Posted on 06/12/2003 5:58:28 AM PDT by Aurelius
Over the years I've heard many rail at the South for seceding from the 'glorious Union.' They claim that Jeff Davis and all Southerners were really nothing but traitors - and some of these people were born and raised in the South and should know better, but don't, thanks to their government school 'education.'
Frank Conner, in his excellent book The South Under Siege 1830-2000 deals in some detail with the question of Davis' alleged 'treason.' In referring to the Northern leaders he noted: "They believed the most logical means of justifying the North's war would be to have the federal government convict Davis of treason against the United States. Such a conviction must presuppose that the Confederate States could not have seceded from the Union; so convicting Davis would validate the war and make it morally legitimate."
Although this was the way the federal government planned to proceed, that prolific South-hater, Thaddeus Stevens, couldn't keep his mouth shut and he let the cat out of the bag. Stevens said: "The Southerners should be treated as a conquered alien enemy...This can be done without violence to the established principles only on the theory that the Southern states were severed from the Union and were an independent government de facto and an alien enemy to be dealt with according to the laws of war...No reform can be effected in the Southern States if they have never left the Union..." And, although he did not plainly say it, what Stevens really desired was that the Christian culture of the Old South be 'reformed' into something more compatible with his beliefs. No matter how you look at it, the feds tried to have it both ways - they claimed the South was in rebellion and had never been out of the Union, but then it had to do certain things to 'get back' into the Union it had never been out of. Strange, is it not, that the 'history' books never seem to pick up on this?
At any rate, the Northern government prepared to try President Davis for treason while it had him in prison. Mr. Conner has observed that: "The War Department presented its evidence for a treason trial against Davis to a famed jurist, Francis Lieber, for his analysis. Lieber pronounced 'Davis will not be found guilty and we shall stand there completely beaten'." According to Mr. Conner, U.S. Attorney General James Speed appointed a renowned attorney, John J. Clifford, as his chief prosecutor. Clifford, after studying the government's evidence against Davis, withdrew from the case. He said he had 'grave doubts' about it. Not to be undone, Speed then appointed Richard Henry Dana, a prominent maritime lawyer, to the case. Mr. Dana also withdrew. He said basically, that as long as the North had won a military victory over the South, they should just be satisfied with that. In other words - "you won the war, boys, so don't push your luck beyond that."
Mr. Conner tells us that: "In 1866 President Johnson appointed a new U.S. attorney general, Henry Stanburg. But Stanburg wouldn't touch the case either. Thus had spoken the North's best and brightest jurists re the legitimacy of the War of Northern Aggression - even though the Jefferson Davis case offered blinding fame to the prosecutor who could prove that the South had seceded unconstitutionally." None of these bright lights from the North would touch this case with a ten-foot pole. It's not that they were dumb, in fact the reverse is true. These men knew a dead horse when they saw it and were not about to climb aboard and attempt to ride it across the treacherous stream of illegal secession. They knew better. In fact, a Northerner from New York, Charles O'Connor, became the legal counsel for Jeff Davis - without charge. That, plus the celebrity jurists from the North that refused to touch the case, told the federal government that they really had no case against Davis or secession and that Davis was merely being held as a political prisoner.
Author Richard Street, writing in The Civil War back in the 1950s said exactly the same thing. Referring to Jeff Davis, Street wrote: "He was imprisoned after the war, was never brought to trial. The North didn't dare give him a trial, knowing that a trial would establish that secession was not unconstitutional, that there had been no 'rebellion' and that the South had got a raw deal." At one point the government intimated that it would be willing to offer Davis a pardon, should he ask for one. Davis refused that and he demanded that the government either give him a pardon or give him a trial, or admit that they had dealt unjustly with him. Mr. Street said: "He died 'unpardoned' by a government that was leery of giving him a public hearing." If Davis was as guilty as they claimed, why no trial???
Had the federal government had any possible chance to convict Davis and therefore declare secession unconstitutional they would have done so in a New York minute. The fact that they diddled around and finally released him without benefit of the trial he wanted proves that the North had no real case against secession. Over 600,000 boys, both North and South, were killed or maimed so the North could fight a war of conquest over something that the South did that was neither illegal or wrong. Yet they claim the moral high ground because the 'freed' the slaves, a farce at best.
