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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[rustbucket]

By your definition none of the states carved out of the Louisiana purchase would have had the ability to outlaw slavery within their borders because of the Lousiana purchase treaty.

I didn't interpret it that way. The treaty says, "in the meantime [i.e., before the territory got incorporated into the Union] they shall be maintained and protected in the enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they profess".

I took this to mean the treaty would protect the rights of inhabitants until the area in question became a state and got incorporated into the Union. In other words, it covered the rights of inhabitants while the area was a territory. What laws the states passed after they became states would have been governed by US law.

[GOPcapitalist]

Then you lied; but you got caught again.

You couldn't catch a lie if it was glued to your hand, Walt. The issue is secession's constitutionality. Constitutionality supersedes legality.

[Non-Sequitur]

So your suggesting that Davis had no idea what firing on Sumter would bring about? What do you suppose he thought would happen?

[WhiskeyPapa]

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.

George Washington made no such distinction.

"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."

-- George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

You've seen this before, you know you are sure to see it again, and yet you still offer your lame interpretation.

Your statement is crap any way. It was the secessionists who applied coercion. The very thorough shoving of their own methods up where the sun doesn't shine sometimes obscures that fact.

Walt

[GOPcapitalist]

So your suggesting that Davis had no idea what firing on Sumter would bring about?

Nice try at evasion. Much to the contrary, I'm simply noting the fact that your claim is a non-sequitur. You argued that since Toombs predicted invasion, Davis "knew" that invasion had to happen. A prediction by definition does NOT necessitate its anticipated result. Therefore your assertion that Toombs' prediction did is a non-sequitur. The conclusion does not logically follow from that premise.

[GOPcapitalist]

George Washington made no such distinction.

He made no such assertion of what you claim he would have supported. But since you are in the business of peddling chestnut horses, I wouldn't expect you to admit anything other than that.

[GOPcapitalist]

Your statement is crap any way. It was the secessionists who applied coercion.

"[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

Keep on proving those chestnut horses, Wlat!

[Non-Sequitur]

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?

The treaty was with France, not with the people of Georgia. Nothing Congress did regarding laws and regulations it passed following the purchase of the Louisiana territory affected France so you can't say that the treaty was broken with them. As for the people living in the territory at the time of the treaty, they were granted all rights and protections under the Constitution but that still made them liable for following the laws made under it. And if that included laws limiting slave ownership in the territories then so be it.

[Non-Sequitur]

are you trying to see just how fine you can split hairs?

[WhiskeyPapa]

The issue is secession's constitutionality.

The Supreme Court ruled in the Prize Cases that secession was not allowed under U.S. law. They ever referred to the "so-called Confederate states".

More from the Court:

"After such an official recognition by the sovereign, a citizen of a foreign State is estopped to deny the existence of a war with all its consequences as regards neutrals. They cannot ask a Court to affect a technical ignorance of the existence of a war, which all the world acknowledges to be the greatest civil war known in the history of the human race, and thus cripple the arm of the Government and paralyze its power by subtle definitions and ingenious sophisms.

The law of nations is also called the law of nature; it is founded on the common consent as well as the common sense of the world. It contains no such anomalous doctrine as that which this Court are now for the first time desired to pronounce, to wit: That insurgents who have risen in rebellion against their sovereign, expelled her Courts, established a revolutionary government, organized armies, and commenced hostilities, are not enemies because they are traitors; and a war levied on the Government by traitors, in order to dismember and destroy it, is not a war because it is an 'insurrection.' "

In fact, it was a war, and it was started by traitors. Those traitors were acting outside the law of the United States. Attempts at unilateral state secession are treason.

Walt

[thatdewd]

Nonsense. Nowhere in the Constitution is that right outlined. Some of the states may have assumed that they had that right because of their ratification documents but they were wrong.

Nonsense. Nowhere in the Constitution is that right prohibited. Some of the States did declare they had that right in their ratification documents and they were correct. If not, then the union was void as a fraudulent agreement. That specific right was a stated condition, a stated condition that was accepted as part of the agreement to form the union.

"There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States."

