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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[WhiskeyPapa]

First off, the tariff that caused so much opposition in the south was enacted in 1861.

That tariff could not possibly have passed had southern representatives kept their seats.

As Aleck Stephens said, no matter -what- Lincoln's policies were, they couldn't come into being as long as Congress was hostile.

Threats to slavery were distant, but the slave power thought they could get while the getting was good.

They were wrong.

Walt

[GOPcapitalist]

He's entitled to his opinion, so what?

If you percieve the clause I posted to be a simple assertion of opinion on secession, then you have missed its point entirely.

Tocqueville is formulating an argument in that clause. Look closely and see if you can identify it. Then, if you wish to consider its merits, you should weigh in on the validity of that argument.

[GOPcapitalist]

As Aleck Stephens noted in November, 1860, Toombs voted for the tariff as it then stood, along with every other "southern man."

November you say? I find that unusual, Walt, considering that the Morrill bill was not voted on in the senate until February 1861.

[WhiskeyPapa]

These comments were made to the Senate by Texas Senator Wigfall on the day Texas officially withdrew from the Union (March 2, 1861):

"...then Cromwell had to run them [the Puritans] out of England; and then they went over to Holland, and the Dutch let them alone, but would not let them persecute anybody else; and then they got on that ill-fated ship called the Mayflower and landed on Plymouth Rock. And from that time to this, they have been kicking up a dust generally, and making a mess whenever they could put their fingers in the pie. They confederated with the other states to save themselves from the power of old King George III; and no sooner than they had gotten rid of him than they turned to persecuting their neighbors. Having got rid of the Indians, and witches, and Baptists, and Quakers in their country; after selling us our negroes for the love of gold, they began stealing them back for the love of God. That is the history as well as I understand it.

A bit more Wigfall:

"In simple words rarely heard in the United States Senate, Wigfall of Texas had said: "I am a plain, blunt-spoken man. We say that man has a right to property in man. We say that slaves are our property. We say that it is the duty of every government to protect its property everywhere. If you wish to settle this matter, declare that slaves are property, and like all other property entitled to be protected in every quarter of the globe, on land and sea, Say that to us, and then the difficulty is settled."

--Sandburg's Lincoln

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

As Aleck Stephens noted in November, 1860, Toombs voted for the tariff as it then stood, along with every other "southern man."

November you say? I find that unusual, Walt, considering that the Morrill bill was not voted on in the senate until February 1861.

I wasn't talking about the Morrill tariff then, was I?

"The tariff no longer distracts the public councils. Reason has triumphed. The present tariff was voted for by Massachusetts and South Carolina. The lion and the lamb lay down together-- every man in the Senate and House from Massachusetts and South Carolina, I think, voted for it, as did my honorable friend himself. And if it be true, to use the figure of speech of my honorable friend, that every man in the North, that works in iron and brass and wood, has his muscle strengthened by the protection of the government, that stimulant was given by his vote, and I believe every other Southern man. So we ought not to complain of that.

[Mr. Toombs: That tariff lessened the duties.]

[Mr. Stephens:[ Yes, and Massachusetts, with unanimity, voted with the South to lessen them, and they were made just as low as Southern men asked them to be, and those are the rates they are now at. If reason and argument, with experience, produced such changes in the sentiments of Massachusetts from 1832 to 1857, on the subject of the tariff, may not like changes be effected there by the same means, reason and argument, and appeals to patriotism on the present vexed question? And who can say that by 1875 or 1890, Massachusetts may not vote with South Carolina and Georgia upon all those questions that now distract the country and threaten its peace and existence? I believe in the power and efficiency of truth, in the omnipotence of truth, and its ultimate triumph when properly wielded. (Applause.)"

-- Alexander Stephens, November, 1860

Walt

[GOPcapitalist]

I wasn't talking about the Morrill tariff then, was I?

Since the Morrill bill was the point of contention on the tariff issue and since you gave no indication your comments applied to anything else, it is the only tariff one could reasonably conclude you to have been speaking of.

[WhiskeyPapa]

I wasn't talking about the Morrill tariff then, was I?