Saying their is a diference does not imply one is inferior to the other. Lincoln never said blacks were inferior. He said he didn't know the answer to that very question.
"I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects---certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment."
Lincoln never said blacks were inferior to whites.
And no matter what he said in 1858, by 1864 he was advocating the franchise for black soldiers. There were very few people anywhere in the country doing that.
Walt
Yet one more pathetic selective quote from after Lincoln was dead.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Frederick Douglass said:
Illogical and unfair as Mr. Lincoln's statements are, they are nevertheless quite in keeping with his whole course from the beginning of his administration up to this day, and confirm the painful conviction that though elected as an anti-slavery man by Republican and Abolition voters, Mr. Lincoln is quite a genuine representative of American prejudice and Negro hatred and far more concerned for the preservation of slavery, and the favor of the Border States, than for any sentiment of magnanimity or principle of justice and humanity"
The Life and Writing of Frederick Douglass,
edited by Philip S. Foner, 4 Vols, New York, 1955, vol 3, page 268
Frederick Douglass said:
With the single exception of the question of slavery extension, Mr. Lincoln proposes no measure which can bring him into antagonistic collision with the traffickers in human flesh, either in the States or in the District of Columbia .... Slavery will be as safe, and safer, in the Union under such a President, than it can be under any President of a Southern Confederacy"
The Life and Writing of Frederick Douglass,
edited by Philip S. Foner, 4 Vols, New York, 1955, vol 2, page 527
Frederick Douglass charged Clay, and by implication, Lincoln with "the most revolting blasphemy," saying "You would charge upon God the repsonsibility of your own crimes, and would seek a solace from the pangs of a guilty conscience by sacrilegiously assuming that in robbing Africa of her children, you acted in obedience of the great purposed, and were but fulfilling the decress of the most high God" (FD 1:289)
Lincoln never met a Black law he didn't like. Referring to the Illinois Exclusion law, Douglass expressed his outrage for an act which "cooly" proposed to "sell the bodies and souls of the blacks to increase the intelligence and refinement of the whites [and] to rob every black stranger who ventures among them to increase their literary fund."
Douglass's indictment of Lincoln: "The treatment of our poor black soldiers -- the refusal to pay them anything like equal compensation, though it was promised them when they enlisted; the refusal to insist upon the exchange of colored prisoners when colored prisoners have been slaughtered in cold blood, although the President has repeatedly promised thus to protect the lives of his colored soldiers -- have worn my patience threadbare. The President has virtually laid down this as the rule of his statesmen: Do evil by choice, right from necessity" (FD 3:404, 406-7)
Frederick Douglass attacked Lincoln's logic and his racism, saying that "a horse thief pleading that the existence of the horse is the apology for his theft or a highway man contending that the money in the traveler's pocket is the sole first cause of his robbery are about as much entitled to respect as is the President's reasoning at this point."
"Mr. Lincoln takes care in urging his colonization scheme to furnish a weapon to all the ignorant and base, who need only the countenance of men in authority to comment all kinds of violence and outrage upon the colored people of the country." (FD 3:267)
Frederick Douglass told Charles Sumner: "If slavery is really dead in the District of Columbia ... to you, more than to any other American statesman, belongs the honor of this great triumph of Justice, Liberty, and Sound Policy" (FD 3:233-4)
On July 4, 1862, Douglass said: "our weak, faltering and incompetent rulers in the Cabinet ... and our rebel worshipping Generals in the field" were "incomparably more dangerous to the country than dead traitors like former President James Buchanan..." (FD 3:250)
August 1862, "...ABRAHAM LINCOLN is no more fit for the place he holds than was JAMES BUCHANAN, and that the latter was no more the miserable tool of traitors and rebels than the former is allowing himself to be."
Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man. He was preeminently the white man's President, entirely devoted to the welfare of the white people of this country."
