Lost on 'Cold Mountain': The anti-'Gods and Generals'. (Busting the Dixie myth.)

Many intelligent and compassionate Americans, including Jefferson and many others, did not think it would be possible for black and white Americans to live together in peace without the slavery relationship in place.

Jefferson, for instance, firmly believed that the inevitable result of an end to slavery would be a race war and the extermination of the blacks. This was not an unreasonable theory, given the history of white American relations with the Indians, for instance.

Many of these men supported the idea of repatriation, which is not in itself a particularly racist notion. It was an attempt to find a way to solve what seemed an otherwise insoluble problem. The whole idea eventually foundered on the practicalities and cost of shipping 4,000,000 people across an ocean and on the fact that almost none of the freed slaves wanted to go.

I am unaware of any proposal of Lincoln that colonization be made compulsory.

Lincoln, along with a great many other Americans, struggled to figure out how two vastly different races could live together peacefully. We're struggling with basically the same issue 150 years later, and we aren't doing all that great a job ourselves.

I think self-righteous condemnation of ideas sincerely floated at the time is inappropriate.

In other words the South started a war that killed 660,000 Americans over a very small amount of taxation.

I've heard a tax rate that averages some 45-50% called many things before. "Very small" is not one of them.

At the time of secession, southern (and northern, although they usually paid much higher state taxes) Americans were probably the most lightly taxed people in the world.

Two things:

1. According to most estimates among first-world countries we still are the least taxed. Since this is evidently a point of comfort to you, am I correct in assuming that you remind yourself of it every year around April 15th to offset your initial discomfort over present tax rates before happily cutting your check and placing it in the mail?

2. As far as tariffs went for the era, no. The United States was NOT the least taxed region of the world. Much of the british empire at the time was of the free trade persuasion and, where permissible, had tariffs that reflected this. That's one of the reasons Britain got so mad when the yankees hiked taxes of 40% or more against practically all of their dutiable goods!

The entire federal budget was $60M, $2 and change per American

$60 million, eh? Doesn't sound like much at first glance but I wonder how that compares in today's dollars. First off, there wasn't any consumer price index in 1860 so an exact conversion is difficult. That's okay though. We can estimate. The CPI goes back to 1913 and, using a quick calculation in current dollars we find that $60,000,000 in 1913 translates into 1,009,680,000 in today's dollars. The 1913 dollar was inflated more than the 1860 dollar, so the actual figure must be higher. Using a rough but imprecise calculation index for that year off of some econ professor's website at Oregon State, you get an 1860 conversion to $1,276,595,744. The population in that year was about 30 million, which translates into a tax burden of about $45 a head in today's figures, or more than 20 times the simplistic $2 tax burden you suggest. Now before you say "but $45 isn't that much either" consider some more variables that must be considered. First, in 1860 unlike today most women stayed at home meaning the sole income earners were almost all male and almost everyone else was a dependent. Put differently, well under half of the population even earned an income to spend on taxable goods (100% minus 50% for females minus non-working elderly and children equals <50%). So the taxpaying population, whatever it may have been, was significantly less than 30 million, which has the effect of increasing the "share" paid by each person who actually earns money, buys things with that money, and owns what he buys. Second, total income levels were generally lower than they are today. $2+ in 1860 money was a larger percentage of people's total ownings and earnings than it is to us today even with inflation figured in. In sum, taxes were not nearly as low as you make them out to be or as a simplistic $2 per person statisic would seem to suggest.

I've been unable to find the breakdown, but the federal government had other sources of income besides the horrific tariffs. Notably the Post Office and land sales.

The post office ran a deficit in 1860 somewhere in the three million range. The capacity to use land sales as a source of public revenue was severely diminished after 1860 when the northerners pressed for the homesteading act and increased land giveouts to the federally subsidized railroad companies. Tariffs were essentially it among major revenue options.

If the South truly seceded over excessive taxation, were they really stupid enough not to realize that the inevitable result of two hostile countries in North America would be massively increased spending, and therefore taxation, by both?

They had hoped that the country to the north, being of similar background, would peacefully coexist with them. Mexico in the 1860's was in no shape to offer a major threat to them for the reason that it had its own difficulties with the French to worry about.

Cornwallis was not a prisoner when he negotiated his surrender, although he may have been afterwards.

"Charles Earl Cornwallis Lieutenant General [of his Brita]nnick Majesty's Forces:

Do acknowledge myself a Prisoner of War to the [United] States of America, & having permission from His [Excellen]cy General Washington, agreeable to Capitulation, to proceed to New York & Charlestown, or either, & to Europe.

Do pledge my Faith & Word of Honor, that I will not do or say any thing injurious to the said United States or Armies thereof, or their Allies, untill duly exchanged; I do further promise that Whenever required, by the Commander in Chief of the American Army, or the Commissary of Prisoners for the same, I will repair to such place or places as they or either of them may require.