The conditions put forth in the ratification declarations clearly denote that it was the individual State's decision about reassuming ceded powers. The idea of "consent of States" being a prerequisite violates that condition, a condition that was accepted at the formation of the union. The Justices' decision would void the union as a fraudulent agreement, and therefore destroy the power of the constitution and the Court's authority along with it. Courts pass illegal judgements, it happens. However, it has long been established that illegal decisions are not really law. That illegal decision was just that, illegal and nonbinding. To think otherwise would be to void the union as a fraudulent agreement.

[Non-Sequitur]

Some of the States did declare they had that right in their ratification documents and they were correct. If not, then the union was void as a fraudulent agreement.

Try again. In all the ratification documents there is a line stating that they assent to and ratify the Constitution as adopted by convention on September 17, 1787. And that includes the line that says that the Constitution and the laws made under it are the supreme law of the land, state and local laws and constitutions notwithstanding. So if the manner in which the state chose to resume the power and leave the Union violated the Constitution then their actions were illegal. And as the Supreme Court pointed on the southern acts of unilateral secession were illegal. Regardless of ratification documents.

[WhiskeyPapa]

Keep on proving those chestnut horses, Wlat!

Who fired the first shot?

Who organized an army of 100,000?

1861:

January 4 Alabama militia sieze the U.S. arsenal at Mt. Vernon, AL. Alabama has not yet seceded.

January 5 Alabama militia sieze Ft. Morgan and Ft. Gaines in Mobile Bay.

January 7 Florida militia sieze the Federal fort at St. Augustine. Florida has not yet seceded.

January 8 Florida militia attempting to sieze Ft. Barrancas are driven off by Federal troops.

January 9 South Carolina militia fire on US merchant vessel Star of the West, preventing reinforcement and resupply of Ft. Sumter garrison.

Mississippi secedes.

January 10 Louisiana militia sieze all Federal forts and arsenals in the state. Louisiana has not yet seceded.

Florida (belatedly) secedes. Federal troops abandon Ft. Barrancas.

North Carolina militia capture Ft. Johnson and Ft. Caswell. North Carolina has not yet seceded.

January 11 Alabama (belatedly) secedes.

January 12 Florida militia demands the surrender of Federal troops in Ft. Pickens. The demand is refused.

Mississippi fortifies Vicksburg and closes the Mississippi River to all traffic. Mississippi is the only state on the river, at this point, which has seceded.

January 19 Georgia secedes.

January 21 Mississippi militia sieze Ft. Massachussetts and Ship Island.

January 25 Georgia militia sieze the federal arsenal at Augusta. North Carolina calls for a referendum on secession.

January 26 Georgia militia sieze Ft. Jackson and Oglethorpe Barracks.

Louisiana (belatedly) secedes.

January 31 The U.S. Mint in New Orleans is siezed by Louisiana militia.

February 1 Texas submits an article of secession to popular referendum for February 23.

February 4 Delegates from the six seceded states meet in Montgomery to form the Confederate States of America.

February 9 Tennessee rejects secession in popular referendum by a large margin.

February 16 Texas militia sieze the federal arsenal at San Antonio. Texas has not yet seceded.

February 18 Texas militia besiege Federal army headquarters for Texas in San Antonio and force the surrender of over 3,000 troops. Texas has -still- not seceded.

Jefferson Davis inaugurated as President of the Confederacy.

February 21 The Confederate Provisional Congress orders Mississippi to end the blockade at Vicksburg.

February 23 Texas voters approve secession by a 75% majority, secession to take effect March 2 (Texas Independence Day).

February 28 North Carolina voters narrowly reject secession (by fewer than 1,000 votes).

March 2 Texas's secession takes effect; that same day, Texas is admitted into the Confederacy.

March 3 The militia units in Charleston Harbor are taken under Confederate authority.

March 20 Harbor authorities in Mobile sieze the U.S. merchant supply ship Isabella, loaded with supplies for Ft. Pickens, Florida.

April 3 Confederate batteries in Charleston harbor fire on US schooner Rhoda H. Shannon.

April 4 Virginia's State Convention rejects secession 2 to 1.

April 12 Confederate troops open fire on Ft. Sumter; Federal troops reinforcing Ft. Pickens, FL from sea are fired upon by more Confederate troops. The Civil War 'officially' begins.

