Introducing the Lincoln-Reagan Freedom Foundation

Lincoln-Reagan Freedom Foundation ^ | March 17, 2005 | Michael Zak

[Grand Old Partisan]

The Lincoln-Reagan Freedom Foundation is dedicated to promoting greater appreciation for the heritage of the Republican Party, founded as a civil rights movement in 1854. This "Grand Old Party" has an extraordinary, though overlooked, record of achievement in advancing civil rights in the United States and around the world.

Celebrating a Century and a Half of Civil Rights Achievement by the Republican Party

For the past century and a half, the Republican Party has proven to be the most effective political organization ever to champion equality and human rights in the United States and around the world. From President Lincoln's victory in the Civil War to President Reagan's victory in the Cold War, the GOP shares credit for the ability of hundreds of millions of people to live in freedom.

To increase our appreciation for this heritage, the Lincoln-Reagan Freedom Foundation brings together Republican officeholders, activists and staff, academics, and the media.

[GOPcapitalist]

The Abophobes will be here soon.

The Abophiles were here from the very beginning.

[GOPcapitalist]

"Buy some Calendars" ping!

[GOPcapitalist]

"We don’t do Lincoln Day Dinners in South Carolina." - Senator Lindsay Graham

[Grand Old Partisan]

Interesting, but Ronald Reagan spoke at lots of Lincoln Day dinners. It's his example I'd rather follow. Cheers,

[Grand Old Partisan]

The calendar is not for sale, so best not to suggest that people buy it. Rep. Cox did give away 20,000 copies at the Republican National Convention, where they were a big hit.

[GOPcapitalist]

By that same measure, I've also attended lots of Lincoln Day dinners. That didn't make me any more of a Lincoln fan though, nor did it stop me from changing ours to Reagan Day at the first opportunity we got.

[LS]

I am a Jackson hater: he did more to create "big government" than Lincoln ever did---because he did it earlier, and first. Indeed, one can trace the South's rabid fear of Lincoln to the fact that AJ vastly expanded the size of the Fed government and, more important, its powers, especially the executive powers. He issued more vetoes than all other previous presidents put together, and this is touted as "small government" actions, but in fact this INCREASED the power of the presidency much more than in the past, and it was the Jacksonian power that Lincoln inherited.

And, like you TonyRo, I do not support many of Abe's big government programs. But they beat the Dems' state institutionalization of slavery.

[Grand Old Partisan]

Good point, LS. It's hard to think of a bigger Big Government program than slavery.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Thanks for that link. That'll come in handy. :)

[LS]

Mark Thornton (no conservative) makes clear in his study of Southern slavery that it ONLY survived because of government subsidies and support: slave-catching "possees" could dragoon any non-slave-holding southerner into action; courts were "stacked" so as to discount slave testimony (couldn't be offered) or rule against free men of color. Postmasters used state power to censor mails from the north, especially anything deemed "abolitionist." So slavery was deeply intertwined with government power.

[Grand Old Partisan]

To give Andrew Jackson his due, he did say to the nullifiers from South Carolina, his home state:

"If one drop of blood be shed in defiance of the United States Government, I will hang the first man of them I can get my hands on to the first tree I can find."

And still, neo-Confederates complain about Abraham Lincoln!

[LS]

Well, the message to take from the nullification controversy is that here was the BIGGEST example of the negative impact of the tariff . . . and yet ONLY South Carolina got upset, and even then, not enough to secede. (Note that had the South seceded in 1829-32, there was no way Jackson would have had enough troops to attain victory.)

But the tariff was NOT the issue that concerned southerners---oh, it was a pain in the rectum, but nothing serious enough to fight over. But SLAVERY . . . well, that was different. The "Tariff of Abominations" shows clearly that the tariff was NOT the issue that cause the South to secede.

[GOPcapitalist]

Well, the message to take from the nullification controversy is that here was the BIGGEST example of the negative impact of the tariff . . . and yet ONLY South Carolina got upset, and even then, not enough to secede.

That is a gross misrepresentation of the issue. Anger over the Tariff of Abominations extended throughout the south even if the other states did not take the step South Carolina did with nullification. It is silly to complain that it was "not enough to secede" over when in fact South Carolina pushed the issue to the verge of secession before the tariff supporters in Congress caved and agreed to the 1833 Compromise tariff.

The "Tariff of Abominations" shows clearly that the tariff was NOT the issue that cause the South to secede.

That's absurd. Excepting of the Civil War itself, the nullification crisis was the closest any state had ever come to seceding! And they probably would have had the tariff supporters in Congress not caved.

