Historical abolitionist artifact:
Posted on 11/26/2005 9:36:29 PM PST by Mier
While all the anti war cowards were screaming for Bush to cut and run and our willing accomplice main stream media acting like kids in a candy store. I heard someone on talk radio say that during the civil war Lincoln had his media detracters thrown in the bottom of a war ship until the war was over. But I can't find any facts on-line to back it up. Does any one know where I might go to find information on this? I mentioned this to a (left wing co-worker) and he thinks I made it up. I sure would like to prove him wrong! Any information on this would be greatly appreciated.
Broken record Non. The Southern States are not creations of the Constitution; POTUS is.
You are correct. The USSC overturned a Wisconsin State Supreme Court ruling stemming from an 1854 case against a newspaper editor charged with assisting a runaway slave. (Ableman v. Booth 1859). Booth was charged by the Federal slave catcher Abelman with inciting a mob to release the former slave from jail. Booth protested his innocence stating that he had merely advocated peaceful protest of the capture.
The Booth case seems to have been a precedent setting test of the Fugitive Slave Act, which was a political artifice designed to enable California to enter the Union as a free State. The particulars of the case were also troublesome, if all Booth did was editorialize against the capture. The Fugitive Slave Act represented a vast and unnecessary Federal intrusion into the sovereignty of States. How ironic that it was foisted upon the country by the same region which supposedly held State sovereignty in such high regard. I guess its ok to be a federalist as long as its the other guys ox getting gored huh?
Some states are "righter" than others, LOL.
Connecticut Republican Congressman Ferry apparently didn't read the memo. He introduced or tried to introduce the following resolution in the House on February 9, 1861:
Resolved, that the Committee on the Judiciary be instructed to inquire into the expediency of so amending the Constitution of the United States as expressly to forbid the withdrawal of any State from the Union without the consent of two thirds of both Houses of Congress, the approval of the President, and the consent of all the States, to report by joint resolution proposing such an amendment, or otherwise.
It didn't get very far, did it? Probably because it wasn't necessary.
Show me where the Constitution says secession is illegal. You can't. Congressman Ferry recognized the Constitution did not say that and that an amendment was necessary.
Of course, some of Ferry's congressional collegues may have thought that it doesn't matter what the Constitution says or doesn't say -- we can simply ignore it or overpower the other side with force if it comes to that. The right to secede was ultimately decided by force.
Then again, some of his colleagues were doubtless opportunists who desired to continue extracting wealth from the South by means of the tariff thereby providing prosperity for their constituents. As de Tocqueville said:
"If it be supposed that among the states that are united by the federal tie there are some which exclusively enjoy the principal advantages of union, or whose prosperity entirely depends on the duration of that union, it is unquestionable that they will always be ready to support the central government in enforcing the obedience of the others. But the government would then be exerting a force not derived from itself, but from a principle contrary to its nature."
Hey RB, I thought about this thread while listening to the news this morning. They were talking about quick moving fires burning down homes in Texas and Oklahoma. It was a bit suprising since its winter time and the weather is cooler, but apparently the wind is a factor as well.
I'm pretty sure we can rule out abolitionists though...:^)
I've been paying close attention to those fires. We have a lot out in the cedar covered hill country of Central Texas. We hope to build on it, so the fires are a concern to us.
When I was growing up in a little Texas town, our neighborhood got together for fireworks on the 4th. The fireworks set the grass on fire a couple of times (sparks from rockets that landed in the grass). The volunteer fire department put them out.
The 1860 fires weren't grass fires as far as I know. They started in towns and houses. The Unionists (Sam Houston and Union supporting papers I think) claimed that blaming the abolitionists for the fires was a political ploy by the opposition. Maybe, maybe not. I wonder how the history of our times would read if only the New York Times were used for documentation.
See the Great Hanging at Gainesville from the Handbook of Texas Online
There were no "rash of fires". There were no "slave uprisings" and there was no Unionist Conspiracy. What there was were mobs of Secessionists who violated more civil liberties and constitutional protections in one small Texas town than happened in all of the Union under Lincoln. Dozens of innocent people were hanged and shot by the noble slaveocracy and their willing thugs (and future members of the KKK.) Similar events took place across the South where any real or imagined opposition was ruthlessly crushed without benefit of due process.
The Lost Cause brigade hates the have the word "Gainesville" mentioned because it shoots the legs right out from under their "Lincoln the Tyrant" mythology.
War time, in any nation, can be dangerous for dissenters. But during the American Civil War, being a Copperhead in the North was infinitely safer than being a Unionist behind Confederate lines. A Copperhead took the chance of prison only if his rhetoric reached the point of open sedition. A Unionist in the South faced near absolute certainty of either a rope or a bullet if he were discovered.
I received a book for Christmas called Lincoln's Wrath by Manber and Dahlstrom. The book concerns the shutting down of opposition press by pro-Union mobs and government mail restrictions and arrests of editors. The book focuses mainly on the shutting down of the Jeffersonian of West Chester, Pennsylvania.
