Why Lincoln Still Matters(Compares America's founding principles and challenges to Iraq's struggles)

The Claremont Institute ^ | February 11, 2005 | Thomas L. Krannawitter

[cynicom]

The south started thinking of secession because Lincoln in 1848, said EVERYONE had the right to rise up and shake off the existing government.

Lincoln and Marx agreed on that, til Lincoln was in power then it was a no no. Rather hypocritical.

[libertarianben]

Here are quotes from Lincoln, people might find interesting:

"Any People anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing governement and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right - a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit." Speech by Lincoln in Congrees January 1848.

Here's the punch line:

"No state, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union. Plainly, the central idea of sucession, is the essence of anarchy." Lincoln speech made some time later.

I believe this known as a flip-flop.

[Californiajones]

You may be right about how individual blacks were treated by Northerners etc., however Lincoln believed, and stated as such, that the war was essentially over the sin and stain of slavery -- as it stained the promise of the Declaration that all men are created equal.

Lincoln believed that the blood shed in the Civil War was just due because of the terrible moral wrong of slavery.

[Californiajones]

One catch in your argument is that Lincoln in 1948 was talking about natural law or God's law or human rights as given to men by their Creator.

Later Lincoln was talking about the actual LEGALITY of succession. Of course, it was illegal for the South to succeed after they had committed themselves to be one of the "United" States -- but this statement is not a flip flop because Lincoln was discussing two types of law -- God's eternal laws of life and liberty and US Law.

Two things Lincoln pondered and obsessed over as he sweated blood during the mayhem and death of the Civil War years.

[libertarianben]

Freeing the slaves was no doubt a worthwhile goal, but it was not even an issue until the war was almost two years old. Lincoln didn't go to war to free the slaves- he had no such purpose and he said so time and time again. Why didn't Lincoln write and signed the Emancipation Proclamation from the very beginning? In 1864, Lincoln finally named unqualified emancipation as an object of the war in his 1864 re-election campaign. With that, support from Europe increased and the Southern cause was doomed.

[sheltonmac]

"The Civil War was entirely unnecessary"? Tell that to African Americans.

Which group? Thousands--both slave and free--fought for the Confederacy.

[libertarianben]

Yes it was a flip-flop. In one statement he said it was ok for a state/territory to break away if they believe the government to be tyrannical. In another, he said if any state would to break away it would be illegal and there would be anarchy. Even though the founding fathers did the same thing to England in the 1776.

[GloriaJane]

There is going to be a PBS special titled: "Slavery and the Making of America" on sometime this month.

It's is supposed to have a lot of info on the civil war for those who are interested.

Here is the link to the page addy but I don't see what day or time it's going to be on.

http://www.pbs.org/previews/slavery/

Maybe check your local listings?

It lists these credits:

Twenty-five of the most prominent scholars in the field have advised the producers, and/or participated in on-camera interviews. Included are Dr. Horton, Benjamin Banneker Professor of American Studies and History at George Washington University; Ira Berlin, Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland; Nell Irvin Painter, Professor of History at Princeton University; Peter H. Wood, Professor of History at Duke University; Deborah White, Professor of History at Rutgers University; and Jean Fagan Yellin, Distinguished Professor of English Emerita at Pace University.


Web and Educational Outreach

A companion Web site from Thirteen Online will expand upon the program's content and enhance its impact with such features as a rotating gallery of oral histories brought to life by streaming audio files and slide shows; a multimedia timeline with links to interactive quizzes, maps, photo essays, and video and audio clips; and a selection of easy-to-navigate thematic presentations.


A companion book - also entitled Slavery and the Making of America - by James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton will be published by Oxford University Press to coincide with the broadcast.

[Non-Sequitur]

bump

[GOPcapitalist]

Dr. Krannawitter holds a Master's degree and a Ph.D. in political science from the Claremont Graduate University, where he wrote a dissertation on Abraham Lincoln.

