Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

YouTube ^ | March 20, 2008 | Abraham Lincoln via cparsons2005 on YouTube

[Bratch]

Gettysburg Address as recited by Jeff Daniels.

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

[Let's Roll]

You might want to spend a little more time correcting the misspelling in your tagline before attacking the words of Lincoln of all people.

[DiogenesLamp]

You might want to spend a little more time correcting the misspelling in your tagline before attacking the words of Lincoln of all people.

Because we have to keep our priorities straight.

Publicly and historically misrepresenting the actual purpose of the Declaration of Independence in an effort to justify a war that killed 750,000 people, is far less significant than finding a spelling error somewhere on the internet.

[x]

If the South was producing 3/4ths of all the trade, then how is New York paying almost all the tariffs? Something doesn't make sense here! What the H3ll is going on?

Just you not understanding economics. No need for the rest of us to panic.

A whole series of elections had been going against them, and everyone could see what was happening. Lincoln's election was just the final straw in a long ongoing series of losses of political power in Washington DC.

Not so much. The Democrats, who were largely pro-Southern controlled the Senate up to 1861. So far as I've been able to find out, there would have been a tie in the Senate between the two parties if the Southern senators hadn't withdrawn. Democrats lost the House in 1854, 1858, and (I assume) 1860, but they had plenty of power still. Lincoln wasn't going to be president forever. The South would have "risen again" in Congress if they'd shown more patience.

If my money is being "voted" out of my hands because the other side has a majority, it may be Democratic, but that's not going to convince me it's fair.

If you were a slaveowner, probably nothing would be fair enough or good enough for you. But anybody with any understanding of history or economics would tell you that it doesn't matter if you are a great exporter of some commodity. If you aren't importing as much as other people, you don't pay as much in import taxes as they do.

Money circulates. You use your money to buy goods and services from other people and they can use that money to buy imports, and they pay the import taxes in higher prices for those goods.

This nation has long been suffering from allowing non taxpayers to vote so that politicians could bribe them with the money of the taxpayers. This creates a democratic majority, but it is in fact a form of legalized theft.

The Southerners felt the same way when Northern majorities kept expanding the system that had them paying most of the taxes, and Washington DC spending the money on things mostly of interest to Washington DC, and not necessarily for the benefit of the people from whom the money came.

So Northern manufacturers and the many many people who lived in the North were idle deadbeats? And the slaveowners were out there in the fields every day breaking their humps to earn and honest living. Where do you come up with this garbage?

[DiogenesLamp]

Just you not understanding economics.

You have it wrong. I understand them perfectly well, as do you, except when you look at the economics of the Civil War. It's not that you can't see them, it's that you absolutely refuse to see them.

Were the emotional component removed from your analysis, you would see that if 3/4ths of all the trade production comes from one area, and only 1/4 comes from the other, you would correctly conclude that 3/4ths of the imports were created by those exports when a normal balance of trade is maintained.

This is stark. It's not "grey" at the margins. If the trade production was closer to 50-50, you might be able to hide the economic reality by asserting all the intricacies of domestic distribution and other economic activity, but this is ridiculously lopsided in favor of the South, and the whole thing pokes out of the statistical noise to such a degree that no reasonable person can deny what was going on here.

Somehow New York had obtained control of virtually every aspect of trade with Europe. I've already covered how they did it, but you won't even recognize that they did it, so the how isn't really important.

So far as I've been able to find out, there would have been a tie in the Senate between the two parties if the Southern senators hadn't withdrawn. Democrats lost the House in 1854, 1858, and (I assume) 1860, but they had plenty of power still. Lincoln wasn't going to be president forever.

I'm pretty sure they could see the pattern. Reagan was elected in 1980, and he slowed down Liberal advancement a bit. Then Bush allowed it to move forward slowly, then Clinton advanced it greatly. Bush II slowed it down, but it kept advancing, and of course Barack Obama accelerated it massively. Trump has now stopped and in some cases even reversed it, but what do you suppose will happen when next Democrats win the Presidency or the Senate?

Can you not see the trend? Is public law and policy more liberal or more conservative than it was in the 1960s? It is clearly more liberal, and despite our efforts to slow or reverse it, it keeps growing and advancing.

And you don't think the Southerners could see the same thing happening to them since about the 1820s? The trend was unmistakable, and Lincoln simply represented the final straw that broke the camel's back. They realized they could never improve their situation as long as they remained the Milk Cow and whipping boy of the North.

