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Davis' bicentennial eclipsed by Lincoln
The Kentucky Kernel ^ | 3/28/08 | Jill Laster

Posted on 03/28/2008 12:15:10 PM PDT by cowboyway

Over the last few months, celebrations for Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday have drawn attention to the Kentucky native's life and his legacy as president. But the 200-year anniversary of another Kentucky president's birth, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, is receiving mixed reviews.

"I'll say it this way - winners write history," said Ron Bryant, a Lexington historian writing a book on Davis. "We need heroes, we need villains. Lincoln became a hero and Davis a villain."

Davis was born in what is now Todd County, Ky., in 1808, one year before Lincoln. Davis served as the only president of the 11 southern states that seceded from the Union between 1861 and 1865. The Confederate States of America surrendered in 1865, and Davis was locked in prison the same year.

Despite being denounced by many civil rights groups, signs of Davis' legacy can still be found throughout the state.

In Southwest Kentucky, a structure resembling the Washington Monument stands in memory of Davis. At 351 feet tall, the Jefferson Davis Monument is the fourth largest freestanding obelisk in the world, according to Kentucky State Parks.

Although Kentucky never seceded from the Union, a statue of Davis stands in the rotunda in the state's Capitol building.

"The Civil War is still very much alive in many places," said Cliff Howard, a Jefferson Davis impersonator. "Kentucky was on both sides of the fence. It still is."

Having heard of Kentucky's reputation for "being a little backward," integrated strategic communications senior James Davidson Jr. was not surprised about Davis' statue in the Capitol building.

Davidson, first-vice president of UK's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said a statue of Davis leaves a bad impression.

"What is Frankfort saying to the rest of Kentucky with it being there?" Davidson said. "I respect everyone's heritage and Southern tradition, but given the history, I think it shouldn't be there."

The statue of Davis, installed in 1936, is one of five statues in the Capitol building. Lincoln is the largest in the center, and Davis stands in the corner behind his right shoulder. Former Kentucky Congressman Henry Clay, physician and drafter of the state constitution Ephraim McDowell and former Vice President Alben Barkley also stand in the rotunda.

The last time Davis' statue came into debate was 2003, when a coalition of African-American groups protested its presence in the Capitol building. A state advisory committee left the issue up to former Gov. Ernie Fletcher, who took no action during his term.

Gov. Steve Beshear does not plan to remove the statue because Davis is a historical figure who represents part of Kentucky's cultural history, a spokeswoman said.

Student Government President Nick Phelps said his feelings on the statue in the Capitol building resembled how he felt during a controversy two years ago about a 46-foot mural in Memorial Hall depicting the history of Lexington and its surrounding area. The mural, which some said stereotyped American Indians and blacks, was not removed.

"I was not in support of removing the mural, so I would not support removing Jefferson Davis," Phelps said. "I don't think we should remove history. I think it removes the question, 'Who is he?' "

Many students might ask the same question about Davis.

In Kentucky, the Civil War is part of the middle school curriculum. Unless students take an advanced placement history course in high school, that's usually the last time they focus on 19th century American history, said Nayasha Owens-Morton, a U.S. history and African-American history teacher at Bryan Station Traditional High School.

William Campbell has taught a class on Lincoln at UK for about 10 years as an English and honors professor. Students going into his class know little about the confederate president, he said.

"About Jefferson Davis, Kentuckians tend to know that he was from our state, that there's a memorial dedicated to him somewhere in the state, and that he was the president of the Confederacy," Campbell said. "Of Lincoln's writings, most have read only the Gettysburg Address. Of Davis's writings, most have read nothing."


TOPICS: Heated Discussion
KEYWORDS: abrahamlincoln; confederacyslavers; confederate; davis; despotlincoln; dishonestabe; dixie; getoveritalready; greatestpresident; jeffersondavis; lincolnthetyrant; northernaggression; rebel; remembersumter; swattienonsense; tyrantlincoln; youlost
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To: stand watie
NEITHER had the morals of an alley-cat.

