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If only all Americans (you and I included) knew as much about the causes, and far-reaching outcomes, of the Civil War as your Grandfather and my Dad did, we would all have a much healthier perspective on both the past, and the future, of this country.

Returning to reality ....

My impression of Lincoln is about as close to a ‘love/hate’ thing as one can achieve.

I have no doubt that Lincoln suspended the Constitution (and that he did, despite revisionist historians’ protests to the contrary) because of his deep love for our republic, and his burning desire to preserve the unraveling union. But, in doing so, he set a precedent that, 150 or so years later, may very well set the foundation for the destruction of our republican form of government.

When I first read the Patriot Act, one of my initial reactions was, ‘How long will it be before an American President (not necessarily Bush, but the remote possibility exists) invokes a Lincoln-like suspension of the writ of Hapeas Corpus, in the name of homeland security? That vision made me weak in the knees, because the right to individual life and liberty that is the cornerstone of our Constitution, and our republican foundation, would be dealt a blow possibly commensurate to that which any threat of terrorism from outside our borders could ever achieve.

And I’m afraid it’s only a matter of time.

I have a nine-volume set of books, published in 1907, called ‘Works of Abraham Lincoln.’ Volumes VII, VIII and IX are entitled ‘Letters and Telegrams,’ and they contain fascinating inner glimpses into Lincoln via hundreds of personal writings, many of which he labeled ‘personal and confidential.’ (After purchasing this set of books many years ago, I recall spending several days reading all of these letters, and feeling as if I learned more from them than from all of my previous study of Lincoln).

In one that was written on June 12, 1863 to ‘Corning, Erastus and others’ -- labeled ‘personal and confidential’ -- he writes, of the suspension of the writ (brackets are mine):

And here I ought to close this letter, and would close it if there were no apprehension that more injurious consequences than any merely personal to myself might follow the censures systematically cast upon me for doing what, in my view of duty, I could not forebear .... but the meeting, by their resolutions, assert and argue that certain military arrests .... for which I am ultimately responsible, are unconstitutional ....

Would not the demonstration have been better if it could truly have been said that these safeguards had been adopted and applied during the civil wars [meaning those that occurred in England] and during our revolution, instead of after the one and at the close of the other?

I, too, am devotedly for them after civil war, and before civil war, and at all times, except when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require their suspension. The resolutions [adopted by those who were protesting Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus] proceed to tell us that these safeguards ‘have stood the test of seventy-six years of trial under our republican system, under circumstances which show that while they constitute the foundation of all free government, they are elements of the enduring stability of the republic.’

The deadly problem with Lincoln’s philosophy is, very simply put, that the Constitutional safeguards regarding life and liberty which were deemed immutable (except for the unfortunate loophole they left in Article I) by our founders, were deemed temporarily suspendable by Lincoln. Although his motives were purely noble, his actions in declaring the removal of liberty as circumstantial set a dangerous precedent.

Surely neither our Founders, when penning Article I, section 9, Clause 2 (The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public safety may require it), or Lincoln when he saw fit to suspend H.C., never envisioned a central government which would someday envision itself as just as deadly an enemy of individual liberty as any invasionary force from outside our borders might.

It may be the unknowing ‘loophole’ in clause 2, combined with the precedent that Lincoln set (no matter his good intentions), that lays the groundwork for future deadly attacks on our individual liberties -- and the future of republican government, in the name of (either bogus or genuine) homeland security.

Homegrown tyrants are prone to take maximum advantage of loopholes and precedents, and they’ll not let these two fall by the wayside unused. It’s not a matter of if, but when, they will be invoked to their best advantage.

As you know, I share in large substance your views of Abraham Lincoln and the civil war and its impact on us to this day.

I believe it was God's will for Lincoln to be elected and that his solitary purpose was the preservation of the Union. It was his great passion...one that wound him up so thoroughly that he did in fact do extra-constitutional things in the process of holding the southern states in the Union, like those things discussed here and like the arresting of any perceived southern sympathizing Maryland legislator just before they lawfully voted on the seccession measure up before them at the outbreak of the war.

Having said that, in retrospect we know from an historical perspective, that the union holding was of critical importance to events that would occur fifty years later in World War I, and then another twenty years after that in World War II. Without a solid and prosperous ultimate Union resulting from the north's victory (despite the blight of reconstruction), it is almost certain that the Eurpean powers would have played off the resulting two nations in America against one another and we not only would not have been prepared to be the arselnal of liberty for those wars (which proved the winning of both), we very well could have been fighting each other as an extension of both...in which case, we would all probably be speaking German now and Hitler very well may have achieved his demonic goal of his thousand year Reich.

Now, I say this with mixed emotion. I am a Son of the American Revolution three times over...and a Son of the Confederacy, four times over. But the constitution, as it had to be ratified (if it was going to be ratified at all), broke faith with the Declaration of Independence in not addressing the slavery issue. Despite this, and the moral wrong of slavery practised in the south (and many areas of the north as well I might add), I say, despite this, the south was constitutionaly in the right because the issuues of the day were basically state's rights issues (as correctly discussed here on this thread).

As regards slavery itself, the south was moving towards eventual abolition. But the primary issues of the war waere centered on the economics and politics of infringement of state's rights...which of course included the slavery issue.

Lincoln, whom I believe was a sincere and honest man, was committed, above all else, to the preservation of the union. In retrospect, he was inspired to do so, despite the course things took both by his own precedent...and more particularly (IMHO) through the blight and aboration of reconstruction...as perverted, corrupt and immoral a time as ever existed in our history IMHO...and which itself has also led to many of our politcal and social ills today.

But, Lincon, he had no intetnion of afflicting the southern states or its people with that blight. A reading of his own writing makes this very clear. He was for a rapid normalization of issues after the war and a rapid re-elevation of states rights to a more proper role...albeit within an indissolvable union.

I personally believe that it was this intention and commitment on Licoln's part, to relatively cleanly bring the south back into the union and to quickly normalize thier activities within the union, that got him killed. That desire, as history pointed out after his death, was completely incompatable with the powermongers of his day, whom he himself viewed as a greater enemy than the southern armies. We know this is true based on his won pronouncments on the issue. To whit:

"The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, (and) more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe...corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed."-Abraham Lincoln

He was quite prophetic in that pronouncement IMHO.