REMEMBERING MR. LINCOLN

Powerline ^ | 12 Feb 2024 | Scott Johnson

[Rummyfan]

Today is the anniversary of the birth of America’s great or greatest president, Abraham Lincoln. As a politician and as president, Lincoln was a profound student of the Constitution and constitutional history. Perhaps most important, Lincoln was America’s indispensable teacher of the moral ground of political freedom at the exact moment when the country was on the threshold of abandoning what he called its “ancient faith” that all men are created equal.

In 1858 Lincoln attained national prominence in the Republican Party as the result of the contest for the Senate seat held by Stephen Douglas. It was Lincoln’s losing campaign against Douglas that made him a figure of sufficient prominence that he could be the party’s 1860 presidential nominee.

At the convention of the Illinois Republican Party in June, Lincoln was the unanimous choice to run against Douglas. After declaring him their candidate late on the afternoon of June 16, the entire convention returned that evening to hear Lincoln speak. Accepting the convention’s nomination, Lincoln gave one of the most incendiary speeches in American history.

Lincoln electrified the convention, asserting that the institution of slavery had made the United States “a house divided against itself.” Slavery would either be extirpated or become lawful nationwide, Lincoln predicted, provocatively quoting scriptural authority to the effect that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” Demonstrating how it “changed the course of history,” Harry Jaffa calls it “[t]he speech that changed the world.”

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Doesn't matter what they did.
What matters is the fact that because of their official orders, the Confederates saw them as an attacking force, and this is exactly what Lincoln wanted them to believe was happening.
Lincoln was a clever manipulating bastard.
He was good at it."

I'm sorry, but the core problem here is that you are arguing Jefferson Davis himself was an idiot and fool who let Lincoln dance circles around him while Davis could only respond stupidly.
The truth is that Davis was not "manipulated" at Fort Sumter because he had every intention to attack both Forts Sumpter and Pickens as soon as he was ready.
Davis himself said that to CSA Gen. Bragg, over a week before there was any word from Washington about your alleged "war fleet".

Davis made clear to Bragg that it would be a good idea to make it look like Lincoln fired the first shots, but in the end that didn't matter because of other more important considerations.
Davis needed to start Civil War as soon as possible, and so could not afford to wait forever for Lincoln to start shooting.

And the reason Davis needed war is not at all hard to understand -- war was the only way to convince Virginians to secede from the Union and join the Confederacy.
No war = no Virginia and no Virginia = no Tennessee, no North Carolina no Arkansas, no Kentucky, no Missouri, etc.

How is this not obvious to you guys?

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Lincoln, whether he was an atheist or not, (I believe he was) was a brilliant thinker and writer, and a brilliant manipulator of men.
It is this intelligence and ability to manipulate people that made him such a fine lawyer in his day."

Quotes from Lincoln regarding his faith:

• “Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.” — Abraham Lincoln 3

• “I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.” — Abraham Lincoln 12

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Ah, I see you are offering the argument:
"Oh yeah? Your guy did the same bad things *MY* guy did!"
This argument does not justify your guy doing the bad things."

The word being debated here is "tyrant" because our FRiend FLT-bird loves to claim that Lincoln was a "tyrant".

The problem is that word "tyrant" can mean pretty much anything -- a war-ship's captain might be labeled a "tyrant" because he runs a tight ship, and makes his crew practice their drills over & over again, even after they could do them blind-folded.
In an Army, it's sometimes said that you want your troops to be more afraid of their sergeants than they are of the enemy.
So the word "tyrant" can mean pretty much anything.

In this particular case, I've simply compared the "tyrant" Lincoln to that paragon of enlightened civility, CSA Pres. Jefferson Davis and I've discovered -- amazingly -- that pretty much everything Lincoln did to earn Confederates' sobriquet "tyrant" was also done by Davis.
So how can the same acts magically make Lincoln a "tyrant" but not also make Davis a "tyrant"?

I think everybody well understands why.

Notice, in this quote Jefferson Davis threatens extermination of Confederates.
How is that not tyranical?
Thank God, it was all a bluff.

[BroJoeK]

ProgressingAmerica: "We need to come to grips with the fact that CRT-history is quite a lot older than just the last 10 years.
Progressives have been sowing these seeds for many decades under the guise of history."

Oh, now you've gone and done it!
That'll stir up the hornets' nest -- can't be pointing out that today's CRT 1619ers are just Old Time Lost Causers in drag, rewriting history to suit their own political agenda's.

Oh, no, Mr. Bill... 😉

[BroJoeK]

"I don’t need any more of the civil war pings. I don’t want them either."

Not a problem.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "You are advancing a fallacy known as "argumentum ad tu quoque." Which means, "Because someone else did something bad, you can't complain about my guy doing something bad." "

What's at issue is the claim that Lincoln was a "tyrant" and I'm simply saying that word "tyrant" can mean pretty much anything you want it to mean.

In this particular case, if you want to label Lincoln a "tyrant", then so was Jefferson Davis a "tyrant", and are you happy with calling Davis a "tyrant"?