While Mr. Lincoln certainly had his faults, even his most vicious critics never accused him of Clintonian frolics with the office staff. AFAIK, he was completely faithful to Mary.

This says a lot about his character, IMO, as she was not exactly the easiest person in the world to live with.

281 posted on 04/04/2008 2:45:16 PM PDT by Sherman Logan (Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves. - A. Lincoln)
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To: Sherman Logan; cowboyway
What enormous expansion of federal power was there in 1880 as compared to 1860? Not much.

A better question might be what enormous expansion of federal power was there in 1850?

The Fugitive Slave Acts of 1850 - passed not only with the South's approval but with the unanimous and insistent demand of every Southern Representative and Senator - were the most dramatic exercise of federal power since the Alien And Sedition Acts.

In fact they were even more so.

Federal Marshals accompanied slave hunters into the North and with a warrant that contained only a vague description of a Southern master's slave could and did enter the houses of free black men and free white men too in search of fugitives.

Once captured, they had no rights - including no right of habeas corpus - and they were judged by special federal courts set up for the purpose in which the judges were paid by the federal government five dollars for freeing any seized black person they believed was wrongly identified and ten dollars for sending any seized black person they believed was rightly identified.

Citizens of Northern states were grabbed and spirited over the border by a hastily assembled kangaroo court before their friends and family knew they were missing.

Southern masters had slaves returned to them who they claimed had been missing for twenty years or more - and federal law allowed these masters to seize the children born in the free states to these black people.

Half the black people in the North fled to Canada because the governments of their states were helpless to protect them.

This running roughshod of federal power over state laws enraged Northern opinion - not on "states' rights" grounds but moral grounds - and delighted Southerners.

And for what? Less than a thousand allegedly recovered slaves.

The most vocal proponents of draconian federal measures - such as calling out three hundred federal marshals to recover one suspected fugitive in Boston - were the legislatures of the deep South states like Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina and Mississippi. In other words the same states that were so enamoured of "states' rights" in 1860 and the first to secede from a federal government that rigidly enforced their will in faraway Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.

It is no wonder that this hypocrisy stank in the nostrils of the North come secession time.

282 posted on 04/04/2008 5:32:48 PM PDT by wideawake (Why is it that those who call themselves Constitutionalists know the least about the Constitution?)
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To: cowboyway; Bubba Ho-Tep
There are no such things as "states' rights."

States are governments, and governments do not have rights.

Citizens have rights, governments have powers.

So the real issue is the powers of states and which powers the states have in relation to the powers of the federal government.

The main question on which the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, The Kansas-Nebraska debates of 1854 and the Civil War turned was whether or not the federal government had a right under the Constitution to determine the legality of slaveholding in federal territories not organized into states.

So the main issue was never the mythical notion of "states' rights" or even the powers of states in relation to the federal government.

It was a debate over the power of the Southern section to dictate to the federal government how to govern federal territories not under the jurisdiction of the several states.

The Confederacy was formed before Lincoln was even sworn into office. Why?

283 posted on 04/04/2008 5:45:24 PM PDT by wideawake (Why is it that those who call themselves Constitutionalists know the least about the Constitution?)
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To: wideawake

You are absolutely right.

The South seceded not because they disliked federal power but because they were losing control of it. They had no problem with intrusive federal power when they controlled it and used it in their interest.

As you point out, the fugutive slave issue was a big one in southern eyes, but like just about everything else political involving slavery, it was a symbolic issue, not a real economic one. The thousand slaves recovered were worth what, $1,000,000? I wonder how much it cost the government to recapture these poor people.


284 posted on 04/04/2008 5:46:10 PM PDT by Sherman Logan (Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves. - A. Lincoln)
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To: Sherman Logan
The South seceded not because they disliked federal power but because they were losing control of it. They had no problem with intrusive federal power when they controlled it and used it in their interest.

Indeed. In the 1930s in the South Confederate Memorial Day, Lee's Birthday, and the anniversaries of various key battles were occasions on which Southern orators would deliver long disquisitions about "states' rights" and federal aggression to enthusiastic applause.