[LS]

It was clearly a relatively insignificant issue compared to slavery. Slavery dominated every thought, every deed, every writing of the southerners, slaveholder and non alike. It underlay every law, and even the tariff was viewed in the context of slavery. Again, see Thornton.

[lentulusgracchus]

[LS] The "Tariff of Abominations" shows clearly that the tariff was NOT the issue that cause the South to secede.

[GOPcapitalist] That's absurd. Excepting of the Civil War itself, the nullification crisis was the closest any state had ever come to seceding! And they probably would have had the tariff supporters in Congress not caved.

Concurring bump. If anyone could have made the federal government's writ run in 1833, it was "King Andrew", but the correlation of forces, as the Soviets used to like to call it, was much more favorable to the South in 1833 than in 1863, and it would have been a near-run thing whose outcome would have been dependent on South Carolina's ability to attract support from the other tariff-chump (as opposed to tariff-beneficiary) States.

Nullification had a constitutional-law problem in that it wasn't sustainable by argument. Madison backed away from the Nullifiers, even though they showed that they understood very well what Madison himself had written in response to the Federalists' police-state Alien and Sedition Acts at the turn of the century, before the Democratic Republicans gained national office, defusing that first crisis.

Jefferson Davis, in his inaugural as president of the provisional Confederate government, explained the Nullifiers' problem succinctly, that their theory flew in the face of the Supremacy Clause, which the Peoples of all the States had ratified with the rest of the Constitution, and that it wasn't possible to remain in the Union while insisting that one's sovereignty allowed one to change both the terms of Union and the laws of the federal government unilaterally, which would break the compact of the Constitution.

[lentulusgracchus]

It was clearly a relatively insignificant issue compared to slavery. Slavery dominated every thought, every deed, every writing of the southerners, slaveholder and non alike.

Actually, that isn't quite true. See the call of Robert Rhett to the other Slaveholding States, as he called them, posted above. There were several outstanding issues. The reason the slavery issue was so important was because the Abolitionist agitation allowed the Industrial Interest (to whom Lincoln had to reach out in order to achieve the nomination in 1860) to develop, in slavery, a wedge issue with which to beat the South as a region.

The Southern States were the leaders of the agrarian interests, the farmers -- the majority -- against the conniving and cartelization of the merchant and banking class, just as in the 1940's Southern Congressional "mossbacks", committee chairmen who wielded great power, were a huge roadblock to the liberals' plans to lead us all into the sunny highlands of State Socialism. And suddenly, the civil rights movement broke out, with liberal NGO apparatchiks appearing in the South as intervenors in school-integration discussions, launching Saul Alinsky-inspired direct political action, bringing lawsuits, and generally stirring the mud, while liberal senators and congressmen rose in the well of the Senate and House to denounce Jim Crow. The South was an obstacle to socialism, but the South was also vulnerable because of Jim Crow. So guess what we got? As Gomer Pyle would say, "Sur-prahz, sur-prahz, sur-prahz!! Gawl Lee!!"

The Yankee Industrial, Merchant, and Banking Interest has been playing this game for 150 years now -- first the Tariff, then Nullification, then Abolition and the Civil War, then the civil rights movement, and now the Confederate-flag controversy. When are our interlocutors going to begin to see the pattern here and realize that they're tools?

[GOPcapitalist]

It was clearly a relatively insignificant issue compared to slavery.

You are not answering my critique, LS. Whatever the relative status of tariffs to slavery (and why this need to view everything through the lens of slavery anyway?), it cannot be denied that the nullification crisis was a significant event in our history.

Slavery dominated every thought, every deed, every writing of the southerners, slaveholder and non alike. It underlay every law, and even the tariff was viewed in the context of slavery. Again, see Thornton.

Curious.

"Slavery Exploitation of the laborer dominated every thought, every deed, every writing of the southerners bourgeoise, slaveholder factory owner and non alike. It underlay every law, and even the tariff was viewed in the context of slavery exploitation. Again, see Thornton."

Tis interesting how these single-issue reductionist theories of history pan out, is it not?

[LS]

Actually that isn't quite true. Actually, that's so far from true as to be wrong.

It was all about slavery. Even Rhett's own letters, (not his public pronoucements when he was trying to hide slavery as an issue), along with the letters of virtually all the other secess leaders, emphasize slavery over and over again. You don't even get to the tariff as an issue really without slavery.

[LS]

Oh, by the way, it's interesting that the two leading advocates of the "southern way of life," and slavery, John Calhoun and George Fizhugh, were died in the wool socialists. BOth believed in the labor theory of value. Fizhugh wanted to socialize everyone---he flat called socialism slavery, and said slavery (as in the SOuth) was the best way to implement socialism.