Posted on 02/13/2009 8:05:16 AM PST by Dick Bachert
I don't know what they teach in U.S. history classes today. But back in the middle of the last century, when I was in elementary school, there was absolutely no question about how we were to regard Abraham Lincoln. We were taught to feel a reverence bordering on awe for Honest Abe, the Great Emancipator, the eloquent martyr who saved the Republic.
We were required to memorize the Gettysburg Address. And if we were lucky enough to join a field trip to our nation's capitol, one of the most significant events was our visit to the Lincoln Memorial. (A few of us rapscallions spoiled the solemnity of the moment by sliding down the sides of the monument.)
That was what we were taught in the grade schools of Cleveland, Ohio. And I suspect it wasn't any different in any other school in the North. Some of you sons and daughters of the South will have to tell me what your teachers and history books said.
It wasn't until I became an adult and started reading history on my own that I began to doubt the version of events I was taught nearly six decades ago. For example, did you know that Lincoln suspended civil liberties in the North, including the writ of habeas corpus? That he filled the jails with more than 13,000 political prisoners, all incarcerated without due process? The Supreme Court protested Lincoln's disregard for our Constitutional protections, but the president replied he had a war to fight. Since he commanded the army, Lincoln won that argument.
And speaking of the war, guess who uttered these words:
"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable — a most sacred right — a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much of their territory as they inhabit."
Okay, I'll admit this is a trick question. The speaker was Abraham Lincoln. But he was not talking about the southern states that tried to secede from the Union. No, these remarks were made in 1847, when Lincoln was defending the right of Texans to demand their independence from Mexico. A dozen years later, when six southern states tried to declare their independence, Lincoln's response was to wage war on them.
As a child, I never questioned the assertion that the South was wrong to secede. And that Lincoln was right to use as much force as necessary to preserve the Union. Later, as I grew to understand the strength and uniqueness of our Constitutional Republic, I began to question both assumptions.
The U.S. Constitution, I came to believe, was a contract — a contract between the various states and the federal government they created. Note that the Constitution had to be approved by the states, not a majority of the citizens. There was no "majority rule" here, no popular vote taken.
But this raises the question, if it was necessary for the states to adopt the Constitution, why wouldn't it be legal for some of those states to rescind that vote, especially if they felt the contract had been broken? More and more, I found myself thinking that the South was legally and morally right in declaring its independence. And the North, by invading those states and waging war on them, was wrong.
And what a terrible war it was. By the time it was over, nearly 625,000 Americans were dead — more American servicemen than were killed in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War combined. Fully one-fourth of the draft-age white population of the South was dead.
The devastation in the former states of the confederacy is hard to imagine. Sherman's march from Atlanta to Savannah is notorious for its savagery. But he was far from the only Northern officer who ordered his troops to lay waste to southern farms, fields, and plantations. Union troops routinely destroyed crops, sacked homes, and even stabled their horses in Southern churches.
As H.W. Crocker III puts it in The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War (Regnery Publishing, 2008), "If abiding by the law of a free republic and fighting a defensive war solely against armed combatants be flaws, the South had them and the North did not. Lincoln ignored the law, the Constitution, and the Supreme Court when it suited him. His armies waged war on the farms, livelihoods, and people of the South, not just against their armies."
Of all the big lies about the War Between the States, the biggest of all may be that it was necessary to end slavery. The truth is that many illustrious southerners, including Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, recognized that slavery had to come to an end. But it should not come by force of arms, they felt; not at the point of a gun, but rather through the free consent of the owners, with the proper preparation of the slaves. To get them ready for their own freedom, for example, Lee's wife insisted the family's slaves be taught to read and write, and the women how to sew.
Despite what most of us have been taught, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not free the slaves. It wasn't a law, but an edict. It specifically exempted the Border States and any parts of the South that were already under the control of Federal forces. It applied only to areas that were still in rebellion. So the Proclamation, of and by itself, did not free a single slave.
What it did, however, was change the nature of the conflict. Now the war was no longer about restoring the Union, or preventing Southern independence. Now it was about the morality, and the legality, of slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation did not make the war more popular in the north, but it did end the possibility of other countries, especially France and Britain, from coming to the aid of the South. They might have been willing to assist southern independence; but support a war in favor of slavery? Never.
As Crocker notes, "In Southern eyes, the Emancipation Proclamation was the ultimate in Yankee perfidy — an attempt to incite slave uprisings against Confederate women and children." Then he notes, "Happily, while the proclamation did encourage slaves to seek their freedom, there were no slave uprisings, no murders of women and children — which might say something good about Southerners too, both white and black."
Abraham Lincoln, more than any other president who came before him, changed the very nature of our government. There would never again be as many limitations on the powers of the federal government. And just as tragic, the concept of states' rights suffered a blow from which it has never recovered.
I'm told that more than 14,000 books have been written about Abraham Lincoln. Most, of course, are incredibly adulatory. The few that attempt to balance the scales are virtually ignored. While it may not be true that might makes right, it is definitely true that the winners write the history books.
Is it the truth that as Sherman lay in bed watching the fires and listening to the cries of people attempting to flee or put out the fires, that he prayed for those poor, ignorant people who were trying to blame him and his troops by burning their own houses?
(Saw this gem on T.V. as I surfed one evening...)
I have to agree that a major effect of the action was to keep France and Britain at bay.
You can’t have it both ways; the ruling held the Union in check until Lincoln ignored the Court.
‘I have to agree that a major effect of the action was to keep France and Britain at bay.’