Since the Morrill bill was the point of contention on the tariff issue...

Seven states published secession documents before the Morrill tariff passed.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

Since the Morrill bill was the point of contention on the tariff issue and since you gave no indication your comments applied to anything else, it is the only tariff one could reasonably conclude you to have been speaking of.

You just did a big long piece including discussion of Georgia's secession document and the free trade atmosphere resulting from lowering the tariff rates. That was in 1846.

Walt

[rustbucket]

The whole deal was deceit and dishonesty from the onset. South Carolina dealt in good faith, and received treachery in return.

The Daily Picayune of New Orleans picked up on Fox's duplicity and noted in its editorials:

With words of peace, they obtained admission into the fort for spies, who betrayed the confidence reposed in their honor, and with the pledge that his purpose was pacific, arranged there a plot for the introduction of armed succor. ... The betrayal of such a trust is the culmination of a long course of meditated duplicity in the Cabinet at Washington and is ample justification for no longer trusting either to their sense of honor or the sincerity of any professions they make if they desire to adjust the pending controversies in any other way but by an issue of force.

Here terminates, in a disgraceful exposure, the juggle with which the Lincoln Cabinet have been practicing to deceive the public for the last six weeks.

[mac_truck]

me- At this point I'm suggesting that one or more states could have taken their grievance to the US Supreme Court and obtained a favorable ruling from it on the constitutionality of seccesion

you-Even under the circumstances of this possibility, no guarantee existed that Abe Lincoln would honor the ruling.

Yes, but consider the circumstances. A confederate state obtains a favorable ruling on the right of secession under the US constitution. The seven states then legally secede from the Union.

Would a newly elected Lincoln be willing to ignore the highest court in the nation in his first act as president? Would European powers be more inclined to recognize a confederacy that had obtained legitimacy through the court system?

Certainly, history would have looked more kindly on the confederates if they had first sought redress under the law. If Amendment X detrermines the right of states to secede, than Article III informs the state(s) where to take their grievance under the law.

[mac_truck]

me- At this point I'm suggesting that one or more states could have taken their grievance to the US Supreme Court and obtained a favorable ruling from it on the constitutionality of seccesion.

you-If the States still in the union had a problem about it, then they should have taken it to the Court.

Your statement makes no sense. I am talking about 1860, before Lincoln takes office, before the first state attempts to secede. All the states are still in the union at this point.

It would have created a precedent...

[mac_truck]

Walt,

I'm becoming convinced that the original confederates knew they'd lose in front of the US Supreme court on the issue of secesssion. They also knew the precedent such an unfavorable ruling would set, both domestically as well as in europe.

-btw the patient is starting to become more incoherent and delusional. Should we continue therapy or move to more radical forms of treatment?

[rustbucket]

Thank you for your information about Senator Wigfall. Here is some more information about him and his actions to stop possible bloodshed at Fort Sumter (previously posted by GOPcapitalist):

Wigfall at Fort Sumter

[Non-Sequitur]

I apologize, I misunderstood what you were saying. I thought that you were talking about citizenship for native-born blacks and not immigrants. Laws like that unfortunately don't surprise me since the U.S. was enacting laws like that towards blacks and Asians well in to the 20th century. But prior to the Civil War states like North Carolina were saying that even native-born blacks were not really citizens and, of course, there was the Scott v. Sandford decision so I assumed you were talking about things like that.

Do you have documentation where the South specifically requested that free blacks be excluded from the territories?

You yourself said many people were for free blacks being excluded from the territories, Jefferson Davis was for free blacks being excluded from the U.S. altogether, it's not unlikely that many down south might support that part of the Free Soil proposals, especially since the Free Soilers drew so heavily from the Democrats.

[WhiskeyPapa]

Walt, I'm becoming convinced that the original confederates knew they'd lose in front of the US Supreme court on the issue of secesssion. They also knew the precedent such an unfavorable ruling would set, both domestically as well as in europe.

The Supreme Court was not the friend of the secesh.