I actually don't think either one deserves the sobriquet "tyrant" because real tyrants are such monsters as Hitler, or Stalin, or Mao or... a long list of blood-thirsty dictators, with no similarities to either Lincoln or Davis.

But, if you must absolutely insist that Lincoln was a "tyrant", then Davis was also just as much a "tyrant" as Lincoln.
Are you happy with that?

[BroJoeK]

FLT-bird: quoting BJK: "Relative to their population, Confederates arrested as many pro-Union Southerners as the Union arrested Copperhead Democrats."

FLT-bird: "No they didn't."

Well... here's what the sources say about it:

"In the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis also suspended habeas corpus and imposed martial law.[36]
Shortly after his inauguration as president of the Confederacy,[37] an act of the Confederate Congress of February 27, 1862, was passed authorizing Davis to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and declare martial law 'in such towns, cities, and military districts as shall, in his judgment, be in such danger of attack by the enemy'....[38]"

"In various proclamations and orders beginning in 1862, Davis suspended the writ and declared martial law in parts of Virginia (including the Confederate capital of Richmond, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Petersburg, and elsewhere).[38]
Davis also suspended the writ in East Tennessee;[38] in this region, Thomas A.R. Nelson was arrested by the Confederate military and held as a political prisoner before being released on the condition that he cease criticizing the Confederate government.[39]
Suspensions of civil process in the confederacy were used against suspected Unionists, particularly in border states.[40]
Historian Barton A. Myers notes that after the Confederacy imposed nationwide conscription, 'the difference between arrest for political dissidence and conscription into the military became largely semantic, as anyone accused of Unionism was almost always first taken to a training camp where they were monitored and hazed under guard.'[41]"

Political dissenters were drafted into the Confederate army.

"Davis also suspended the writ in North Carolina (June 1862) and in Atlanta (in September 1862).[38]
The Confederate Congress passed re-authorizing legislation twice more, in October 1862 and February 1864.[38]
Davis suspended habeas corpus in Arkansas and the Indian Territory in January 1863.[40][42]
Although Davis had initially been resistant to the idea, he suspended the writ after receiving a telegram from General Theophilus Holmes complaining that his region was filled with disloyal persons and deserters, and that he could not enforce conscription.[42]"

"At least 2,672 civilians were subject to military arrest in the Confederacy over the course of its history, although this is likely an undercount given the incompleteness of records.[41]
Civil War historian Mark E. Neely Jr. suggests that "there seems to be no difference in the arrest rate in those periods when the Confederate Congress refuse to authorization suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and those periods was authorized. ... civilian prisoners trickled into Confederate military prisons whether the writ of habeas corpus was suspended or not."[41]"

AI response: "In summary, Confederate authorities arrested and tried numerous Southerners for political crimes during the Civil War, and the outcomes varied based on individual cases and circumstances."

FLT-bird: "...The CSA did not declare war.
Objecting to starting a war is not treason as per Article III section 3 clause 1 of the US Constitution."

It's odd the lengths our dedicated Lost Cause propagandists will go to deny a clear fact of history -- The Confederacy's May 6, 1861 Declaration of War against the United States.

This is the actual Confederate Declaration of War on May 6, 1861.

Waging war against the United States is treason, for any American citizen, which certainly included union states like Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri.

Why would anyone want to deny the obvious?

FLT-bird: "Suspension of the habeas corpus at a time when the courts are functioning is unconstitutional.
This has been the ruling of the Supreme Court and no, not just Taney.
Lincoln acted unconstitutionally."

It was not a ruling in 1861 and the US Constitution does allow for suspension of habeas corpus "in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it. " Art 1, Sect 9

In 1861 there was no precedent and no previous rulings regarding habeas corpus suspensions.

FLT-bird: "He did so less than Lincoln and arrest FAR fewer people."

Sure, and the best numbers I can find are:

1. "14,401 Union civilians arrested by Lincoln administration."

2. "At least 2,672 civilians were subject to military arrest in the Confederacy over the course of its history, although this is likely an undercount given the incompleteness of records."[41]

So, proportionately, relatively speaking -- Union arrests are said to be 14,401 out of 22.5 million is one arrested for every 1,562 citizens.

In the Confederacy, at least 2,672 arrested out of 5.5 million whites is one arrested for every 2,058 citizens.
But since Confederate records are spottier than Union records and many were simply drafted rather than arrested, it's easy to say that proportionately, Confederates arrested as many Southerners as the Union arrested northerners, without habeas corpus.

It's also worth noticing that in both Confederacy and Union, authorities arrested mainly people from disloyal regions, like Maryland or Missouri in the Union, Eastern Tennessee or Northern Arkansas in the Confederacy.

Very few, a mere handful, were arrested from loyal states or regions on either side.

FLT-bird: "Read the Real Lincoln.
Others confirmed it as well.
Its documented and footnoted.
He did it."

Naw, the only other confirmation came from Crazy-Roger Taney himself, who claimed to be afraid of being arrested.
But he never was, so it's just another lunatic fantasy of pro-Confederates.