It did set up a political gordian knot for both countries.
But its also useful to remember another big factor at play with both of those nations at that specific 48 month ‘moment in time’’.
The Monitor and the Merramack rendered the entire British and French fleets obsolete from the first moment of their famous battle in the Chesapeak Bay/Hampton Roads harbor.
Kinda hard to break a blockcade when your fleet is nothing but potential drift wood.
‘You can’t have it both ways; the ruling held the Union in check until Lincoln ignored the Court.’
Held the Union in check, how specifically?
LOL! Yeah, I feel your pain. Ive been listening to the same Lost Cause mythology for a couple of decades. Abandoned debating them long ago. They are impervious to fact and evidence and come out of the woodwork when their careful constructed world is threatened.
EXCELLENT paper from Mises dot org.
http://mises.org/journals/jls/18_4/18_4_3.pdf
You all might want to read it or bookmark it for later.
>>The spirit is admirable, but I really believe it turned out best for everybody, the South most of all. When a regime lasts only four years it’s easy to romanticize and overlook faults, but I don’t think long term rule by that Confederate gang upon the necks of southerners would have worn well for very long.<<
Obviously, we’ll never know how long the Confederacy would have survived. The outcome hasn’t turned out so well either, what with trillion dollar deficits as far as we can imagine, new proposals to decide who lives or dies and usurpation of individual rights.
It might have been better all around for both sides to part AMICABLY than to live together as we do today.
Of course. Wasn't Lincoln the first Republican president? Always remember, Lincoln the Republican free the slaves who belonged to Democrats!!
And five months later, Lee surrendered; the war was effectively over when the amendment was enacted.
It was LIncoln’s war to fight and his to win; most of the offenses against the Constitution were restored by the end of Jackson’s term.
If the argument here is that there is no room for another book on this war because all that’s fit to know has already been printed then I will buy your presentation of events.
As long as Dred held sway it was onvious that one couldn’t take another’s property (the slave) legally; of course the Court has no police or prosecutors.
I suppose you're referring to the "Corwin" amendment that would have extended slavery for all time.
From a quick search: "In 1861, a proposed amendment, was signed by President Lincoln. This was the only proposed amendment that was ever signed by a president. That resolve to amend read: "ARTICLE THIRTEEN, No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State." (In other words, President Lincoln had signed a resolve that would have permitted slavery, and upheld states' rights.) Only one State, Illinois, ratified this proposed amendment before the Civil War broke out in 1861.
Fair point. Although by the time we get to 1862, the Dredd Scott case had been rendered moot by real world events.
Unfortunately war does that too, not just people. I understand your feelings too, because afterall, if we forget the lessons of history, we are destined to repeat them.
I just finished watching a two-hour PBS program on Lincoln that I recorded the other night. It focused on the myths of Lincoln, and whether he had been made out to be more than he really was. The main historian was Henry Louis Gates Jr., an African-American. I had to laugh at several parts of the program. He interviewed several blacks who believed they had been misled to believe that Lincoln was their "saviour" and the Great Emancipator. My impression was that they were blaming whitey, and their school system for starting and perpetuating that myth. Yet no where in the program did they mention the possibility that a lot of that myth may have begun with their own people, having been passed from freed slaves, down through the generations. God forbid that their own folks would have played a role in creating the myth that is Lincoln.
Then there was the part where Gates, while attending a get-together of the Sons of Confederate Veterans seemed shocked over the fact that blacks had actually fought for the South. Here you have a well-known historian, who acted surprised to see a black family in attendance, honoring their ancestor's memory and the role he played in the Confederacy. It only stands to reason, if there were blacks who owned slaves in this country, (and they did), why is it so hard to believe or accept that blacks would have fought for the South? I've seen it time and time again where educated blacks refuse to accept these facts as truth, choosing instead to perpetuate their own myths about what their black ancestors did. The most interesting fact for me is that they refuse to admit that it was their own African ancestors who sold their people to the slavers.
Unfortunately, the practice by some blacks has been to try to eliminate any trace of history of the Confederacy. On one hand they push to promote their own racial history in this country, cherry-picking the truths they want told, yet they strive to eliminate someone else's because it doesn't fit their idea of what history or heritage is, or should be.
True-my Dad never discussed it-never win. We took my son to the local museum in Kennesaw GA. He was about six...as we were leaving he talked about the South winning the war...we laughed and told him the truth...but if all you knew is what was presented at the museum...you would believe the South won.
Which begs the question, if the North was this wonderful place so incredibly sympathetic to the plight of runaway slaves, why DIDN’T these kind folks — all of whom were MY ancestors — shelter and protect them HERE in the U.S.?
Could it have been because MANY large, wealthy and influential NORTHERN interests were providing the FINANCING for the SLAVE TRADE??
Gives a new meaning to HYPOCRICY.
I don’t hold it against Lincoln. I am merely speaking to how my Southern relatives talked about it even when I was a little girl...more that 100 years after the end of the war. Personally, I am a great admirer of Lincoln. I think he was one of the greatest presidents of all time and saved the union...I include George Washington, John Adams and Ronald Reagan in this group.
There was a small amount of residual slavery in some mostly North Eastern states also at the time of the Civil War or as my aunties called it “The War of Northern Aggression”. I never heard the term civil war until I went to school in the North after one of our many moves.
Whoever it was that placed keyboard keys so close together ought to bne shot!!!
In fact, I am sick of these revisionist historians who seek to destroy our American heroes. It’s sick.
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