The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Claremont's smear of DiLorenzo (NR book review)

10/9 | myself

[GOPcapitalist]

As you may know, the Claremonsters launched their latest and probably most widespread attack on Thomas DiLorenzo's "The Real Lincoln" this week with an article in National Review by Ken Masugi. The article follows the same line taken by the two previous Claremonsters tasked with smearing DiLorenzo by the Abratollah Jaffa - Tom Krannawitter and Richard Ferrier. Rather than appearing on the Claremont or Declaration Foundation websites like the previous attacks, this one made it into a more mainstream conservative publication. I read the review today in the new issue of NR and immediately experienced a sense of disgust that the publication would print such poorly written bilge. To critique DiLorenzo's book is one thing, but Masugi's article is little more than intellectually bankrupt rhetoric. Compared to the old days of NR when Frank Meyer took Lincoln to task and even when the Abratollah actually fought his battles himself, the lack of quality in the present piece is shocking and in need of address. A dissection and rebuttal of the latest and most prominent Claremonster attack on DiLorenzo's book is therefore in order. Excerpts from the NR article are printed in bold:

I. "Fortunately we are not dependent on DiLorenzo for an understanding of Lincoln's political philosophy; Lincoln himself summarized it in the Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural. For Lincoln, the preservation of equality of natural rights demands a strong government, but one limited in its powers. This founding principle leads politically to the need for consent of the governed, the basis of our republican government."

Contrary to Masugi's assertions, the Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural were not reflections of Lincoln's political philosophy but rather his rhetorical gifts. Above all, Lincoln was a pragmatic politician who played the games of politics with amazing skill and frequency. His asserted devotion to a government "of the people, by the people, for the people" in the Gettysburg speech makes a brilliant rhetorical point, but does not reflect Lincoln's own political behavior in any sense. Lincoln went to war to prevent the formation of a government by a clear majority of the southern people and imposed military reign in its place upon conquest of that region. Such behavior further makes Masugi's claim that Lincoln's political philosophy revolved around principles of "the need for consent of the governed" absurd.

Lincoln did advocate and exercise his power in a strong government, but the limits in its power that Masugi speaks of were severely lacking. One such case happened famously in Lincoln's shunning of a court ruling contrary to his assumed and unconstitutional unilateral suspension of habeas corpus. Following the violation of citizen's equal rights before the law in Maryland, Justice Roger Taney authored the opinion of Ex Parte Merryman for the US Circuit Court and had a copy hand delivered to Lincoln himself. Lincoln shunned the decision, though the court in its proper role had exercised a perfectly legitimate and constitutionally sound limitation on government powers exercised through the executive and military. The incident is but a single of many virtually unrestrained exercises of power by Lincoln during his administration.

II. "DiLorenzo then complains of the war measures Lincoln took after secession: military tribunals, restrictions on civil liberties, and the suppression of newspapers. But he doesn't mention the South's suppression of discussion about abolition"

In this complaint Masugi commits a fallacious line of argument, and perhaps intentionally. He notes DiLorenzo's complaint with Lincoln, responds with the assertion that the south "did it too," and moves on as if the issue has been settled while simultaneously criticizing DiLorenzo for failing to write about the South's shortcomings. Only one problem - DiLorenzo's book was never about the South's shortcomings and never sought to take up that issue in the first place. It was about Lincoln though, and despite Masugi's best efforts to divert attention away from the validity of DiLorenzo's complaints with Lincoln, they remain unaddressed in his supposed critique. Yet again, DiLorenzo's argument remains unaddressed by Masugi.

III. "DiLorenzo also contends that Lincoln violated international law in his "savage" conduct of the war. Not once does DiLorenzo entertain the thought that a disunited America might have become prey for the designs of European imperial powers, which would have put an end to the experiment in self-government"

Masugi employs a clear and apparently intentional distraction tactic to divert attention away from DiLorenzo's original argument - war crimes under Lincoln's command. Notice that his "response" to DiLorenzo on the issue is a wholly unrelated reference to fears of European imperialism in North America - an issue that has very little if anything to do with DiLorenzo's commentary about war crimes and fails to address it in any significant way.

IV. "And for the destruction caused by Sherman's march through Georgia, historian Victor Davis Hanson has observed: 'It is a hard thing for contemporary liberalism to envision war as not always evil, but as sometimes very necessary - and very necessarily brutal if great evil is to disappear.'"

Masugi's comment here comes as if an arbitrary rhetorical expression constitutes enough to dismiss a factually formulated argument. It doesn't, and Masugi's chosen quote conveys little more than excuse making of an "ends justify means" variety.  By implication of his quote, Masugi seems to be attempting to cast DiLorenzo's critique of Lincoln's style of warfare as a view of "contemporary liberalism." Nothing could be further from the truth, as the distinction of justly waged war and unjustly waged war comes directly from traditional conservative Christian moral absolutism, not modern liberalism.