FLT-bird: " 'Lincoln won New York state by 7000 votes "with the help of federal bayonets,' wrote Pulitzer Prize—winning Lincoln biographer David Donald in Lincoln Reconsidered.
BroJoeK gets it stuffed down his throat again."

That's just more nonsense...
The 1864 electoral count was not even close 212 - 21, so Lincoln could have lost New York and others too and still won reelection.

In many elections the margin of victory is only a few votes in a few states.
In 1864, the Democrats' Peace Candidate, "Little Mac" McClellan, won only three states and two of those by very narrow margins, New Jersey and Delaware, a total of just 7,900 votes.

Of course, as late as the summer of 1864 Lincoln himself expected Little Mac to win in November, based on the military situation which, fortunately for Lincoln soon improved considerably from a Union perspective.

FLT-bird: "In May 1861 the New York Journal of Commerce published a list of 100 Northern newspapers that opposed the Lincoln administration.
Lincoln ordered the Postmaster General and the army to shut them all down."

Even your own Abbeville Press doesn't say Lincoln shut down 100 disloyal newspapers.

A more accurate report comes from the Smithsonian Magazine:

"The censorship of newspapers via the Post Office Department first took place in the summer of 1861 after a New York grand jury handed down a decision stating that certain Northern newspapers were expressing Southern sentiments, thereby making them traitorous.
On August 22, the Department responded to this decision by ordering all New York postmasters to refrain from mailing these newspapers, which included the Journal of Commerce, Day Book, Freeman’s Journal, News, and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
While the censorship of mails was initially prompted by an entity outside of the Post Office, a state court, the Department also censored papers on its own.
By the end of 1861, twelve more newspapers had been censored from the mail by the orders of Postmaster General Blair.(7)"

We might remember that before 1861 there was always censorship of abolition materials mailed to Southern states.
Nor is there evidence of any pro-Union newspapers publishing in the Confederacy.

FLT-bird: "May 18, 1864, Lincoln order that directly issued to General John Dix: 'You will take possession by military force, of the printing establishments of the New York World and Journal of Commerce'...

They were guilty of publishing forged documents intended to disrupt the Union war efforts.

It's worth noticing that in every major US war -- i.e., WWII -- the US press was officially censored.

FLT-bird: "A military kangaroo court claimed sitting US Senator Vallandingham was guilty of treason and banished him from the US.
Where was that provision allowing military tribunals over US Senators?
I can't seem to find it.
BTW, no I'm not talking about Breckenridge."

Kentucky Democrat Senator Breckenridge was banished from the US Senate for treason, and became a Confederate general.

Ohio Democrat Congressman Vallandigham was arrested and tried by a military tribunal for the crime of violating General Ambrose E. Burnside's General Order Number 38, which warned that the "habit of declaring sympathies for the enemy" would not be tolerated.
The military court sentenced Vallandigham to prison for the war's duration.
Pres. Lincoln released Vallandigham from prison and exiled him to the Confederacy, where he stayed for a few months before traveling to Canada and running for Ohio governor.
He lost that election.

We might remember that broadcasting enemy propaganda was treason during World War II, and several Americans served years in prison for it, including Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose.
Britain's "Lord Hawhaw" was executed for his treasonous Nazi broadcasts.

FLT-bird: "Its more like 6,000 who were murdered at Camp Douglas.
Unlike the CSA, there was no shortage of food or medicine in the US during the war."

The numbers are disputed: "The official death toll for Confederate prisoners at Camp Douglas is given by several sources as 4,454.[217][218]"

"The majority of the deaths at the camp had been caused by typhoid fever and pneumonia.
The prisoners arrived in a weakened condition, making them vulnerable to disease; at the camp they suffered filthy conditions, an inadequate sewer system, harshly cold weather, and lack of sufficient heat and clothing.[81] "

"...In the aftermath of the war, Camp Douglas, though not exclusively, sometimes came to be described as the North's "Andersonville" for its poor conditions and large number of deaths.[230]
Camp Douglas was one of the longest operating and largest prisons in the North.
Although the number of prisoners who died there was more than at other locations, the percentage of prisoners who died at Camp Douglas was similar to most other Union prisoner of war camps.[231]
The death rate of prisoners at Camp Douglas was lower than at Andersonville and the conditions at Camp Douglas were better.[44]
If any one camp could be called the "Andersonville of the North," it would more likely be Elmira Prison at Elmira, New York where the deaths per thousand prisoners were 241.0 versus 44.1 at Camp Douglas.[231][232]"

FLT-bird: "The rest of the Santee Sioux also suffered in the war's aftermath.
The people of Minnesota wanted the Native Americans out of the state — the lands the whites had stolen — "

And yet, according to census numbers Native Americans in Minnesota were around 1.2% of the population in 1860, in 1880 and today.
We need not doubt that they were mistreated, but words like "genocide" are a bit far fetched.

FLT-bird: "Lincoln sent a fleet of heavily armed warships to invade South Carolina's sovereign territory which it duly did.
This forced the CSA to either defend itself by opening fire or to allow itself to be invaded without firing a shot in its own defense.
The Confederates did what any other country would do upon being invaded - they fired to drive the invaders away. An aggressor is one who invades the land of another - not one who fires to drive an invader away."