And then these same Southerners would turn around and vote - by an overwhelming landslide -for Roosevelt and the most far-reaching federal programs in US history up to that point.

There were no protests when the federal government was handing out those Civilian Conservation Corps checks or when it was sezing vast swaths of private land for the TVA and handing out thousands and thousands of sinecure TVA jobs.

285 posted on 04/04/2008 5:56:23 PM PDT by wideawake (Why is it that those who call themselves Constitutionalists know the least about the Constitution?)
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To: Bubba Ho-Tep
People have rights. They create governments and give them powers to protect these rights. Governments don't have rights

Your argument is purely semantics.

State's rights is a commonly used term that is usually used to defend a state law that the Federal government seeks to override, or a perceived violation of the bounds of Federal authority.

"State's rights" been used in that context for 200+ years from Joe Citizen to supreme court justices.

But, if it's your mission in life to delete this commonly used term from the lexicon of American language and replace it with your more preferred terminology then, by all means, go for it.

However, leave me off your list of potential converts because, like Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Bob Barr, Justice Roberts, Anne Coulter, and millions of others, I'm gonna continue to use the commonly acknowledged term, state's rights.

286 posted on 04/04/2008 7:09:19 PM PDT by cowboyway ("No damn man kills me and lives." -- Nathan Bedford Forrest)
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To: rockrr
Wouldn’t do any good. Swattie is even confused about sewage...;’}

See post #286.

287 posted on 04/04/2008 7:12:13 PM PDT by cowboyway ("No damn man kills me and lives." -- Nathan Bedford Forrest)
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To: stand watie
1. that if secession is NOT lawful & a BASIC RIGHT of FREE men/women, then NOBODY is really free (instead we are ALL "subjects" of the union/leviathan)

The yankee mentality is to be a "subject" of a power base. For example, they can't wait to turn 18 and become union thugs.

(Isn't it interesting how yankee labor union and communist posters look so much alike?)

288 posted on 04/04/2008 7:22:18 PM PDT by cowboyway ("No damn man kills me and lives." -- Nathan Bedford Forrest)
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To: wideawake
In other words: he won.

What exactly did he win?

The right to bow to and become forever enslaved to an all powerful, central government that would become destined to invade ever single aspect of every single life?

Nope. Just like the Confederate soldiers and citizens, he and his comrades LOST, for him and all of the descendent's on both sides, the Republican form of government given to us by the Founders to be replaced by an authoritative oligarchy that was only made possible by fighting for Lincoln's cause.

Thanks yank.

289 posted on 04/04/2008 7:39:38 PM PDT by cowboyway ("No damn man kills me and lives." -- Nathan Bedford Forrest)
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To: x
I always liked Foghorn Leghorn.

Since we're doing images, I've got one of you, x-girl......


290 posted on 04/04/2008 7:48:33 PM PDT by cowboyway ("No damn man kills me and lives." -- Nathan Bedford Forrest)
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To: cowboyway
What exactly did he win?

Something you and your whinging can never take away from him: he won the right to call himself a preserver of the Union.

Thanks to him, I live in the greatest country the world has ever known.

Thanks yank.

You're welcome, Mr. Jeremiah Wright-lite.

291 posted on 04/04/2008 8:05:36 PM PDT by wideawake (Why is it that those who call themselves Constitutionalists know the least about the Constitution?)
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To: Sherman Logan
Nobody really believes that, not even the people who say it. And they are referring to sexual morality only.

Define 'nobody'.

Sexual morality does make up a large section of the moral pie so it gets the most attention.

By 1861 there were no slaves in "the north."

NJ had slaves until 1865. Also Maryland and West Virginia had slaves during the War.

Most of those that were retained for a while during Reconstruction was because some southern terrorists refused to accept blacks as fellow citizens.

How do you account for the black population declining in the north after northern slavery was abolished?