Thomas Aquinas, a famed Christian philosopher and ethicist of the scholastic age, set forth the qualifications of a morally waged war. Aquinas reasoned that a war may be justly waged when three conditions are met: that of sovereign authority to do so, that of a just cause for its being waged, and thirdly "it is necessary that the belligerents should have a rightful intention, so that they intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil" Aquinas cites St. Augustine in giving examples of the wicked waging of war: "The passion for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance, an unpacific and relentless spirit, the fever of revolt, the lust of power, and such like things, all these are rightly condemned in war." Many such elements, including drives for vengeance and harm and the lust for power exhibited their ugly heads in the brand of warfare waged against civilians by northern troops.

Even if one believes that the North had fought for the just end of freeing the slaves (it did not do so according to no less a source than Lincoln himself), and even if the North's war was waged duly under proper authority, its immoral waging renders the war unjust. Aquinas states this clearly in his writings: "For it may happen that the war is declared by the legitimate authority, and for a just cause, and yet be rendered unlawful through a wicked intention." DiLorenzo also readily admits in his book that had the war been waged to free the slaves, had it been properly conducted, and had it been waged in a moral way, it would have been justified. His argument, which he supports by citing the rampant Northern war crimes, demonstrates that this was simply not the case, therefore making the North's waging of war unjust and immoral. Yet again, this argument of DiLorenzo remains unaddressed by Masugi.

V. "But why would Lincoln indulge in these criminal actions? Since he was a racist and had no great interest in freeing the slaves, DiLorenzo concludes, his "real agenda" must have been the imposition of a "mercantilist/Whig" high tariff economic system"

Masugi's assertion here is a clear case of scarecrow construction, but first let us examine the conclusions he attributes to DiLorenzo but apparently disputes himself. The fact of Lincoln's racism (racism being defined by the belief that a certain skin color instills qualifies conditions of superiority in that skin color over another)  is thoroughly supported by Lincoln's statements. Among them are the following:

"I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position." - Lincoln at Ottowa, August 21, 1858

"Negro equality! Fudge!! How long, in the government of a God, great enough to make and maintain this Universe, shall there continue knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagoguism as this?" - Lincoln, speech fragments, circa 1859

Next we may turn to Lincoln's position on the issue of freeing the slaves. I have recognized many times before that Lincoln very clearly had a passive moral opposition to slavery. Politically, he took a fairly firm stance in opposition to its expansion into the territories. Beyond that, Lincoln played politics, which led him to adopt positions opposed to the abolition of slavery and even engage in efforts to prolong the institution's existence. One such case of the latter came in 1861 when Lincoln endorsed - in his inaugural address of all places - a recently passed constitutional amendment that stated

"No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State."

The measure would have effectively prevented any future amendment abolishing slavery, likely extending the institution years if not decades beyond what would otherwise have been its fate had the measure been ratified. Lincoln's involvement in this constitutional amendment extended far beyond simply endorsing it though. Lincoln himself was the motivation behind its introduction in committee several months earlier, as is indicated by the senator who introduced it, William Seward. Following the proposal's introduction, Seward wrote to Lincoln to inform him of his actions stating "I offered three propositions which seemed to me to cover the ground of the suggestion made by you, through Mr. Weed, as I understand it." In other words, Seward introduced the measure after being informed of it by Thurlow Weed, who conveyed it as a message from Lincoln, who he met with in Springfield a few days earlier. When the amendment passed Congress two months later on the eve of Lincoln's inauguration, his support of the measure was further cited as the main reason for its success. Eyewitness Henry Adams wrote of the event, "some careful manipulation, as well as the direct influence of the new President, was needed before this measure...could be passed."

Having exposed the error in these assumptions about Lincoln that had been contradicted by DiLorenzo though denied by the Claremonsters, we may now turn to Masugi's argument in this statement. In the simplest of terms Masugi is asserting that, holding the other two assertions to be true, DiLorenzo concludes by default that Lincoln's real motivation was the Whig economic agenda. This assertion is a straw man, as DiLorenzo's argument on Lincoln's economic beliefs is based upon Lincoln's espousal of those beliefs throughout his career - not some random conclusion that since it wasn't X and Y, it must by default be Z. Extensive passages of DiLorenzo's book are devoted to Lincoln's career as a proponent of protectionism, and Lincoln's own words right up to the war indicate he held this belief strongly:

"I was an old Henry Clay tariff whig. In old times I made more speeches on that subject, than on any other. I have not since changed my views." - Lincoln to Edward Wallace, October 11, 1859

