Posted on 06/12/2003 5:58:28 AM PDT by Aurelius
Nineteenth century America was very religious and scriptural. The tendency was to think of crises and tragedies in terms of Providence. You can look at Eugene Genovese's "A Consuming Fire" for examples.
Naturally, a more skeptical generation would find these scriptural references offensive. All the more so if they agreed with the other side. And there was much opportunity in Masters's day to exploit the change in sensibility to skewer those one disagreed with. But points scored against the rhetorical style of the day, don't particularly reflect on Lincoln personally. One might just as well find Lee's or Davis's or Jackson's references to Providence or God or the deity blasphemous or sacrilegious as Lincoln's. All Masters shows in his attack on Lincoln is his own disagreement with that President. Those who see the primary blame for the war resting on other shoulders won't be convinced by Masters's own rhetorical excesses.
You can quote Mother Goose if you'd like. The decision by the Supreme Court cannot change what it takes an amendment to do. Nor can the dicta in a decision change what the founders REFUSED to do. Even Hamilton wouldn't second Morris' motion to consolidate the people into one mass.
Might makes right? Appeals to force do not decide the LEGALITY of the issue - which is what Grier wrote in the Prize Cases. If might made right, men in white coats dragging you off to an asylum would make it justified and legal? 623,000 men were slaughtered to preserve a union that wan't destroyed when the states seceded. Waging a war on innocent men, women and children - black and white - raping, looting, destroying crops and homes, blockading your own ports, refusing to exchange prisioners and intentionally refusing to abide by the established rules of war, and subjecting innocents to starvation are not acts of friendship. They are the hallmarks of a dictator.
You contradict yourself -- for obvious reasons.
Sherman himself articulated the policy, per your quote, of Schrecklichkeit -- which is what Heinrich Himmler called it later.
Please notice that this is not a standardized, gratuitous and rhetorical comparison of some person to the Nazis. Here, the comparison is germane, it's supported by the quotation and by evidence from the field, and it goes to the heart of Sherman's intentions.
Sherman did not intend to shorten the war by depriving the South of the ability to fight. He sought to shorten it the way the Nazis intended to shorten their war with Britain, by bombing London into rubble. The Nazi air campaign against London wasn't aimed at military objectives or logistical capacity. It was aimed at the minds and morale of the English people, to break them. Sherman had the same end in view. No Southerner will ever forgive him for bringing that crudity of a policy to bear on American civilians.
You won't win any points on this thread or any other by apologizing for William Sherman. Though I suppose you'll smoke out the South-haters as they surge forward gleefully to slap you on the back and join you in gloating.
Now there's a bold claim. Herndon, Lincoln's long-time partner who helped him midwife the Republican Party, not an authoritative source on Lincoln? Tell us why he isn't. Whom do you like better? Edwin Stanton? John Nicolay?
Come on. After Mary Lincoln, there was nobody in America who knew Lincoln better than William Herndon.
I think it's more a taunt than an actual appeal to anything. Had enough of this clown yet? I sent him back to pulling wings off flies a while ago.
Yes, and the differences in meaning between its original and legal meaning and the popularly understood meaning of it in English are sufficiently divergent now that it required Elaine Scarry, in a legal article, several paragraphs to review the concept and its origins in Locke, and then clarify the language differences between Locke's usage and modern law, on the one hand, and the legal and popular meanings of these concepts on the other.
Scarry's interest in the concept went to the nature of the People's sovereign permission for the Government to use force. She went into a long discussion of the role of mutiny, e.g., in denying permission and authority to the Government to use the Militia in ways inconsistent with the People's will. She compared the Militia to juries both grand and petit, and noticed that both had the power to refuse the Government what it wanted. She described this refusal as a revocation of a perpetual consent granted by the People to the Government and sourced and cited the Framers' statements during the convention and ratification debates, and in The Federalist, showing that they fully intended this perpetual consent -- and its opposite -- to be a check on Government.
But, since you bring up Sherman's rationale, let me quote from the contemporary British soldier/historian, Bevin Alexander:
(In Chattanooga) Sherman had come to realize that destroying the Southern people’s will to pursue the war was more important than destroying Johnston’s army. Once the people wearied of war, their armies would melt away. So long as they remained adamant, they would continue to throw up armies or, failing that, guerilla bands, which could lead to endless war. The only sure solution was to inflict so much damage on Southern property and way of life, and not merely “war resources,” that the people would prefer surrender to continued destruction.
I think ending the war as soon as possible was very much one of Sherman's goals. In his own words Sherman intended to convince the Southerners that "war and individual ruin and synonymous terms" and that "If they want peace, they and their relatives must stop war."
