Posted on 02/23/2014 6:39:53 PM PST by grumpa
Few people understand how lawless Abraham Lincoln was in propagating our country’s biggest nightmare—the Civil War. And not enough people sense the parallel of Obama’s emerging lawlessness.
Lincoln achieved his political aims by bullying—rather than effective, innovative solutions and negotiations. Here are some facts:
• Lincoln closed more than 300 newspapers that disagreed with him.
• He arrested members of state legislatures, preventing them from debating the secession issue.
• He ordered military trials for citizens when civilian courts were available. Many of these trials resulted in hangings.
• Operating as a military dictator, Lincoln spent millions not authorized by the Congress.
• He suspended the writ of habeas corpus, a law that prevents people from being imprisoned without due process. This suspension, along with the military tribunals, resulted in the imprisonment of 14,000 war opponents illegally. (For comparison, Mussolini is reported to have jailed around 2,000 people.)
• When Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney ruled Lincoln’s suspension of the writ unconstitutional, amazingly, Lincoln ordered Taney arrested! But the United States Marshal’s office refused to make the arrest without a valid arrest warrant. However, due to the political situation at the time, the writ was never officially restored until Andrew Johnson’s tenure.
• The cruelty of the Northern generals Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan was authorized by Lincoln. The wanton cruelty toward civilian life and property made Lincoln clearly guilty of war crimes.
• His dishonorable prosecution of the war is responsible for the failure to re-assimilate the South after the war, and left bitterness for a hundred years. The Ku Klux Klan is certainly a result of this bitterness.
• Lincoln signed the order approving the hanging of 39 Sioux Indians, for dubious reasons. This was the only mass hanging in American history.
• Lincoln was a liar, changing his message to suit the audience and his political objectives.
This is all presented in an amazing book by Charles Adams entitled, When in the Course of Human Events. Adams concludes, as any reasonable man would, that Lincoln should have been impeached. The war would thus have not progressed to its devastating conclusion. And slavery, which was clearly on its way out anyway, would have ended without the loss of 630,000 American lives.
So, how is this relevant today? Is it not ironic that a black president is potentially taking us down a path of a constitutional crisis not seen since Lincoln? History never repeats itself exactly. But the parallels should be apparent to anyone willing to see them.
Only the ignorant public school educated dolts believe the war was fought over slavery. Not even Lincoln said it was.
“To Defend And Protect The Constitution.”
Of which Lincoln ignored and violated. Don’t try to sell that crap here.
How many quotes from southern leaders saying that they seceded to protect slavery do you want?
Or Hampden-Sidney College graduates.
"The South had always been solid for slavery and when the quarrel about it resulted in a conflict of arms, those who had approved the policy of disunion took the pro-slavery side. It was perfectly logical to fight for slavery, if it was right to own slaves." [John S. Mosby, Mosby's Memoirs, p. 20]
Have you considered we would then be like the EU?
Why couldn’t we just be separate countries?
That's a joke from a guy who defends a regime that denied even the most basic of human rights to people who happened to be of a different race. At the time, those people you idolize declared slavery the Cornerstone of their Republic and yet you profess to be proud of them and call those who object racists! Very strange.
You really do live in an alternate universe of some imaginary ancestor worship. I'd advise you see a Psych.
It wasn’t. It was fought over the Union.
That's another bold faced lie that is easy to disprove. But it comes from you distorted ancestor worship imagination.
I’ve had a chance to review posts to date (188) and this one still stands out as the most sensible.
Frankly threads like this are trollworks. They are meant for one thing and one thing only - flame-bait. They’re idiotic and divisive. They bring out the worst in regional bigotry and make for a most unbecoming display for the site.
And they also show how much work we have to do as conservatives. There are far too many ignorant posts here! I will admit to following WBTS threads as a guilty pleasure. I like history and I like debate. It would be nice if we could discuss without so much rancor but I don’t think that’s likely anytime soon.
Thanks for a common-sense post.
If forced to choose between preserving the Union (his first priority) and ending slavery (his second priority) he clearly said he would choose his first priority.
