You are claiming horse chestnuts as chestnut horsed again.

[GOPcapitalist]

They could be.

Considering that they lack the connection to establish any coherent link between them, no. Not really. They are no better than a collection assembled by the dart board.

They all support the same thing -- an immovable attachment to the national union.

No. Not really. You are converting horse chestnuts into chestnut horses again, Walt.

Your quote from TJ, on the other hand, says not a word about the legality of secession under U.S. law

But it does say several words about the possibility of a legitimate unilateral separation and indicates Jefferson's own tolerance for such an event in a particular case. That's a heck of a lot more for secession than any one of your quotes indicates against it.

[thatdewd]

And there is nothing in this paper you quote to suggest that secession was -legal- under U.S. law.

LOL - There is everything in that paper I quoted to suggest that secession was legal. Your comprehension skills are worsening. The quote references the FACT that the 'union' was created with the condition that States reserved the right to reassume the powers ceded to the 'union'. If the union declared they could not do that after the fact of joining, then it was a fraudulent agreement and therefore VOID. Either it was legal under U.S. law, or there was no U.S. law. You are trying to void the entire union from it's inception, Wlat. ROFLMAO. All the Southern States wanted to do was leave it, but you're trying to VOID the entire thing. What a great enemy of the union you are! Is that why you called the Constitution a "Pact With The Devil"? Maybe you bear watching by Mr. Ashcroft as a potential 'enemy of the state'.

[WhiskeyPapa]

Either it was legal under U.S. law, or there was no U.S. law.

The Militia Act of 1792, as amended in 1795 requires that U.S. law operate in all the states.

The Judiciary Act of 1789 requires that "controversies of a civil nature" between the states be submitted to the Supreme Court.

You don't know the history.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

Your quote from TJ, on the other hand, says not a word about the legality of secession under U.S. law

But it does say...

Then you lied; but you got caught again.

Walt