Lincoln espoused his tariff views strongly in a speech given only weeks before of his inauguration. It pertained to the Morrill tariff bill, which had long since passed the House and was up for debate in the Senate. In the plainest of language and on the eve of the war, Lincoln told his audience that the tariff, which the South vehemently opposed, was a top priority:

"According to my political education, I am inclined to believe that the people in the various sections of the country should have their own views carried out through their representatives in Congress, and if the consideration of the Tariff bill should be postponed until the next session of the National Legislature, no subject should engage your representatives more closely than that of a tariff."- Lincoln at Pittsburgh, February 15, 1861

VI. "The South's call for low tariffs became a demand for preserving an agricultural economy based on slavery. To view the conflict between North and South as primarily one of two incompatible economic systems obscures the central place of slavery."

Masugi fails to substantiate his first assertion and proceeds as if it were fact upon his statement. In reality, common sense economics dictate that Southern opposition to the tariff stemmed from the economic detriments incurred by the South by the presence of protectionist industrial tariffs. A protectionist tariff functions by raising the price of a foreign import by way of the tax imposed upon it. When raised by a tariff, a comparatively cheap foreign good's price may become equal to or higher than an otherwise more expensive but protected domestically produced substitute. Accordingly the market shifts to favor the protected domestic good, which is, thanks to the tariff, the cheaper of the two. That domestic good will still cost more than the foreign substitute absent the tariff, therefore persons who stand to gain from the presence of a cheaper foreign good will oppose the tariff while the protected industries will support it. That is exactly what the South faced in 1861. Tariffs benefited northern industries by shifting the market to them and denying persons outside of the northern industries the benefits of free trade.

Masugi's second assertion is itself ironic, as it better applies to his own position when flipped than to any tariff-oriented argument - To view the conflict between North and South as one of slavery and virtually nothing else, as Masugi does, obscures the complexity of the conflict itself by denying even the simplest consideration of any factor beyond that narrow pre-set parameter. To be sure, reducing the entirety of the war to a tariff difference is not without its own fallacy, but just as much if not more is true of slavery reductionism, and the latter is firmly adhered to as an immovable doctrine by many in the Claremonster school. Rather than objecting to attempts of another to interpret the conflict as exclusively economic, they seem to object to any interpretation of the conflict that is not exclusively slavery.

VII. "Progressivism was based on the same historical-evolutionary brand of thought, dating back to Rousseau, that justified black slavery as the cornerstone of Confederate civilization. And Progressivism begat modern megastate liberalism."

Masugi's argument in this case, that leftism emerged out of the same strain of thought as the confederacy, is not only bizarre but wholly unsubstantiated in his article. He simply asserts it to be so, accepts his self-assertion as fact, and moves on as if it were the case. The entirety of his statement may be rejected as quickly as the whim in which it was made. Quod gratis asseritur gratis negatur.

If one does, however, investigate this assertion further, its falsehoods are similarly evident. Masugi's assertion is presumably based upon the writings of the Abratollah, which basically attempt to force a bizarre theory on the evolution of liberalism from John C. Calhoun to the Confederacy to both Adolph Hitler and modern leftism. Jaffa's attempted connection is uneasy, if not wholly unsubstantiated. Any honest examination of the political evolution that led to Hitler and National Socialism traces its origins to the synthesis of Germanic nationalism and Hegelian Marxism by a group of relatively obscure far-left political philosophers who wrote in Germany during the first world war. All of these writers were direct products of various communist movements drawn upon what their writings asserted, Marx und Hegel. The theory of national socialism, as with its counterpart theory of socialism that still dominates modern leftism, emerged heavily out of the life breathed into it by Karl Marx and his successors. As evidenced by the writings of Marx himself, the marxist movement's interpretation of the War Between the States has been thoroughly aligned with the North, not the South, since the very first shot was fired in 1861. They saw the Northern cause, albeit through shaded glasses, as being purely a struggle of liberation for the working man and sung praises of that which came out of it under Lincoln's guidance. Marx himself expressed this interpretation in a letter to Lincoln in 1864:

"The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world." - Marx, November 29, 1864

Contrary to Masugi's interpretation, Marx, in the plainest of terms, saw his leftist cause advanced into a new stage of historical evolution by the Northern victory over the Confederacy he detested and spent his time attacking throughout the war.

VIII. "Some libertarians would not see a paradox in a liberty to own slaves and thus to enslave oneself: This is precisely DiLorenzo's position stripped of all its pretensions"

This attempt to characterize a position of DiLorenzo is yet another unsupported assertion of Masugi's, made on a whim and inserted as if it were so by its very presence alone. Masugi offers no evidence though that anything of DiLorenzo's even remotely approaches that position. Any honest reading of The Real Lincoln recognizes that, when applicable, DiLorenzo is harshly critical of slavery itself as an institution and even acknowledges that fighting a war to end it could be justice, if it were truly the reason for that war. This however was not the case with Lincoln.

