[BroJoeK]

PeaRidge: "But most would miss the point entirely about why the speech was such a success before the large New York City audience of 1500.
It was a success because in the speech Lincoln pledged that the Republican Party would never interfere with southern slavery, thereby eliminating the prospect that large numbers of black people would live among New Yorkers and compete with them for jobs."

This brings us to the matter of the Lost Cause orthodox party line which, as best I can tell, goes something like this:

1. Lincoln didn't hate slavery, he hated blacks.

2. Lincoln didn't want to abolish slavery, he just wanted to keep blacks out of Northern states & territories.

3. By 1860 slavery was already dying out and would have been gone in a few years without Civil War.

4. The Morrill Tariff and "money flows from Europe" were the real reasons for secession, not Lincoln's alleged abolitionism.

5. The US Constitution provides a clear "right of secession" against which no serious arguments exist.

6. All law recognizes that once a group declares its secession, then all Federal properties within that state automatically become Confederate properties.
   In many cases a formal declaration of secession is not even necessary to justify seizures of Federal properties.

7. Confederate seizures of Federal properties are not acts of war, be they forts, ships, arsenals or mints, and neither are threats against Union officials or firing on Union ships.
   But ordering Union ships to resupply Federal troops in a Confederate port, now that's an act of war.

8. Lincoln was ruled over by what some call "Northeastern Power Brokers" usually unnamed, but possibly like Thurlow Weed, who, it's claimed, wanted war against Confederates for economic reasons: in order to protect "money flows from Europe".
   "Follow the money", they say.

9. Politically, Lincoln wanted Civil War so he could destroy the South and achieve permanent Republican domination over it.

10. Confederates never seriously threatened the Union, so it was strictly a "war of Northern aggression".

11. Lincoln's blood-thirsty generals, notably Sherman, scorched Southern earth and killed millions of Southern civilians.

12. Lincoln is the political father of modern Progressive Democrats.
    Confederates were, in modern term: patriotic conservative Republicans.

13. Lincoln was the devil incarnate, and that's why Southern Democrats must now rule over the Republican party, driving out all "Lincoln worshipers"!

Doubtless there's parts of this theology I've missed, but this is a start...

Progressive Democrat "Ape" Lincoln, versus Conservative Republican Jefferson Davis**:

**according to Lost Cause orthodoxy.

[OIFVeteran]

I think you nailed most of the lost cause “beliefs”. The fact that these beliefs are not supported at all by the writings and speeches at the time is of no consequence. Our neo-confederates on this site are historical mind readers that truly know what the southern leaders meant.

I want to draw attention to one part of Lincoln’s New Haven speech because it supports my contention from a previous thread that the slavery issue and the abortion issue have many similarities. With the democrats being just as wrong then as they are now.

“You say that you think slavery is wrong, but you denounce all attempts to restrain it. Is there anything else that you think wrong, that you are not willing to deal with as a wrong? Why are you so careful, so tender of this one wrong and no other? You will not let us do a single thing as if it was wrong; there is no place where you will allow it to be even called wrong! We must not call it wrong in the Free States, because it is not there, and we must not call it wrong in the Slave States because it is there; we must not call it wrong in politics because that is bringing morality into politics, and we must not call it wrong in the pulpit because that is bringing politics into religion; we must not bring it into the Tract Society or the other societies, because those are such unsuitable places, and there is no single place, according to you, where this wrong thing can properly be called wrong!”

Modern Democrats use to admit that abortion was, if not wrong, at least not desirable. Bill Clinton’s “safe,legal, and rare”, statement. Just as Democrats before 1850 said slavery was wrong. Now though democrats say that abortion is a positive good and empowering to women. They attack anyone who won’t agree with them. Just as democrats then started attacking anyone who would not agree with them that slavery was a positive good.

It’s amazing to me that the issue might change, but the arguments and tactics the democrats use are the same.