GIVEN under my Hand at York Town 28th day of October 1781
(signed) Cornwallis"

Napoleon was no longer in power when he was captured by the British. He was on the run and surrendered to the Brits largely because the French royalists were going to kill him when they caught him.

Mostly out of power (He retreated to ile d'aix because it was an isolated residence in one of the last areas under his control) but not without followers. The initial plan was to flee the continent, regroup, and possibly return yet again. He negotiated with the British because they had him surrounded by ships leaving him nowhere else to go.

But if that still doesn't suffice, then what of Henry VI's capture at Northampton and again five years later at Clitheroe and yet again in 1471 at London? These events caused the crown of England, and with it the head of the government, to change hands from him not once but two separate times in barely a decade.

I assume you believe the Germans and Japanese are still allied in the Axis against the Allies?

No, because the war ended and the surviving leaders of their respective regimes surrendered.

And I guess the Warsaw Pact is still in force.

Treaties cease when countries cease to be or when those countries are defeated. They do not cease when a country remains but simply changes governments or kings.

After all, the international commitments made by these country's former dictatorial goverments cannot just be tossed away at the convenience of their successors.

They can if (a) the component states cease to exist, which the USSR and several artificially assembled eastern european countries did, if (b) the purpose treaty itself is warring and the warring nations are defeated, or (c) both.

Yes, I think the financial and other commitments made by Saddam Hussein and other dictators should not have legal validity. Might make it much harder for dictators to make deals or get credit if everyone knows their successors may not honor their deals.

It may, and that may be a course to go in this day and age but the majority of world history has dealt with this circumstance differently. When a new king inherited the old king's agreements he had only three choices: abide by it, approach the other nation and attempt to peacefully withdraw from it, or violate it. He couldn't simply say "well, I know King Harry signed this treaty and built that castle but Harry was a bad king so everything he did doesn't count anymore."

It's not like Mexico, as a nation, ever accepted the treaty in question.

It did as a nation when Santa Anna himself was for all practical purposes the government of that nation, and that includes the time in which it was signed. His subordinates later learned of his policy and disagreed with it, prompting them to rise up against his power and replace him but by then it was too late. Santa Anna's loyalists permitted him to become a dictator before he signed the treaty and dictator means dictator whether they liked everything he dictated or not. When he did enough that they didn't like they replaced him, but only then did they have the power to make policy on their own and by then Santa Anna's treaty was already a done deal.

Actually, it would be more like if the news of the Louisiana sale had led to an immediate revolution and overthrow of Napoleon, a pretty definite national repudiation of the treaty.

Not really. Santa Anna's own subordinates repudiated the policy and replaced him, at least until the next time he came back around 1838. At the same time as this the other revolting forces in Mexico were already trying to oust Santa Anna for entirely different reasons than his former subordinates and in fact many of the same reasons that the Texans revolted over in 1836.

Terms like "legal" are by definition used in reference to the rule of law. Using such terms when you're dealing with dictators is a very slippery concept.

...and that is a risk inherent to the very nature of dictatorial governments where a single el presidente, generalissimo, king, emperor, czar, sultan, caesar, kaiser, or lord high commander is for all practical purposes the state. Unlimited dictatorial power means unlimited dictatorial power. The decree of the king IS statutory law in a system of this type.

I realize Santa Ana had pretty well trashed the Constitution of Mexico, however I suspect there were still formalities that needed to be carried out for a treaty to be legal.

By then was little other mechanism for him to carry any such formality out. The 1824 Constitution was gone. Most of the legislatures were dissolved and replaced with military governors, who were normally generallisimo juniors of their own that also happened to be Santa Anna's in law or cousin. Practically all of the opposition parties and officials were abolished and imprisoned where possible, with the ones who were still free waging revolts of their own against him and so forth. So I suppose he could have gone back to Mexico City, reopened whatever was left of the national Congress, named his wife's second cousin Grand Senior Poobah of All Things Congressional, and told him to affix a wax seal upon the treaty thus signifying its "ratification" through that body, but for all practical purposes that wouldn't have meant anything more than his own signature.

True. Which was exactly the case in Mexico. The treaty was never accepted, either de facto or de jure by the Mexican people or government.

Correction. It was de jure because at the time it was signed Santa Anna WAS the Mexican government. That is the key point. Its de facto rejection is the explanatory cause for why Mexico reneged on its terms in the treaty but it does not alter that the treaty was adopted legally by Mexico's dictatorial head of state. So Mexico, even if it truly believed that letting Texas go was wrong after that event occurred, was still legally in breach of the treaty that let Texas go.

Many intelligent and compassionate Americans, including Jefferson and many others, did not think it would be possible for black and white Americans to live together in peace without the slavery relationship in place.

