Posted on 10/31/2012 9:08:23 PM PDT by EveningStar
The Abraham Lincoln of popular perception is a mythological figure. He has little to do with the actual 16th president.
(Excerpt) Read more at canada.com ...
Kevin Gutzman is US, not Canadian. He merely wrote the article for the National Post.
I was being sarcastic. The Civil War was about slavery sure as shooting. And although we can complain about paying taxes, slaves we are not. Much as I hate paying taxes and big government there is no way you can compare that with being an African-American in the South in 1861.
Uh ... Confederate? Or maybe just Idiot. Really, it says it on his passport.
For example, a popular film depicts a fictionalized Lincoln as having been opposed to slavery virtually from the cradle. His Confederate enemies, on the other hand, were minions of Satan. The reality was not so.
This is just a stupid straw man argument. Until not so long ago, Southerners learned a very romanticized view of the Confederacy in school and had a bitter, jaundiced take on Lincoln. To some extent that persists today. Even in the Northern states there was a lot more respect for Robert E. Lee than for abolitionists like Garrison or Radical Republicans like Stevens.
To the degree that things have changed since then, it hasn't been to Lincoln's benefit. Teachers and students who honor Fredrick Douglass and respect John Brown don't have much time for Lincoln or his Republican Party. Those left-wingers have much common ground with DiLorenzo and Gutzman. They share many of the same anti-Lincoln arguments and the same hypocrisy (since affection for the Confederacy and support for emancipation, like radical abolitionism and concern for the Constitution don't always go together easily and without contradictions).
Many people who write about Lincoln don't know or care who he was. That's because they use him as a stand-in for Wilson, or FDR, or LBJ, either to win support for those later presidents by appealing to Lincoln's enduring popularity or to damn them by damning Lincoln. Lincoln the conservative statesman gets lost in all the polemics.
Americans will generally have none of this. The typical American will accept only a Manichean world in which Good battles Evil endlessly. Not for him the refinement of tragedy, of things lost along the way. Lincoln, idolized as the Great Emancipator after his death, must never have done any wrong. None of his accomplishment involved any kind of cost.
What rock has this character been living under? Chances are, if you mention Lincoln on the Internet a good 40% of the posts will reflect his own biased and ignorant opinion. And aren't those union-haters very much "Manichean" believers in a struggle between pure good and pure evil? And how you can read Lincoln and come away with without a sense of loss or tragedy is beyond me. Gutzman may flatter Canadian readers, but I suspect a lot Americans have more of an understanding of the tragic than he thinks they do -- or than he does himself.
But in reality, life is not that simple. Before Lincoln's election in 1860, the central precept of the majority political party's creed was that the Federal Government had limited powers, while the states retained the rest. This was the chief quality distinguishing a federal system, such as in the USA, from a national one, like that of Great Britain. Lincoln's victory in the Civil War involved the destruction of this principle. Even before his election as president, Lincoln had in fact always stood for power in the central government beyond what the Constitution granted.
According to one of many interpretations of the Constitution, that was neither the only one nor the best grounded. We could argue about whether the federal government should have gotten involved in protective tariffs, or banking, or road-building, but that wasn't something that Washington or Hamilton or Adams would have objected to. It was what later conservative Republicans like McKinley, Taft, Harding, and Coolidge favored.
BTW, x: excellent post, as usual. :)
“apparently you do not understand the term blather.”
Ahso, so the writer did not present untruths about Lincoln. It was just that you didn’t like the presentation.
Really? I mean no we have the legal word from On High (the Supreme Court) that the government can (a) force us to buy a product, (b) place punitive fines-as-taxes on us for not doing something, and (c) own the fruit of your labors, even outside of the country, which is something the US has in common with North Korea.
No there are plenty of things that are not accurate (I did not call them untruths anywhere) but I don’t bother to try and educate those who are so convince...you still don’t know the meaning of blather
I totally agree. Have fun with the food thing.
“They had no legitimate grievances upon which to base secession. “
LOL! Nor were any required.
That’s funny. I’ve never lost. Thing is, the article correct. The north’s argument was freedom for the black man, but not for the southern white man.
Interesting hypocrisy.
Dude. I’ve exposed your stupidity before. Do I have to do it again? REally?
Reminds me of a FReeper (I don’t recall his name) who had as his tagline “Proudly posting without actually reading the article since XXXX” ;-)
I’ve actually read superior presentations of the lost causer argument right here at FreeRepublic than this screed. C- and I’m being generous.
Interesting hypocrisy.
Southern 'freedom' predicated on slavery means you've lost before you've begun; I'm not surprised you see that as a 'win'.
But thanks for playing.
Of course Jefferson was wrong there. There are many mixed race people descended in part from the Jefferson’s and their slaves, and so extinction of one race or the other is not an option.
We have very little genetic difference. Bad history, even more than bad water leads to ill health and death.
Along on the Dieppe raid was Lucian Truscott Jr., who later was involved in managing the Jefferson estate (his wife was a descendant of Thomas Jefferson).
His grandson, JKT IV was involved in inviting black descendants of the family to the reunions. I think the jury is still out on whether any of the black descendants are actually descended from Jefferson himself (rather than from Randolph Jefferson, say) but certainly LKT Jr. had a strong appreciation of the Canadians, and regretted the necessity (but held that it was a necessity) to pay in blood to learn how to conduct amphibious operations against a continent.
States’s rights would have permitted a State to ban slavery within its borders. That was what the Dred Scott decision forbade.
Previous decisions had removed the necessity of state officials to support slave catchers, making the kidnapping of accused former slaves a federal responsibility only. States had their personal liberty laws overturned, which extended even to accused escaped slaves the rights to trial and security in their persons until proven guilty.
The Civil War was not about States Rights. It was about the Slave Powers demand to run not only their only affairs, but also the affairs of their neighbors. They expected the Northern states to cave, as they had so many times previously.
I have a quibble with the notion that income taxes came with the 16th Amendment. Income not from rent of property could be taxed before that, just as income from Whiskey was taxed via an excise tax (major cause of the Whiskey Rebellion put down by Washington).
The Supreme Court had previously held that income from wages could be subject to tax without being a direct tax. Further it had held that income from rent of property could not be taxed, that being too close to a direct tax on the property itself.
The 16th amendment was written to correct that supreme court ruling, so that income from renting property could be taxed without being subject to the limitations on direct taxes (being in proportion to population).
What was required was
a. the assent of 3/4s of the other states if separation was attained by amendment, or
b. federal legislation, or
c. a successful court case between the state and the federal government. That last would have required a grievance.
No, it can not force you to buy a product. It can force you to pay a tax, under conditions set by the government.
Whether it should, to what level, or under what conditions, honest people may disagree.
You are one of the few Lincoln Cultists who will actually read entire “lost causer” posts. You may be brain washed with reconstructed 19th century US history, but you make an attempt at the truth.
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