I've not gotten very far into the book but did discover that Lincoln secretly financed an Illinois newspaper back in 1858 and hired the publisher. Ethics of the time perhaps.
Another interesting tidbit in the book was a political dirty trick by Ward Hill Lamon, he of the arrest warrant for Chief Justice Taney fame. Lamon and another guy had a large number of fake admission tickets printed for the 1860 Republican Convention. The tickets were given to Lincoln supporters who got to the hall early. When Seward's supporters arrived with legitimate tickets, they were turned away since the hall was already filled.
Here is a quote from the Introduction of the book:
Interestingly, after all these years [they researched for the book for 10 years], we as authors disagree as to whether the draconian actions of Lincoln and his administration in muzzling dissenting voices were justified. Perhaps it is right that two historians cannot agree, for the role of the Constitution in a crisis is a basic American dilemma. Is the Constitution only to be obeyed during times of national peace? Hodgson [editor of the Jeffersonian] thought not, and perhaps we are a stronger nation today because of the personal courage of these Civil War-era editors.
I did get the book Yankee Leviathan recommended by LS. I see on page 144 it notes that in contrast to newspaper suppression in the North during the war, "only one paper (in Knoxville, Tennessee) seems to have been closed by national authorities [Confederate]; only one other (in Raleigh, North Carolina) was destroyed by mob action." The Tennessee paper was Parson Brownlow's. However, some claim Brownlow's paper was shut down by state authorities, not national authorities (see Link).
Perhaps some Southern papers were closed by local or state authorities (as opposed to national), but I've just not run across that in the old newspapers.
Suspected sources of fire were: fireworks, welding, burning trash in barrels, cigarettes thrown from cars, and sparks from catalytic converters. I would be interested in knowing if drought conditions in 1860 had also touched off prairie fires, but haven't been able to find reports. In any case, I don't think one can draw an airtight distinction between prairie fires as acts of nature and city fires caused by humans.
Trying to come up with more information on the Internet, I found lots of cases of fires started at sawmills in 19th Century Texas. One family even lost their mill four times on the post-Civil War frontier. It must have something to do with sawdust and shavings as tinder and kindling, the friction of the saws providing sparks, and whatever source of energy was used to heat or light or power the mill.
Blacksmith shops and livery stables may have been other likely flashpoints. We've seen how the dangers of early phosphorous matches made safety matches necessary starting at about this time. Candles, oil, and kerosene may also have been factors.
We forget how different things were between then and now. I came across a report of two men in Coryell County, Texas being lynched for voting for Lincoln. I haven't had time to verify but it does indicate just how unlike the present-day, the America of 1860 was.
Well, I could almost see Bush voters being lynched in San Fransisco today. ;~))
From the Marshall Texas Republican, November 1860, cited upthread:
What are the facts? The fires alluded to commenced in July last, and, in the short period of one month, property to the amount of over a million of dollars, was destroyed, including two of the largest and most flourishing towns in Eastern Texas. Eleven fires occurred in Northern Texas in one week, involving a loss of upwards of seven hundred thousand dollars. There was scarcely a county in the State that claimed an immunity from these outrages. Farm houses, gins, mills, and stores were destroyed in almost every county. Every newspaper that reached us during those exciting times, contained from one to a half dozen accounts of these burnings. ...
That there should have been a great deal of excitement, that many reports should have been circulated having no foundation and that acts of unjustifiable violence should have taken place, were perfectly natural. Such results have followed similar excitements everywhere else, and why should Texas prove different from the rest of the world?
But if the number, frequency, and the accounts given of these fires were insufficient to dispel the idea that they were [illegible line] elicited by committees appointed to examine into the facts, is sufficient to show that that they were caused by incendiaries.
We are free to admit that testimony elicited by violence or fright is not to be depended on, but, in this case, it is a noted fact, that negroes, over a hundred miles apart, in a number of counties, all concurred in the general outlines of this abolition movement.
The Lost Cause brigade hates the have the word "Gainesville" mentioned because it shoots the legs right out from under their "Lincoln the Tyrant" mythology.
LOL. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Lincoln can be a tyrant, and the mob at Gainesville can be a lynch mob.
You linked to a Handbook of Texas Online article on Gainesville by Richard McCaslin. I suggest that you read McCaslin's more detailed description of what happened at Gainesville in his 1994 book, "Tainted Breeze, The Great Hanging at Gainesville, Texas, 1862," published by the Louisiana State University Press. I covered this subject in a previous thread. Perhaps you missed those discussions though you were posting on the thread in question.
See Link, posts 676 and 687.
It was not only common practice, but expected, that politicians would secretly or openly finance papers that would then publicize them. ALL the Dem papers were started by the Jacksonians for such purposes. I know Grant authorized his troops to arrest one editor who was printing troop positions in TN, but I don't know if his subordinate did so or not.
See the following link from the 1859 US House of Representatives: Link
Historical abolitionist artifact:
The few, the proud, the SF Bay area Freepers...
The opposition that day...lol!
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