The business of emancipation in the North amounted to the simple matters of, 1. determining how to compensate slaveowners for the few slaves they had left, and, 2. making sure newly freed slaves would be marginalized economically and politically in their home communities, and that nothing in the state's constitution would encourage fugitive slaves from elsewhere to settle there.

"I confess to a prejudice in favor of my own race, & can't learn to like the odor of either Billy goats or niggers."-----General George B. McClellan

Me thinks that your little 'terrorist' comment should be self directed.

More on Northern Slavery:

"The Northern climate set some barriers to large-scale agricultural slavery. The long winters, which brought no income on Northern farms, made slaves a burden for many months of the year unless they could be hired out to chop wood or tend livestock."

"in 1718 a Connecticut man discovered a black man and a white woman together, and in his enraged reaction he castrated the other man. The “Boston News Letter” reported this, approvingly."

"The change in the economic winds helped ease the path for the North to give up its direct involvement in expanding slavery, without disowning the fortune it already had made."

"Edgar McManus, the historian of Northern slavery, finds that “abolitionists of the 1780's belonged to the business elite which thirty years before had reaped handsome profits from the slave trade. The precipitous decline of the trade after 1770 apparently sharpened the moral sensibilities of those who had formerly profited. ... The leaders of the abolition movement were honorable men who sincerely regarded slavery as a great moral wrong. But it is also true that they embraced antislavery at a time when it entailed no economic hardship for their class.”

"Whites of the working class hated slavery as an institution, but they also feared the free Negro as an economic competitor. They supported emancipation not to raise the Negro to a better life but to destroy a system which gave him a fixed place in the economy.”

"Early 19th century New Englanders had real motives for forgetting their slave history, or, if they recalled it at all, for characterizing it as a brief period of mild servitude. This was partly a Puritan effort to absolve New England's ancestors of their guilt. The cleansing of history had a racist motive as well, denying blacks -- slave or free -- a legitimate place in New England history. But most importantly, the deliberate creation of a "mythology of a free New England" was a crucial event in the history of sectional conflict in America. The North, and New England in particular, sought to demonize the South through its institution of slavery; they did this in part by burying their own histories as slave-owners and slave-importers. At the same time, behind the potent rhetoric of Daniel Webster and others, they enshrined New England values as the essential ones of the Revolution, and the new nation. In so doing, they characterized Southern interests as purely sectional and selfish. In the rhetorical battle, New England backed the South right out of the American mainstream."

Melish's perceptive book, "Disowning Slavery," argues that the North didn't simply forget that it ever had slaves. She makes a forceful case for a deliberate re-writing of the region's past, in the early 1800s.

"In 1862, the General Assembly replied to Lincoln's compensated emancipation offer with a resolution stating that, "when the people of Delaware desire to abolish slavery within her borders, they will do so in their own way, having due regard to strict equity." And they furthermore notified the administration that they regarded "any interference from without" as "improper," and a thing to be "harshly repelled."

"As it turned out, Kentucky and Delaware, among the border states, continued to tolerate slavery, even after Lee's surrender. Delaware's General Assembly refused to ratify the 13th Amendment, calling it an illegal extension of federal powers over the states."

"As in other maritime colonies of New England, the chief families were among the chief slavers. Cornelius Waldo, maternal great-grandfather of Ralph Waldo Emerson, was a slave merchant on a large scale, a proud importer of "Choice Irish Duck, fine Florence wine, negro slaves and Irish butter." His ship, Africa, plied the Middle Passage packed with 200 black people at a time crammed below-decks, though lethal epidemics of "flux" sometimes tore through the captives and cut into Waldo's profits."

In a notorious case, the famous schooner-yacht Wanderer, pride of the New York Yacht Club, put in to Port Jefferson Harbor in April 1858 to be fitted out for the slave trade. Everyone looked the other way -- which suggests this kind of thing was not unusual -- except the surveyor of the port, who reported his suspicions to the federal officials. The ship was seized and towed to New York, but her captain talked (and possibly bought) his way out and was allowed to sail for Charleston, S.C.