You are correct about that fact, but that is not at all my point. It has been asserted by some on this board and some within the circles of professional historians that Lincoln either was or late in his life became "above" the belief that blacks and whites could not freely coexist in the United States. The quasi-honest members of this crowd will admit that Lincoln believed in and encouraged colonization projects designed to return the blacks to Africa or other chosen locations like Haiti and Panama. They fib however when they claim that Lincoln abandoned this belief in favor of a more racially "enlightened" view circa 1864.

I think self-righteous condemnation of ideas sincerely floated at the time is inappropriate.

I have for the most part withheld judgment of his colonization policies for the purposes of this discussion and therefore cannot accurately be described as having engaged in that. I simply noted that, contrary to the assertions of some around here, strong evidence shows that Lincoln clung to his earlier colonization position till the day he died. That deprives him of the status of having moved to what we now consider a more enlightened position on race relations - a fact which some of his defenders find to be objectionable for their own presentations of Lincoln. So they fib about it and attempt to dismiss the evidence. That is the rub of things here.

I ALREADY DID. See post #411

All I see is that President Lincoln supported voting rights for black soldiers.

Walt

He repeatedly states his motives for using colored troops in that letter, that he offers freedom to some for the purpose of weakening the enemy and sparing the lives of Northern whites who would otherwise fill those positions. Listen to Lincoln, not Jaffa.

That letter, written to New York democrats and James Conkling in particular, must have stunned the rebels.

President Lincoln wrote two famous letters on this subject, in fact.

To James Conkling:

"But to be plain, you are dissatisfied with me about the negro. Quite likely there is a difference of opinion between you and myself upon that subject. I certainly wish that all men could be free, while I suppose that you do not. Yet I have neither adopted nor proposed any measure, which is not consistant even with your view, provided you are for the Union. I suggested compensated emancipation; to which you replied you wished not to be taxed to buy negroes. But I had not asked you to be taxed to buy negroes, except in such way, as to save you from greater expense, to save the Union exclusively by other means. You dislike the emancipatio proclamation; and perhaps, would have it retracted. You say it is unconstitutional--I think differently.

I think the Constitution invests the commander in chief with the law of war, in time of war. The most that can be said, if so much, is, that slaves are property. Is there--has there ever been--any question that by the law of war, property, both of enemies and friends, may be taken when needed? And is it not needed whenever taking it helps us, or hurts the enemy?

....but the proclamation, as law, either is valid, or it is not valid. If it is not valid, it needs no retraction. If it is valid, it can not be retracted, any more than the dead can be brought to life....

The war has certainly progressed as favorably for us, since the issue of the proclamation as before. I know as fully as one can know the opinions of others that some of the commanders of our armies in the field who have given us some of most important successes, believe the emancipation policy and the use of colored troops, constitute the heaviest blow yet dealt the rebellion, and that at least one of those important successes could not have been achieved when it was but for the aid of black soldiers....

I submit these opinions as being entitled to some weight against the objections, often urged, that emancipation, and arming the blacks, are unwise as military measures, and were not adopted, as such, in good faith. You say you will not fight to free negroes. Some of them seem willing to fight for you; but no matter. Fight you then, exclusively to save the Union...

negroes, like other people act upon motives. Why should they do anything for us if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive--even the promise of freedom. And the promise, being made, must be kept....peace does not appear as distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to worth the keeping in all future time.

It will have then been proved that, among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost. And then, there will be some black men, who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet they have helped mankind on to this great consumation; while, I fear, there will be some white ones, unable to forget that, with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, have strove to hinder it.

Still let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy final triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let us dilligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the rightful result."

8/24/63

And to A. G. Hodges:

"You ask me to put in writing the substance of what I verbally said the other day, in your presence, to Governor Bramlette and Senator Dixon. It was about as follows:

"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took, that I would, to the utmost of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I have publically declared this many times, and in many ways.

And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did understand however that my oath to preserve the constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving by every indispensible means, that government--that nation--of which that constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation, and preserve the constitution? By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensible to to the preservation of the of the Constitution, through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it...

When in March, and May and July 1862 I made earnest, and succcessive appeals to the border states to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable neccessity for military emancipation and arming the blacks would come, unless averted by that measure. They declined the proposition; and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it the Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter.

In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss; but of this, I was not entirely confident. More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our home popular sentiment, none in our white military force, no loss any how or any where. On the contrary, it shows a gain of quite one hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen and laborers. These are palpable facts, about which there can be no cavilling. We have the men; and we could not have them without the measure.

And now let any Union man who complains of the measure, test himself by writing down in one line that he is for subduing the rebellion by force of arms; and in the next, that he is for taking these hundred and thirty thousand men from the Union side, and placing them where they would be but for the measure he condemns. If he can not face his case so stated, it is only because he can not face the truth.