And still, despite well knowing it, you blind yourself to the real truth, which is that, by his own confession on April 3, 1861, Jefferson Davis intended to start Civil War at Forts Sumter and Pickens, regardless of what Lincoln did or didn't do to "provoke" it.

[BroJoeK]

FLT-bird: "so you are claiming Lincoln did not send ships which invaded South Carolina's territorial waters?"

I'm saying not a single Union warship, your words: "invaded South Carolina's sovereign territory."

I'm saying, first of all, South Carolina had no legally recognized "sovereign territory".

Second, even if we contemplate SC "territorial waters", there's no proof that any Union ship "invaded" those waters.

Third, there was no "fleet" on April 11, there was only one small ship, the Revenue Cutter Harriet Lane and it neither "invaded" South Carolina's "sovereign territory" nor threatened any Confederates.

All of this DiogenesLamp understands, which is why he argues it was not the existence of a mythical "war fleet" that even matters, but rather the issuance of orders telling the captains to used force if necessary to resupply Fort Sumter.

So, according to DiogenesLamp, it was Lincoln's paperwork which started the Civil War, not Confederates' actual firing on Fort Sumter, forcing its surrender.

FLT-bird: "and yet there was a heavily armed fleet threatening Charleston as has already been outlined in this thread."

Your list of Union "war fleet" ships includes none which were actually in Charleston Harbor or invading South Carolina's "sovereign territory".

[ProgressingAmerica]

That is not what I said.

[FLT-bird]

AI response: "In summary, Confederate authorities arrested and tried numerous Southerners for political crimes during the Civil War, and the outcomes varied based on individual cases and circumstances.",/i>

And yet in comparison to Lincoln's suspension of Habeas Corupus......

"Davis . . . possessed the authority to suspend the writ of habeas corpus for a total of only sixteen months. During most of that time he exercised this power more sparingly than did his counterpart in Washington. The rhetoric of southern libertarians about executive tyranny thus seems overblown." (McPherson, The Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 435)

In his defense and whitewashing of Lincoln's civil liberties abuses even Lincoln apologist Mark Neely, Jr., author of The Fate of Liberty, noted that in Fort Lafayette (aka “the American Bastille”) and in other dungeons where political prisoners where held, "Handcuffs and hanging by the wrists were rare [but not nonexistent], but in the summer of 1863 the army had developed a water torture that came to be used routinely" (p. 110) Repeatedly, whenever Congress asked for information on the arrests, he replied that it was not in the public interest to furnish the information (p. 302).

The Tyrant Lincoln imprisoned somewhere between 13,000 and 38,000 people often without charge or trial - or with "trial" only before military tribunals.

It's odd the lengths our dedicated Lost Cause propagandists will go to deny a clear fact of history -- The Confederacy's May 6, 1861 Declaration of War against the United States. This is the actual Confederate Declaration of War on May 6, 1861.

It seems our dedicated PC Revisionists will go to any lengths to lie in order to push their false narrative.

Neither side made any formal declaration of war in the Civil War. The Confederacy did not declare war on the U.S. - it took control of federal property and demanded the evacuation of Fort Sumter. It made clear its intent to fight defensively - to defend its sovereignty.

https://www.google.com/search?q=did+the+confederacy+officially+declare+war+on+the+union&sca_esv=0cf1a99061b4d4b8&ei=_IfPZc6nLaO3wN4PwMCloAo&ved=0ahUKEwjOlYHmnrCEAxWjG9AFHUBgCaQQ4dUDCBA&uact=5&oq=did+the+confederacy+officially+declare+war+on+the+union&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiN2RpZCB0aGUgY29uZmVkZXJhY3kgb2ZmaWNpYWxseSBkZWNsYXJlIHdhciBvbiB0aGUgdW5pb24yChAAGEcY1gQYsAMyChAAGEcY1gQYsAMyChAAGEcY1gQYsAMyChAAGEcY1gQYsAMyChAAGEcY1gQYsAMyChAAGEcY1gQYsAMyChAAGEcY1gQYsAMyChAAGEcY1gQYsANI8RVQqQVYqRNwAXgBkAEAmAEAoAEAqgEAuAEDyAEA-AEBiAYBkAYI&sclient=gws-wiz-serp

Waging war against the United States is treason, for any American citizen, which certainly included union states like Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri. Why would anyone want to deny the obvious?

Indeed, why would anyone want to deny the obvious?

If you bring these [Confederate] leaders to trial it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution secession is not rebellion. Lincoln wanted Davis to escape, and he was right. His capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one.” Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, July 1867 (Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3, p. 765)

“If you bring these leaders to trial, it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution, secession is not a rebellion. His [Jefferson Davis] capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one. We cannot convict him of treason” Chief Justice Salmon P Chase [as quoted by Herman S. Frey, in Jefferson Davis, Frey Enterprises, 1977, pp. 69-72]

It was not a ruling in 1861 and the US Constitution does allow for suspension of habeas corpus "in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it. " Art 1, Sect 9

the Chief justice of the SCOTUS ruled that way in ex parte Merryman and Habeas Corpus may in any event only be suspended by Congress - not unilaterally by the President and not when the courts are functioning. This was just Lincoln acting as an unconstitutional tyrant again.

