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To: lentulusgracchus
The Wide-Awakes were a political marching group organized well before the 1860 election. Who's zooming whom here? They were radical, militant, sinister paramilitary political street formations exactly analogous to the Nazi Sturmabteilungen, the Brown Shirts. The Wide-Awakes dressed in uniforms and wore black oilskins when they marched in their lamplight parades.

Took you this long to resort to a Nazi analogy? You are slipping. Usually you've sunk to that level long before now.

Because we were talking about something else -- the fact that Lincoln started planning before he armed the Wide-Awakes in January, to suppress the entire State of Missouri.

Which is bullshit but hey, without BS where would any of your posts be?

Missouri isn't the only Southern State -- it was a Southern State, pal, get over it! Full of rednecks! And you can't stand it, but there it is! -- to have voted down secession, only to change their minds later when they saw what Lincoln was doing.

Except that nobody changed any minds. Missouri's secession was launched by an impeached governor and a rump part of the legislature. It was no more legal than the secession announced by any of the other rebelling states. In the end, Missouri wound up supplying more troops to the Union than to the rebels.

Only they never got the chance -- Lincoln had his tigers at their throats before they could move.

The Southron myth machine knows no limits.

Nice try. The whole State was a "Southern mob" according to you ..... except for the Missouri Wide-Awakes who were innocent little lambikins rowing back and forth to the Illinois side to arm up with the contents of Illinois arsenals.

Hardly. The majority of the state preferred the Union to the rebels.

The Missouri volunteer Militia, the MMV, were legitimate. The Wide-Awakes were not. That's the difference.

A difference that exists only in your mind.

Lincoln used force against States the way I use flyswatters on flies, and he did it unprovoked. Lincoln was the aggressor, you can't get out of it.

So you would like us to believe.

342 posted on 03/14/2010 12:55:11 PM PDT by Non-Sequitur
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To: Non-Sequitur
Hardly. The majority of the state preferred the Union to the rebels.

Nice try at eliding, evading, and spinning the issues. Missourians did not prefer the Wide-Awakes and Lincoln to the legitimate State government.

In the 1860 election, Lincoln logged only 10% of the popular vote.

Breckinridge got 19% (almost twice as many as Lincoln), and Bell got 35%. The two Southern candidates combined for 54% of the popular vote.

Stephen Douglas of Illinois got about 350 more votes than Bell, at 35% and a fraction, and carried Missouri's nine electoral votes.

But combining the two Illinois candidates' votes, you're only at 45% -- and Douglas's "Northern" candidacy was far different from Lincoln's. Douglas had no plans to fall upon the South and occupy or destroy it, and everyone understood that. John Bell's Constitutional Union Party, favored by the big planters in the South, stood for the South's remaining in the Union -- but he was nobody's Abolitionist and as far from a South-basher as you could get.

No, you don't get this point. You're wrong.

353 posted on 03/14/2010 2:05:18 PM PDT by lentulusgracchus
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To: Non-Sequitur
[Me] The Wide-Awakes were a political marching group organized well before the 1860 election. Who's zooming whom here?

[You, ad hominem] Took you this long to resort to a Nazi analogy? ...sunk to that level ... and bla, bla, bla.

Buried in your ad hom and attempt to change the subject (you hope) is the fact that I stripped your attempt to steal a point.

The Wide Awakes were organized long before the other political groups like the Minute Men and Invincibles and they numbered, according to rustbucket's Austin, Texas, newspaper article, 300,000 men. They were a very considerable and threatening presence, and yes, they were sinister -- as witness their taking arms from the Illinois Militia.

And yes, arming up to impose by force a putsch government on Missouri, organized by the party that only 10% of Missourians voted for, is sinister.

[Me] ....Lincoln started planning before he armed the Wide-Awakes in January, to suppress the entire State of Missouri.

[You, substituting invective for argument] Which is bullshit but hey, without BS where would any of your posts be?

You didn't answer the point. Lincoln did arrange for Nathaniel Lyons to arm the Wide Awakes. Got a problem with that? Complain to the historians. Who are mostly on your side, btw.

355 posted on 03/14/2010 2:27:59 PM PDT by lentulusgracchus
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