I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation. In telling this tale I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the Nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God."

4/4/64

Quoted from "Lincoln; Speeches and Writings, 1859-65, Library of the Americas.

The letters speak for themselves.

Walt

The last time President Lincoln supported colonization was on 12/1/62.

Oh BS, and you know it. I see nolu_chan (with his usual thoroughness) has already addressed this issue, so there is no need to repeat proving you false.

Quote President Lincoln then. I've asked this before, and all I get back is what Lerone Bennett said Lincoln said.

Walt

And consider what Frederick Douglass said

If only you would.

"Mr. President, that was a sacred effort."

--Douglass to Lincoln 3/4/65

Walt

Why the obsession with proving that Lincoln, Grant, etc. were racists?

I would suggest reading both the glowing books of praise by African-American historians about Lincoln and Forced Into Glory, by Lerone Bennett, Jr. (pictured above). Assuming the myth of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator is true, it would seem there could be no obsession by Black historians to prove Lincoln was a racist. The simple fact is that Lincoln was a White Supremecist. In his 650 page book, Bennett quotes Lincoln relentlessly and skewers many of the White myth-making authors who write while on their knees before a shrine to Lincoln (or just churn out crap that will sell).

The reading list is not as long as might be expected. Regarding the glowing books of praise by African-American historians about Lincoln, the search should prove interesting. If Lincoln were truly the Black Saviour, one must at least become curious about why all those countless books of praise, annointing Lincoln as Saint Abraham, were written by White authors.

From the preface to Forced Into Glory:

This is not a biography: this is a political study of the uses and abuses of biography and myth, and it suggests, among other things, that your identity, whatever your color, is based, at least in part, on what you think about Lincoln, the Civil War, and slavery.
Abraham Lincoln or somebody said once that you can't fool all the people all the time. By turning a racist who wanted to deport all Blacks into a national symbol of integration and brotherhood, the Lincoln mythmakers have managed to prove Lincoln or whoever said it wrong.
This is the story of how they fooled all the people all the time, and why.
I have assumed here, in telling this story, that slavery was a crime against humanity and that there is no hope for us until we cross the great equator of our history and confront Lincoln, Lee and all the other participants on that level. I have compared Lincoln here not with twentieth-century leaders but with the White men and women of his own time, and I have suggested that one of the reasons we are in trouble racially in this country is that we have systematically downplayed and suppressed the White men and women who, unlike Lincoln, really believed in the Declaration of Independence. In the end, then, Forced Into Glory is not so much about Lincoln as it is about race, heroes, leadership, political morality, scholarship, and the American Dream.
* * *
Two: I have not, to paraphrase what Wendell Phillips said in another connection, judged Lincoln at all except by the words of his own mouth and on facts asserted and admitted by his own eulogists and defenders, including Herndon, Sandburg, Randall, Donald et al. I have not claimed here that he should have been perfect, but I have suggested that he should have been consistent and that if government of the people was good for the White majority of Illinois it was good for the Black majority of South Carolina. I have not criticized him for not rising to the level of the Kings and Mandelas of our time -- I have deplored the fact that he didn't rise to the level of the great Black and White leaders of his time.
Lerone Bennett Jr. Chicago 2000

You are a small. Why do you leave out the later quotes? Why do you ignore what Douglas said of Lincoln and of his second inaugural address? Why do you do this? Where is your sense of right and wrong?

You believe what you want to believe.....and then arrogantly label others...

You are a small. Why do you leave out the later quotes? Why do you ignore what Douglas said of Lincoln and of his second inaugural address? Why do you do this? Where is your sense of right and wrong?

I saw a thing on C-Span about the opening of a new wing of something or other in Springfield. They asked the curator about the sort of criticism we see daily from the neo-confederates. He said that the neo-confederates want to "freeze" Mr. Lincoln in time. They want only his early speeches considered. They want to ignore how he grew and changed. So does the disgraceful Lerone Bennett, and for what purpose? -- money-- I suppose.

Walt

What, exactly, compared to slavery, was it that the disgraceful Lincoln considered a greater evil, even to the cause of human liberty itself?

The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 2, page 130

LINK

A Greater Evil, Even to the Cause of Human Liberty Itself

Abraham Lincoln
July 6, 1852

HONORS TO HENRY CLAY

Having been led to allude to domestic slavery so frequently already, I am unwilling to close without referring more particularly to Mr. Clay's views and conduct in regard to it. He ever was, on principle and in feeling, opposed to slavery. The very earliest, and one of the latest public efforts of his life, separated by a period of more than fifty years, were both made in favor of gradual emancipation of the slaves in Kentucky. He did not perceive, that on a question of human right, the negroes were to be excepted from the human race. And yet Mr. Clay was the owner of slaves. Cast into life where slavery was already widely spread and deeply seated, he did not perceive, as I think no wise man has perceived, how it could be at once eradicated, without producing a greater evil, even to the cause of human liberty itself.