"Slavery was abolished in Ohio by the state's original constitution (1802). But at the same time, Ohio, with slave-state Kentucky across the river, took the lead in aggressively barring black immigration."

"[R]ace prejudice seems stronger in those states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists, and nowhere is it more intolerant than in those states where slavery was never known." --Alexis De Tocqueville, “Democracy in America”

But I contend little of this is a direct result of the WBTS.

You must be one helluva political historian because MOST political historians acknowledge that there are two defining moments of American governmental change: 1)The War Between the States and 2)FDR.

292 posted on 04/04/2008 10:45:34 PM PDT by cowboyway ("No damn man kills me and lives." -- Nathan Bedford Forrest)
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To: wideawake
Something you and your whinging can never take away from him: he won the right to call himself a preserver of the Union.

He was a damn yankee invader that deserved to have his ass shot and then left for the buzzards.......which probably would have turned their noses up at him.

The probable reason that he didn't eat a Reb bullet was that he was hiding somewhere.

Thanks to him, I live in the greatest country the world has ever known.

This country would be a lot greater without a few million POS's from north of the Mason/Dixon line.

Because of you POS ancestor, we have Hillary, Schumer, Kerry, Kennedy, Sharpton, Obama, Murtha, Bayh, Biden, Dodd, Levin, did I mention Kennedy?, Souter, Ginsburg, did I mention Kennedy,.............

293 posted on 04/04/2008 11:00:56 PM PDT by cowboyway ("No damn man kills me and lives." -- Nathan Bedford Forrest)
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To: wideawake
Half the black people in the North fled to Canada because the governments of their states were helpless to protect them.

This running roughshod of federal power over state laws enraged Northern opinion - not on "states' rights" grounds but moral grounds - and delighted Southerners.

It is no wonder that this hypocrisy stank in the nostrils of the North come secession time.

What a steaming pile of crap!!!!!!! The north was only too happy to be rid of any and all blacks using any method.

You may be 'wideawake' but you're blind as a damn bat............

"Early 19th century New Englanders had real motives for forgetting their slave history, or, if they recalled it at all, for characterizing it as a brief period of mild servitude. This was partly a Puritan effort to absolve New England's ancestors of their guilt. The cleansing of history had a racist motive as well, denying blacks -- slave or free -- a legitimate place in New England history. But most importantly, the deliberate creation of a "mythology of a free New England" was a crucial event in the history of sectional conflict in America. The North, and New England in particular, sought to demonize the South through its institution of slavery; they did this in part by burying their own histories as slave-owners and slave-importers. At the same time, behind the potent rhetoric of Daniel Webster and others, they enshrined New England values as the essential ones of the Revolution, and the new nation. In so doing, they characterized Southern interests as purely sectional and selfish. In the rhetorical battle, New England backed the South right out of the American mainstream."

"The attempt to force blame for all America's ills onto the South led the Northern leadership to extreme twists of logic. Abolitionist leaders in New England noted the "degraded" condition of the local black communities. Yet the common abolitionist explanation of this had nothing to do with northerners, black or white. Instead, they blamed it on the continuance of slavery in the South. "The toleration of slavery in the South," Garrison editorialized, "is the chief cause of the unfortunate situation of free colored persons in the North."

"Melish's perceptive book, "Disowning Slavery," argues that the North didn't simply forget that it ever had slaves. She makes a forceful case for a deliberate re-writing of the region's past, in the early 1800s. By the 1850s, Melish writes, "New England had become a region whose history had been re-visioned by whites as a triumphant narrative of free, white labor." And she adds that this "narrative of a historically free, white New England also advanced antebellum New England nationalism by supporting the region's claims to a superior moral identity that could be contrasted effectively with the 'Jacobinism' of a slave-holding, 'negroized' South." The demonizing adjective is one she borrows from Daniel Webster, who used it in the Webster-Hayne debate of 1830."

"Slavery was abolished in Ohio by the state's original constitution (1802). But at the same time, Ohio, with slave-state Kentucky across the river, took the lead in aggressively barring black immigration.