"14,401 Union civilians arrested by Lincoln administration." "At least 2,672 civilians were subject to military arrest in the Confederacy over the course of its history, although this is likely an undercount given the incompleteness of records."[41] So, proportionately, relatively speaking -- Union arrests are said to be 14,401 out of 22.5 million is one arrested for every 1,562 citizens. In the Confederacy, at least 2,672 arrested out of 5.5 million whites is one arrested for every 2,058 citizens. But since Confederate records are spottier than Union records and many were simply drafted rather than arrested, it's easy to say that proportionately, Confederates arrested as many Southerners as the Union arrested northerners, without habeas corpus.

its easy to say that....if you want to lie. The arrests in the Union vary between 13,000 at a low end and 38,000 at the high end. And don't pretend dissenters weren't simply dragooned into the Union army. So you can forget about that little dodge.

Naw, the only other confirmation came from Crazy-Roger Taney himself, who claimed to be afraid of being arrested. But he never was, so it's just another lunatic fantasy of pro-Confederates.

Nah. Lincoln did it and people other than Taney knew about it. You just don't want to admit it because its inconvenient for you.

That's just more nonsense...

Nah. Your denial is just more nonsense.

Even your own Abbeville Press doesn't say Lincoln shut down 100 disloyal newspapers

Yes he did.

"The censorship of newspapers via the Post Office Department first took place in the summer of 1861 after a New York grand jury handed down a decision stating that certain Northern newspapers were expressing Southern sentiments, thereby making them traitorous. On August 22, the Department responded to this decision by ordering all New York postmasters to refrain from mailing these newspapers, which included the Journal of Commerce, Day Book, Freeman’s Journal, News, and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. While the censorship of mails was initially prompted by an entity outside of the Post Office, a state court, the Department also censored papers on its own. By the end of 1861, twelve more newspapers had been censored from the mail by the orders of Postmaster General Blair.(7)"

over 100 opposition Newspapers. He even ordered the Army to shut down some of them by military force.

They were guilty of publishing forged documents intended to disrupt the Union war efforts.

Uh huh. Sure. Everybody that opposed Lincoln's policy committed a "crime". No doubt.

Ohio Democrat Congressman Vallandigham was arrested and tried by a military tribunal for the crime of violating General Ambrose E. Burnside's General Order Number 38, which warned that the "habit of declaring sympathies for the enemy" would not be tolerated.

Which is blatantly unconstitutional.

The military court sentenced Vallandigham to prison for the war's duration. Pres. Lincoln released Vallandigham from prison and exiled him to the Confederacy.

"trial" before military tribunal is once again blatantly unconstitutional.

Here BroJoeK tries his usual red herring defense of comparing anybody who disagreed with Lincoln's policies to people like Lord Haw Haw who made propaganda broadcasts for the enemy during war. These are of course, radically different things.

The numbers are disputed: "The official death toll for Confederate prisoners at Camp Douglas is given by several sources as 4,454.[217][218]" "The majority of the deaths at the camp had been caused by typhoid fever and pneumonia. The prisoners arrived in a weakened condition, making them vulnerable to disease; at the camp they suffered filthy conditions, an inadequate sewer system, harshly cold weather, and lack of sufficient heat and clothing.[81] " "...In the aftermath of the war, Camp Douglas, though not exclusively, sometimes came to be described as the North's "Andersonville" for its poor conditions and large number of deaths.[230] Camp Douglas was one of the longest operating and largest prisons in the North. Although the number of prisoners who died there was more than at other locations, the percentage of prisoners who died at Camp Douglas was similar to most other Union prisoner of war camps.[231]

Surprise Surprise the US Federal government systematically undercounted the death toll and whitewashed the whole thing. Nobody was ever tried for running this infamous death camp or the deliberate murder of thousands of people they claimed were their fellow Americans. Read "To Die in Chicago" by Levy. It covers this infamous death camp in great detail. https://www.amazon.com/Die-Chicago-Confederate-Prisoners-Douglas/dp/1565543319

the Confederate Mound in Chicago is the largest mass grave in the entire western hemisphere.

The Chicago doctors who inspected the prison in 1863 called Camp Douglas an “extermination camp.” What George Levy’s meticulous research, including newly discovered hospital records, has uncovered is not a pretty picture. The story of Camp Douglas is one of brutal guards, deliberate starvation of prisoners, neglect of the sick, sadistic torture, murder, corruption at all levels, and a beef scandal reaching into the White House.

As a result of the overcrowding and substandard provisions, disease ran rampant and the mortality rate soared. By the thousands, prisoners needlessly died of pneumonia, smallpox, and other maladies. Most were buried in unmarked mass graves. The exact number of those who died is impossible to discern because of the Union’s haphazard recordkeeping and general disregard for the deceased.