"In order, therefore, to form a more perfect union, to establish justice, to insure domestic tranquility, to provide for common defense and to secure the blessings of liberty, those people, among whom were the people of Georgia, ordained and established the present constitution. By that constitution, legislative power is vested, executive power is vested, judicial power is vested...We may then infer, that the people of the United States intended to bind the several states, by the legislative power of the national government...

Whoever considers, in a combined and comprehensive view, the general texture of the constitution, wil be satisfied that the people of the United States intended to form themselves into a nation for national purposes. They instituted, for such purposes, a national government complete in all its parts, with powers legislative, executive and judiciary, ad in all those powers extending over the whole nation. "

John Jay, first Chief Justice, 1793:

"It is remarkable that in establishing it, the people exercised their own rights and their own proper sovereignty, and conscious of the plenitude of it, they declared with becoming dignity, "We the people of the United States," 'do ordain and establish this Constitution." Here we see the people acting as the sovereigns of the whole country; and in the language of sovereignty, establishing a Constitution by which it was their will, that the state governments should be bound, and to which the State Constitutions should be made to conform. Every State Constitution is a compact made by and between the citizens of a state to govern themeselves in a certain manner; and the Constitution of the United States is liekwise a compact made by the people of the United States to govern themselves as to general objects, in a certain manner. By this great compact however, many prerogatives were transferred to the national Government, such as those of making war and peace, contracting alliances, coining money, etc."

--Chisholm v. Georgia, 1793

Chief Justice John Marshall:

"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 approprate, 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

As to Virginia:

"The mischievous consequences of the construction contended for on the part of Virginia, are also entitled to great consideration. It would prostrate, it has been said, the government and its laws at the feet of every state in the Union. And would this not be the effect? What power of the government could be executed by its own means, in any states disposed to resist its execution by a course of legislation?...each member will possess a veto on the will of the whole...there is certainly nothing in the circumstances under which our constitution was formed; nothing in the history of the times, which justify the opinion that the confidence reposed in the states was so implicit as to leave in them and their tribunals the power of resisting or defeating, in the form of law, the legislative measures of the Union..."

ibid, p. 169-70

"Thus it fell to Story in his first constitutional decision almost to surpass Marshall in his nationalistic leanings, if that were possible. The hopes of the Jeffersonians were blasted. A case came to the Court involving rival grants of land in Virginia. One grant stemmed from the state and one from the British government before the Revolution. Marshall disqualified himself from hearing the case because of a family relation on the side of the ultimate winner. The Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Story, held against the grant of the state of Virginia. Normally this would have ended the litigation, as the state supreme court would be expected to issue court process to carry out the decision. But the Supreme Court of Virginia openly defied the decision and refused to issue the proper legal process upholding it! Remember, this was Virginia, the home of the Jeffersonians and the scat of the opposition to Marshall and the Court.

Back the case went to Washington. Story again delivered the opinion of the Court--an opinion which surely reached the ultimate in the doctrine of federal supremacy over the states. Story held that the Virginia court must follow the mandate of the Supreme Court, and indirectly hinted that if this were not done the Supreme Court would issue legal process against the Virginia justices personally, compelling their acquiescence upon threat of contempt. The possible spectacle of a judge of the highest court of a state being called to account before the United States Supreme Court under pain of possible fine or jail sentence is certainly the acme of federal supremacy over the states. The spectacle never took place. The Supreme Court of Virginia acquiesced.

Story's opinion, one of his longest, was one of his ablest. It is magnificently reasoned, as might be expected from a meticulous scholar, but its very thoroughness makes it a somewhat difficult opinion to read and understand. Less than half of it is printed here.

See Professor Jerre S. Williams, University of Texas, author of Constitutional Analysis in a Nutshell for more info

Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, 1 Wheaton 304; 4 L. Ed. 97 (1816).

"Before proceeding to the principal questions, it may not be unfit to dispose of some preliminary considerations which have grown out of the arguments at the bar. The constitution of the United States was ordained and established, not by the states in their sovereign capacities, but emphatically, as the preamble of the constitution declares, by "the people of the United States."

The secesh dared not go before the Supreme Court. They had to drug the mind of their section with "treason thus sugar coated", as President Lincoln said.