This is logical, because he could never accomplish his second priority without accomplishing his first priority.
This was just, and wise.
The Confederacy failed because its adherents were unjust and unwise.
They claimed that their first priority was freedom for white people and that enslaving black people was only their second priority.
However, their actions revealed that what they claimed was their second priority was really their first.
They paid dearly for their stupidity and dishonesty.
The first priority (preserving the Union) was within his executive authority as CiC. The second priority (legally ending slavery) was not. Under the Constitution, slavery was legal and slaves were property.
The Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery. It simply used an executive order from the CiC to seize 'enemy property' and dispose of that property as the CiC saw fit. That disposition was freedom for those individuals, but it did not end the legality of slavery.
It took the 13th Amendment to actually end slavery in the US and Lincoln battled hard through even a friendly congress to get that amendment passed with the necessary 2/3 vote, and then, before his assassination to encourage the states to ratify it.
That ratification occurred after his death, but he set the ball in motion.
He did not go into office even dreaming of ending slavery. No one thought that possible in 1860. His only promise was to stop the spread of slavery into the territories which was the issue of contention at that point.
For the FINAL time, my point: numerous small countries with widely different ethnic, religious, demographic and economic make up WILL be exploited by politicians to attack their neighbors-similar the the Balkans.
Where in that argument is the fixation on the separation process?
You confine the periodic and almost regular warfare in the Balkans to the “recent” period. WWII, WWI, etc. doesn’t seem pertinent?
You seem to continuously limit your understanding of the point I am making in order to repeat your view intermingling a smug sermonizing about what I’m “forgetting” or “assuming” or “speculating”.
Please, don’t respond-just go away.
re: your last comment. mea culpa. I misunderstood your point.
I think O just does whatever he can at the direct of folks like Bill Ayers so he can stay in the luxury of his position. I don’t think he gives a rat’s behind about the Constitution or the country or the citizens. He is the imperial president.
We’ll see if he voluntarily steps down
Well, I have never asked my dad about this in particular, but my feeling is that, in the event that a State or, in the case of the Civil War, States choose to secede from the Union, the application of the Constitution falls into a gray area.
Although I have not read it, the case of Texas vs. White apparently found secession unconstitutional. In my opinion, any case that deals with the idea of secession falls outside the bounds of the Constitution. The Article II type settlement would be one that two parties must agree to abide by in order to maintain peace within a union which was the main point of writing Section 2. This doesn’t apply to secession which is a divorce between two parties when one party wants nothing more to do with the other. When independence is declared, the union is dissolved and the new nation becomes separate and self governing. Why does the court decision of the original nation still have to be forced on the other, separate country? Even if you subscribe to the idea that a court trial is legitimate, if the justices were completely honest and moral, they would have to recuse themselves for having a conflict of interest.
I don’t see a big difference between the US forcing States to stay in a union they vehemently oppose and have declared independence from and marching into a foreign nation, crushing it and claiming it as another State. I think in this issue, Lincoln had a lot in common with King George III during the American Revolution and Santa Ana during the Texas Revolution. The difference is that Lincoln won. If the South had won, what we refer to now as the Civil War would be the Confederate War of Independence. Imagine how embarrassing that title, and all that it implies, would have been to Lincoln’s legacy. Hence, his need to win at all costs.
Joining the union is voluntary, leaving it should be also, but it all depends upon the ego in power.
That's certainly original.
I suppose the Confederate States could have split completely into City States or County States so the substantial parts of the Confederacy that thought secession was a mistake or didn't wish to secede no matter what could remain parts of the United States.
If I'm not mistaken, the article said Lincoln and Obama were two sides to the same coin. This is nonsense, unless anyone can convince me that Lincoln cared as little about others as Obama does.
Obama is 100% solipsist. I don't think Lincoln was such.
Joining is voluntary and mutual, leaving must be the same.
A lot of Freepers on this thread sound just like renowned jacka$$ John Stewart. This must make the Lincoln Coven so proud.
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