Among the most shocking revelations are such forms of torture as hanging prisoners by their thumbs, hanging them by their heels and then whipping them, and forcing prisoners to sit with their exposed buttocks in the ice and snow.

The Confederate Camp Andersonville never saw such gratuitous barbarity.

The death rate of prisoners at Camp Douglas was lower than at Andersonville and the conditions at Camp Douglas were better.[44]

You get to this lie, ONLY if you believe the systematic undercounting of deaths at Camp Douglas.

If any one camp could be called the "Andersonville of the North," it would more likely be Elmira Prison at Elmira, New York where the deaths per thousand prisoners were 241.0 versus 44.1 at Camp Douglas.[231][232]"

Hellmira was another infamous death camp. So was Point Lookout in Maryland.

And yet, according to census numbers Native Americans in Minnesota were around 1.2% of the population in 1860, in 1880 and today. We need not doubt that they were mistreated, but words like "genocide" are a bit far fetched.

And yet this does nothing to refute the historical record of treaty violations, deliberate starvation, ethnic cleansing and mass murder committed by the Lincoln administration.

And still, despite well knowing it, you blind yourself to the real truth, which is that, by his own confession on April 3, 1861, Jefferson Davis intended to start Civil War at Forts Sumter and Pickens, regardless of what Lincoln did or didn't do to "provoke" it.

And yet despite knowing it for certain, you continue to try to dishonestly deny that Lincoln deliberately started the war and that he did so without the consent of Congress.

[FLT-bird]

I'm saying not a single Union warship, your words: "invaded South Carolina's sovereign territory.",/p>

LOL! Then that is a lie on your part.

I'm saying, first of all, South Carolina had no legally recognized "sovereign territory".

of course it did. Read the 1783 Treaty of Paris. The sovereignty of each state was recognized individually. The sovereignty of each state has never been denied and is not denied to the present day by the SCOTUS. So this is just another lie on your part.

Second, even if we contemplate SC "territorial waters", there's no proof that any Union ship "invaded" those waters.

LOL! Every time a union warship sailed into South Carolina's territorial waters without the consent of the lawfully elected government of South Carolina, it invaded South Carolina's sovereign territory.

Third, there was no "fleet" on April 11, there was only one small ship, the Revenue Cutter Harriet Lane and it neither "invaded" South Carolina's "sovereign territory" nor threatened any Confederates.

Lincoln sent a heavily armed fleet as previously discussed.

Your list of Union "war fleet" ships includes none which were actually in Charleston Harbor or invading South Carolina's "sovereign territory".

Lincoln sent the fleet of warships I outlined previously.

[BroJoeK]

woodpusher: "The income tax became law during the Special Session of Congress that was called July 4, 1861.
This unapportioned income tax was unconstitutional.
Also established was the Internal Revenue Bureau, later renamed the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to enforce the then unconstitutional income tax."

Lincoln's income tax was certainly not considered unconstitutional at the time, and one way we can understand this is to remember that the first proposed wartime income tax came from our Father of the Constitution, during Pres. Madison's War of 1812.

If our Father of the Constitution considered a wartime income tax entirely constitutional in 1812, then on what grounds would a Pres. Lincoln, or Congress, decide not to use the same tax to fund Civil War in 1861?

Mr. Madison's War of 1812 ended before Congress was forced to pass his proposed income tax, but sadly, that was not the case in 1861.

1814 Treaty of Ghent eliminated a need for a US wartime income tax proposed by Pres. Madison.
Note US Sec. of State, future Pres. John Quincy Adams, center:

[Fury]

Good greif, both of you grow up.

An otherwise interesting discussion is marred by you two verbally slapping each other like girls.

[BroJoeK]

FLT-bird quoting: "Davis . . . possessed the authority to suspend the writ of habeas corpus for a total of only sixteen months.
During most of that time he exercised this power more sparingly than did his counterpart in Washington.
The rhetoric of southern libertarians about executive tyranny thus seems overblown." (McPherson, The Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 435)"

Other historians disagree:

"Civil War historian Mark E. Neely Jr. suggests that "there seems to be no difference in the arrest rate in those periods when the Confederate Congress refuse to authorization suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and those periods was authorized. ... civilian prisoners trickled into Confederate military prisons whether the writ of habeas corpus was suspended or not."[41]""

FLT-bird: "The Tyrant Lincoln imprisoned somewhere between 13,000 and 38,000 people often without charge or trial - or with "trial" only before military tribunals."

While the "tyrant" Jefferson Davis imprisoned no fewer than 2,687 Southerners with or without suspension of habeas corpus.
If we allow for a number of missing Confederate records, these percentages are relatively the same when compared to Union or Confederate populations.

FLT-bird: "Neither side made any formal declaration of war in the Civil War.
The Confederacy did not declare war on the U.S. - it took control of federal property and demanded the evacuation of Fort Sumter.
It made clear its intent to fight defensively - to defend its sovereignty."

