Posted on 04/19/2010 8:18:35 AM PDT by erod
Hi FRiends,
I have two brothers who I love very much, they’re young and libertarian Ron Paul supporters, sigh. We get along and I’m hoping that one day they’ll come back to conservatism, but they have bought into a theory that I don’t think makes much sense:
Abe Lincoln was a dictator.
There are many websites dedicated to this nonsense you can Google "Abe Lincoln dictator" and get some weird stuff, if you want to check it out.
I need your help in busting this myth are there any books I can read on this subject to dispel this stuff? Do you know any of the arguments to combat this nonsense? Ie. Lincoln did not want to free the slaves.
Thanks for taking time out of your day to help me out, -Erod
LOL,keep telling yourself that numbnuts.
Relevant moralism and equivocating.
The choice to die or be a slave is compassion?
No, the option for the slave holder who demands fealty, does so on his terms of bondage.
The slaveholder sees it as human chattel and a pain in the ass or a permissive being on the order of an ox. Non compliance or to much work for being on the order of an animal, in another human beings eyes, is discarded by way of consumption of the human wholly or spiritually.
Total compliance, in other words, is death to oneself and giving the leasehold of ones life to another.
Buckeye! That’s right. Hilarious videos.
Bullshit.
In August of 1852 Lincoln said “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it....what I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.”
1862. But the interesting thing about that quote is that at the time Lincoln was writing to Greeley he had already discussed his Emancipation Proclamation with his cabinet. Seward has wisely suggested Lincoln wait until after a Union victory before releasing it. Which, of course, was not long in coming.
Lincoln also said on September 18th, 1858, “I will say, then, that I am not, nor have I ever been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.”
He also said, "I hold that, notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence-the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man."
For Lincoln, or anyone else, to even suggest to a Southerner that any black man was in any way their equal was an absolute anathema to them. Yet another reason why they hated the man.
In 1861 Lincoln was asked “why not let the South go in peace?” He replied by saying “I can’t let them go. Who would pay for the government?”
Apocryphal at best.
If that's what you need to tell yourself in order to sleep at night while working all day to justify slavery, don't let me intrude.
Why someone would try to find a moral excuse for slavery is beyond me.
You laughed when you couldn’t accept my real life experiences that existed before.
Never mentioned the words, “wonderland”, “swimmingly”, true “culture”on this continent.....what?
QUOTE ME ON BEING A DEFENDER OF SLAVERY....YOU own it. Bless your heart.
Your problem must be, you have some kind of skin in the game to keep the hate going.
Because all y'all are so obsessed with denying it was a reason for your rebellion.
I didn’t have slaves, neither did you. It’s way past time they got over it.
I'm not suggesting y'all owe anyone reparations or anything like that. And yeah, too many people use it as an excuse for failure. But too many Lost Causers pretend it didn't happen, too.
I'll tell anyone that. You don't know jack. Not about me. Not about the rebellion.
Nice quote. Doesn’t change a darn thing though. The Union forces fought to preserve the Union and to free the slaves.
Defending slavery as “compassionate” and making giants of the slaveholders is repugnant.
I’m sure your “real life experiences” about the wonderland of the South are universally felt.
By whites, anyway.
"If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." - Abraham Lincoln, 1864
As an African American historian, reenactor, and descendant from two Virginia Slave families I am more than aware of the complete history of American slavery. I currently reside in the middle of the historical roots of my family in Virginia; from King and Queen and Southampton counties to be exact. I am also a former resident of the glorious state of SC and quite knowledgeable of John C. Calhoun as well.......
“Slavery as an institution was never limited to the Southern states. Every state in the Union had the institution of slavery within its borders under Constitutional law. Even the so-called Border States, which were states loyal to the Union and thus were Union states, kept slavery as an institution. These Union states and the Confederate state of Tennessee (somehow carefully excluded from the Emancipation Proclamation) remained slave states under Federal law for eight months after the South surrendered and slavery ceased to exist there.
One irony is that in the Union slave states of Maryland, Delaware, and Kentucky Lincoln occupied them with Federal troops to prevent them from seceding but did not interfere with slavery in those states during his lifetime. Wall Street in New York was one of the BIGGEST slave markets of its day. The very first colony to legalize slavery was Massachusetts. Slavery was a very profitable industry backed by Northern finances. During the mid to late 1700’s tens of thousands of slave ships landed in Massachusetts. Rhode Island and New York later became leaders in the slave industry respectively.”
http://www.confederateamericanpride.com/thoughts.html
But his rabid hatred of the South and anyone that lives there and loves it makes him so fun to annoy.
What twaddle. That's a bogus argument for many reasons.
First off, you're holding out the specious position that the only two choices for those held in bondage in the South, was slavery or death. Clearly, obviously, untrue.
As to "compassion," the original southern slaveholders were not being "compassionate" when they bought their slaves from the slavers who delivered them from Africa. They were buying livestock to provide labor for their plantations.
And you most certainly cannot apply that argument to those human beings who were born to slaves, and by extension were enslaved themselves, and their offspring after them. There's no "death vs. slavery" compassion involved there -- it was a matter of livestock trading.
And it also manages to sidestep that soaring language of the Declaration, that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
The problem with self-evident truths is that they're not something about which "each man must answer for himself." They're simply true, and they apply even -- perhaps even especially, in this case -- to men held as slaves.
The fact is that the slave-holders had a financial stake in their livestock, and were therefore unwilling -- to the point of secession and warfare -- to give them up unless forced to do so.
All in all, this "compassion" gambit is among the more rancid arguments I've seen on these threads.
“Again, what possible evidence is there of slavery beginning as an altruistic act? Slavery, from the moment it began, was a barbaric act of one person oppressing another. There is not, and never has been, any compassion in it at all.”
Again, the issue is the ORIGIN of slavery vs death. Those origins are found thousands of years before America existed. One conquered person would prefer death over enslavement, another would choose a life of enslavement and see the act of his life being spared as compassionate.
I do not speak to compassion in enslavement or lack thereof. That is a question each must answer for himself.
And I guess it keeps the thread bumped.
Perhaps it's not "rabid hatred, etc." that animates him, so much as utter contempt for the idiots who attempt to defend the slave-holding South by actively denying the very institution in defense of which they seceded, fought, and ultimately were conquered.
They're an abjectly dishonest and morally reprehensible bunch, these neo-confeds. You soil yourself by teaming up with them.
“Why someone would try to find a moral excuse for slavery is beyond me.”
You are putting words in my mouth with this statement. Never a wise point from which to argue. You know not my views on the origins of slavery nor my views on the institution itself.
Well, bless your heart. As long as the black community can continue to blame someone other than themselves for the problems.some getting quite rich in the process, you will continue to see your communities deteriorate.
I take no joy in the prospect of it.
You did know about slavery in the Colonies?
Damn that Evil George Washington. Right?
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