"When Virginian John Randolph's 518 slaves were emancipated and a plan was hatched to settle them in southern Ohio, the population rose up in indignation. An Ohio congressman warned that if the attempt were made, "the banks of the Ohio ... would be lined with men with muskets on their shoulders to keep off the emancipated slaves."

"[R]ace prejudice seems stronger in those states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists, and nowhere is it more intolerant than in those states where slavery was never known." --Alexis De Tocqueville, “Democracy in America”

294 posted on 04/05/2008 1:56:09 AM PDT by cowboyway ("No damn man kills me and lives." -- Nathan Bedford Forrest)
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To: Sherman Logan
even his most vicious critics never accused him of Clintonian frolics with the office staff. AFAIK, he was completely faithful to Mary.

Was Lincoln Gay?

295 posted on 04/05/2008 2:07:21 AM PDT by cowboyway ("No damn man kills me and lives." -- Nathan Bedford Forrest)
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To: cowboyway
Define 'nobody'.

Sigh. The same people who most loudly proclaim, "You can't legislate morality" are the first to line up to enact laws enforcing their own morality: anti-smoking, pro-PC, enforced muti-culturalism, etc. With rare honorable libertarian exceptions, even the people who use the phrase mean, "You aren't allowed to legislate morality. I am allowed to legislate mine." And, as I said, sexual morality is what is almost always meant when the expression is used.

Please give me an example of a law that was passed despite nobody believing it was a moral issue. We don't legislate anything but morality.

What they should mean by the phrase is, "It's really difficult to enforce laws legislating morality." That is an accurate statement, especially with regard to sexual morality, as there is a partial and growing consensus in our society that laws enforcing sexual morality are themselves immoral.

NJ had slaves until 1865. Also Maryland and West Virginia had slaves during the War.

New Jersey reported 18 slaves in the 1860 census. Since the state had officially abolished slavery in 1846, there is some issue as to whether these were properly reported. The 1846 emancipation law allowed some blacks to be held as life-long "apprentices" after the law took effect and it is likely these were what was meant. They were not legally slaves, although I suspect the difference didn't mean a lot to the 18 individuals involved.

West Virginia was admitted to the Union by a bill providing for gradual emancipation for all slaves over 21 and for slave children as they reached the age of 21. This was approved by the voters of WV on March 26, 1863. The state was admitted to the Union on June 20, 1863. The state passed full emancipation on February 3, 1865. WV got rid of the detestable institution pretty promptly, considering that there were other things going on. :)

Maryland abolished slavery when it adopted a new state constitution on November 1, 1864.

There were also slaves in the Union states of KY, MO and DE. As with NJ, there were very few in DE. MO abolished slavery during the war by state action. The 13th Amendment freed slaves only in KY and a few in DE, and possibly in some counties of southern states that had been occupied by the federal army when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect.

With the exception of the (possible) 18 slaves in NJ, there were therefore no slaves in northern states during the war, which was what we were originally discussing.

How do you account for the black population declining in the north after northern slavery was abolished?

Very simply. Most northern slaveowners sold their slaves south before the emancipation laws, which allowed them to do so, went into effect. Quite shameful, but I've never claimed northerners were not capable of evil.

McClellan is not a particularly good example for you to use as the arrogant Yankee abolitionist. He was pro-slavery and quite open about it. No surprise at all that he disliked blacks. Most white people at the time, north and south, did. I've never claimed otherwise. The difference is that most in the north thought blacks had a right to life and liberty, although not full equality, and most in the south thought the black man "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit." To quote our Supreme Court.

Do you not think the KKK and the Order of the White Camelia and similar groups were terrorists? They very openly proclaimed their intention to frighten their opponents from exercising their constitutional rights. If that isn't terrorism, what is it?

Your long list of links shows, accurately, that northern states and peoples had a long history of being involved in slavery and slave trading, and that many of them by the time of the war tried to ignore this and demonize southerners. So what? Have I ever said otherwise?

