Lincoln was no angel. And it was about STATES RIGHTS, exactly what we’re trying to do here, today.
http://www.geocities.com/mark_willey/civlwar.html
Destruction of the Constitution
Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus and 13,000 people were thrown into prison in Washington, DC, alone on charges never brought or made known. In his Proclamation of September 24, 1864, Lincoln by executive fiat ordered that all citizens who engaged in “disloyal practices” would be tried in military tribunals, with such practices decided at whim by Lincoln himself. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Roger B. Taney informed Lincoln that he was engaged in practices that violated the Constitution he had sworn an oath to uphold. (Harold Hyman, A More Perfect Union, pp 85-86) Lincoln issued orders to arrest the octogenarian Taney but thought better of assaulting the most respected man in the country. The governor of New York reminded people that the founding fathers during the Revolution did not destroy men’s’ rights - “THEY did not say liberty was suspended, that men might be deprived of the right to trial by jury, that they might be torn from their homes by midnight intruders.”
Lincoln let his generals suspend 300 newspapers. As Encyclopedia Britannica puts it “He justified this action on the ground that he had to allow some temporary sacrifice of the Constitution in order to maintain the Union...” In other words, he destroyed the Constitution in order to save it. It is little wonder that Booth considered Lincoln a tyrant and expected Lincoln to create a monarchy. Lincoln’s model of assuming war powers and concentrating power in Washington was the precedent used by Wilson and FDR as a tool to remake America into a socialist state. Their intense desire and eagerness to grab and use this tool lead them to mistaken and harmful war-mongering. When the Constitution fails them they have only to say “this is time of war - and war gives all needed power.”
LINCOLN - 19th CENTURY HITLER
War has always been terrible, of course, and mass extermination was a regular occurrence until the development of what may be called; without irony, the rules of “civilized warfare” late in the seventeenth century. At that time Europe’s rulers, exhausted by bloody combat, came to agree on certain conventions: combat should be confined to soldiers in uniform; civilians and their property should be left alone; prisoners should be treated humanely; and defeated powers should be spared total devastation and indignity. These rules held until Lincoln violated them in the War Between the States, replacing them with the logic of annihilation that governed primitive or “primary warfare” — the unrestricted slaughter common between warring societies with no civilized principles in common.
For more than two centuries after the age of Louis XIV, European civilians were so unmolested that they often barely realized that their rulers were at war, and ordinary travel and commerce between countries usually continued during hostilities. There was courtliness between rulers and officers of opposing armies, like the jovial fraternization between common soldiers as soon as peace was restored. A sort of golden rule prevailed; each victor realized that he might be tomorrow’s loser, so everyone tried to avoid leaving a legacy of bitterness by treating the vanquished reasonably and often generously. Peace treaties politely avoided any tone of blame or recrimination.
Lincoln’s policy of waging war on civilian areas shocked European observers. Lincoln justified this on grounds that he was dealing not with a traditional war, but with a rebellion, in which the entire enemy population might be treated as criminals and traitors. The idealizers of Lincoln have blamed his policy on the generals who merely carried it out, especially Sherman and Sheridan. Of course even Lincoln was unable to apply this view consistently; to do so would have meant executing nearly every Southerner, soldier or civilian.
With malice toward none and charity for all! What a great man!
ML/NJ
He was not elected to the post of angel, he was elected president of the US. Being president can be a rough job, especially during a Civil War. I do not think you can examine Lincoln completely without knowing what was simultaneously happening in Saint Jeff's Dixie of sweetness and light. When Lincoln was merely jailing suspected bridge burners in Maryland, the Davis's thugs were hanging them in Knoxville. One of the best defense for Lincoln's actions can be found in looking at the way the rebels treated their own home front.
"Logic of annihilation"? And you can present evidence to support such an outrageous lie?