Posted on 02/05/2005 6:30:51 PM PST by quidnunc
The key to understanding Lincoln's Philosophy of Statesmanship is that he always sought the meeting point between what was right in theory and what could be achieved in practice.
Most Americans — including most historians — regard Abraham Lincoln as the nation's greatest president. But in recent years powerful movements have gathered, both on the political right and the left, to condemn Lincoln as a flawed and even wicked man.
For both camps, the debunking of Lincoln usually begins with an exposé of the "Lincoln myth," which is well described in William Lee Miller's 2002 book Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography. How odd it is, Miller writes, that an "unschooled" politician "from the raw frontier villages of Illinois and Indiana" could become such a great president. "He was the myth made real," Miller writes, "rising from an actual Kentucky cabin made of actual Kentucky logs all the way to the actual White House."
Lincoln's critics have done us all a service by showing that the actual author of the myth is Abraham Lincoln himself. It was Lincoln who, over the years, carefully crafted the public image of himself as Log Cabin Lincoln, Honest Abe and the rest of it. Asked to describe his early life, Lincoln answered, "the short and simple annals of the poor," referring to Thomas Gray's poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." Lincoln disclaimed great aspirations for himself, noting that if people did not vote for him, he would return to obscurity, for he was, after all, used to disappointments.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at historynet.com ...
!!!!!!!!
freedom-loving people saw it CORRECTLY as FREE SPEECH & FREEDOM of the PRESS.
free dixie,sw
lincoln & wee willie klintoon were just alike. twins, separated by 150+ years.
free dixie,sw
the unionist cliche of lunatics on FR believes that if you don't bow down to saint abe, the UNjust, before breakfast each morning, that you're NOT a good American.
free dixie,sw
No, I have not given up on our Constitution, and I agree that it is the supreme law of the land; I have taken an oath, and take it seriously, to "protect and defend the Contstitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic." My problem is that I have grave doubts that many of my "elected officials" take their oaths nearly as seriously as do I. Surely you can see that the federals have assumed much, much more power than is legitimately allocated to them in the Constitution. This is the crux of the issue, then (1861-1865) and now.
Lincoln arrested newspaper editors and owners. In some cases, he was able to stop them without arresting them.
In 1839, Alexis de Tocqueville had written:
"Among the twelve million people living in the United States, there is not one single man who has dared to suggest restricting the freedom of the press."
Just twenty-five years later, Lincoln, true to his Federalist and Hamiltonian roots, felt no compunction whatever about jailing during the Civil War a total of thirteen thousand Northern civilians who had expressed views critical of Lincoln or his war.
According to historian Arthur Ekirch, this was often done "without any sort of trial or after only cursory hearings before a military tribunal."
The New York City newspapers had always dominated much of the nation’s news.
Although such papers as Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune supported the war, others, such as the Journal of Commerce and the New York Daily News did not. These two papers were the heart of the opposition press in the North, because their articles were reprinted in many other papers that were also critical of Lincoln’s war policies.
In May 1861 the Journal of Commerce had published a list of more than a hundred Northern newspapers that had editorialized against going to war. The Lincoln administration responded by ordering the Postmaster General to deny these papers mail delivery.
At that time, nearly all newspaper deliveries were made by mail, so this action put every one of the papers out of circulation.
Some of them resumed publication after promising not to criticize the Lincoln government. For example, the founder of the Journal of Commerce, Gerard Hallock, ”brought the wrath of government down on his head” with his “peace editorials”--appeals not to treason or even secession, but to peace. Hallock had spent thirty years of his life building the paper to its position as one of the most prominent in America, and rather than see it become extinct, he obeyed the government’s demand that he sell his ownership in the paper and withdraw from its management. With the paper’s peace editorials censored, the paper was permitted to use the mails once again.
The same technique--denying the use of the mails--was used by the Lincoln administration against the New Your Daily News, The Daybook, Brooklyn Eagle, Freeman’s Journal, and several other smaller New York newspapers.
The editor of the Daily News was Ben Wood, the brother of New York City Mayor Fernando Wood, who had denounced Lincoln as an “unscrupulous Chief magistrate” whose recent message to Congress was “an ocean of falsehood and deceit.” After being denied the use of the mails, Wood hired private express couriers and delivery boys to deliver his papers. The administration responded by ordering Federal marshals to confiscate the paper in cites throughout the Northern states. The paper then went into bankruptcy.
And, of course, there were others:
The Brooklyn Eagle promised not to write any more anti-Lincoln editorials and was therefore permitted to resume publication, but the Freeman’s Appeal was censored after Lincoln ordered the arrest of the editor, James McMasters, who was sent to Fort Lafayette.
By September of 1861, all of the opposition press in New York City was censored with the help of military force.
Fort Lafayette was filled with newspaper editors from all over the country who had questioned the wisdom of Lincoln’s military invasion and war of conquest. Seward and his Federal officers scoured the countryside for the editors of any newspapers, large and small that did not support the Lincoln administration’s war policy and had them arrested and imprisoned.
