Masters, Edgar Lee
1869-1950, American poet and biographer, b. Garnett, Kans. He maintained a successful law practice in Chicago from 1892 to 1920. Masters's Spoon River Anthology (1915), a collection of epitaphs in free verse revealing the secret lives of dead citizens, was acclaimed for its treatment of small-town American life. Less successful volumes that followed include Starved Rock (1919), Domesday Book (1920), Poems of People (1936), and Illinois Poems (1941). His Lincoln the Man (1931) is a bitter and prejudiced attack. Other biographies are Vachel Lindsay (1935), Whitman (1937), and Mark Twain (1938).
Edgar Lee Masters is known as the "John Wilkes Booth" of poetry.
Birds of a feather ...
That's right, capitan. Call Masters and his book names then pretend what it actually says has gone away.
CARL SANDBURG at encyclopedia.com
Sandburg's most ambitious work was his six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln (1926-39); this monumental work exalts Lincoln as the symbol and embodiment of the American spirit. The last four volumes won the Pulitzer Prize.
Sandburg noted that poor Whites were worse off than enslaved field hands who had better "quantities of food, clothing, shelter, and employment..." (Abraham Lincoln, The War Years, 4 vols., New York, 1939, Volume 1, page 11.) Indeed, there was little unemployment among the slaves. For pointing that out, Sandburg definitely earned an award.
Of course, the Illinois poet who gets showered with Lincolnian praise would be Carl Sandburg who prostituted his writing talents to shill for the following lie, which Sandburg penned in a letter of July 16, 1929 to Paul M. Angle: "the use of the word 'Nigger' was never indulged in by Lincoln unless he was quoting somebody..." Just who was Lincoln quoting at the sixth Lincoln-Douglas debate when, in front of 15,000 witnesses, Lincoln denied he wanted a "Nigger wife?" In the last debate, in front of 4,000 witnesses, Lincoln averred he had "no taste for running and catching niggers." Who was he quoting that time? In Carlinville, Lincoln opened a speech with, "the question is often asked, why this fuss about niggers?" A year later, in Elwood, Kansas, Lincoln said, "People often ask, why make such a fuss about a few niggers." It is efforts such as Sandburg's which win Lincoln awards and the Pulitzer.
Lincoln asserted the accuracy of Robert Roberts Hitt, the shorthand expert who reported the Lincoln-Douglas debates for the Chicago Tribune and included various N-bombs. Lincoln himself corrected the debate manuscripts before they were published as a collection, changed poorly chosen words and didn't edit or evince any qualms about the recorded N-bombs. Lincoln said, "In my own speeches, I have corrected only a few small typographical errors." Obviously, he did not consider the recorded N-bombs to be errors. One wonders who Sandburg thought Lincoln was quoting.
ALL LINKS go to the Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, Roy. P. Basler. Italics in original.
| Speech at Carlinville, Illinois, August 31, 1858 |
He [Lincoln] said the question is often asked, why this fuss about niggers?
| Speech at Elwood, Kansas, December 1 [November 30?], 1859 |
People often ask, ``why make such a fuss about a few niggers?''
|CW 2:396, Springfield, May 25, 1857. |
There is no longer any difficult question of jurisdiction in the Federal courts; they have jurisdiction in all possible cases, except such as might redound to the benefit of a "nigger'' in some way.
| First Debate with Stephen Douglas, Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858 |
[CW 3:20] When my friend, Judge Douglas, came to Chicago, on the 9th of July, this speech having been delivered on the 16th of June, he made an harangue there, in which he took hold of this speech of mine, showing that he had carefully read it; and while he paid no attention to this matter at all, but complimented me as being a "kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman,'' notwithstanding I had said this; he goes on and eliminates, or draws out, from my speech this tendency of mine to set the States at war with one another, to make all the institutions uniform, and set the niggers and white people to marrying together.
[CW 3:27] There is no danger that the people of Kentucky will shoulder their muskets and with a young nigger stuck on every bayonet march into Illinois and force them upon us.
| Third Lincoln-Douglas debate,Jonesboro, Illinois, September 15, 1858 |
We have seen many a "nigger'' that we thought more of than some white men.
| Speech at Springfield, Illinois June 10, 1856 |
He would occasionally launch out and lead his hearers to think that the most ultra abolitionism would follow, when, under the old whig eyes we have mentioned, he would soften his remarks to a supposed palatable texture. In this way, backing and filling, he frittered away anything of argument that he might have presented, convincing his audience, however, that his niggerism has as dark a hue as that of Garrison or Fred Douglass but that his timidity before the peculiar audience he addressed prevented its earnest advocacy with the power and ability he is known to possess. ... To attain power, by whatever means, was the burden of his song, and he pointed to the complexion of the Bloomington ticket as evidence of the desire of the factions to attain it by any process.
