Posted on 12/19/2004 6:19:45 AM PST by TFine80
It is news guaranteed to make many Republicans squirm. Was Abraham Lincoln, founder of the party now seeking a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in America, actually gay himself?
A new book, published next month, certainly thinks so. The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln by C.A. Tripp produces evidence that one of America's greatest Presidents had a long-term relationship with a youthful friend, Joshua Speed, and shared his bed with David Derickson, captain of his bodyguards.
Tripp, a former researcher for sex scientist Alfred Kinsey and an influential gay writer, includes asides by many of Lincoln's close friends. 'He was not very fond of girls, as he seemed to me,' his stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln, once told a friend.
It also includes a diary excerpt by one upper-class Washington woman who wrote of Derickson: 'There is a Bucktail soldier here devoted to the President, drives with him, and when Mrs L is not home, sleeps with him. What stuff!'
Scholars have long debated Lincoln's sexuality, and as early as the 1920s were making veiled references to his relationship with Speed. However, critics say that in the pioneer days men sleeping together in rough circumstances was not uncommon.
Now Tripp has discovered letters between Lincoln and Speed which supposedly betray a deep intimacy.
But Tripp's book really breaks new ground in its exhaustive portrayal of many of Lincoln's possible gay lovers, including one man who said Lincoln's thighs 'were as perfect as a human being could be'.
'Make no mistake - Abe Lincoln was gay,' said Professor Scott Thompson, from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts.
But David Donald, a Harvard professor and respected Lincoln biographer, has disputed Tripp's findings in his own book, We Are Lincoln Men, published last year, and says there is no definitive proof of Lincoln having affairs with any men.
Not really. I just read it in the context of the Texas Declaration of Causes that I linked above. I know -- you'd have to be one of those "types" to see anything about slavery in the Declaration of Causes. I mean, you'd have to be one nasty yankee to infer that this little excerpt had much to do with slavery:
[Texas] was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery--the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits--a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.
That's just geography, right? And as for their grievances against the hated Yankees, the good legislators of Texas said the following:
In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color--a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and the negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.
There's that "debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color."
And here's the kicker:
That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding States.
But its all just a geographic description, right?
Wrong. The passage you quoted with the geographical reference you claimed as evidence of a slavery conspiracy was the Texas Secession Ordinance - a binding legislative act ratified at large by a popular vote of the people of Texas. It is located here http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ref/abouttx/secession/1feb1861.html
The Texas Declaration of Causes, with which you keep confusing it, was a nonbinding resolution adopted by the majority of the Texas Secession Convention as an expression of some of its members' beliefs and opinions. If you're going to discuss these matters at least get your documents straight.
Try again. I said I had read the Ordinance in the context of the Declaration. What part of the word "context" do you not understand?
The Texas Declaration of Causes, with which you keep confusing it, was a nonbinding resolution adopted by the majority of the Texas Secession Convention as an expression of some of its members' beliefs and opinions.
I confused nothing. I know there are two documents. It is entirely fair to interpret the language of the Ordinance in conjuction with the Declaration of Causes passed the very next day by the exact same vote. The elected representatives of the people of Texas -- who presumably represent the views of the people of that state -- approved the Declaration of Causes by a vote of 166-8. I'd assume you'd like to disassociate the "noble" vote for secession with the rather odious content of the Declaration of Causes, but I think the historical record speaks for itself.
As far as I'm concerned, the more people read those various Declarations of Causes, the better. See, I wasn't aware of those things until a few years ago, and was a bit more sympathetic to the argument that the Civil War wasn't primarily about slavery. Then I read those documents passed overwhelmingly by their respective state legislatures, and you could say that altered my opinion a tad.
I don't condemn every southernor who fought, nor do I think the south was "evil". But I sure as hell think they were fighting for a really crappy cause. Too bad, because secession might have been a more noble cause in the abstract. But the reality is that the abstract didn't exist. Reality does, and the reality was slavery.
Dress it up all you want. Like I said, I think the documents speak for themselves.
And I said you are wrong to do so. They are neither the same document, nor even documents of similar effect or ratification. The Ordinance was adopted by the people of the state as a whole via referendum and had a legal effect. The Declaration of Causes was a non-binding resolution adopted only by the convention with zero legal effect.