"With the single exception of the question of slavery extension, Mr. Lincoln proposes no measure which can bring him into antagonistic collision with the traffikers in human flesh, either in the States or in the District of Columbia .... slavery will be as safe, and safer, in the Union under such a President than it can be under any President of a Southern Confederacy" (FD 2:527)
Lincoln was "scrupulous to the very letter of the law in favor of slavery, and a perfect latitudinarian as to the discharge of his duties under a law favoring freedom."
In a January 25, 1865 speech, Douglass said that the system of forced labor inaugurated in Louisiana by General Banks, with Lincoln's approval, "practically enslaves the Negro, and makes the Proclamation of 1863 a mockery and delusion."
President LIncoln openly advocated that the franchise be given to black soldiers. He never openly, or privately, advocated that anyone be forced out of the country.
He never said that blacks were inferior to whites either morally or intellectually. He said he didn't know. In even saying -that- he went way out on a limb politically.
Lincoln clearly was going out on a limb -- he was leading people to a new view of blacks.
. In 1862 Generals Hunter and Butler issued emancipation documents of varying force. Lincoln had them revoked.
He knew that sentiment in the north was such that it was too soon to go for emancipation. But when he played the compensated emancipation and colonization cards, border state leaders and black leaders were cold to that. The very next day after he met with border state representatives, July 12, 1862, he decided on emancipation as a war measure. And he took that step --when-- he took it --because-- his political sense told him that the north would accept it, this within days after the bloodbath at Antietam.
This is why Frederick Douglass said that Lincoln was "swift, radical, zealous and determined."
Lincoln also used his great --political-- skills to assess when and if voting rights for blacks be acceptable to the great mass of whites -- at least in the north. The attempt to legitimize blacks as Americans can be seen in these letters he wrote :
Private
General Hunter
Executive Mansion
Washington D.C. April 1, 1863
My dear Sir:
I am glad to see the accounts of your colored force at Jacksonville, Florida. I see the enemy are driving at them fiercely, as is to be expected. It is mportant to the enemy that such a force shall not take shape, and grow, and thrive, in the south; and in precisely the same proportion, it is important to us that it shall. Hence the utmost caution and viglilance is necessary on our part. The enemy will make extra efforts to destroy them; and we should do the same to preserve and increase them.
Yours truly
A. Lincoln
_________________________________________________________
Hon. Andrew Johnson
Executive Mansion,
My dear Sir:
Washington, March 26. 1863.
I am told you have at least thought of raising a negro military force. In my opinion the country now needs no specific thing so much as some man of your ability, and position, to go to this work. When I speak of your position, I mean that of an eminent citizen of a slave-state, and himself a slave- holder. The colored population is the great available and yet unavailed of, force for restoring the Union. The bare sight of fifty thousand armed, and drilled black soldiers on the banks of the Mississippi, would end the rebellion at once. And who doubts that we can present that sight, if we but take hold in earnest? If you have been thinking of it please do not dismiss the thought. Yours truly
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hon Soc of War
Executive Mansion
Washington
July 21, 1863
My Dear Sir:
I desire that a renewed and vigorous effort be made to raise colored forces along the shores of the Missippi [sic]. Please consult the General-in-chief; and if it is perceived that any acceleration of the matter can be effected, let it be done. I think the evidence is nearly conclusive that Gen. Thomas is one of the best, if not the very best, instruments for this service.
Yours truly
Lincoln also proposed --privately-- to the new governor of Louisiana that the new state constiution include voting rights for blacks. A year later, in April, 1865 he came out --publicly-- for the suffrage for black soldiers, because his great --political-- skill told him that the time was right.
It was a direct result of this speech, and this position, that Booth shot him.
President Lincoln, besides ordering the army (note that this is only a few months after the EP) to use black soldiers more vigorously, made many public speeches to prepare the people for the idea of black suffrage.
"But to be plain, you are dissatisfied with me about the negro. Quite likely there is a difference of opinion between you and myself upon that subject. I certainly wish that all men could be free, while I suppose that you do not. ....peace does not appear as distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to worth the keeping in all future time. It will have then been proved that, among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost. And then, there will be some black men, who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet they have helped mankind on to this great consumation; while, I fear, there will be some white ones, unable to forget that, with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, have strove to hinder it. Still let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy final triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let us dilligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the rightful result."