| August 9, 1856 |
Lincoln then took the stand and made a three hours speech. It was prosy and dull in the extreme---all about ``freedom,'' ``liberty'' and niggers.
| Speech at Edwardsville, Illinois, September 11, 1858 |
Then if Mr. Douglas did not invent this kind of Sovereignty, let us pursue the inquiry and find out what the invention really was. Was it the right of emigrants in Kansas and Nebraska to govern themselves and a gang of niggers too, if they wanted them? Clearly this was no invention of his, because Gen. Cass put forth the same doctrine in 1848, in his so-called Nicholson letter, six years before Douglas thought of such a thing. Gen. Cass could have taken out a patent for the idea, if he had chosen to do so, and have prevented his Illinois rival from reaping a particle of benefit from it. Then what was it, I ask again, that this ``Little Giant'' invented? It never occurred to Gen. Cass to call his discovery by the odd name of ``Popular Sovereignty.'' He had not the impudence to say that the right of people to govern niggers was the right of people to govern themselves. His notions of the fitness of things were not moulded to the brazen degree of calling the right to put a hundred niggers through under the lash in Nebraska, a "sacred right of self-government." And here, I submit to this intelligent audience and the whole world, was Judge Douglas' discovery, and the whole of it. He invented a name for Gen. Cass' old Nicholson letter dogma. He discovered that the right of the white man to breed and flog niggers in Nebraska was POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY!
Chicago Press and Tribune, September 11, 1858.
Way to go Abe!! Dropped the N-bomb four times in one paragraph in a public speech.
| Speech at Edwardsville, Illinois, September 11, 1858 |
Then, if Mr. Douglas did not invent this kind of sovereignty, let us pursue the inquiry and find out what the invention really was. Was it the right of emigrants in Kansas and Nebraska to govern themselves and a gang of niggers too, if they wanted them? Clearly this was no invention of his, because Gen. Cass put forth the same doctrine in 1848, in his so-called Nicholson letter---six whole years before Douglas thought of such a thing. Gen. Cass could have taken out a patent for the idea, if he had chosen to do so, and have prevented his Illinois rival from reaping a particle of benefit from it. Then what was it, I ask again, that this ``Little Giant'' invented? It never occurred to Gen. Cass to call his discovery by the odd name of ``Popular Sovereignty.'' He had not the impudence to say that the right of people to govern niggers was the right of people to govern themselves. His notions of the fitness of things were not moulded to the brazen degree of calling the right to put a hundred niggers through under the lash in Nebraska, a "sacred right of self-government." And here, I submit to this intelligent audience and the whole world, was Judge Douglas' discovery, and the whole of it. He invented a name for Gen. Cass' old Nicholson letter dogma. He discovered that the right of the white man to breed and flog niggers in Nebraska was POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY!---[Great applause and laughter.]
Alton Weekly Courier, September 16, 1858.
Way to go Abe!! Quite a stump speech you have going there! Different newspaper, still four n-bombs.
| Seventh and Last Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Alton, Illinois, October 15, 1858 |
We profess to have no taste for running and catching niggers---at least I profess no taste for that job at all. Why then do I yield support to a fugitive slave law? Because I do not understand that the Constitution, which guarantees that right, can be supported without it.
| Editor of the Central Transcript. Springfield, July 3, 1859 |
Dear Sir:
Your fling about men entangled with the "Matteson Robbery" as you express it; and men indicted for stealing niggers and mail-bags, I think is unjust and impolitic. Why manufacture slang to be used against us by our enemies? The world knows who are alluded to by the mention of stealing niggers and mail-bags; and as to the Canal script fraud, the charge of being entangled with it, would be as just, if made against you, as against any other Republican in the State.
| Speech at Council Bluffs, Iowa, August 13, 1859 |
He then, with many excuses and a lengthy explanation, as if conscious of the nauseous nature of that Black Republican nostrum, announced his intention to speak about the "eternal Negro," to use his own language, and entered into a lengthy and ingenious analysis of the Nigger question, impressing upon his hearers that it was the only question to be agitated until finally settled.
| Speech at Clinton, Illinois October 14, 1859 |
He then spoke of the evils and disasters attending the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, by which the barriers protecting freedom and free labor were broken down and the Territories transformed into asylums for slavery and niggers....
| Speech at Hartford, Connecticut, March 5, 1860 |
[Daily Courant Version]
They say that between the nigger and the crocodile they go for the nigger. The proportion, therefore, is, that as the crocodile to the nigger so is the nigger to the white man.