If you aren't importing as much as other people, you don't pay as much in import taxes as they do.

And here you once again advance the idea that one can be an importer of 75% of all goods, while only balancing it with 25% of all exports. Somehow you just think the people creating the production will just walk away from that other 50% of the total value, with no questions asked.

Yes, you try to hide this stark contrast by asserting the idea that there are all sorts of these little trades between one group and the other that has the South losing that 50% to the North, and cumulatively they all result in transfer of ownership of that 50% of all goods from the South to the North. You also argue it was all free market voluntary and without coercion causing it.

I've pointed to the "navigation act of 1817" to explain how a great deal of that money got transferred from the South to the North, but you dismiss that without any reasonable consideration.

You simply ignore the great gobs of money involved in the relations between North and South, and would prefer to think the Southerners simply wanted to protect an institution already protected by American law, and under no real threat from any person or institution, while simultaneously dismissing the idea that they may have been very interested in the money they saw as being siphoned off from their income due to laws designed to help Northern industries, mostly at their expense.

You don't want to believe that at the bottom of this whole affair, the motivation for both sides was simply money.

And the slaveowners were out there in the fields every day breaking their humps to earn and honest living.

Nobody said that. Of course they weren't earning a moral living, but morality is not always the same thing as legal rights. They had a legal right at the time to force other people to work for them. They did not have a moral right to do so, but the whole system ran on legal rights, not on what was moral.

They were legally entitled to that money under the laws of the United States at the time, and though we may huff and fume about how immoral it was, the fact remains that this was what all the states agreed to when they ratified the US Constitution.

[x]

I'm pretty sure they could see the pattern. Reagan was elected in 1980, and he slowed down Liberal advancement a bit. Then Bush allowed it to move forward slowly, then Clinton advanced it greatly. Bush II slowed it down, but it kept advancing, and of course Barack Obama accelerated it massively.

That is a nutcase response. Are you seriously equating present day politics in the North and the South with the 19th century politics of the free and the slave states? That is exactly how liberals were talking after your beloved 2004 election. The problem is that the issues are different. I didn't vote Republican because I was fighting the same fight as the plantation owners a century and a half before and it's insulting to make such allegations.

Can you not see the trend? Is public law and policy more liberal or more conservative than it was in the 1960s? It is clearly more liberal, and despite our efforts to slow or reverse it, it keeps growing and advancing.

Liberals or progressives devote themselves to change and increased power for the government. They are betting and abetting the natural tendency of government to expand, but in the last quarter of the 20th century, conservatives did very well for themselves.

This has little to do with North-South relations. Southerners did supremely well for themselves in the mid-20th century when Democrats ruled and government expanded. They did well for themselves in the last third of the century when Republicans were dominant, and those in Congress were at least talking against "big government." Politics is a merry-go-round or a a roller coaster or a roulette game: stay at it long enough and be smart enough and it comes back to where you started and you are on top again.

Slavery was threatened. But taxes and apportionments come and go. There was no reason to feel threatened because your share of the pie is smaller in one year than in earlier or later years.

Somehow New York had obtained control of virtually every aspect of trade with Europe.

Not really. There was direct trade between Charleston and New Orleans and British and French ports. It was a global trade. I've mentioned Trenholm and Company (or Fraser, Trenholm). They had offices in Charleston, New York, Liverpool and London, but they were very much a South Carolina company and the owners went with the Confederacy in 1861. If they chose to route some of their trade through New York, it was because it was to their advantage.

You simply ignore the great gobs of money involved in the relations between North and South, and would prefer to think the Southerners simply wanted to protect an institution already protected by American law, and under no real threat from any person or institution, while simultaneously dismissing the idea that they may have been very interested in the money they saw as being siphoned off from their income due to laws designed to help Northern industries, mostly at their expense.

No real threat? John Brown? And what does "real threat" mean? Slaveowners felt passionately that slavery was threatened, and said so. For them the threat was real. The idea that the government or the Yankees were stealing their money was much more of an illusion than the idea that slavery was threatened.

You don't want to believe that at the bottom of this whole affair, the motivation for both sides was simply money.

Slavery was money. Are you so naive or foolish that you don't realize that?

They were legally entitled to that money under the laws of the United States at the time, and though we may huff and fume about how immoral it was, the fact remains that this was what all the states agreed to when they ratified the US Constitution.