IX. "Others on the right, such as Russell Kirk, Robert Bork, and Robert Kraynak have criticized the Declaration for being French, nihilistic, or irreligious."

Masugi's assertion here is aimed at a branch of conservatives who have taken Constitution-oriented views of proper American government, citing the Declaration as an important however somewhat problematic document. The Abratollah and his followers tend to hold otherwise, forwarding an argument that orients American government around the Declaration and asserts the document to have been perfected by the ideals embodied in Abraham Lincoln. In actuality, the major traditional conservative criticism of the DoI relates to its thoroughly Lockean philosophical base. Instead they turn to the much more solid and traditional philosophical bases found elsewhere in the founding documents. The Jaffa school has instead long tried to reconcile and rectify the Lockean problem, often through Lincoln as mentioned above. As a side note, for those who wonder what problems Locke, a figure frequently embraced by many conservatives, presents - read the logical fulfillment of his ideas as expressed in David Hume's Enquiry. From there it will become fairly obvious how post-modern leftism emerged in later centuries and the empiricist predecessors out of which it stems.

X. "But in two magnificent works, Crisis of the House Divided and A New Birth of Freedom, Harry V. Jaffa captured Lincoln's teaching about our founding principles. Jaffa demonstrated how tradition, majoritarianism, revelation, and latter-day states' rights arguments cannot provide for liberty, human excellence, and republican limited government as well as the natural-rights teaching of the Declaration as sublimely articulated by Abraham Lincoln"

In this concluding sentence, Masugi inadvertently concedes what this is really all about - a combination plug for the Abratollah's books and an intellectually light weight trashing of a major opposition, found in DiLorenzo. At least this statement of Masugi's is consistent with the rest of his book "review" - it consists of nothing more than a blind assertion of whim. Nowhere does Masugi bother to explain how Jaffa "demonstrated" all the things he alleges, nor does he even elaborate upon them. He simply asserts them to be true. The conclusion gives an appearance of an intention that the reader, at this point, to accept the Abratollah's word on faith, conclude the error of contrary positions by default, and join the Claremonster in its practice of genuflecting toward their worldly leader, his secular deity of Lincoln, and the glorious concept of "The Union" embodied in all three. As with all false gods though, their fraudulence is immediately revealed by exposure to a simple dose of truth and common sense.

[lodwick]

The Freeper Tagline Challenge!
For every dollar donated to FR in support of bringing back the Tag Line I will match those donations up to a total of $500 Please let me know the amount you donate, thanks. Take this opportunity to DOUBLE your donation ;-)	Donate Here By Secure Server Or mail checks to FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794 or you can use PayPal at Jimrob@psnw.com
Fund Raiser thread here

[Non-Sequitur]

But Jeff Davis was NEVER put on trial for treason.

No, but he was indicted for treason and would have been tried, and no doubt convicted, if not for the passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868. Chief Justice Chase viewed the penalties imposed on the leaders of the rebellion in that amendment as meaning any future trial and punishment for crimes connected with the rebellion as a violation of the defendants 5th Amendment rights. Shortly afterwards the charges were dropped.

[4CJ]

Even in April of 1865, Lincoln was wondering what to do with the blacks, and the black union soldiers. He didn't advocate them migrating to Illinois.

[GOPcapitalist]

If one wants to judge -- and Di Lorenzo clearly wants to judge and condemn Lincoln -- one has to have an accurate yardstick, that is to say, clear moral values and also a sense of what is possible in a given situation. I don't know about the former, but DiLorenzo clearly lacks the latter.

I don't believe so. A major part of DiLorenzo's book is devoted to the argument that the war could have been avoided had Lincoln acted differently - the notion that the war was unneccessary. His major contention is of the possibility that Lincoln could have acted differently but chose not to do so and instead chose the course that led to the war and to his abuses.

Speculation about how someone else thinks can't be proven or disproven, but it's probably inevitable in writing a review and it's much more of a side issue, not something to be singled out for attack. It's not that Masugi substitutes a weaker argument for a stronger, but that he tries to understand how DiLorenzo proceeded.

No. He said it in plainest of terms that DiLorenzo's argument was based upon "If not X and Y, then Z by default." Immediately after that statement, he quotes a summary sentence of Lincoln's position on the tariff from DiLorenzo's book, as if it were the conclusion made by default after the rejection of X and Y. Such is a straw man argument in the classic sense.

Your argument seems to be that because DiLorenzo has data about much Lincoln's Whiggery that is somehow prima facie evidence of Lincoln's motivation for fighting the war.