What exactly is this thing the despicable Lincoln called "the White Man's Charter of Freedom?

THE WHITE MAN'S CHARTER OF FREEDOM
by Abraham Lincoln

LINK

Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865.: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 2.

Eulogy on Henry Clay

July 6, 1852

HONORS TO HENRY CLAY

But I would also, if I could, array his name, opinions, and influence against the opposite extreme---against a few, but an increasing number of men, who, for the sake of perpetuating slavery, are beginning to assail and to ridicule the white-man's charter of freedom---the declaration that ``all men are created free and equal.''

=====

LINK

Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865.: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 2.

Speech at Peoria, Illinois

October 16, 1854

In our greedy chase to make profit of the negro, let us beware, lest we ``cancel and tear to pieces'' even the white man's charter of freedom.

=====

In our greedy chase to make profit of the negro, let us beware, lest we ``cancel and tear to pieces'' even the white man's charter of freedom.

That charter applied to all.

"And yet again, there are in the United States and territories, including the District of Columbia, 433,643 free blacks. At $500 per head they are worth over two hundred millions of dolars. How comes this vast amount of property to be running about without owners? We do not see free horses or free cattle running at large. How is this? All these free blacks are the descendants of slaves, or have been slaves themselves, or they would be slaves now, but for something which has operated on their white owners, inducing them, at vast pecuniary sacrifices, to liberate them. What is that something? Is there any mistaking it? In all cases it is your sense of justice, and human sympathy, continually telling you, that the poor negro has some natural right to himself-- that those who deny it, and make mere merchandise of him, deserve kickings, contempt and death...

The doctrine of self-government is right -- absolutely and eternally right -- but it has no just application, as here attempted. Or perhaps I should rather say that whether it has such application depends upon whether a negro is not or is a man. If he is not a man, why in that case, he who is a man may, as a matter of self-government, do just as he pleases with him. But if the negro is a man, is it not to that extent a total destruction of self-government, to say that he too shall not govern himself? When the white man governs himself that is self-government; but when he governs himself, and also governs another man, that is more than self-government -- that is despotism. If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that "all men are created equal;" and there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another."

1858

Walt

Abraham Lincoln

Address at Cooper Institute, New York City

February 27, 1860

In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, ``It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation, and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly; and their places be, pari passu, filled up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up.''

The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol 3, page 541.

Annual Message to Congress

December 1, 1862

Heretofore colored people, to some extent, have fled north from bondage; and now, perhaps, from both bondage and destitution. But if gradual emancipation and deportation be adopted, they will have neither to flee from. Their old masters will give them wages at least until new laborers can be procured; and the freed men, in turn, will gladly give their labor for the wages, till new homes can be found for them, in congenial climes, and with people of their own blood and race. This proposition can be trusted on the mutual interests involved. And, in any event, cannot the north decide for itself, whether to receive them?

The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol 5, page 535-6.

December 1, 1862

I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I strongly favor colonization.

In April 1865, Lincoln to General Butler, fully corroborated and matching other statements known to have been made by Lincoln, as quoted and authenticated by multiple reputable historians.

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. . . . 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.

Benjamin F. Butler, Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin F. Butler: A Review of His Legal, Political, and Military Career (or, Butler’s Book) (Boston: A. M. Thayer & Co. Book Publishers, 1892), p. 903.

Scores of historians have spent countless hours trying to discredit Butler and his story. But since it is impossible to prove a negative, and since, as other historians have pointed out, Butler's account is "full and circumstantial" and there was no reason for him to lie, these efforts have proved fruitless. More to the point, Lincoln said the same thing about colonization and his fear of Black violence to others (see page 615). Based on these and other factors, some scholars, Ludwell H. Johnson (68) and Herman Belz (282) among them, have concluded that there is no reason to doubt the butler account. "If Butler's recollection is substantially correct, as it appears to be," George Frederickson said, "then one can only conclude that Lincoln continued to his dying day to deny the possibility of racial harmony and equality in the United States and persisted in regarding colonization as the only real alternative to perpetual race conflict" (57)
Forced Into Glory, Lerone Bennett, Jr., p. 167
Citations:
Belz, Herman, Reconstructing the Union. Ithaca, 1969.
Frederickson, George M. "A Man but Not a Brother: Abraham Lincoln and Racial Equality," Journal of Southern History 41 (February 1975): 39-58.
Johnson, Ludwell. "Lincoln and Equal Rights: The Authenticity of the Wadsworth Letter," Journal of Southern History 32 (Sept. 1966): 83-7

Congressman Julian, who conferred with Lincoln often as a member of the powerful Joint Committee on the Conduct ofthe War, used almost the same words, saying that when Lincoln "very reluctantly issued his preliminary proclamation ... he wished it distinctly understood that the deportation of the slaves was, in his mind, inseparably connected with the policy" (RR 61)
Forced Into Glory, Lerone Bennett, Jr., p. 510
Citation:
Allen T. Rice, Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time. New York, 1888.

