Rare Lincoln Letter Found in Allentown

AP ^ | July 19, 2006 | AP

[stainlessbanner]

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) - July 19, 2006 - A University of Illinois researcher had discovered a fourth copy of a rare letter Abraham Lincoln had written by to the nation's governors in 1861.

The letter John Lupton found Tuesday in the Lehigh County Historical Society's holdings was one Lincoln wrote as part of an unsuccessful ratification process for a constitutional amendment Congress adopted during the term of his predecessor, President James Buchanan, that would have made slavery the law of the land.

The president remembered for abolishing slavery had been willing to push the amendment as "kind of a carrot to the Southern states" if that would preserve the union, said Lupton, associate director of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln Project of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency.

"But even by that point, it was too late. By that time, the Southern states felt Lincoln's election was an affront," Lupton said. In fact, the letter discovered in Allentown was addressed to "His Excellency the Governor of the State of Florida," which had seceded from the union two months earlier.

Until Tuesday, only three of the letters were known to have survived. "It's a very cool document," Lupton said.

Joseph Garrera, the historical society director, said he will consult with the society's board to determine the best way to display the document and try to figure out exactly who donated the letter.

[usmcobra]

So you believe that the confederacy should have abolished slavery as a part of their moves towards secession.

Then why didn't they?

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Who was it said he liked South Carolina, it was too small for a country and too large for an insane asylum?

[stand watie]

i think that YEP they should have, but since i don't have a crystal ball, i'd be guessing.

had they done so, EARLY & recruited ALL the able-bodied men into the armed services, our ancestors MIGHT have won their freedom, against all odds.

i touched on this issue in another post, which i'll ping to you. i see no point in retyping it again.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

check out #51.

free dixie,sw

[groanup]

Slavery was an economic reality. It was not a moral issue between the North and the South any more than was smoking cigars. The lies are in the new order that the WBTS was "about" and "abolished" slavery. Nothing of the sort. Slavery was worldwide at the time. The only difference, If you read, and believe, D'nish D'souza's book "The End of Racism" is that the black slaves that lived in the US at the time were far better off than the majority of the people in the ENTIRE WORLD. Only now do their descendants want to plead reparations and stamp the guilt on the foreheads of the descendants of slave owners.

[usmcobra]

How then can any man claim they were fighting for the south's freedom when they knew that others were being enslaved?

Lincoln, the abolitionist, staked the fate of the nation to free all from slavery, and the southern democrats staked their own fates to maintain slavery. Lincoln won.

Had there been a debate and a vote he still would have won as well, only without the bloodshed.

[stand watie]

read #65 above. graoanup said it better than i did.

the FACTS are that lincoln, the TYRANT, was a LIAR,an EGOMANIAC & a crooked SHYSTER lawyer, as well as a stone RACIST & an anti-Indian bigot.

there is not enough soap in all the world to wash away his crimes against HUMANITY or the innocent BLOOD from his hands, no matter what the "lincoln MYTH" says.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

i wouldn't argue with most of that.

everyone would be better off had there been NO African slave trade. it dirtied everyone who touched the "peculiar institution".

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

lincoln was interested in only three things:

1. MONEY

2.CONQUEST &

3. MORE POWER.

he did NOT care a DAMN for 'the plight of the slaves",as he SAID, in his own correspondence.

why don't you "get the message" that you are defending an AMORAL, cheap, money-hungry,politician, who was no better than "wee willie klintoon"???

BOTH lincoln & klintoon would do ANYTHING to "get ahead". ANYTHING!

free dixie,sw

[usmcobra]

STAND is not like anyone here expect you to make a case worth reading, you need someone to carry your load for you.

[usmcobra]

STAND I realize that profanity is not supposed to be posted on this forum, but honestly allowing you to do so might improve your posts.

I mean it's not like every adult that has read one of your posts can't hear the cusswords you screamed out as you typed what you had to say.

[stand watie]

spoken like the WITLESS twit & TURNCOAT that you demonstrably are.

since you have no crystal ball that works, your post is a CLASSIC CASE of NITWITTERY & IGNORANT, arrogance.

lol AT you!

free dixie,sw

[usmcobra]

Simple question STAND.....

The Confederacy has been dead since 1865, which country am I a TURNCOAT of?

And which country are you a citizen of?

Shall I start the Jethrotardy music now?

[azhenfud]

"Legally these would be Apprentices of a guild or a union, indentured servants and debtors working off a debt through service to those that loaned them the money, not slaves."