8/23/63
"When you give the Negro these rights," he [Lincoln] said, "when you put a gun in his hands, it prophesies something more: it foretells that he is to have the full enjoyment of his liberty and his manhood...By the close of the war, Lincoln was reccomending commissioning black officers in the regiments, and one actually rose to become a major before it was over. At the end of 1863, more than a hundred thousand had enlisted in the United States Colored Troops, and in his message to Congress the president reported, "So far as tested, it is difficult to say they are not as good soldiers as any." When some suggested in August 1864 that the Union ought to offer to help return runaway slaves to their masters as a condition for the South's laying down its arms, Lincoln refused even to consider the question.
"Why should they give their lives for us, with full notice of our purpose to betray them?" he retorted. "Drive back to the support of the rebellion the physical force which the colored people now give, and promise us, and neither the present, or any incoming administration can save the Union." To others he said it even more emphatically. "This is not a question of sentiment or taste, but one of physical force which may be measured and estimated. Keep it and you can save the Union. Throw it away, and the Union goes with it."
--"Lincoln's Men" pp 163-64 by William C. Davis
Lincoln's sense of fairness made him seek to extend the blessings of citizenship to everyone who served under the flag.
His great political skill made him realize that blacks --were--not-- leaving -- he played that card and no one was biting, black or white. That being the case, he knew he had to prepare for the future, and that future involved full rights for blacks.
Walt
No, I did not ask what you thought. I have seen no evidence that you think.
Well this is what you said:
So let me get this straight Walt. You are saying...
You seem to be having difficulty expressing yourself.
Walt
Douglass seeems ill-informed.
General Grant clearly refused to exchange any prisoners unless blacks were included.
And Lincoln wrote this letter:
Hon. Secretary of War Executive Mansion
Washington D.C. May 17, 1864
Please notify the insurgents, through the proper military channels and forms, that the government of the United States has satisfactory proof of the massacre, by the insurgent forces at Fort-Pillow, on the 12th and 13th days of April last, of fully ____ white and colored officers and soldiers of the United States, after the latter had ceased resistance, and asked quarter of the former.
That with reference to said massacre, the government of the United States has assigned and set apart by name _____ insurgent officers, theretofore, and up to that time, held by said government as prisoners of war.
That, as blood can not restore blood, and governments should not act for revenge, any assurance, as nearly as perfect as the case admits, given on or before the first day of July next, that there be shall be no more similar massacre, nor any officer or soldier of the United States, whether white or colored, now held, or hereafter captured by the insurgents, shall be treated other than according to the laws of war, will insure the replacing of said _____ insurgent officers in the simple condition of prisoner of war.
That the insurgents having refused either to exchange, or to give any account or explanation in regard to colored soldiers of the United States captured by them, a number of insurgent prisoners equal to the number of such colored soldiers supposed to have been captured by said insurgents will, from time to time, be asigned and set aside, with reference to such captured colored soldiers, and will, if the insurgents assent, be exchanged for such colored soldiers; but that if no satisfactory attention shall be given to this notice, by said insurgents, on or before the first day of July next, it will be assumed by the government of the United States, that said captured colored troops shall have been murdered, or subjected to Slavery, and that said government will, upon said assumption, take such action as may then appear expedient and just.
A. Lincoln
That's nonsense, billbears. Given that blacks were not welcome by most northerners, and that they were welcome by southerners only if they were slaves then why was Lincoln's encouragement that they carve a life out for themselves as a free people in Africa that wrong? He encouraged emigration for those who wanted it as did thousands of other Americans including Robert Lee and John Breckenridge. In fact it was his Breckenridge that brought him around to supporting colonization.
Lincoln's best hand was the race card.
"But for your race among us there could not be war, although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or the other....
You may believe you can live in Washington or elsewhere in the United States the remainder of your life, perhaps more so than in any foreign country, and hence you have come to the conclusion that you have nothing to do with the idea of going to a foreign country. This is (I speak in no unkind sense) an extremely selfish view of the case."