Looking back later, Rev. Mitchell said, according to an interview published in the St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat, August 26, 1894, that he asked a Presbyterian pastor to recommend a local man who could help him organize Illinois for the American Colonization Society. The pastor recommended Lincoln, who didn't, Mitchell said, look like much but who had a firm grasp of the politics of colonization and what Mitchell had done in Indiana. Lincoln was thirty-four years old when he met Mitchell. What did he believe? He "earnestly believed in and advocated colonization as a means of solving 'the race problem,'" Mitchell said. The two men became friends or at least associates, and Lincoln later names Mitchell commissioner of [Black] emigration in the Lincoln administration.
Forced Into Glory, Lerone Bennett, Jr., p. 226

This was not an ad hoc political tactic or a hastily devised response to the pressure of events -- this was, Lincoln's emigration aide Rev. James Mitchell told the St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat on August 16, 1894, the foundation of Lincoln's private and public policy. It was "his honest conviction that it was better for both races to separate. This was the central point of his policy, around which hung all his private views, and as far as others would let him, his public acts" [Italics added] Lincoln was "fully convinced" that "the republic was already dangerously encumbered with African blood that would not legally mix with American [sic] . . . . He regarded a mixed race as eminently anti-republican, because of the heterogeneous character it gives the population where it exists, and for similar reasons he did not favor the annexation of tropical lands encumbers with mixed races ...."
Forced Into Glory, Lerone Bennett, Jr., p. 384

Lincoln's emigration aide, the Rev. James Mitchell, said the Proclamation "did not change Mr. Lincoln's policy of colonization, nor was it so intended." On August 18, 1863, seven months after the signing of the Proclamation and three months before the Gettysburg Address, Mitchell said he asked Lincoln if the "might say that colonization was still the policy of the Administration." Lincoln replied twice, he said, that "I have never thought so much on any subject and arrived at a conclusion so definite as I have in this case, and in after years found myself wrong." Lincoln added that "it would have been much better to separate the races than to have such scenes as those in New York [during the Draft Riots] the other day, where Negroes were hanged to lamp posts."
Forced Into Glory, Lerone Bennett, Jr., p. 554

Lincoln appointed and supported the sick, perverted, twisted James Mitchell for years as the Agent of [Black] Emigration, i.e., Commissioner of Ethnic Cleansing.

[Wlat] Now, Mitchell was a very loyal and capable Union man. If President Lincon would go out of his way to help rebels, what would he do for true patriots?

WALT'S VERY LOYAL AND CAPABLE UNION MAN, MITCHELL

The link goes to The Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, to a pamphlet made from the letter of James Mitchell to Abraham Lincoln of May 18, 1862.

As a pamphlet, the Lincoln administration had the Mitchell Deportation Plan printed by the Government Printing Office (GPO). Lincoln then made this man the United States Commissoner of [Black] Emigration, and kept him in that position for several years.

Below is a representative sampling of quotes from the letter of James Mitchell to Abraham Lincoln. This is what Walt defends as a very capable Union man. This is, no doubt, Walt's idea of a very good Republican.

WALT'S IDEA OF LOYAL AND CAPABLE REPUBLICANISM

[Wlat 561] Your whole rant falls down because you apply modern standards to historical people.

Wlat would apply historical standards to James Mitchell and he would come out smelling like a rose...

Lincoln appointee James Mitchell referred to "the license of the races, which is giving to this continent a nation of bastards." That fits into an acceptable standard for Wlat and the Wlat Brigade.

All of the grotesque comments below are direct quotations of written statements by James Mitchell to Abraham Lincoln. After James Mitchell made these statements, Abraham Lincoln put him on the payroll and all of these statements and more were sent to the Government Printing Office for publication as a pamphlet at taxpayer expense.

THIS IS WHAT WLAT DEFENDS

require a separation of the colored or negro race from us

Yet, terrible as is this civil war between men of kindred race for the dominion of the servant, future history will show that it has been moderate and altogether tolerable when contrasted with a struggle between the black and white race, which, within the next one or two hundred years must sweep over this nation,

the removal of the colored race to a proper locality . . . Surely this exercise of influence is a legitimate prerogative of the Chief Magistrate, the guardian of national peace, who, being convinced of impending danger to the country, has the undoubted right to notify the nation of its approach, and recommend the remedy.

Our danger in the future arises from the fact that we have 4,500,000 persons, who, whilst amongst us, cannot be of us - persons of a different race

The social and civil evils resulting from the presence of the negro race are numerous

the license of the races, which is giving to this continent a nation of bastards.

