[woodpusher]

Lincoln's speech expressly referred to all or any people.

As I quoted Lincoln in the post in your response is a blatant lie:"

The fact is that Lincoln was talking about the Mexican War and you don't know if he intended his words to apply to disgruntled Southern slaveocrats.

Lincoln:

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.

There is no way in hell that the stated position of Lincoln refers ONLY to the Mexican war. It applies to "any people anywhere." It applies to "liberate the world." Lincoln was rapping that what Texans were doing was the right of all people in the world, to revolutionize, and make their own, so much of the territory as they inhabited.

In 1861, Lincoln found his stated position of 1848 to be inconvenient. In 1848, Lincoln's stated opinion agreed precisely with what the southern states were doing in 1860-1861.

In 2023, Brother Joe Pravda finds inconvenient, the stated position of Lincoln in 1848.

Lincoln's words are not up for debate or hypothization. They are quoted from the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. No quote that made it into that gold standard collection has ever been proven false.

You sound like Karine Jean-Pierre or John Kirby making believe Biden's statement that he never talked to Hunter about his business did not really happen. Now he never did business with Hunter. On numerous phone calls to meetings he only discussed the weather.

[BroJoeK]

woodpusher: "In 1861, Lincoln found his stated position of 1848 to be inconvenient.
In 1848, Lincoln's stated opinion agreed precisely with what the southern states were doing in 1860-1861."

And so you keep repeating, over and over and over.
Still, as John Adams first said and Ronald Reagan liked to quote, "facts are stubborn things" and in this case the facts include several items contrary to your claims.

1. Even in 1848, young & arguably naive Whig Congressman Lincoln included a qualifier of three short words, "having the power", which speaks to a broad spectrum of issues and necessary calculations.
   Think about it, young Lincoln is saying, in effect, the "right to secede" comes from "having the power" to secede, so without "having the power", there is no right.
   It almost sounds like "might makes right" though I'm pretty sure that's not how Lincoln intended it.

   Clearly, young Lincoln's words imply that if you thought & calculated you had the "power to secede", but in a contest of arms you are defeated militarily, then, in fact, you did not have the "power to secede" and so you also had no "right to secede".

   As I said, in 1848 Lincoln was young and arguably naive and so I doubt if he gave these particualr words as much thought as they needed.

2. So far as I know, young Whig Congressman Lincoln in circa 1848 said nothing about the alleged right of slaveocrats to declare secession over tariffs, slavery or even a presidential election they didn't like.

   However, we do know that young Whig Congressman Lincoln was befriended and mentored by then very old Congressman, ex-President John Quincy Adams, from whom Lincoln is said to have learned that a civil war would grant the President the authority to declare rebels' slaves as "contraband of war".
   Adams himself knew of it because that's what the Brits did during the Revolutionary War.

   So Lincoln may have understood even in 1848 that civil war would lead to emancipations of rebel slaves.

3. You claim, "Lincoln's stated opinion agreed precisely with what the southern states were doing in 1860-1861.", but that is far from true.
   In fact, in 1860 & 1861 Confederate Democrats miscalculated their "having the power", imagining they could command more power than proved available to them -- i.e., military support from Britain & France.
   Then, lacking the power they picked a military fight with what proved to be one of the strongest military and political powers on earth.

   And Confederate Democrats lost their power and so, turns out, they had no right after all, at least according to the formulation of young Lincoln in 1848.

4. Lincoln's actions in early 1861 are more or less consistent with his generalization in 1848, with qualifiers hidden behind the phrase, "having the power" revealed step by reluctant step over the course of several months, as I spelled out in post #277 above.