They had money. They spent it or invested it, and the people who sold things to them could buy things of their own, as could the people to whom the money was invested with or loaned out to. There was no "moral right" to money you have already spent. Once you use it to buy something, other people have the money.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Apparently the South produced 3/4ths of all the gross trade from the United States in 1860. Wait! What?"
If the South was producing 3/4ths of all the trade, then how is New York paying almost all the tariffs?
Something doesn't make sense here! What the H3ll is going on?

Sorry, but regardless of how often you repeat & repeat that lie, it'll never be true.
In 1860 the cotton South produced half of US exports, not 3/4.
The balance was produced in Union states, some of them slave states.
Further, for every dollar "the South" exported, it purchased a dollar's worth of "imports" from the North.
That's how Northerners earned the money to pay for all those New York import tariffs.

Naturally every exporter, including cotton exporters sought and received Federal protection in the form of tariffs on imports of competing products.
And, every exporter wanted higher tariffs on stuff they sold and lower tariffs on stuff they bought, so resolving such competing claims is what politics was all about.
In 1860 US overall tariffs were as low as they'd ever been.
A proposal for modest increases had been defeated in 1860 by Southern Democrats and could have, even in 1861, been politically compromised, as was normally done.

But secession wasn't about tariffs, none of the early secessionists said it was.
Indeed, when Congress was making its mad scrambles in early 1861 to "compromise" with secessionists, none of the compromise proposals included tariffs, nor did any secessionist ask for lower tariffs.

Instead they said it was all about something vastly more existential than routine changes in tariff rates, it was all about slavery.

DiogenesLamp: "And then I learned the rest of the story because it was told in the economic data of the era, and so I changed my mind.
This is called 'objectivity.' "

Complete nonsense because you've now ben told the truth of this matter, & others, repeatedly, and none of it phases you.
You've got your opinions, and the real facts be d*mned.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Were the emotional component removed from your analysis, you would see that if 3/4ths of all the trade production comes from one area, and only 1/4 comes from the other, you would correctly conclude that 3/4ths of the imports were created by those exports when a normal balance of trade is maintained.
This is stark.
It's not "grey" at the margins.
If the trade production was closer to 50-50, you might be able to hide the economic reality by asserting all the intricacies of domestic distribution and other economic activity, but this is ridiculously lopsided in favor of the South, and the whole thing pokes out of the statistical noise to such a degree that no reasonable person can deny what was going on here."

In fact, it was 50%-50% because half, not 3/4 of US exports came from the secession cotton-South, the rest came from Union states, some of them slave-states.
Further, for every dollar "the South" exported, they "imported" a dollar's worth of goods from the North.

And the South's political clout in Washington steadily reduced Federal tariffs until by 1860 they were as low as ever.
So Democrats defeated the proposed Morrill tariff increases in 1860 and could have at least compromised them in 1861, had that been their goal.

But tariffs were not their big concern, slavery was, so they said.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Somehow New York had obtained control of virtually every aspect of trade with Europe.
I've already covered how they did it, but you won't even recognize that they did it, so the how isn't really important."

In fact, half of US cotton exported directly not from New York, but from New Orleans.
Other Gulf ports (i.e., Mobile, Galveston) shipped smaller percentages, leaving maybe 20% -- East Coast cotton -- to be picked up by New York packet ships for consolidation & shipment from New York to European customers.

So the real complaint here is not that all cotton shipped through New York, but rather that imports on their return from Europe did mostly stop in New York where they were off-loaded, warehoused and eventually sold to customers throughout the USA.

That's the "problem" which seems to have DiogenesLamp so exercised he just can't stop lying about it.

{sign}

DiogenesLamp: "And here you once again advance the idea that one can be an importer of 75% of all goods, while only balancing it with 25% of all exports.
Somehow you just think the people creating the production will just walk away from that other 50% of the total value, with no questions asked."

75% of imports through New York seems about right, where goods were off-loaded, warehoused, then eventually sold & shipped (via railroad & steamship) throughout the USA -- North, South, East & West.
So where did all those other regions outside the South earn money to pay for imports?
Well... about half of it came from their own exports to foreign countries, the other half came from their "exports" to the South.

So suggestions something about all this was grossly unfair are, so far as I can tell, simply DiogenesLamp's unresolved emotional conflicts with... who knows who... maybe some relative?