That political economist must be blind indeed; that statesman must be a shallow thinker, who cannot see a fearful future before this country, if the production of this mixed race is not checked by removal.

possibly the next great civil war will be the conflict of this race for dominion and existence.

this population is in the way of the peace of the country

Thus far we have found that their presence here disturbs our social structure. We come now to examine how far our civil structure is damaged by this population.

But there is one clause of this sacred compact which requires the Federal government to "guarantee to the several States a republican form of government." . . . When rightly construed it must and will require the gradual removal of such anti-republican elements and peoples as cannot be engrafted on the national stock

It is admitted on all hands that our mixed and servile population constitute the root of those issues and quarrels; what shall be done with them is the question of the hour.

this repulsive admixture of blood

the men of the Exeter Hall school, who, far removed from the scene of danger, see not the degradation of this admixture of race.

he does not choose to endanger the blood of his posterity by the proximity of such a population; that here is no command in the Word of God that will oblige him to place this race on the high road to such an amalgamation with his family

they rejected the black because they could not or would not amalgamate on legal or honorable terms.

Nothing but the authority of the Divine law will change his purpose to hedge himself in and erect legal protections against this possible admixture of blood,

Where men are truly moral and religious, the white and black races do not mix, so that the influence of religion will never effect fusion,

hatred of those who would engraft, as they say, negro blood on the population of their country

We must regard the extension of equal social and civil rights to this class of persons as distasteful to the mass of the nations; the majority will never submit to it

we cannot make republican citizens out of our negro population

a possible corruption of blood in future generations

The government of Great Britain is composed of a few thousand titled and privileged persons, located in a small island, who are born to rule and govern. From their isolated position it is not possible for them to come in contact with the numerous, heterogeneous, and inferior tribes and races under their rule. They are thus protected from possible admixture of inferior blood

How can such a people comprehend the necessity or use of removing the man of color?

to protect them against this repulsive admixture of blood

What is to protect us as a people from degenerating as a race, but the resolve to receive no blood from the other races but that which can be honorably and safely engrafted on the stock of the nation.

Let us then, earnestly and respectfully recommend as a remedy for our present troubles and future danger, the perfecting the proposed plans of the administration in regard to those two conflicting races, and the careful and gradual removal of the colored race to some desirable and convenient home.

Some affect to fear that the man of color will not remove to a separate locality. It is not to be expected that a race, which has hardly attained a mental majority, will rise in a day to the stature of the men who found empires, build cities, and lay the ground work of civil institutions like ours; nor should they be expected to do this unaided and alone. They should receive the kind attention, direction, and aid of those who understand such things; nor will the world condemn a gentle pressure in the forward course to overcome the natural inertia of masses long used to the driver's will and rod. Let us do justice in the provision we make for their future comfort, and surety they will do justice to our distracted Republic.

If they should fail to do this, there would then be more propriety in weighing the requirement of some to remove without consultation, but not till then.

We know that there is a growing sentiment in the country which considered the removal of the freed man, without consulting him, "a moral and military necessity" -- as a measure necessary to the purity of public morals and the peace of the country; and this unhappy war of white man with white man, about the condition of the black, will multiply this sentiment.

But we cannot go further now than suggesting, that the mandatory relation held by the rebel master should escheat to the Federal government in a modified sense, so as to enable his proper government and gradual removal to a proper home where he can be independent.

We earnestly pray that a perpetual barrier may be reared between us and that land of the mixed races of this continent - Mexico.

As Abraham and Lot agreed to separate their conflicting retainer and dependents, the one going to the right and the other to the left, so let those two governments agree to divide this continent between the Anglo-American and mixed races

Cast into life where slavery was already widely spread and deeply seated, he did not perceive, as I think no wise man has perceived, how it could be at once eradicated, without producing a greater evil, even to the cause of human liberty itself.

So?

"Well I too, go for saving the Union. Much as I hate slavery, I would consent to the extension of it rather than see the Union dissolved, just as I would consent to any GREAT evil, to avoid a GREATER one. But when I go to Union saving, I must believe, at least, that the means I employ has some adaptation to the end."

"Our republican robe is soiled, and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it. Let us turn and wash it white, in the spirit, if not in the blood of the revolution. Let us turn slavery from its claims of "moral right," back upon its existing legal rights, and its arguments of "necessity." Let us return it to the position our fathers gave it; and there let it rest in peace. Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize it. Let north and south -- let all Americans -- let all lovers of liberty everywhere -- join in the great and good work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have so saved it, as to make, and to keep it, forever worthy of the saving. We shall have so saved it, that succeeding millions of free happy people, the world over, shall rise up, and call us blessed, to the latest generations."