No. Not in itself. DiLorenzo's argument is that Lincoln highly valued and forwarded Whig economics, that those economics came into play with much objection from the south just before the war, that their result incited a good portion of the southern secession cause, and that from economic terms and priorities, the south's secession had to be opposed in order to collect the tariff and avoid the economic consequences of a free trade neighbor. It's a lot more involved than your attempted simplification to "Lincoln believed X therefore it must've been his motivation." Read the book.

DiLorenzo carefully picks documents out of a much larger collection to "prove" his point. The random letter to a tariff supporter is given importance far beyond what its context warrants.

I'm assuming you are referring to the 1859 one? I don't believe this letter should be underestimated as it clearly shows several things. First, it is one of a set of similar letters by Lincoln from the same period, indicating that the issue had popped onto the radar of the political scene. Second, it indicates in the clearest of terms that by 1859, 60, and 61, Lincoln was still devoted to the tariff cause just as he had been in 1840 when it dominated his politics. Third, in the letter he expresses clear hopes and intentions that the issue will become politically viable in the near future and that a tariff can be installed.

A speech on how the functions of government will go on is erroneously read as representing a thirst for ever more tariff revenue.

Are you referring to the first inaugural? If so, I don't believe that, read in the context of Lincoln's actions proceding it, DiLorenzo erred to call it thirst for tariff enforcement. Read Lincoln's private correspondence about Fort Sumter and other southern garrisons from about December 1860 through the seige. Also read the blockade orders. One clear and dominating theme that appears throughout them is a near-obsessive concern for making sure the tariff revenue is collected - practically above all else in some cases.

The whole argument that a war to liberate the slaves would have been regarded as a legitimate war by DiLorenzo is a dubious redherring he throws in. Given his support for secession and state's rights, I suspect he like others in his camp would find such a war equally reprehensible, not just at the time, but even today, were he honest.

Once again, your speculation is irrelevant and inconsequential. You are starting to behave like a broken record, x, repeating flawed forms of argumentation that have already been exposed. Why is that?

And though the war did eventually become one for liberation of the slaves, that doesn't cause DiLorenzo to moderate his attacks.

Beyond a propaganda rallying cry and a tactical decision, no. I don't think it ever did. The slaves were freed because it was politically advantageous in the long run for the north to do so, not because of some greater moral calling in warfare.

The problem with applying just war theory to history is that political leaders can't apply the brakes to wars once they begin.

That is not so much a problem with ethical rules of warfare as it is with the political leaders who cannot apply the breaks. Admittedly, most wars are not just. But that does not mean they cannot be, nor does it excuse an unjust war. In Lincoln's case, you will also find it difficult to argue that he didn't stop Sherman because he "couldn't apply the breaks." Lincoln was famous for his detailed hands on management of his armies. He knew what Sherman was doing and consented to it. The war was just in its inception.

Going to war to subjugate another people is just?

Whether or not Lincoln had the right to force the rebel states back under elected federal authority he clearly did have the right to combat and prevent their efforts to promote rebellion in other states and put them under Confederate control.

Arguably yes, but Fort Sumter was not in one of those other states. Richmond was not in one of those other states. The war began in two stages - first when Lincoln sent his expedition force to Sumter and the blockade a week later, then when Lincoln marched his army toward Manassas.

There is a gray area between "war crimes" and legitimate and accepted means of winning a war which may not be particularly nice or kind. DiLorenzo and his kind are too quick to assume that actions committed by Union forces fall into the former and not the latter category.

Excuse it as you may, there is very little gray area about open warfare against civilians for the sole purpose of targetting those civilians with destruction.

Your quote by Augustine is very pretty, but I wish you would stand back a minute and try read it through critical eyes. He seems to be saying the reasons for war and the things that happen in war are all "rightly condemned in war." Wasn't every war fought in an "unpacific spirit?" Doesn't "the fever of revolt, the lust of power" sum up the spirit of the early Confederacy? "The passion for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance" had taken hold in the guerrilla wars of Missouri and Kansas and would have gone on even had Lincoln remained passive and appeasing towards the Confederacy.

Yet again, you withdraw your position to tu quoque. Yes, its perfectly possible to find incidents of any one of those things committed by any side. But when considering the justice of a war as committed by the person waging it, such fallacious reasoning fails to even acknowledge the issue at hand - was the side waging the war (the north) just in doing so? My contention, which I do not believe could reasonably be disputed in light of the conduct of Lincoln's armies and the motivations for the invasion itself, is a resounding no.

Lincoln was clearly no angel or saint

Unfortunately some individuals based out of Claremont, CA seem to think otherwise.

nor would any of America's wartime leaders fit that mold.