Walt

[thatdewd]

A court decision is not incorrect just because you say it is. And it isn't law in the first place.

LOL - Court rulings determine law, which can often be the same as making it. If you think Courts don't make "law", I suggest you learn of a dreadful practice called "judicial activism". You will discover you are very incorrect. It has been the very ruin of society, and began a long time ago. Apparently you think the "consensus of states" ruling is not "law", and is therefore meaningless since it certainly has no basis in the Constitution or the documents that created it's union. It was NOT a pre-existing rule of law and was the legal invention (which illegally usurped the conditions in the documents that created the union) of that Court decision. Now you apparently deny the Court's authority altogether, when all I had done was point out a mistake and hoped we could argue it on appeal since it was obviously incorrect. You're starting to sound like an anarchist.

[WhiskeyPapa]

-btw the patient is starting to become more incoherent and delusional. Should we continue therapy or move to more radical forms of treatment?

Yeah, that might work. We can cut 'em off from grits.

Walt

[thatdewd]

All your post does is to support what has been said all along. Lincoln's intention was to land food only unless that action was opposed by the confederate forces.

Based on that single order for the "hiring of the ships", one could incorrectly think that and be deceived. This one order has often been quoted by supporters of that myth, and that is why I posted it followed by the order in post 434, which reveals the true and stated mission. I presented them as a pair to expose that myth for what it was, a myth. The second order is but one that very clearly shows the true purpose of the mission.

He said as much in letters to Governor Pickens and Major Anderson, and Wells is repeating those instructions here with orders to support the landing of supplies if opposed.

He lied. Read the second order where it is revealed what the true and exact nature of the mission was. The first order only deals with the "hiring of the ships", and the real mission was not revealed in that order. That is common military practice. Lincoln lied.

Had Davis not chosen to begin a war then the status quo would have been maintained and a peaceful resolution might have been achieved. But that didn't suit his purposes I guess.

LOL - It was Lincoln who did not want a peaceful resolution, and that is why he sent US Agent Fox to devise and lead a mission guaranteed to cause an incident sufficent for his warmongering purposes.

[WhiskeyPapa]

He lied. Read the second order where it is revealed what the true and exact nature of the mission was. The first order only deals with the "hiring of the ships", and the real mission was not revealed in that order. That is common military practice. Lincoln lied.

Why would he lie?

General Scott told President Lincoln that 20,000 troops would be required to take the town. The whole U.S. Army had not so many men. What could President Lincoln possibly gain by lying?

Can you point out the descrepancies you see in what you posted, and what the clerk Chew delivered to Governor Pickens:

Washington, April 6. 1861

Sir--

You will proceed directly to Charleston, South Carolina; and if, on your arrival there, the flag of the United States shall be flying over Fort-Sumpter, and the Fort shall not have been attacked, you will procure an interview with Gov. Pickens, and read to him as follows: "I am directed by the President of the United States to notify you to expect an attempt will be made to supply Fort-Sumpter with provisions only; and that, if such attempt be not resisted, no effort to throw in men, arms, or amunition, without will be made, without further notice, or in case of an attack upon the Fort"

After you shall have read this to Governor Pickens, deliver to him the copy of it herein enclosed, and retain this letter yourself--

But if, on your arrival at Charleston, you shall ascertain that Fort-Sumpter shall have been already evacuated, or surrendered, by the United States force; or, shall have been attacked by an opposing force, you will seek no interview with Gov. Pickens, but return here forthwith-- [On Following Sheet:]

I am directed by the President of the United States to notify you to expect an attempt will be made to supply Fort-Sumpter with provisions only; and that, if such attempt be not resisted, no effort to throw in men, arms, or amunition will be made, without further notice, or in case of an attack upon the Fort--

[Endorsed on Envelope by Lincoln:]

President Lincoln didn't lie. He had no earthly reason to.

Attempts to besmirch his memory will always founder on the record.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

It was Lincoln who did not want a peaceful resolution...

You are talking about a time frame of about a month after he promised to support a constitutional amendment protecting slavery in the states.

How does that square with war mongering?

Walt