I gave you the link, you can read it yourself, there was an actual Confederate congress Declaration of War on May 6, 1861.
Prior to Confederate Declaration of War, there was no Union "invasion" of the Confederacy and after the declaration, every Union citizen who gave "aid and comfort" to Confederates was guilty, by Constitution's definition, of treason.

FLT-bird quoting: " 'If you bring these [Confederate] leaders to trial it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution secession is not rebellion.
Lincoln wanted Davis to escape, and he was right.
His capture was a mistake.
His trial will be a greater one.'
Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, July 1867 (Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3, p. 765)"

Chase's argument here is spurious, specious and politically motivated, though after the war was over, perhaps for the best.
Chase's key nonsense is in claiming, "secession is not rebellion", since it was not secession alone which caused Civil War, but rather secession mixed with rebellion -- the Confederate assault on Fort Sumter -- which turned a political argument into a military war.
And after the Confederate Declaration of War on May 6, 1861, the entire issue was mute.

FLT-bird: "the Chief justice of the SCOTUS ruled that way in ex parte Merryman and Habeas Corpus may in any event only be suspended by Congress - not unilaterally by the President and not when the courts are functioning.
This was just Lincoln acting as an unconstitutional tyrant again."

Naw, it wasn't a SCOTUS ruling, it was only Crazy-Roger Taney babbling nonsense as a circuit court judge.
SCOTUS never ruled on it during the war.

FLT-bird: "Its easy to say that....if you want to lie.
The arrests in the Union vary between 13,000 at a low end and 38,000 at the high end.
And don't pretend dissenters weren't simply dragooned into the Union army.
So you can forget about that little dodge."

This source says:

" Even so, the lowest estimate is 13,535 arrests from February 15, 1862, to the end of the war. [3]
At least 866 others occurred from the beginning of the war until February 15, 1862.
Therefore, at least 14,401 civilians were arrested by the Lincoln administration.
If one takes the population of the North during the Civil War as 22.5 million (using the 1860 census and counting West Virginia but not Nevada), then one person out of every 1,563 in the North was arrested during the Civil War.[4]"

Do the math for Confederate arrests and the results come out pretty much the same.

FLT-bird on alleged arrest warrant for Crazy-Roger: "Nah.
Lincoln did it and people other than Taney knew about it.
You just don't want to admit it because its inconvenient for you."

So you repeatedly claim, but without ever providing a verifiable primary source for your claims.

FLT-bird quoting: "over 100 opposition Newspapers.
He even ordered the Army to shut down some of them by military force."

And what about the others?
The answer is, he didn't shut them down.
They remained free to continue publishing.

The US Post Office, however, did not deliver their treasonous materials.
Nor is there any evidence of Confederate authorities ever allowing publishers treasonous to them to operate.

FLT-bird referring to the arrest and trial of Ohio Democrat Congressman Vallandingham: "Which is blatantly unconstitutional."

Not at the time.

FLT-bird "Confederate Mound in Chicago is the largest mass grave in the entire western hemisphere."

The numbers of dead only exceeded, perhaps, by those at Andersonville, Georgia.
Worth noticing that Andersonville's death toll of 13,000 happened over just 15 months of operation, or nearly 900 per month on average.
By contrast, at Camp Douglas, the official death toll of 4,415 happened over 39 months of operation, or just over 100 per month average.
So, even if we contemplate your higher speculation of 6,000 total deaths, it's still just 150 per month, compared to nearly 900 per month at Andersonville, Georgia.

FLT-bird quoting: "The death rate of prisoners at Camp Douglas was lower than at Andersonville and the conditions at Camp Douglas were better.[44]

"You get to this lie, ONLY if you believe the systematic undercounting of deaths at Camp Douglas."

Nooooo... even if we contemplate your alleged 6,000 Confederate POW deaths at Camp Douglas, that is still only around 150 per month over 39 months from February 1862 through May 1865.
At Andersonville Union prisoner deaths averaged nearly 900 per month for 15 months = 13,000 total.

FLT-bird on Minnesota Native Americans: "And yet this does nothing to refute the historical record of treaty violations, deliberate starvation, ethnic cleansing and mass murder committed by the Lincoln administration."

There is no evidence the "Lincoln administration" committed any crime against Minnesota Native Americans.
The root cause appears to be a two-month delay in Federal payments to reservation Indians, possibly from corrupt agents, accompanied by local merchants' refusal to extend credit to starving Indians.
Nothing in the tragic events there suggest that Lincoln was somehow personally responsible.

If you want a rough equivalency, we could personally blame Jefferson Davis for the Lawrence, Kansas massacre in August, 1863.
What sense would that make?

[BroJoeK]

FLT-bird quoting BJK: "I'm saying, first of all, South Carolina had no legally recognized "sovereign territory".

FLT-bird: "of course it did.
Read the 1783 Treaty of Paris.
The sovereignty of each state was recognized individually.
The sovereignty of each state has never been denied and is not denied to the present day by the SCOTUS.
So this is just another lie on your part."

Whatever the Treaty of Paris may or may not have recognized in 1783 did not last beyond the new US Constitution ratified in 1788.

