Posted on 06/12/2003 5:58:28 AM PDT by Aurelius
I most certainly did.
"I must say, and I am proud to say, that I never was treated by any one with more kindness and cordiality than were shown to me by that great and good man, Abraham Lincoln, by the grace of God president of the United States for four years more. He took my little book, and with the same hand that signed the death-warrant of slavery, wrote as follows:
For Aunty Sojourner Truth
October 29, 1864"
Gee whiz, Lincoln -was- elected president -twice-. Some of his contemporaries must have liked him pretty well.
Walt
Uhhhhhhhhh...........see #1297?
Walt
Not exactly a revelation. President Lincoln always made clear that his first duty was to save the Union.
Walt
Well, that was enough to cause the war, after all.
This is no secret. President Lincoln was always for talking and comporomise before he was for fighting and killing. The measures you condemn him for were part of that.
You seem to be throwing up your hands in disgust because President Lincoln's actions don't meet today's sensibilities. That's just sorta silly.
But the question of slavery expansion..........
As John Stuart Mill wrote at the time: "Abolitionists, in America, mean those who do not keep within the Constitution; the Republican party neither aim nor profess to aim at this object. . . . If they have not taken arms against slavery, they have against its extension. And they know . . . that this amounts to the same thing. The day when slavery can no longer extend itself, is the day of its doom. The slave owners know this, and it is the cause of their fury."
All your pretension to outrage won't impress anyone who knows the record.
Walt
Well, you can fool some of the people all the time, that's true.
Walt
Are you going to say you never heard of this incident?
"Lincoln had Douglass shown in at once. "Here is my friend Douglass," the President announced when Douglass entered the room. "I am glad to see you," Lincoln told him. "I saw you in the crowd today, listening to my [second inaugural] address." He added, "there is no man in the country whose opinion I value more than yours. I want to know what you think of it." Douglass said he was impressed: he thought it "a sacred effort." "I am glad you liked it." Lincoln said, and he watched as Douglass passed down the [receiving] line. It was the first inaugural reception in the history of the Republic in which an American President had greeted a free black man and solicited his opinion."
--"with Malice Towards None", p. 412 by Stephen Oates
Walt
"Finally a great party was organized for the purpose of obtaining the administration of the Government, with the avowed object of using its power for the total exclusion of the slave States from all participation in the benefits of the public domain acquired by al1 the States in common, whether by conquest or purchase; of surrounding them entirely by States in which slavery should be prohibited; of those rendering the property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless' and thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars. This party, thus organized, succeeded in the month of November last in the election of its candidate for the Presidency of the United States...
-- Jefferson Davis, 1861
Hmmmm........Jefferson Davis seems to have thought that Lincoln was an anti-slavery man.
Walt
Not a secret.
This letter to A.D. Hodges was published during the war:
"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took, that I would, to the utmost of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I have publically declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery."
A. Lincoln, 4/4/64
Walt
I can quote at least one. Too bad for Wlat that he's not exactly the kind of guy that most sane people want to have on their side...
"The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world." - Karl Marx, letter to Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 29, 1864
Dr. Marx then brought up the report of the subcommittee, also a draft of the address which had been drawn up for presentation to the people of America congratulating them on their having re-elected Abraham Lincoln as President. The address is as follows and was unanimously agreed to.
The minutes continue:
A long discussion then took place as to the mode of presenting the address and the propriety of having a M.P. with the deputation; this was strongly opposed by many members, who said workingmen should rely on themselves and not seek for extraneous aid.... It was then proposed... and carried unanimously. The secretary correspond with the United States Minister asking to appoint a time for receiving the deputation, such deputation to consist of the members of the Central Council.
So rather than a personal letter to Lincoln from Marx as you insinuate, it is an address from the International Workers Association (IWA)General Counsel to the American people, delivered through our London embassy.
Nice try though...
"As these sentiments [expressed by the English workmen] are manifestly the enduring support of the free institutions of England, so am I sure that they constitute the only reliable basis for free institutions throughout the world.... The resources, advantages, and power of the American people are very great, and they have consequently succeeded to equally great responsibilities. It seems to have devolved upon them to test whether a government established on the principles of human freedom can be maintained against an effort to build one upon the exclusive foundation of human bondage. They will rejoice with me in the new evidence which your proceedings furnish that the magnanimity they are exhibiting is justly estimated by the true friends of freedom and humanity in foreign countries."
A. Lincoln
The letter itself, which your excerpt shows to have been written by Marx, opens as follows:
"To Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America
Sir:
We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority."
In other words, the letter, which was written by Marx and signed onto by his commie club, went to Lincoln himself and not the general people as you claim.
It was indeed delivered to the American embassy as that was the means of transmitting it TO Lincoln at the time. The records further show that it was transmitted from the embassy to its intended recipient, Abe Lincoln, in January 1865. Charles Francis Adams, the ambassador at the time, sent a response to Marx and his commie club informing them that the letter to Lincoln "was duly transmitted through this Legation to the President of the United States, has been received by him."
"It is not our part to call words of sorrow and horror, while the heart of two worlds heaves with emotion. Even the sycophants who, year after year, and day by day, stick to their Sisyphus work of morally assassinating Abraham Lincoln, and the great Republic he headed, stand now aghast at this universal outburst of popular feeling, and rival with each other to strew rhetorical flowers on his open grave. They have now at last found out that he was a man, neither to be browbeaten by adversity, nor intoxicated by success, inflexibly pressing on to his great goal, never compromising it by blind haste, slowly maturing his steps, never retracing them, carried away by no surge of popular favour, disheartened by no slackening of the popular pulse, tempering stern acts by the gleams of a kind heart, illuminating scenes dark with passion by the smile of humour, doing his titanic work as humbly and homely as Heaven-born rulers do little things with the grandiloquence of pomp and state; in one word, one of the rare men who succeed in becoming great, without ceasing to be good. Such, indeed, was the modesty of this great and good man, that the world only discovered him a hero after he had fallen a martyr."
Communists have always adored Lincoln. They were among his first cheerleaders during his own lifetime and remain so to this day through the likes of James McPherson.
Don't forget Dr. Farber.
"It was Lincolns character his ability, judgment, courage, and humanity that brought the Union through the war with the Constitution intact. It was as much dumb luck as anything else that placed Lincoln in the White House in this critical time. To expect another Lincoln would be foolish. Nor should the legal system be designed on the assumption that all leaders will have his qualities. Even the wisest rulers must be restrained by law. But no matter how many checks and balances and protections we build into the system, we must keep in mind Hamiltons admonition. Sir, when you have divided and nicely balanced the departments of government; when you have strongly connected the virtue of your rulers with their interest; when, in short you have rendered your system as perfect as human forms can be you must place confidence; you must give power. In the end, all power can be abused, so we must take the risk of putting confidence in those who exercise power. This as much true of generals and justices as it is of presidents. We had best take care that, like Lincoln, they are worthy of our trust.
--Lincolns Constitution p. 200 by Daniel Farber
Sir: We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority. If resistance to the Slave Power was the reserved watchword of your first election, the triumphant war cry of your re-election is Death to Slavery.
At least the IWA knew the fight was about slavery, not tariffs.
You've nothing to show for this false accusation against McPherson other than old transcripts from some interviews given to a socialist radio station. You give conservatives a bad name with these cheap, guilt by association, sleights of hand.
Grow up.
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