It is notable that Lincoln never demonized southerners in this way. He recognized that they were trapped in a society based on an evil institution, and that there was no easy way to get rid of it. He never said they were evil for not knowing how to get rid of something he didn't know hot to get rid of himself.

He said they became supporters of evil, accurately IMHO, when they began to make a case for slavery as a positive good, and to attempt to expand it territorially and extend it forever.

You are correct that northerners abolished slavery at a time when it was relatively cost-free financially for them to do so. It is also correct to say that southerners began their switch from supporting the idea of eventual elimination of the institution, the almost universal position among the founders, to supporting its spread and perpetuation, precisely at the time when slavery began to go from largely unprofitable to highly profitable.

You must be one helluva political historian because MOST political historians acknowledge that there are two defining moments of American governmental change: 1)The War Between the States and 2)FDR.

Sigh.

I agree the War set a precedent for expanded federal power. However, most of these powers disappeared for most of the rest of the 19th century, with expansion beginning again in the very late century as a result of the Progressive movement.

If you disagree, please point out examples of greatly expanded federal power in 1880 as compared to 1860.

Your analogy also assumes that the Progressive movement, the New Deal and all the other expansions of federal power would not have occurred if Lincoln had not saved the Union. This is confusing sequence with causation.

Your assumption, however, is correct in one sense. Had Lincoln not saved the Union, the federal government wouldn't have its present powers, as there would be no federal government in the current sense of the term.

This does not mean that there might not be a considerably more tyrannical government in one or more of the multiple governments exercising authority over what is now the USA.

296 posted on 04/05/2008 7:56:04 AM PDT by Sherman Logan (Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves. - A. Lincoln)
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To: cowboyway

Was Lincoln Gar?

No.

My reference was with regard to his critics at the time. AFAIK, nobody claimed any such thing then. (Although there was considerable talk about Buchanan, who was widely believed to be a little light in the loafers.)

Modern homosexual activists claim everybody from Jesus to Lincoln to have been gay. So what? This tells us a great deal about them and very little about the men they’re defaming.


297 posted on 04/05/2008 8:00:00 AM PDT by Sherman Logan (Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves. - A. Lincoln)
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To: Sherman Logan

Was Lincoln Gar?

No. And he wasn’t gay either!


298 posted on 04/05/2008 8:01:13 AM PDT by Sherman Logan (Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves. - A. Lincoln)
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To: Sherman Logan
This tells us a great deal about them and very little about the men they’re defaming.

It also says much about the depths to which a schmuck will plummet in order to make a point...
299 posted on 04/05/2008 8:36:17 AM PDT by rockrr (Global warming is to science what Islam is to religion)
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To: cowboyway
Lincoln's attitude towards the guilt of southerners for slavery:

Before proceeding, let me say I think I have no prejudice against the Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist amongst them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up. This I believe of the masses north and south. Doubtless there are individuals, on both sides, who would not hold slaves under any circumstances; and others who would gladly introduce slavery anew, if it were out of existence. We know that some southern men do free their slaves, go north, and become tip-top abolitionists; while some northern ones go south, and become most cruel slave-masters.

When southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery, than we; I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists; and that it is very difficult to get rid of it, in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, -- to their own native land. But a moment's reflection would convince me, that whatever of high hope, (as I think there is) there may be in this, in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible. If they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough in the world to carry them there in many times ten days. What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery, at any rate; yet the point is not clear enough for me to denounce people upon. What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially, our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not.

Despite the lapse of time and the multitude changes in the world, I think this stands up very well even today. There is little in it for me to disagree with, with the exception of course that I'm in favor of full legal and social equality.

Those who foresaw great turmoil and trouble if slavery were abolished have largely been proven correct. We're still dealing with its after-effects almost 150 years later. The present campaign is largely dominated by issues arising from slavery.

300 posted on 04/05/2008 8:52:25 AM PDT by Sherman Logan (Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves. - A. Lincoln)
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