I like the way encyclopedia.com calls ELM prejudiced and then reports that "he maintained a sucessful law practice in Chicago." For eight years, until he resigned from the firm and started his own practice, Edgar Lee Masters was the law partner of Clarence Darrow.
"Seldom have I read so brilliant a picture of the decay of the old American spirit, with its horrible consequences in politics, business, and daily life. The writing here is so eloquent as to be genuinely moving. And under it there is visible the fine earnestness of an American who really loves his country."
-- H. L. Mencken, The New York Herald-Tribune
"A people lives by myths, religious and social. And it is always a dangerous thing to tamper with them. But the Lincoln myth is definitely a bad myth, and Mr. Masters deserves great credit for shattering it..."
-- Andrew Nelson Lytle, The Virginia Quarterly Review
“There is no reason why there should not be a Copperhead [pro-South Northern] life of Lincoln. This is a Copperhead, not a Confederate biography..."
-- C. W. Thompson, The New York Times
"Needless to say, a writer of Mr. Masters's talent has a good deal to say that is worth hearing..."
-- The Times of London
"An intensely interesting, arresting, challenging book which will create no end of bitter controversy and have in consequence, a wide reading."
-- Claude Bowers, The Saturday Review of Literature
John Quincy Adams, an offshoot of Hamiltonian Federalism, and a bitter enemy of slavery as we have had occasion to see, delivered an address in 1839 before the Historical Society of New York, and committed himself as follows: "With these qualifications we may admit the same right in the people of every state in the Union, with reference to the general government, which was exercised by the people of the colonies with reference to the supreme head of the British Empire, of which they formed a part; and under these limitations have the people of each state of the Union a right to secede from the Confederated Union itself. Here stands the right. But the indissoluble Union between the several states of this confederated nation is, after all, not in the right, but in the heart. If the day should ever come (may heaven avert it), when the affections of the people of these states shall be alienated from each other; when the fraternal spirit shall give way to cold indifference, or collision of interest shall fester into hatred, the bands of political asseveration will not long hold together parties no longer attached by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies; and far better will it be for the people of the dis-United States, to part in friendship from each other, than to be held together by constraint; then will be the time for reverting to the precedents which occurred at the formation and adoption of the Constitution, to form again a more perfect Union by dissolving that which could no longer bind, and to leave the separated parts to be reunited by the law of political gravitation."There is a wealth of material and authority upon this matter in hand too great to be used in a study where Lincoln's mind is the main consideration. This much shows that Lincoln stood up in the delivery of his First Inaugural and opposed himself to the greatest thinkers that America had then produced on this matter of the nature of the Union and the right of states to get out of it if they chose, and that for a good or a bad reason. A bad reason would have proved the immorality of the step, not its lack of right. A good reason established the step both upon legality and morality. In this connection one can begin with Hamilton who feared secession if the state debts of the Revolution were not assumed by the Federal Government. He urged the funding of the debts to prevent secession, without even referring to the right of secession. He assumed without question that the right existed. One can refer to the words of Washington, Madison, Hamilton again, Jefferson, Rufus King, Ellsworth, Morris, Randolph -- all fathers, so-called, and all of whom spoke of the United States Government as Federal in character, several of them calling the Constitution a compact. One can refer to Jackson's apologia in the South Carolina nullification matter as published in the Washington Globe shortly after his proclamation, and the argument upon the Force Bill of the time, in which he declared that the Constitution originated in a compact, and that it was one among the several states, and that it was not the work of the whole people in the aggregate. "The Constitution of the United States is founded in compact... this compact derives its obligation from the agreement, entered into by the people of each of the states, in their political capacity, with the people of the other states.... In the case of a violation of the Constitution of the United States, and the usurpation of powers not granted by it on the part of the functionaries of the general government, the state governments have the right to interpose and arrest the evil, upon the principles which were set forth in the Virginia resolutions of 1798 against the Alien and Sedition laws." In these words Jackson backed down from the coercion of South Carolina, while the difficulty with that state over the tariff bill was composed in compromise.
The Kentucky and Virginia resolutions, and Madison's report or state paper upon them must not miss something of reference. In 1798 Jefferson drew up Resolutions for the Kentucky legislature in which he laid down the doctrine that "the several states composing the United States of America, are not united on the principles of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that by compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States... they constituted a general government for special purposes, delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving each state to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void and of no force... that as in all cases of compact, among parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions, as of the mode and manner of redress."
