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Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter 1860-1861 Harold Holzer Kindle edition bargain hardcover |
Posted on 06/15/2010 12:04:20 PM PDT by winstonwolf33
I'm planning on reading a biography of Abraham Lincoln for a nice non-fiction change of pace. As you can imagine, there's so many Lincoln biographies out there I wouldn't know where to begin! Certainly, I would like to begin with the cream of the crop, but which one would it be? Even if I do a search in Amazon.com for Abraham Lincoln biographies sorted by five-star average customer reviews, a truckload of titles pop out.
Here's just a few of those titles:
Lincoln and His Admirals by Craig L. Symonds
Lincoln's Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words (Vintage) by Douglas L. Wilson
Lincoln: An Illustrated Biography by Jr. Philip B. Kunhardt, Philip B. Kunhardt III, Peter W. Kunhardt, and David Herbert Donald
The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words by Ronald C. White
Lincoln as I Knew Him: Gossip, Tributes and Revelations from His Best Friends and Worst Enemies by Harold Holzer
A. Lincoln: His Last 24 Hours by W. Emerson Reck
The Physical Lincoln Complete by John G. Sotos
Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years & the War Years (Library of the Presidents) by Carl Sandburg
The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln: The Story of America's Most Reviled President by Larry Tagg
Abe's Honest Words: The Life of Abraham Lincoln by Doreen Rappaport and Kadir Nelson
Lincoln's Other White House: The Untold Story of the Man and His Presidency by Elizabeth Smith Brownstein
Abraham Lincoln For The Defense by Warren Bull (Paperback - June 9, 2003)
Herndon's Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life : The History and Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln by William Henry Herndon and Jesse William Weik
Abraham Lincoln: The Man & His Faith by G. Frederick Owen
Tell Me of Lincoln: Memories of Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, and Life in Old New York by James Edward Kelly, William B. Styple, and James E. Kelly
The Essential Lincoln by Tim Davidson
With Charity for All: Lincoln and the Restoration of the Union by William C. Harris (Paperback - June 24, 1999)
So after a while, I pretty much gave up on Amazon and decided to just jump in here and see if I can get some feedback from my fellow Freepers. Any recommendations?
Rioting over a draft that doesn't exist would seem a little odd.
Well, see I said "Wonder if there will be draft riots..."
In my country, that means you are wondering about something that hasn't happened yet...
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Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter 1860-1861 Harold Holzer Kindle edition bargain hardcover |
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| Secession Timeline various sources |
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| [Although very late in the war Lee wanted freedom offered to any of the slaves who would agree to fight for the Confederacy, practically no one was stupid enough to fall for that. In any case, Lee was definitely not fighting to end slavery, instead writing that black folks are better off in bondage than they were free in Africa, and regardless, slavery will be around until Providence decides, and who are we to second guess that? And the only reason the masters beat their slaves is because of the abolitionists.] Robert E. Lee letter -- "...There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy. This influence, though slow, is sure. The doctrines and miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small portion of the human race, and even among Christian nations what gross errors still exist! While we see the course of the final abolition of human slavery is still onward, and give it the aid of our prayers, let us leave the progress as well as the results in the hands of Him who, chooses to work by slow influences, and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day. Although the abolitionist must know this, must know that he has neither the right not the power of operating, except by moral means; that to benefit the slave he must not excite angry feelings in the master..." |
December 27, 1856 |
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| Platform of the Alabama Democracy -- the first Dixiecrats wanted to be able to expand slavery into the territories. It was precisely the issue of slavery that drove secession -- and talk about "sovereignty" pertained to restrictions on slavery's expansion into the territories. | January 1860 |
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| Abraham Lincoln nominated by Republican Party | May 18, 1860 |
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| Abraham Lincoln elected | November 6, 1860 |
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| Robert Toombs, Speech to the Georgia Legislature -- "...In 1790 we had less than eight hundred thousand slaves. Under our mild and humane administration of the system they have increased above four millions. The country has expanded to meet this growing want, and Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, have received this increasing tide of African labor; before the end of this century, at precisely the same rate of increase, the Africans among us in a subordinate condition will amount to eleven millions of persons. What shall be done with them? We must expand or perish. We are constrained by an inexorable necessity to accept expansion or extermination. Those who tell you that the territorial question is an abstraction, that you can never colonize another territory without the African slavetrade, are both deaf and blind to the history of the last sixty years. All just reasoning, all past history, condemn the fallacy. The North understand it better - they have told us for twenty years that their object was to pen up slavery within its present limits - surround it with a border of free States, and like the scorpion surrounded with fire, they will make it sting itself to death." | November 13, 1860 |
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| Alexander H. Stephens -- "...The first question that presents itself is, shall the people of Georgia secede from the Union in consequence of the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States? My countrymen, I tell you frankly, candidly, and earnestly, that I do not think that they ought. In my judgment, the election of no man, constitutionally chosen to that high office, is sufficient cause to justify any State to separate from the Union. It ought to stand by and aid still in maintaining the Constitution of the country. To make a point of resistance to the Government, to withdraw from it because any man has been elected, would put us in the wrong. We are pledged to maintain the Constitution." | November 14, 1860 |
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| South Carolina | December 20, 1860 |
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| Mississippi | January 9, 1861 |
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| Florida | January 10, 1861 |
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| Alabama | January 11, 1861 |
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| Georgia | January 19, 1861 |
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| Louisiana | January 26, 1861 |
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| Texas | February 23, 1861 |
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| Abraham Lincoln sworn in as President of the United States |
March 4, 1861 |
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| Arizona territory | March 16, 1861 |
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| CSA Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, Cornerstone speech -- "...last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution -- African slavery as it exists amongst us -- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the 'rock upon which the old Union would split.' He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact." | March 21, 1861 |
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| Virginia | adopted April 17,1861 ratified by voters May 23, 1861 |
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| Arkansas | May 6, 1861 |
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| North Carolina | May 20, 1861 |
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| Tennessee | adopted May 6, 1861 ratified June 8, 1861 |
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| West Virginia declares for the Union | June 19, 1861 |
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| Missouri | October 31, 1861 |
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| "Convention of the People of Kentucky" | November 20, 1861 |
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N-S: If it isn't true will that change your opinion on Lincoln's scumbagness?