(Abraham Lincoln v. 5, pp. 372-5. Address on Colonization to a Deputation of Negroes, Aug. 14, 1862)
the northern states did NOT free their slaves, including those in bondage in DC (until late 1862).MANY officials of the yankee government owned slaves themselves until they were forced to free them (almost a YEAR after Richmond fell).
many slaveowners in the north sold their slaves rather than manumitting them.
large numbers of northern banks, insurance companies & other corporations owned slaves in southern states (those slaves remained in bondage until the bitter end of slavery.) and profited by that ownership.
the Emancipation Proclamation was INTENTIONALLY designed NOT to free slaves in the north & yankee-occupied areas in the south.
lincoln & many other northern political leaders said they had NO interest in freeing slaves ANYWHERE until early 1863,when the WBTS was going badly for their side. then the agressive war of re-conquest of the seceded states became a "crusade against slavery".
the Emancipation Proclamation was ONLY passed because the north feared that GB, France & Canada would enter the WBTS on the southern side.
the TRUTH is that the WBTS was motivated by the radical republican administration wanting to conquer the CSA for other than honorable reasons AND those reasons were only POWER and $$$$$$$$$$$$. (trying to whitewash the damnyankees does the person holding the brush NO HONOR!)
free dixie,sw
The race card was first played at the Constitutional Convention.
It is true that President Lincoln said in 1864 that without the aid of the blacks, the war would have to be given up in three weeks.
Walt
Sounds bogus. Date? Source?
"My friends, I have detained you about as long as I desired to do, and I have only to say, let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man; this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position; discarding our standard that we have left us. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal."
A. Lincoln, 7/10/58
Looks to me like Lincoln said all men were equal.
Walt
Well let's see. Your list includes the school that chased off its nobel-winning econ department for being too conservative (UVA), the school that made incoming freshmen read a book on the koran to make them more "tolerant" of mohammedans after 9/11 (UNC), and two schools that have recently been involved in PC controversies for removing confederate names etc. from their campuses (Vandy & Ole Miss). It also includes the nation's largest left wing academic sh*thole in the middle of a left wing sh*thole of a city called Austin, Texas (UT). Oh, and don't even think of trying to portray Rice as conservative. I used to live only a few miles away from it and drove through there regularly on my way to work. That place is nothing but a hotbed for chomskyite lesbo women's studies majors, nose-pierced counterculturalists, and marx-loving abortionist banshees. They had Morris Dees as their celebrated commencement speaker a few years ago and regularly host "pride" festivals of perversity on campus. There isn't one damn thing about that school that is even remotely conservative. So in other words, I'm not the least bit impressed by your list or the left wing trash on it. In fact about the only schools there that could reasonably be called conservative are USC and GMU, and both of them surely have at least a couple leftist faculty that would be stupid enough to sign that petition.
Pretending that the universe of petition signers are all left-wingers because several petition signers are known to be, will not earn you any points anywhere.
Then show me the right wingers on that petition. I venture to speculate that 99.9% of them are all liberals from academia.
Your logic here seems to be, A) some left-wingers opposed the Clinton impeachment, B) James McPherson opposed the Clinton impeachment, ergo James McPherson is a left-winger.
Straw man. Try A) several left wingers organized a petition among themselves opposing impeachment, B) James McPherson signed that petition and stated other things opposing impeachment, C) James McPherson has a known track record of political activism on the democrat left, so therefore D) McPherson's signature is further solid evidence of his far left politics.
You also haven’t addressed the fact that when offered an opportunity to publicly defend the president in fron of Congress, McPherson declined.
Sure I have. YOU just didn't read/acknowledge my response to your rambling. As the article from Princeton clearly shows, the reason McPherson did not testify is because the time conflicted with his classes! It had nothing to do with a lack of devotion to the cause of Clinton (he openly stated in the same article that he opposed impeachment). Rather, the time that they wanted him to come simply didn't work with his schedule. Otherwise he probably would have come!