And:

"Mr. Clay many, many years ago . . . told an audience that if they would repress all tendencies to liberty and ultimate emancipation, they must go back to the era of our independence and muzzle the cannon which thunoered its annual joyous return on the Fourth of July; they must blow out the moral lights around us. ...I call attention to the fact that in a preeminent degree these popular sovereigns are at this work: blowing out the moral lights around us; teaching that the negro is no longer a man, but a brute; that the Declaration has nothing to do with him; that he ranks with the crocodile and the reptile that man, with body and soul, is a matter of dollars and cents. I suggest to this portion of Ohio Republicans, or Democrats , . . that there is now going or among you a steady process of debauching public opinion on this subject.

This government is expressly charged with the duty of providing for the general welfare. We believe that the spreading out and perpetuity of slavery impairs the general welfare. . . , I say that we must not interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists, because the Constitution forbids it, and the general welfare does not require us to do so. We must not withhold an efficient fugitive-slave law, because the Constitution requires us as I understand it, not to withhold such a law. But we must prevent the out spreading of the institution. . . . We must prevent the revival of the Africa slave-trade, and the enacting by Congress ot a territorial slave code. We must prevent each of these things being done by either Congress or courts. The people of these United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

All they ask, we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right and our thinking it wrong is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being right. . . . Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the national Territories, and to overrun us here in these free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty fear- lessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we' are so industriously plied and belabored—contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong: vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man; such as a policy of "don't care" on a question about which all true men do care, such as the Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance; such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said and undo what Washington did."

Walt

"If Butler's recollection is substantially correct, as it appears to be," George Frederickson said, "then one can only conclude that Lincoln continued to his dying day to deny the possibility of racial harmony and equality in the United States and persisted in regarding colonization as the only real alternative to perpetual race conflict"

We have indeed had something very close to "race conflict" for almost 150 years now, and by some standards that conflict is continuing to get worse. Can you really deny that Lincoln was prophetic in his concern that failing to separate the white and black races would lead to "perpetual race conflict?"

We haven't had a true race war yet, but if the multi-cultis keep pushing, we may eventually get one. I'm consistently surprised when a year goes by without a REAL white backlash.

The black people in America were here by force, and it would have seemed unreasonable to expect they would be devoted patriots to this nation that was not their chosen place of residency. They were foreigners in spirit, and to deport them back home to Africa or to a new land they could claim as their own, away from their oppressers, was not an unkind notion, but a liberating one.

The blacks thought differently. On 14 Aug 1862 Lincoln addressed a group of free blacks at the White House about colonization of Panama.

Negroes in the District of Columbia received the colonization proposal with hostility. A Negro meeting held at Union Bethel Church was reported in the Baltimore Sun on August 23 as protesting against the plan: "Such dissatisfaction had been manifested in regard to the course of the committee who lately waited on the president . . . that they did not attend."
Address on Colonization to a Deputation of Negroes, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Roy P. Basler, ed, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1953, Vol. V, p. 375.

If you and your family had been taken from here and enslaved in another land, would you consider yourself truly free if let go on that soil amidst great hostility, or would you prefer the choices to be returned home or delivered to a new land away from the people who had stolen your freedom?

For the blacks in question, generations were born here, not in Africa. But assuming all were, the decision would be between returning to Africa - where one could easily be re-enslaved, possibly eaten by any number of beasts or even cannibals; or to stay in a land that might be hostile, but also had much to offer.

Now it was de finest thing could have happen for de Negro, to have been snatched out of Africa and brought here in touch wid civilization and Christianity. It will work out untold benefit to de race.
Cornelius Holmes, Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938, South Carolina Narratives, Vol. XIV, Pt. 2, p. 297

Decisions, decisions.

It's funny . . . . every so often Free Republic has threads about articles that criticize the Founding Fathers for having slaves . . . . and these articles are pretty universally condemned, because it's silly to hate George Washington and Thomas Jefferson for owning slaves. Yes, it's true, they did own slaves, but they were so much more than that.

I think the same thing is obviously true about Lincoln. No, he was not an abolitionist. Yes, he was a great man. Was he flawed? Of course he was. All human beings are flawed.

What I think is weird is that if you spent that same amount of energy tearing down George Washington or Thomas Jefferson for being flawed, and not abolitionists, most Freepers would think you were a nut case.

I'll just say that I think your obsession is potentially unhealthy. Lincoln died almost 140 years ago. Get over it.

It's a topic worthy of study, but you need to get a grip.

Here's the South Carolina Articles of Secession - not one word about tariffs. Slavery, is all.
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/csa/scarsec.htm

I've looked at the others and the various founding documents of the Confederacy, and failed to see anything at all about tariffs.
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/csa/csapage.htm

If you read Jackson's address to South Carolina in 1832, that's about tariffs. Same with Webster's speech of March 7, 1830. The secession crisis of 1830-1832 was about tariffs, indisputably.

Not so the crisis of 1860-1861.