There were also the Virginia Resolutions, which passed the House of Delegates on December 21, 1798, which declared, the powers of the Federal Government resulted "from the compact to which the states are parties," and that its powers were "limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting that compact, as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the States, who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose, for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining, within their respective limits, the authorities, rights, and liberties, appertaining to them." These Virginia resolutions were sent out to the several states, and were by some of the states disapproved. Whereupon a committee was appointed in the 1799-1800 session of the Virginia House of Delegates, of which Madison, the so-called Father of the Constitution, was chairman, the business of the committee being to consider the communications of the several states which had noticed them, and to report upon them to the House. Madison made the report of the Committees. He first held that the position was clear that the powers of the Federal Government resulted from a compact; and that in all the contemporaneous comment on the Constitution while it was depending for adoption it was said that all powers not granted were reserved; and that if any doubt could ever have existed on this subject it was removed by the Xth amendment. "The other position involved in this branch of the resolution, namely, that 'the states are parties to the Constitution or compact, is in the judgment of the committee equally free from objection." Further, "it appears to your committee to be a plain principle, founded in common sense, illustrated by common practice, and essential to the nature of compacts that where resort can be had to no tribunal superior to the authority of the parties, the parties themselves must be the rightful judges in the last resort, whether the bargain has been pursued or violated.... The states, then, being the parties to the constitutional compact, and in their sovereign capacity, it follows of necessity, that there can be no tribunal above their authority, to decide in the last resort, whether, the compact made by them be violated.... If the deliberate exercise of dangerous powers, palpably withheld by the Constitution itself, could not justify the parties to it, in interposing even so far as to arrest the progress of the evil, and thereby to preserve the Constitution itself, as well as to provide for the safety of the parties to it, there would be an end to all relief from usurped power."
Then Madison touched upon a subject which may be already in the reader's reflections. "But it is objected," he said, "that the judicial authority is to be regarded as the sole expositor of the Constitution in the last resort.... On this objection it might be observed: first, that there may be instances of usurped power, which the forms of the Constitution would never draw within the control of the judicial department." Parenthetically here Lincoln usurped power as president which even Chief Justice Taney tried to arrest and was overcome by Lincoln as head of the army. To go on with Madison: "Secondly that if the decision of the judiciary be raised above the authority of the sovereign parties to the Constitution, the decisions of the other departments, not carried by the forms of the Constitution before the judiciary, must be equally authoritative and final with the decision of that department.... The resolution supposes that dangerous powers not delegated, may not only be usurped and executed by the other departments, but that the judicial department also may exercise or sanction dangerous powers beyond the grant of the Constitution; and consequently that the ultimate right of the parties to the Constitution, to judge whether the compact has been dangerously violated, must extend to violations by one delegated authority, as well as by another; by the judiciary, as well as by the executive or the legislative." The judicial department was undoubtedly made the judge of questions submitted to it in relation to the "authority of the other departments of the government; not in relation to the rights of the parties to the constitutional compact, from which the judicial as well as the other departments hold their delegated trusts.... On any other hypothesis, the delegation of judicial power would annul the authority delegating it; and the concurrence of this department with the others in usurped powers, might subvert forever, and beyond the possible reach of any rightful remedy, the very Constitution, which all were instituted to preserve."
Strange now is it that these irrefragable protests should in the aftermath of the War between the States have brought down upon the head of Jefferson the hatred of every centralist historian and politician, with accusations against him violent enough to extend to a charge that it was he who originally counseled secession, and thus brought the war of the South against the North which Lincoln in noble obedience to the Constitution and the laws broke with the mighty force of a virtuous people in righteous arms and led by the God of Battles. It is stranger still that these arguments, made for the benefit of the people, for the liberty and peace and happiness of generations to come, should have been ignored or despised by the heedless throngs who have passed along the scene of life revering Hamilton, and making a demi-god of Lincoln. Yet before the heretical dogma of the supremacy of the Supreme Court arose and became sacred, it was not so with the people. Upon these Kentucky-Virginia resolutions, Jefferson was elected president in 1800 and again in 1804; Madison was elected upon them in 1808 and 1812; Monroe was elected upon them in 1816 and 1820. John Quincy Adams, who had repented of the principles of his father, who was responsible for the Alien and Sedition Laws to which the Kentucky-Virginia resolutions were a protest, was elected upon them in 1824. Jackson twice came to the power of the presidency upon them. This was popular construction of the Constitution which lawyers and statesmen regard with respect, even as they pay heed to the legislative construction of the Constitution.
SOURCE: Edgar Lee Masters, Lincoln, The Man, Copr 1931, Reprint 1997, pp. 336-41.