The fact that in his capacity as a member of the Princeton faculty he defended his position to the campus newspaper is not as you suggested ‘offering public statements of support to the Clinton WH.'
Sure it is. A newspaper is by its very nature a public medium. McPherson gave statements defending Clinton to that newspaper, thus making them public.
The charge is baseless an unworthy of further consideration.
Not at all. Thus far you have been unable to (a) demonstrate an error in my noting that McPherson signed the petition or (b) demonstrate an error for noting that he publicly stated his support for Clinton. Like it or not, McPherson did both of those things. To date your ONLY response is to try and downplay the significance of that petition to the point of absurdity. No honest person on this forum would dispute that the Clinton petition represents anything but the far left wing of american academia. No honest person would attempt to deny that McPherson, who is known and documented to have participated politically in the left wing of the Democrat party, was simply continuing his leftist politics by supporting Clinton during impeachment. Yet you casually dismiss them both as inconsequential incidents, thus granting McPherson an exception from standards that I seriously doubt you or any true conservative would give to anyone else who you did not have a vested interest in defending.
Once again you’ve taken McPherson’s words out of context to create a man of straw.
No mac. His characterization of anti-abortion activists as "extremes" is right there in full context of the sentence: "There are groups, like the anti-abortion people, extremes on the Right, the Wall Street Journal being the more respectable spokesman for some of these"
McPherson was discussing the Brooks-Sumner fight and he concluded thusly.
That he was, but he couldn't resist, when mentioning anti-abortion activists, also throwing in a label of them as "extremes on the right" immediately following that statement.
You seem to have difficulty distinguishing the difference between a legitimate political organization like WSWS, which you disagree with, and other quasi-terrorist or out-right terrorist groups.
So you think that a marxist party is a "legitimate political organization," mac? And you think that a marxist party is different from quasi and out right terrorist groups like Hamas? I find this highly interesting considering that the marxist philosophy is centered around the concept of a revolutionary overthrow of the existing capitalist world. I also find it intersting considering that this marxist party advocates the works of murderous communist revolutionaries like Lenin and Trotsky and defends the Bolshevik uprising of 1917 as a legitimate political action that went wrong not out of something in itself but due to Stalin "corrupting" it. Quite frankly, it is not at all unreasonable to characterize the Bolsheviks and their followers (which includes that political party) as far more dangerous than Hamas or Al Qaeda or the Klan. Nor is it inaccurate to say that the ideological heroes of that party, including Marx, Trotsky, and especially Lenin, have the blood of literally millions of murdered innocents on their hands. That you would call them a "legitimate" political organization or deny their terrorist element - an element that has been present throughout what they themselves describe as the key defining moments of their own history - is outright absurd.
The fact that McPherson hasn’t spoken with the groups you cited is…meaningless.
No. Instead he's sustained an ongoing relationship with a far more dangerous and far more subversive group - a major marxist political party.
With regard to McPherson’s so-called interview on the Pacifica, you haven’t provided a link to the full transcript.
It's on one of the Pacifica websites, mac. I've already given you more than enough info to find it, including the show's title, date, and a lengthy excerpt of its text. Under standard citation practices that should be more than enough information for you to find it. I've already waded through the internet once to give you the quotes and am not going to waste my time doing that again when you can just as easily find it. So go look it up yourself.
Given your pattern of mischaracterization when you have provided direct sources
Cite one.
I will not engage in speculation about what was said and what wasn’t.
You have no need to speculate anything. I already gave to a lengthy word-for-word excerpt of what was said.
I didn’t mention McPherson being an advisor to Bill Bradley because he wasn’t an advisor to Bill Bradley.
The Baltimore Sun, February 6, 2000 reports otherwise.
The Bradley presidential campaign ran out of gas fairly early in 2000 as I recall. If you have direct evidence that supports McPherson, was acting as a political advisor to Bill Bradley, show it.
See above.
BTW didn’t Bradley advocate the ‘flat tax’ back in the 1980s? Now there’s a far left-wing position for you!