I confused nothing. I know there are two documents. It is entirely fair to interpret the language of the Ordinance in conjuction with the Declaration of Causes passed the very next day by the exact same vote.
The Ordinance was passed by popular referendum by the people of Texas with legally binding effects. There was never a popular vote on the Declaration and it had no legally binding effect.
As far as I'm concerned, the more people read those various Declarations of Causes, the better.
Fine by me so long as they take the time to know what they actually are and so long as they also read all the other secession declarations out there. It is evident that you have done neither.
With regards to the latter, there were a total of 12 state legislatures or conventions, 1 rump state convention (Kentucky), 1 territorial convention (Arizona), and 2 Indian tribes that published one or more secession documents of some sort during the civil war. In total they published at least 21 documents declaring or otherwise affirming their secession. 12 were ordinances officiating the secession act itself adopted by the 12 state conventions, legislatures, or popular referendum. The conventions of 4 of those 12 states adopted an additional "Declaration of Causes" as a nonbinding legislative resolution. The convention of South Carolina also adopted a letter of causes addressed to all the other southern states outlining why they were seceding and urging others to join them (interestingly enough half that document is a list of grievances against the north for tax hikes and tariffs).
Out of the 21 total declarations, ordinances, and other secession documents only 6 mention slavery in any context beyond a geographical reference (and only 5 of them mention it at substantial length - the sixth is in a single brief clause). 14 of those documents specify other causes, either in addition to slavery (as in the 6) or without mentioning it at all. The remaining 7 do not list any causes.
Have a nice day.
If he was gay, he was rather unusual.
The nasty gossip at the time accused him of being a wonamizer.
It's probably possible to be a gay womanizer, just unusual.
Abe was not gay, but his accusers are out of their mind and obsessed with making the gay life style acceptable, which it will NEVER be.
Law Professor homo. Why is that no surprise. Using lies to further his homo-public-relations campaign.
Bring out your dead the homosexuals are interested in stealing the dead.
I'll take that as your concession that you cannot respond to salient and factual data about the war, opting instead to cling your preconcieved and slothfully constructed position at the outset of this discussion in spite of direct counterevidence that contradicts, modifies, or invalidates several of the tenets around which it is built.
The only reason I continued posting in this thread was for others who might be scanning it. Apparently, its just you and I now. And I value neither your integrity nor intellectual honesty enough to waste more of my time discussing this with you.
But if you consider mere endurance the sine qua non of discussion, then congratulate yourself on victory. For me, its enough to know that others reading this thread get exposed to those nasty little Declarations you folks hate to see discussed.
Bye-bye.
Believe me, the feeling is reciprocal though with far greater legitimacy coming from my end. Your entire posting scheme has consisted of nothing but diversions, flames, insults, racial slurs, and outright refusal to respond to salient points of fact, opting instead for gratuitous assertions that fly in the face of previously noted factual occurrences that you have nevertheless slothfully opted to ignore.
You lost this debate before it even started because you began with the intention of throwing bombs rather than attempting a coherent dialog. That you now finally choose to cede the field is but the final chapter in your failed and miserable effort here.
I'm mildly surprised at you for wanting to go there, Pea. You seem to be claiming that conditions up North couldn't be better than conditions down south because of the laws in Indiana and Illinois. Indefensible laws to be sure, but did that make them worse than the south? Considering that virtually every southern state had similar laws on their books or in their constitutions?
Tocqueville said that the northern conditions he saw for free blacks were worse than the southern ones.
Considering that virtually every southern state had similar laws on their books or in their constitutions?
Quoth the Non-Sequitur: "Squack! Tu quoque! Tu quoque!"
You can take your tu quoque and stick it where the sun don't shine, jackass. PeaRidge opened up the topic when he attempted to rebut XJarhead's claim that the south was much worse in race relations by listing only northern transgressions. Since those transgressions were no worse than the policies in place in most southern states then how can that disprove XJarhead's claim?
Thanks but no thanks, parrot boy. The tu quoque monopoly belongs to you and you alone as demonstrated by your habitual indulgence in it both here and elsewhere.
So speaketh Mother Focker.
Whatever you say, Mr. Goodman. Are you done yet?
Probably not.
Boo! Last word.
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