Although the military presence was pervasive in Northern cities in order to implement the Lincoln/Seward censorship policy, it looked the other way when mobs—at times mobs of Federal soldiers—ransacked the offices and destroyed the property of newspapers that were critical of Lincoln.
A mob of Federal soldiers demolished the offices of the Democratic Standard in Washington, DC, after it editorialized about military blunders during the Battle of First Manassas. This same thing happened to the Bangor Democrat when a Unionist mob completely destroyed the Maine paper’s printing facilities and demanded the hanging of the editor.
In many cases, these editors were simply editorializing in favor of avoiding the bloodshed of war, and working out some kind of peaceful solution to the crisis, including compensated emancipation.
Lincoln would have not of these suggestions, and so he allowed his military and his supporters to destroy paper after paper in the North.
The Northern peace movement was intimidated, physically assaulted, and destroyed
To those that were keen observers of Lincoln, it became apparent that he had rebuffed the numerous peace efforts of key leaders in both the Southern Confederacy, as well as his own party and the concerned citizens of the North and West.
The deeper implications of Lincoln’s suppression of free speech were rarely noticed.
The need for widespread suppression suggests that Lincoln’s war was not part of the electoral majority mandate that he claimed to be vindicating by invading the South
Lincoln was the worst President we ever had. 600,000 Americans were killed during his administration, more than all other Presidents combined.
This is the true character of the man.
I do! That being said, do did Robert E. Lee, and other Confederates. When those rights were trampled on, war came!
You reminded me of a letter I found last night in the Official Records. Apparently prisoners such as Baltimore newspaper editor Frank Key Howard were not even allowed to call Lincoln a dictator in their private mail.
FORT LAFAYETTE, New York Harbor, October 22, 1861.
Lieutenant Colonel M. BURKE,
Commanding Forts Hamilton and Lafayette.
COLONEL: On looking over the letters written by the prisoners confined at this post I found one from F. Key Howard, of Baltimore, in which speaking of the President of the United States he made use of the expression "vulgar dictator." I returned the letter to him with notice that if he was not more respectful in his letters it would be my duty to stop his correspondence.
Hoping you will approve my action, I remain, with respect, your obedient servant,
CHAS. O. WOOD
George Orwell probably picked up some ideas from Lincoln for his novel "1984." Orwell could have reset his novel in America and named it, "1864" (or "Big Stovepipe Hat is Watching You").
LOL!
Yes, and the Gettysburg Address would have been an example of 'newspeak'.
Reagan defeated the evil empire with its hundreds of divisions of infantry and tanks; 6000 war planes, hundreds of ships, submarines, and mines; and over a thousand nuclear warheads.
Lincoln ordered a conspiracy to instigage war when the Confederate Army numbered less than 10,000...had no warships other than a few captured at their own ports, and no way to move troops North except by a foot, horse, and rail.
Reagan defeated the evil empire without firing a shot.
Lincoln presided over the deaths of 600,000.
And one poster earlier said that there was no permanent damage.
A foolish remark.
From the mid-1860's until just 50 years ago, the South withered for the lack of a middle class..........25% or more killed in the war, and a slow building back.
Who do these people think they are? They know nothing of the devastation...the ruin...the human degration.
"...in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves....".
Where did this fit into the thinking of those that sent Sheridan and Sherman south?
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
So you admit that the south was engaged in war prior to firing on Sumter since it was 'capturing' Union warships?
LOL. You guys are a joke and it is so fitting that you quote Fernando Wood on ethics --- he's the guy who taught Boss Tweed everything he knew about corruption.
Wood was a total demagogue who made a career out of appealing to the worst in people. He organized the so-called "Draft Riots", in reality race riots, by using his brothers newspaper to inflame the poor immigrants with stories about Lincoln shipping millions of free blacks to New York to take their jobs. Who Woods was really serving was not the slum dwellers of New York. His masters were the banking and shipping interests who were the major creditors of the big time southern plantation owners. They stood to lose lots of money if the Confederacy and slavery went down. Organizing riots was nothing new to him however. In 1857 when the State of New York finally stepped in to shut down Wood's totally corrupt and extremely brutal "Municipal" police goon squad, he organized riots that lasted for days and left many dead. He set the standard in NYC that bigots and charlatans like Al Sharpton follow to this day.
Woods was also a vicious racist --- probably worse that any Confederate leader. In 1864, he managed to get himself elected to Congress again and during the debates in January of 1865 on the 13th Amendment, he had this to say.
We may amend the Constitution; we may by superior military force overrun and conquer the South; we may lay waste their lands and destroy their property; we may free their slaves. But there is one thing we cannot do: we cannot violate with impunity or alter the laws of God. The Almighty has fixed the distinction of the races; the Almighty has made the black man inferior, and sir, by no legislation, by no partisan success, by no revolution, by no military power, can you wipe out this distinction. You may make the black man free, but when you have done that, what have you done?
It is entirely and fitting that you neo-Confederates use Woods as a source. Even though he is surely burning in hell now, he is a kindred spirit.
After reviewing rabid neo-confederate postings it would be fair to classify them as bordering on being a one issue cult, fighting for a shameful & outrageous lost cause.
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