You've got to be kidding, mac. First you tried to downplay the fact that the signers of the Clinton petition were leftists. Then you tried to deny that marxism is, by its own history and philosophical practices, a terrorist enterprise. So now you are suggesting that Bill Bradley is not a leftist?!? Your entire argument in this debate is an endeavor into the absurd!
Your premise that James McPherson is a left-wing socialist is false.
You keep posting that in repetition as if it somehow makes it more true, yet all reasonable evidence suggests otherwise. Consider the facts, mac. We know for a fact that McPherson is politically active on the left as (a) an advisor to Bill Bradley, (b) an active opponent of Bill Clinton's impeachment, and (c) an active proponent of affirmative action. We also know that McPherson has an ongoing 5 year relationship with a marxist political party that publishes his articles and interviews. We also know that he appeared on an avowedly socialist radio station amidst three other known socialists on a show specifically intended to brand George W. Bush as a racist. Everything we know about the guy's politics reads leftist. To deny that is to be slothful. Several things about the guy also read communist left. You also persist in denying this yet cannot escape the obvious. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
...even you know the rest.
You can find the source - start your internet search engine. I'll be your friend rdf or one of the Temple of Democracy staffers can help you.
Actually, he did; and I posted it (the exact quote) on this site several weeks ago in response to one of your packaged praises of Abe.
Can't find it now?
"If A can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B. -- why not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A.?
-- You say A. is a white, and B. is black. It is --color--, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be the slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own.
You do not mean color exactly? -- You mean the whites are --intellectually-- the superiors of the blacks, and therefore, have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own.
But, say you, it is a question of --interest--; and, if you can make it your --interest--, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you."
1854
My friends, I have detained you about as long as I desired to do, and I have only to say, let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man; this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position; discarding our standard that we have left us. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal."
A. Lincoln, 7/10/58
"I will say here, while upon this subject, that 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. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but 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. [Loud cheers.] 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 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."
August, 1858
"I do not expect the Union to be dissolved--I do not expect the house to fall--But I do expect it will cease to be divided. Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is the course of ultimate extinctioon; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new--North as well as South. Have we no tendency towards the latter condition?"
1858
"The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society. And yet they are denied, and evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them "glittering generalities"; another bluntly calls them "self evident lies"; and still others insidiously argue that they only apply to "superior races."
These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect. -- the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads, plotting against the people. They are the van-guard -- the miners and sappers -- of returning despotism. We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us. This is a world of compensations; and he that would -be- no slave, must consent to --have-- no slave. Those that deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God cannot long retain it."
3/1/59
"But to be plain, you are dissatisfied with me about the negro. Quite likely there is a difference of opinion between you and myself upon that subject. I certainly wish that all men could be free, while I suppose that you do not. ....peace does not appear as distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to worth the keeping in all future time. It will have then been proved that, among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost. And then, there will be some black men, who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet they have helped mankind on to this great consumation; while, I fear, there will be some white ones, unable to forget that, with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, have strove to hinder it. Still let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy final triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let us dilligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the rightful result."
8/23/63
"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...
In telling this tale I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the Nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God."
4/4/64
"it is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers."
4/11/65
sources: "Abraham Lincoln, Mystic Chords of Memory" published by the Book of the Month Club, 1984 and:
"Lincoln, Speeches and Writings, 1859-65, Library of the Americas, Don E. Fehrenbacher, ed. 1989
Walt
for one thing Professor Blackerby had a VERY long time to do his research & found actual records of the 100,000+ black & mixed-blood Confederates.
frankly, i think both works are important. also, i believe that Jordan's book does NOT, in any real sense, trump the thousands of service records discovered by Blackerby.
the "scholars" who dispute Blackerby, i believe, are SOLELY motivated by PC-idiocy & HATRED of the southland. some of the REVISIONISTS have actually been foolish enough to say that Blackerby "cannot be believed due to his obvious RACIAL prejudices". (one wonders if they know that he was a black man???? OR do they discount him because he WAS black????)
free dixie,sw
all those mean 'ole rebs are ganging up on you! (SOB, WEEP, SOB).
i'm so sad for you.
free dixie,sw
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