Looks like Tommy finally finished up his dissertation! Too bad it's probably a gushy panegyric to Lincoln that wouldn't pass the defense bar at any real scholarly institution.

[Stoat]

Thanks very much for your passion, your insights, your music, and your helpful and thoughtful posts.

[Californiajones]

Still same argument. Was the government tyrannical before the South succeeded?

[libertarianben]

To say it was illegal for the South to break away from the Union is to say it was illegal for the American Colonies to break away from Britian. Is government tyrannical? I would say so. The "Civil War" was the beginning of the expanding federal government. The stomping of the constitution.

[Californiajones]

Reread the Declaration. Jefferson and company make very plain that their appeal is to Nature's God not legalities or illegalities - and that tyranny is the just cause not for "revolution" as the French or nascent Marxists would have said -- but tyranny was the just cause for a righteous God to grant nationhood to the colonies. Deists or Christians, the Founding Fathers and Jefferson (at least at the time of the Declaration) knew their scriptures well enough to know that they needed to "declare" their independence based on moral and biblical arguments because the Bible states the "rebellion is as witchcraft". Jefferson was careful to avoid all mention of rebellion against England; rather it was, again, a declaration of the dissolutionment of unjust bonds to England. If all men are created equal under God, then Jefferson's appeal to God in the Declaration and his prooftexts of unjust taxation, tyrannical, second class citizen status for the colonists, etc., were all that was needed to prove that there was a higher law the colonist were appealing to.

On the other hand, the South seceded without any elegant appeals to the Lord or Nature's God. Their aristocratic way of life -- living off the sweat of another man's brow -- essentially spat in the face of the Declaration. Instead of declaring their moral or legal rights to secession, they simply broke off in fear in the long months between Lincoln's election in November to his inauguration in March 1861.

Lincoln well knew the issues of the founders and their lack of courage to banish slavery from the original constitution. During the elongated months while he waited to take office, he watched as war became inevitable as the South reacted to his election in fear and arrogance.

We can argue states rights vs federal rights until we are blue in the face but this gal from California thinks that you are mixing up the arguments of what is God's law and what is technically illegal. Lincoln believed that the South had NO moral imperative to break away from the Union; in fact the very act of calling the Southerners "rebels" again was a very negative label that goes over the heads of our less Bible literate consciousness today. The colonists were not "rebels" -- but had taken, and proved, their moral high ground. The Confederates slunk away from proving that their position was moral because they knew dang well it wasn't. Lincoln bristled at the idea that the Confederates had any right by God or law to do what they did -- he saw it as an essentially selfish act of protectionism for their "peculiar way of life".

Again, the colonists' argument was an entirely different one.

[Californiajones]

Oh yeah, thanks again for the post because

Lincoln

still

matters.

[HankReardon]

Southern forces fired the first shots on supply ships that were arriving to replenish Ft Sumter. The South started the Civil War.

[HankReardon]

"Nature's" God? I'll have to look for that one!

[libertarianben]

They were on Southern property. What would you do if someone was on yours?

[libertarianben]

First: To the British the American were "rebels" as the South was considered to the North.

Second: Who is to say who has the moral high ground? This war was about what most but not all wars are about territory and money. Slavery didn't become a reason to fight until 2 years into the conflict. You make it sound like us Southerners were demons of satan, and the Union was full of angels. What a bs holier than thou attitude. If you read history not all southerners owned slaves and believed in slavery. They were fighting for their homeland against a invading force.

Third: You do not or should not base laws on a religious book. As you can see from the Middle East, that isn't a good idea.

Fourth: Every major newspaper in the North said Lincoln was an idoit for trying to save the Union.

[HankReardon]

Whatever, the South fired the first shots. The South commenced the war. Fort Sumter was United States military property. The south put itself on war footing by looting the federal amories with intent to use the arms against the United States military. The South wanted war and the South got war. Now what are you bitter about?