April 15 Lincoln calls for 75,000 militiamen to serve for three months to put down the insurrection in the South.

April 16 Isham Harris, governor of Tennessee, requests military alliance with the Confederacy. Tennessee has NOT seceded and is making treaty or confederation with another power, violating the Constitution.

April 17 Virginia secedes.

And so forth.

Who first applied coercion?

Walt

[rustbucket]

The treaty was with France, not with the people of Georgia. Nothing Congress did regarding laws and regulations it passed following the purchase of the Louisiana territory affected France so you can't say that the treaty was broken with them

The treaty affected the rights of former French citizens. In the treaty, France had tried to guarantee the rights of these former citizens. If the US turned around and dumped on the rights of former French citizens in violation of the treaty, then IMO France could claim the treaty was broken.

Breaking one's word seems to be a particularly Northern trait (take Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3, of the Constitution, for example), though Southerners may have done their fair share of it too.

[thatdewd]

None of these ratification documents suggest any resumption of complete state sovereignty was in keeping with United States law.

LOL - That wasn't the point of that post, and you know it. At that point in time I was only proving your lie to be what it was, a lie. You said the framers understood the union to be "permanent", and I provided quotes from the ratification documents stating otherwise. They would not have deliberately included statements that they could reassume those powers if they thought the union "permanent". You lied. Again. I proved it. Again.

As to "keeping with United States law", to deny them the right of "resumption of complete state sovereignty" would be to void the union as a fraudulent agreement because that agreement was made with that right as a stated condition.

The assumption at all the ratification conventions was that the Constitution was both binding and perpetual except for intolerable abuse.

"binding and perpetual except..." - LOL. Now you're backing up and inserting conditions that contradict your earlier statements. Apparently you need a dictionary so you can look up words like "permanent" and "perpetual". As to "intolerable abuse", that is not the condition stated in the declarations. For example, New York merely said the powers could be reassumed "whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness". That condition was accepted by the framers.

What the rebs and neo-rebs both want is some nirvana not based in human experience.

LOL - What the neo-unionist hatemongers want is some nirvana based on revisionist lies.

[thatdewd]

So if the manner in which the state chose to resume the power and leave the Union violated the Constitution then their actions were illegal. And as the Supreme Court pointed on the southern acts of unilateral secession were illegal. Regardless of ratification documents.

For the Supreme Court to decide that "consensus of States" was needed, then they would be declaring the union void as a fraudulent agreement. The conditions for reassuming powers were never stated that way. Quite the opposite, actually. The Court's decision is either illegal and void, or the union is void. Take your pick, it definitely is one or the other. As to the ratification documents, they clearly stated the conditions upon which the union was formed. The reassumption of powers was NEVER conditioned by "consensus of States", it was clearly stated otherwise and to change those conditions after the fact without the States approval is to make the agreement void as fraudulent.

[WhiskeyPapa]

The assumption at all the ratification conventions was that the Constitution was both binding and perpetual except for intolerable abuse.

"binding and perpetual except..." - LOL. Now you're backing up and inserting conditions that contradict your earlier statements.

I'm paraphrasing Madison.

"The essential difference between a free Government and Governments not free, is that the former is founded in compact, the parties to which are mutually and equally bound by it. Neither of them can have a greater right to break off from the bargain, then the other or others have to hold them to it. And certainly there is nothing in the Virginia resolutions of --98, adverse to this principle, which is that of common sense and common justice. The fallacy which draws a different conclusion from them lies in confounding a single party, with the parties to the Constitutional compact of the United States. The latter having made the compact may do what they will with it. The former as one only of the parties, owes fidelity to it, till released by consent, or absolved by an intolerable abuse of the power created...."

- James Madison

You don't know the history.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

LOL - What the neo-unionist hatemongers want is some nirvana based on revisionist lies.

Neo-Union?

The Union has been extant unbroken since at least 1774.

Walt

[Aurelius]

"Attempts at unilateral state secession are treason."

That is nonsense. But then it is your post, so it's being nonsense is nothing out of the ordinary.

[thatdewd]

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

Those that are still part of the union.

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

For States that are still a part of the union.

You don't know the history.

ROFLMAO.