DiogenesLamp: "I've pointed to the "navigation act of 1817" to explain how a great deal of that money got transferred from the South to the North, but you dismiss that without any reasonable consideration. "

We've been over this many times, and the 1817 Navigation Act didn't do what you claim it did.
First, remember that from the election of 1800 until secession in 1861, Southern Democrats ruled Washington DC almost continuously.
Any new law required their approval and nothing they opposed stood very long.
In 1817 Southern Democrats ruled both houses of congress, the Presidency and Supreme Court.
So anything inherently unfair about the 1817 Navigation Act would never have passed Southern scrutiny.

Nor did any document in 1860 ever complain about that act or some alleged unfairness of existing trade routes.

[DiogenesLamp]

BroJoeK, I am genuinely happy to hear from you again. I hadn't seen you launching your avalanche of text against me for awhile, and I was worried that you may have been going through a rough patch or something.

I still don't want to read your long spiels that basically reduce to "Rubbish!", but I am glad you are once again throwing them at me.

:)

[DiogenesLamp]

Further, for every dollar "the South" exported, they "imported" a dollar's worth of goods from the North.

I doubt you will get this point, but when you have a captive market in which you can inflate your prices over that of the foreign competition, a "dollar's worth" of goods doesn't mean what you are trying to portray it as.

Yes, in the controlled, protectionist market at the inflated prices caused by this protectionism, the South brought in a "dollar's worth" of goods from the North.

Of course that same dollar would have brought in 1 1/2, to 2 times the same value in European goods, but they weren't allowed to get those at the fair market prices because of the protectionist policies of the USA.

[DiogenesLamp]

In fact, half of US cotton exported directly not from New York, but from New Orleans.

This is true, but you are leaving out the fact that New York was the controlling city of all that export traffic from New Orleans. As a matter of fact, I first learned that tidbit in a link you provided years ago.

New York controlled the cotton trade almost completely, and they did so as a consequence of controlling virtually all the shipping in the United States.

75% of imports through New York seems about right, where goods were off-loaded, warehoused, then eventually sold & shipped (via railroad & steamship) throughout the USA -- North, South, East & West.

Lot of money involved. Would be a terrible shame if that traffic and business all moved to New Orleans, Mobile, and Charleston. Shame for wealthy and powerful New York business owners that is.

[Kalamata]

I believe it is important to understand that the plight of blacks and slaves was the least of Lincoln's concerns:

"I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views." [Lincoln, Abraham, "Letter to Horace Greeley." Abraham Lincoln Online, 1858]

In fact, Lincoln was a white supremacist who was in favor of returning all blacks to Africa (as did Thomas Jefferson, and others):

"Colonization was hardly a fringe movement. 'Almost every respectable man,' as Frederick Douglass observed, supported it. Thomas Jefferson and Henry Clay, the statesmen most revered by Lincoln, favored colonization. Jefferson remained committed to the idea to his dying day. In 1824, he proposed that the federal government purchase and deport 'the increase of each year' (that is, children) so that the slave population would age and eventually disappear. Critics, Jefferson admitted, might object on humanitarian grounds to 'the separation of infants from their mothers.' But this, he insisted, would be 'straining at a gnat.'" [Eric Foner, "The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery." W. W. Norton & Company, 2011, Chap 1, Part II]

"From the American Revolution to about 1820, surprising numbers of slaves were liberated even in the United States South as well as North. Yet one of the truly distinctive features of North American slavery, except for that brief period, was the virtual lack of hope for any change in status. This closing of doors and escape hatches resulted partly from the spectacular long-term increase in the value of slaves, which reflected a growing demand and limited supply. The restrictions on manumission also reflected the mounting pressures of white racism—the conviction, shared by virtually every national leader from Jefferson to Lincoln, that whites and blacks could never permanently coexist as free and equal citizens." [David Brion Davis, "Challenging the Boundaries of Slavery." Harvard University Press, 2006, pp.30-31]

This is from a short article on the subject:

""Founded by the American Colonization Society, a group of men who believed that freed slaves had better chances closer to their roots, Liberia became a beacon for the freed slave. Presidents of the Colonization Society included James Madison and Henry Clay. 'There is a moral fitness in the idea,' said the latter, 'of returning Africa her children, whose ancestors have been torn from her by the ruthless hand of fraud and violence.'" [Shirley & Shirley, "Revisiting the founding of Liberia." Washington Times, Sept 27, 2018]

Revisiting the founding of Liberia

That said, the Gettysburg Address was a political strategy in the midst of an unfavorable war: nothing else. If it was about slavery, Lincoln, using his usurped dictatorial powers, would have freed the Northern slaves earlier that year with his "Emancipation Proclamation."