You are simply WRONG.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/article04/15.html#1

"This clause contemplated the existence of a positive unqualified right on the part of the owner of a slave which no state law could in any way regulate, control, or restrain. Consequently the owner of a slave had the same right to seize and repossess him in another State, as the local laws of his own State conferred upon him, and a state law which penalized such seizure was held unconstitutional. Congress had the power and the duty, which it exercised by the Act of February 12, 1793, to carry into effect the rights given by this section, and the States had no concurrent power to legislate on the subject. However, a state statute providing a penalty for harboring a fugitive slave was held not to conflict with this clause since it did not affect the right or remedy either of the master or the slave; by it the State simply prescribed a rule of conduct for its own citizens in the exercise of its police power."

-------------------

I challenge you to provide a legitimate opposing resource.

[azhenfud]

The USSC is consistant, in that even today, it still rules badly on some cases.

[Non-Sequitur]

Sovereignty over the states. Powerful central government. Trying to lead a nation of states with a handful of power brokers in Washington. Control of states' laws. Usurping the 9th and 10th Amendments.

Specifics, please. How was the federal government infringing on state sovereignty, what was expanding the powerful central government, what laws were being controlled and how were the 9th and 10th Amendments being violated?

[usmcobra]

I've already given a Founding Father who would have been considered a perfect case for Article IV Section 2 as I have described it: Ben Franklin, who as an apprentice printer ran away from his master to which he had been legally bond to learn the craft during a period of labor or service.

And summit to you the actual writing of an indentured servant describing the conditions by which they had to live under, the only difference between them and slaves, a legal contract that would expire when all conditions were met by the servant.

After reading such an account how is it any different from a similar account of life aboard a slave ship?

Legally Defining slavery vs servitude (Debtors, Apprentices, and Indentured Servants) is the missing link in this argument.

Those of us blessed with the passage of time tend to forget that indentured servants even existed in a time where a female one was subject to on average of 12 lashing with a whip or 240 extra days added to her contract for getting pregnant by her master as well as possibly an additional 2 years of service under the charge of "the churchwardens of the parish where she lived" according to the laws of Virgina.

but of course I'm "wrong" when I point out that the labour and service described in Article IV Section 2 describes a legal relationship between apprentices of a guild or a union, indentured servants and debtors and those to which they had bound themselves voluntarily and legally, how soon we forget the hardships and cost that went into building this country and the price paid by those that did.

[azhenfud]

One of the immediate usurptions was abolishing the Constitutional method whereby Senators were elected and replacing it with a system where a FEDERAL ELECTIONS board imposes its regulations on and governs the application and campaigning process for STATE representative offices. Now, if a candidate doesn't get an endorsement from their national party's office (which are controlled by national party leaders), they're slated as damaged goods, unlikely to succeed and, unless they're self-made affluent and wealthy, can hardly meet the boards' petitioning requirements. PLUS, the FedGov recently expanded their control over that "institution" with the braintoot of McCain.

Encroachments would come, not so much from sudden, direct and blatant impositions, but from the subtle deterioration of Americans' Constitutional liberties. Whenever a state enacts the will of its people in opposition to federal mandates, the first thing to occur is threats of federal blackmail and extortion through taxpayer funds and services being withheld. The "state" is then most often condemned and made to look as though it doesn't represent its own populus - as if it were the "bad guy". The central government advocate federals then claim they're in opposition to the state, not the people as a ploy to divide.

Those who believe the federal system listens to and cares for them are living in a fairytale world. It has its own agenda, cowering only to a select affluent segment of the populus whose offspring only serve to perpetuate that control clique. The "of the people, for the people, and by the people" is a farce of the first order meant only to pacify and keep us ignorant in check.

[groanup]

From the SC Articles of Secession. Granted, the topics included slavery. But pick another and the compact was still violated:

By this Constitution, certain duties were imposed upon the several States, and the exercise of certain of their powers was restrained, which necessarily implied their continued existence as sovereign States. But to remove all doubt, an amendment was added, which declared that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people. On the 23d May , 1788, South Carolina, by a Convention of her People, passed an Ordinance assenting to this Constitution, and afterwards altered her own Constitution, to conform herself to the obligations she had undertaken.

Thus was established, by compact between the States, a Government with definite objects and powers, limited to the express words of the grant. This limitation left the whole remaining mass of power subject to the clause reserving it to the States or to the people, and rendered unnecessary any specification of reserved rights.

We hold that the Government thus established is subject to the two great principles asserted in the Declaration of Independence; and we hold further, that the mode of its formation subjects it to a third fundamental principle, namely: the law of compact. We maintain that in every compact between two or more parties, the obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of the contracting parties to perform a material part of the agreement, entirely releases the obligation of the other; and that where no arbiter is provided, each party is remitted to his own judgment to determine the fact of failure, with all its consequences.

In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.

[usmcobra]

You are of course talking about the method where a state's Senators were elected not by the people of the state but instead by the majority of the politicians of a States assembly or put another way by the party in control of a state.

No wonder democrats were so commited to this idea of returning to a day and age when they could control the country by controlling the states.