You appear to be having much difficulty grasping this - tu quoque relativism is by its very nature a non-response to an argument.

Augustine may have the yardstick for getting into heaven, but it's most unrealistic in judging wartime leaders.

The fact that a just war is often not the case bears no relevance on whether or a particular war is just. Try again.

Like has to be compared with like

It _can_ be compared with like, but that does not mean it _must_ be judged by its relativity to a percieved like...that is unless you are a relativist and are accordingly prepared to receive the dubious philosophical consequences of that position. For the record, I am beginning to think that relativism runs strong in your set of beliefs yet I do not think you've realized the consequences yet.

I am readily prepared to admit that Lincoln made mistakes.

Good. That places you well ahead of the Jaffa crowd at Claremont and the Wlat brigade around here on FR.

[Non-Sequitur]

Good. That places you well ahead of the Jaffa crowd at Claremont and the Wlat brigade around here on FR.

But behind you, who it seems is not prepared to make the same admission about Jefferson Davis.

[Non-Sequitur]

Even in April of 1865, Lincoln was wondering what to do with the blacks, and the black union soldiers. He didn't advocate them migrating to Illinois.

Given that the black population in Illinois quadrupled between 1860 and 1870 I guess he didn't have much to worry about.

[GOPcapitalist]

But behind you, who it seems is not prepared to make the same admission about Jefferson Davis.

It seems we have another member of the tu quoque school of argumentation around here. If he can show any case where I have ever suggested in any form that Jefferson Davis was incapable of flaw or error, then his non-response may at least have some fact, albeit inconsequential fact, to it. That burden is upon him though, and I am confident that, in usual fashion, he will fail to meet it.

[Non-Sequitur]

My apologies. I confused you with GOPcapitalist. All you southerners look alike to me, I guess.

But while we're here, now is your chance to take a swing at Davis. What was his greatest crime?

[Non-Sequitur]

This is just not my day. I did mean to direct the reponse to you. The original was misdirected to 4Conservative Justices.

But the offer still stands. Take a shot at Jeff. If you dare.

[friday jones]

http://www.sutler.com/2ndMD/History/Session_in_Maryland/session_in_maryland.html

"In a span of four days from the 13th to the 17th of September Lincoln had all of the members of the state legislature, who had or were suspected of having ties to the Confederacy, arrested."

"Arrests of this sort continued and became more numerous. Prime examples of this include an incident where Baltimore police chief Marshal George P. Kane was arrested for no particular reason. The underlying reason for the arrest was that as soon as Kane was arrested, the military was able to take over the Baltimore police department. Kane's arrest brought out extreme anti-North sentiments through out the state. These sentiments were quelled in Baltimore by the presence of infantry and artillery companies from Boston who were in control of the city at this time."

[TexConfederate1861]

Well...they shouldn't have been planning to desert and make
war on their country.....and I don't mean the USA.

[TexConfederate1861]

That isn't the reason Chase gave...he said that secession could not have been proved illegal, hence no treason, and that they would "lose in the courtroom what has been won on the battlefield."

[Maelstrom]

There are better examples.

Lincoln's actions lay the onus of an unfettered government upon his own shoulders.

There remained no recourse for violations at the federal level of states' rights. They could not overcome a majority in the corrupt northern states and were forbidden to leave...but government usurpation of consent of the governed.

Lincoln remains the linchpin of an incremental slide away from a republic of collected states toward more and greater federal authoritarian powers.

He is responsible.

=Maelstrom=

[Maelstrom]

Nobody was...because the original claim is blatantly false, is known to be blatantly false, and historically, has only ever been blatantly false.

Advocating secession is, was, and never will be treasonous.

The original poster of that falsehood knows that it's a falsehood, and it's just one of many.

[WhiskeyPapa]

Advocating secession is, was, and never will be treasonous.

The original poster of that falsehood knows that it's a falsehood, and it's just one of many.

Justice Grier in the majority opinion in The Prize Cases refers to the secessionists as tratitors.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

lLincoln remains the linchpin of an incremental slide away from a republic of collected states toward more and greater federal authoritarian powers.

President Lincoln made the same points that Chief Justice Jay and Justice Wilson made in 1793.

"We may then infer, that the people of the United States intended to bind the several states, by the legislative power of the national government...Whoever considers, in a combined and comprehensive view, the general texture of the constitution, will be satisfied that the people of the United States intended to form themselves into a nation for national purposes. They instituted, for such purposes, a national government complete in all its parts, with powers legislative, executive and judiiciary, ad in all those powers extending over the whole nation.