I find your comment, "No Southerner will ever forgive him (Sherman) for bringing that crudity of a policy to bear on American civilians," somewhat puzzling. If Robert E. Lee was correct when he noted in 1861, that "secession is revolution," do you consider Southerners as rebellious citizens of the USA, or enemy aliens to the USA? Citizens supporting enemy armies are simply treasonous. As civilians of an enemy country, did they deserve any better than the Germans or Japanese got 80 years later?
Admittedly, by the time Sherman got into South Carolina, his vendetta against the South became a vindictive opportunity to crush every last secessionist bone. General Halleck wrote to Sherman, "Should you capture Charleston, I hope by some accident the place may be destroyed, and, if a little salt should be sown upon its site, it may prevent the growth of future crops of nullification and secession." Sherman replied, "The whole army is buring with an insatiable desire to wreak vengence upon South Carolina. I almost tremble at her fate."
For the American generals, simply winning was no longer enough. Nevertheless, Sherman's approach to war, as compared to the barbaric frontal assaults used by Grant to pound Lee into submission, probably saved more American lives than it cost. But like Sherman said, "War is hell."
Might makes right?
Their considered opinion.
You're trying to suggest something I bet you don't believe. You are trying to belittle what I say not because it has no merit, but because it doesn't fit with your agenda. The loyal Union men saw Jay's words, and Madison's words, and Washington's words, and this is a magnificent expresssion of why they fought:
"And this issue embraces more than the fact of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man, the question, whether a constitutional republic, or a democracy--a government of the people, by the same people--can or cannot, maintain its territorial integtrity against its own domestic foes. It presents the question, whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration, according to organic law, in any case, can always, upon the pretenses made in this case, or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily, without any pretense, break up their government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask: "Is there in all republics, this inherent, and fatal weakness?" "Must a government, of neccessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existance?"
A. Lincoln, 7/4/61
The loyal Union men weren't going to allow the rebels to trample the principles of freee government. It took force. You're pathetic. It took a hell of a lot of force to allow you to sit in your den or computer room or whatever so you could say might shouldn't make right unless you like it.
But you should like it. You should thank God that you get to live in this country and you should thank God for the men that made that possble. And none of -them- wore gray.
Walt
That is not all he wrote in the Prize Cases ruling.
Unilateral state secession is illegal. See the Militia Act of 1792. Grier cites the Act, as you know.
Walt
Because you don't like it?
The government must be run by men. The laws and the Constitution must be interpreted by men. The Supreme Court did not agree with the interpretation you give the amendment.
You are pushing an interpretation on people that is not based in the record of the words of the people of the day. They thought differently than you.
You are putting modern day judgements on historical figures. You are outed. You are wrong to do that. It is exactly the same thing as changing Christopher Columbus from "Admiral of the Ocean Deep" to oppressor of native Americans. It's silly and it's wrong and it's easily exposed.
Walt
It wasn't the states that put down the rebellion. It was the people.
Walt
LOL! The mods let him hang around so we can have fun!!!
BINGO! The founders explicitly cited the need of the state militia to protect the state from a despot/dictator. One defininition of perpetual I like is 'until terminated'.
That works for me.
One of the first things the social lice always try to do is to use weasel-wording and crisis management to turn perpetual consents into threshold consent, to take the People out of the play.
That's why lice love Supreme Court cases -- every case is a chance to create a threshold event.
With enough Supreme Court cases, you've created a thoroughly sanctioned and insulated government, and governmental class (or termite nest), possessing numbers of deemed threshold permissions with which to work its will on its hosts.
That works for me.
But not for Robert E. Lee.
He indicated that the Union was perpetual unless changed by the whole people acting in convention.
And it wouldn't work for George Washington either. He indicated that the Constitution couldn't be changed without a genuine expression of the will of the whole people.
Walt
The relevance is that the Supreme Court is vested by the Constitution to rule on the legality of actions made under the Constitution. Their opinion on what is legal and what is illegal is binding. And in their opinion the acts of unilateral secession as practiced by Texas and the other southern states were not allowed under the Constitution. Is that response enough for you?
The Supreme Court isn't unfailing.
I never said that they were. There have been dozens of Supreme Court decisions that have left me scratching my head. But a court decision does not need your approval or my approval to be valid. And Texas v White was a valid decision.
Of course we know that the War of Northern Agression wasn't fought to end slavery (or racial discrimination).
Of course it wasn't. The goal of the Civil War from the Northern standpoint was to preserve the Union as a whole. The purpose from the southern standpoint was to protect their institution of domestic slavery from what they saw as a threat to its existence by the Republican presidency. Ending slavery or fighting racial discrimination wasn't a goal of either side.
1 a : continuing forever : EVERLASTING b (1) : valid for all time (2) : holding (as an office) for life or for an unlimited time
Where do they get their definitions?
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