Mr. Kalamata

[DiogenesLamp]

That said, the Gettysburg Address was a political strategy in the midst of an unfavorable war: nothing else. If it was about slavery, Lincoln, using his usurped dictatorial powers, would have freed the Northern slaves earlier that year with his "Emancipation Proclamation."

People can't envision Lincoln as a ruthless manipulator, but the more I learn of him, the more apparent it seems that he would accomplish what he wanted by hook or by crook.

He was a master at manipulating people, and this is why he was such a good lawyer as well.

As Lincoln's own Secretary of State remarked regarding the Emancipation Proclamation:

"We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free."

He points out the hypocrisy and illusion of moral purpose behind what Lincoln did.

[Kalamata]

>>x wrote: "Paul Craig Roberts, who wrote the article, also comes very close to being a Holocaust denier. He's not to be trusted."

That is a very sleazy aspersion. Paul Craig Roberts, PhD, was the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy under President Ronald Reagan.

So who do we believe: some anonymous aspersion-slinger who goes by the name of "x", or Dr. Paul Craig Roberts of the Reagan administration? Tough choice . . .

This is Dr. Roberts:

"[T]he reason for which the Southern states were seceding was the tariff, but the Constitution gave the federal government the right to levy a tariff. Therefore, the Southern states could not cite the tariff as a breach of the Constitutional fabric.

"Slavery was the only issue that the South could use to make a legal case that it was not in rebellion. Article 4 of the US Constitution reads: 'No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.' In defiance of Article 4, some Northern states had passed laws that nullified the Fugitive Slave Act and other laws that upheld this article of the Constitution. The South used these nullification laws to make its case that Northern states had broken the Constitutional contract, thus justifying the Southern states secession."

[Paul Craig Roberts, "A 'Civil War' Lesson for the Uneducated." The Burning Platform, Nov 14, 2018]

A “Civil War” Lesson for the Uneducated

The historical literature is loaded with support for Dr. Robert's assertion that the tariff was the precipitator of the Secession. Perhaps in the future you will strive to defend your position with something other than low-class slander.

Mr. Kalamata

[Kalamata]

>>DiogenesLamp wrote: “People can’t envision Lincoln as a ruthless manipulator, but the more I learn of him, the more apparent it seems that he would accomplish what he wanted by hook or by crook. He was a master at manipulating people, and this is why he was such a good lawyer as well.”

Lincoln was, after all, a high-powered railroad lawyer (who was born in a log cabin he helped his daddy build.)

Mr. Kalamata

[DiogenesLamp]

He certainly knew how to schmooze. He played people like a fiddle.

[Vermont Lt]

So, one could say that Lincoln knew that it was a bad idea to let them leave.

Just sayin’. LOL

[Vermont Lt]

We rode home on trains. Y’all walked with what we let you carry.

I don’t think we “barely” DC. New York, DC, Philadelphia, Chicago...were all unscathed. Not hardly a scratch. Richmond, Atlanta, Chattanooga, Vicksburg, Petersburg,...all ruins.

I hate to think what it would have looked like if you had gotten your asses kicked.

[Vermont Lt]

You realize the distance from London to New York is significantly shorter than ANY port in the south. In a year, the ships could probably make another round trip.

Once stuff started coming out of the center of the country, the price to transport to the East was more expensive than shipping it.

You take this stuff personal, but it was all about business.

[DiogenesLamp]

We rode home on trains. Y’all walked with what we let you carry.

Who is this "Y'all"? My family was in Europe when all this happened. We didn't have a dog in that fight.

I don’t think we “barely” DC. New York, DC, Philadelphia, Chicago...were all unscathed. Not hardly a scratch. Richmond, Atlanta, Chattanooga, Vicksburg, Petersburg,...all ruins.

Since the vast majority of the battles were fought in the territory of the defenders, and not in the territory of the invaders, it seems natural that the destruction would occur in the areas where the battles were fought.

Yes, later on in the war, after it was no longer possible to hold them back, the Union forces did quite a lot of wanton destruction to the civilian populations and their property. Again, 4-1 odds gives one side a lot of advantage in that regard, but with just a few things turning out different, the overall outcome might have changed drastically.

The loss of Special Order 191 was a disaster for the South. The death of Stonewall Jackson was another. There are quite a few pivotal points in which their luck just went the wrong way.

Bad luck is one thing when you have four times the population and can afford setbacks. It's another thing when you have only 1/4th the population to sustain you. The facts seem clear that in a roughly equal fight, the South would have beaten the Union quite handily.