--Justice Wilson:

"the people nevertheless continued to consider themselves, in a national point of view, as one people; and they continued without interruption to manage their national concerns accordingly; afterwards, in the hurry of the war, and in the warmth of mutual confidence, they made a confederation of the States, the basis of a general Government. Experience disappointed the expectations they had formed from it; and then the people, in their collective and national capacity, established the present Constitution. It is remarkable that in establishing it, the people exercised their own rights and their own proper sovereignty, and conscious of the plenitude of it, they declared with becoming dignity, "We the people of the United States," 'do ordain and establish this Constitution."

Here we see the people acting as the sovereigns of the whole country; and in the language of sovereignty, establishing a Constitution by which it was their will, that the state governments should be bound, and to which the State Constitutions should be made to conform.

Every State Constitution is a compact made by and between the citizens of a state to govern themeselves in a certain manner; and the Constitution of the United States is liekwise a compact made by the people of the United States to govern themselves as to general objects, in a certain manner. By this great compact however, many prerogatives were transferred to the national Government, such as those of making war and peace, contracting alliances, coining money, etc."

--Jay, Chief Justice

You can look up these opinions, they are from Chisholm v. Georgia

For the record, this is part of section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789:

"And be it further enacted, That the Supreme Court shall have exclusive jurisdiction of all controversies of a civil nature, where a state is a party, except between a state and its citizens; and except also between a state and citizens of other states, or aliens, in which latter case it shall have original but not exclusive jurisdiction."

Now, was secession a criminal act or a civil act?

There is no recourse to unilateral state scession in U.S. law and all the fulmination in the world won't produce it.

Walt

[x]

You seem to think that because you respond to something you have disproven and disposed of it, or because you can slap a label on something you have refuted it. I don't have that much confidence in purely verbal formulations and quick retorts. Your confidence may take you far, but won't necessarily bring you any closer to the truth. If you think that your denial of someone else's argument is always equivalent to a refutation, you will face much frustration in life.

Lincoln wanted to maintain the idea that the union had not been broken. The mails, forts, courts and import taxes were virtually the only ways the goverment acted in those days, hence the symbolic importance of the pretence that the government could still collect tariffs. I don't think Lincoln counted on collecting much money from the rebel states, but maintaining a military installation or two was key to keeping the flag flying.

DiLorenzo's ignorance of earlier American history and his willful distortion of Lincoln's record -- his deliberately reading a passage from the Lincoln-Douglas debates out of context to convey the opposite of what Lincoln intended -- make him a very suspect guide to our history. Claremont's views aren't for everyone, but they do take DiLorenzo seriously and take more time to refute him than he really deserves. J.F. Epperson has also done a good job tracking down DiLorenzo's factual errors, distortions of interpretation, and shoddy scholarship.

Your view of the beginning of the war is too clean and rationalistic. It ignores the panic of the time and the rhetoric of conquest indulged in by secessionist leaders. It also ignores the fact that the Confederates began the war and intended to gain territory by doing so. Begin a war and then say, "we just want to be left alone," and it's likely that others won't take your words seriously. That "we just want to be left alone" is more an excuse concocted for the defeated Confederacy than the real spirit of 1861.

That year was not a time of calm, rational discussion or of successful rational planning. It saw a collapse of reason into emotionalism, militant passions, panic and lust for glory. Had reason, good sense, and purposeful, intentional action been stronger then, there would likely have been a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

The Civil War was typical -- on both sides -- of mass ideologically motivated warfare in the industrial age. It was not more brutal on civilians that others of that sort. Sherman's destructive war on Confederate property was unfortunate to those who suffered from it, but it was a war on property not a brutal war on civilian lives.

You have denied that this matters, but you've said nothing to convince me. Essentially, you have a condemnation of the Civil War, of the two World Wars and of other wars in the modern age. But it doesn't amount to a serious indictment of Lincoln or the Union Armies.

[4CJ]

Lincoln's views on rewarding the blacks for their service in April 1865.  Full text - no exclusions, additions in brackets below are mine for clarification:

A conversation was held between us after the negotiations had failed at Hampton Roads [3 Feb 1865], and in the course of the conversation he [Lincoln] said to me:--

But what shall we do with the negroes after they are free? I can hardly believe that the South and North can live in peace, unless we can get rid of the negroes. Certainly they cannot if we don't get rid of the negroes whom we have armed and disciplined and who have fought with us, to the amount, I believe, of some one hundred and fifty thousand men. I believe that it would be better to export them all to some fertile country with a good climate, which they could have to themselves.

You have been a stanch friend of the race from the time you first advised me to enlist them at New Orleans. You have had a good deal of experience in moving bodies of men by water,--your movement up the James was a magnificent one. Now, we shall have no use for our very large navy; what, then, are our difficulties in sending all the blacks away?