If it were true that South Carolina in 1860 had "sovereign territorial waters" to defend, then you might expect at least a SC Coast Guard or Navy, but of course there was none.
South Carolina's territorial waters were the responsibility of Federal government, not South Carolina.

FLT-bird "Every time a union warship sailed into South Carolina's territorial waters without the consent of the lawfully elected government of South Carolina, it invaded South Carolina's sovereign territory."

But not one ever did on April 11, 1861.

FLT-bird: "Lincoln sent a heavily armed fleet as previously discussed."

Perhaps, but not one of those ships ever "invaded" South Carolina's "sovereign territorial waters".

[jmacusa]

When I get pushed I shove back.

[DiogenesLamp]

If we are going to disregard original sources, then we don't have much of a Founding left worth discussing.

No one said you need to disregard Jefferson, but you can think for yourself. It does not stand to reason that only 2 out of 13 slave states would object to language that portrays them as bad.

If Georgia and South Carolina hadn't spoken up, others would have done.

You are pinning too much significance on what Jefferson said.

[DiogenesLamp]

But, of course -- endless lies about it notwithstanding -- Lincoln didn't invade first and didn't start the Civil War.

Disagree. And if we can't agree on basic facts, I don't really see the point of arguing with you.

Lincoln sent a fleet of warships with the intent of provoking the Confederates into attacking either the ships or the fort. He cleverly allowed the public orders to go out that the ships would attack, but secretly issued orders which would absolutely prevent them from attacking.

The Confederates, having seen only his public orders, believed the ships would attack, and as a consequence, acted. This gave Lincoln the excuse he needed to create a larger war and invade the South.

Lincoln started it.

[DiogenesLamp]

I don't take what Jefferson said as the objective truth, but his claim that South Carolina and Georgia had serious objections to the passage has the ring of truth.

I do not doubt that this is true, but it may not necessarily be the complete picture. Others may have, and it would seem to me, likely would have objected as well, but South Carolina and Georgia were simply the first to make their opposition known.

As for the rest of the state delegates, maybe they objected to the passage as such, or maybe the SC and GA delegates were so uncompromising in their objections that the other delegates felt they had to give in or risk losing those two states.

It could be, but the way "Progressing America" portrays it, Georgia and South Carolina were the sole objectors and the sole cause of that language being stripped out.

That does not ring true to me. That seems like wishful thinking.

Jefferson's passage may have been regarded as too inflammatory and too likely to lose the revolution support even (or especially) in Jefferson's Virginia. Delegates may also have thought that blaming George III for slavery and the slave trade was going too far and ultimately nonsensical. Some might have disliked the implied threat to the slave trade in the passage, but there were many other possible grounds for objection.

That is exactly my thoughts on this topic.

That made slavery and the slave trade more prominent a part of the document than it was in the draft submitted by the Five.

It causes the document to lose focus. The primary intent was to justify independence, not to initiate a debate on the moral issues surrounding slavery.

It would have opened up the Congress to bitter and counterproductive debates.

Exactly. The debate in the larger community would also have been counterproductive because it did not advance, but instead would have hindered, the work necessary to be done to gain independence. They could get into this secondary debate after the war, which is in fact what they did.

Secessionists claimed that the Continental Congress didn't mean Africans or slaves when it asserted that men had a right to liberty. I'd say that the Founders were thinking of themselves, and they meant "us," the colonists, but the Declaration didn't explicitly exclude Africans or slaves.

I think that was Jefferson's intent, but the rest of the people were oblivious to this idea initially. The vast majority of colonist that read those words, saw them as referring to themselves, without much, if any, thought being given to the slaves.

Jefferson and the Continental Congress didn't have to invoke a universal principle to declare their independence.

They pretty much did. If you read the writings on "Natural Law" during that era, you find that they dealt in broad principles regarding the relationship between God and Man. In order to fit into the framework of natural law which declared they had a right to independence and a right to govern themselves, you had to acknowledge that these rights applied to all men.

You should take a look at "Lex Rex" (Law and the King, Samuel Rutherford, 1644) for a feel of how they looked at natural law.

[DiogenesLamp]

Regarding how Jefferson's anti-slavery text got deleted from the Declaration of Independence, DiogenesLamp argues it was Northerners, not Southerners, who deleted Jefferson's words:

Don't put words in my mouth. If I recall correctly, (no, i'm not going back to look), *YOU* asserted that it was the Southerners. I pointed out that the only Southerner on the committee was Jefferson, and he was the one who wanted to put those words in there.

Obviously it was the larger Northern majority that objected.

Of course, since we first discussed this, someone pointed out that they likely sent the initial draft to the committee of the whole, and rather than the committee of the five removing those words (which is what I had understood to be the case for years), it was the committee of the whole which may have done it.

Whatever. It had to get through the committee of the whole at some point, and the majority obviously decided to get rid of those words, and likely for the reasons that "X" cited above.

In any case, you have provided some useful information on the topic, and I see this as a refreshing change from your usual method of posting massive amounts of irrelevant information. :)