Notice folks how this guy, Non-Sequitur, dodged my question. Obama-like, isn't it!
He dodged it because, what I said about "Honest Abe" leaving Mary Todd and the boys to ride on a train that he feared would be attacked IS true, at least according to the people who were with Lincoln when he abandoned that train. It's also true according to biographers of Mary Todd Lincoln. E.g. Turner and Turner’s Mary Todd Lincoln, Her Life and Letters:
She was not free of anxiety … until her own train had passed safely through the restless crowds in Baltimore.But LIARS, like Non-Sequitur, are more comfortable citing revisionist history. He knows about this stuff because I have pointed it out to him before. I have also quoted to him the reports of a NY Times correspondent allowed to ride with Lincoln (obviously a Lincoln supporter) and the report of Lincoln's own security guy, Pinkerton, who alerted him to the threats.
For those who do not know, I have NEVER lived south of Long Island, NY. I have just learned that all the history I learned in high school isn't all the history there is to learn.
ML/NJ
There is a very small, very vocal, and uber-rabid coven of Lost Causers skulking around FreeRepublic. They're amusing in short doses, but I would avoid prolonged contact...
The president-elect’s movements would have been public until he changed his schedule. Once he was through Baltimore (in the middle of the night) and in Washington, the danger was over. Mary Todd Lincoln’s subsequent movements without him were not publicized and she could travel in relative safety. The statement about her anxiety on the later train through Baltimore was the author’s surmise.
(It’s not as if she were traveling all by herself.)
The Real Lincoln by Tom DiLorenzo.
Hello?
She stayed on the train given by his "public schedule." Her car on this train was, in fact, boarded by rowdies looking to harass "Honest Abe."
Mrs Lincoln and Her FamilyYou might ask yourself why you never learned of these things.Reached the Baltimore depot, showed plainly what would have happened had Mr. Lincoln been of the party. A vast crowd - a multitude, in fact had gathered in and about the premises. It was evident that they considered the announcement of Mr. Lincoln's presence in Washington a mere ruse, for thrusting their heads in at the windows, they shouted - "Trot him out," "Let's have him," Come out old Abe," "We'll give you hell," "You bloody Black Republicrats" - and other equally polite but profane ejaculations. Some rude fellows entered the private apartment in which Mrs. Lincoln was sitting ... [NY Times Feb 26, 1861, p.8]
ML/NJ
You read it in the New York Times? Well, then.
LOL
The absolute best book ever done on Lincoln is “The Real Lincoln” by Thomas J. DiLorenzo with the Forward by Dr. Walter E. Williams.
Yeah, here come the Americans.
Secession was never “legal”. The only way that it could be legal would be an amendment to the Constitution allowing it.
The only states with a shred of a claim to a right to withdraw would be the original 13. But that claim was denied by Madison and Hamilton and later Marshall.
We have a glorious INDIVISIBLE Union which has been the most important new political creation since the Roman Republic.
I have no interest in plagiarists but would doubt anyone claiming the Confederate flag to be “stainless” would know who they are. Hitler’s “Blood Flag” was no less stainless.
Those “aholes” would be the Jeffersonians. They attempted to gain their long sought after goal with the RAT Rebellion of 1861.
Their treachery emerged early in opposition to Washington and Hamilton. After the latter’s murder it was just a matter of time. Andy Jackson would have acted much the same as Lincoln had the attempt been made when he was president.
Of course those of us who value the Constitution and its perpetual Union don’t “worship” any man though we do admire the admirable and great ones.
With a shattered United States who can even imagine the untold misery which would have followed the Treason of 1861?
Not just for the US people but for the entire world.
If you don’t value Liberty then it is not worth it. Certainly the supine, welfare-ridden American people of today would not consider it worth fighting for. But typically only about a third of the population can be counted on to recognize the National Interest and will fight for it. It was that way in 1776 as well as 1861.
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