If these black soldiers of ours go back to the South I am afraid that they will be but little better off with their masters than they were before, and yet they will be free men. I fear a race war, and it will be at least a guerilla war because we have taught these men how to fight. All the arms of the South are now in the hands of their troops, and when we capture them we of course will take their arms. There are plenty of men in the North who will furnish the negroes with arms if there is any oppression of them by their late masters.

I wish you would carefully examine the question and give me your views upon it and go into the figures, as you did before in some degree, so as to show whether the negroes can be exported. I wish also you would give me any views that you have as to how to deal with the negro troops after the war. Some people think that we shall have trouble with our white troops after they are disbanded, but I don't anticipate anything of that sort, for all the intelligent men among them were good citizens or they would not have been good soldiers. But the question of the colored troops troubles me exceedingly. I wish you would do this as soon as you can, because I am to go down to City Point shortly and may meet negotiators for peace there, and I may want to talk this matter over with General Grant if he isn't too busy.

I said: I will go over this matter with all diligence and tell you my conclusions as soon as I can.

The second day after that, I called early in the morning and said: Mr. President, I have gone very carefully over my calculations as to the power of the country to export the negroes of the South, and I assure you that using all your naval vessels and all the merchant marine fit to cross the seas with safety, it will be impossible for you to transport them to the nearest place that can be found fit for them,--and that is the Island of San Domingo,--half as fast as negro children will be born here.

I am afraid you are right, General, was his answer; but have you thought what we shall do with the negro soldiers?

I said:

I have formulated a scheme which I will suggest to you, Mr. President. We have now enlisted one hundred and fifty thousand negro troops, more or less, infantry, cavalry, and artillery. They were enlisted for three years or for the war. We did not commence enlisting them in any numbers until the latter part of 1863 and in 1864. I assume that they have a year at least on an average to serve, and some of them two to three years. We have arms, equipment, clothing, and military material and everything necessary for three hundred thousand troops for five years. Until the war is declared ended by official proclamation, which cannot be done for some very considerable time, they can be ordered to serve wherever the commander-in-chief may direct.

Now I have had some experience in digging canals. The reason why my canal, which was well dug, did not succeed you know. My experience during the war has shown me that the army organization is one of the very best for digging. Indeed, many of the troops have spent a large portion of their time in digging in forts and intrenchments, and especially the negroes, for they were always put into the work when possible. The United States wants a ship canal across the Isthmus of Darien at some proper and convenient point. Now, I know of a concession made by the United States of Colombia of a strip thirty miles wide across the Isthmus for that purpose. I have the confidence of the negroes. If you will put me in command of them, I will take them down there and dig the canal. It will cost the United States nothing but their pay, the clothing that they wear will be otherwise eaten by the moths, the arms are of no worth, as we have so many of them in excess; the wagons and equipments will otherwise rust out. I should set one third of them to digging. I should set another third to building the proper buildings for shelter and the rest to planting the ground and raising food. They will hardly need supplies from the government beyond the first season, having vegetable supplies which they will raise and which will be best for their health. After we get ourselves established we will petition Congress under your recommendation to send down to us our wives and children. You need not send down anybody to guard us, because if fifty thousand well-equipped men cannot take care of ourselves against anybody who would attack us in that neighborhood, we are not fit to go there. We shall thus form a colony there which will protect the canal and the interests of the United States against the world, and at least we shall protect the country from the guerilla warfare of the negro troops until the danger from it is over.

He reflected a while, having given the matter his serious attention, and then spoke up, using his favorite phrase: There is meat in that, General Butler; there is meat in that. But how will it affect our foreign relations? I want you to go and talk it over with Mr. Seward and get his objections, if he has any, and see how you can answer them. There is no special hurry about that, however. I will think it over, but nothing had better be said upon it which will get outside.

Well, then, Mr. President, I said, I will take time to elaborate my proposition carefully in writing before I present it to Mr. Seward.

I bowed and retired, and that was the last interview I ever had with Abraham Lincoln.

Some days afterwards [6 April 1865] I called at Mr. Seward's office, reaching it, as near as I can remember, about two o'clock in the afternoon. He promptly and graciously received me, and I stated to him that I came to see him at the request of the President, to place before him a plan that I had given to the President for disposing of the negro troops.

Ah, he [Seward] said, General, I should be very glad to hear it. I know Mr. Lincoln's anxiety upon that question, for he has expressed it to me often, and I see no answer to his trouble.

Benjamnin F. Butler, Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benj. F. Butler, Book Publishers, Boston, 1892, pp. 903-907

[stainlessbanner]

Epperson's link is Declaration Foundation rehash - Many of us have been aware of this page and realize many anti-Dilorenzo posts include a quick cut and paste from this source.

[3rdnational]

:)