Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial - 2009; the official work and preparation begins now

lincolnbicentennial.gov/ ^ | November 2006 | Lincoln Bicentennial Commission

[freedomdefender]

The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission was created by Congress to inform the public about the impact Abraham Lincoln had on the development of our nation, and to find the best possible ways to honor his accomplishments. The President, the Senate and the House of Representatives appointed a fifteen-member commission to commemorate the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln and to emphasize the contribution of his thoughts and ideals to America and the world.

The official public Bicentennial Commemoration launches February 2008 and closes February 2010, with the climax of the Commemoration taking place on February 12, 2009, the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth.

Across the country communities, organizations and individuals have already begun to plan parades, museum exhibitions, performances, art installations and much more.

[MamaTexan]

What Constitutional rights of southerners were being infringed to inspire separation?

Article 4, Section 2, Clause 3
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

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It seems to me that a precedent for secession resting upon dissatisfaction with the results of an election is a mighty frivolous recipe for future destruction of our people.

Fair enough, but compare this speech-

House Divided Speech Springfield, Illinois June 16, 1858
Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention.
If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.
We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation.
Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented.
In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed.
"A house divided against itself cannot stand."
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other.

With this one -

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates, October 15, 1858

Lastly, in the provision for the reclamation of fugitive slaves, it is said: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
(snip)
I have stated upon former occasions, and I may as well state again, what I understand to be the real issue in this controversy between Judge Douglas and myself. On the point of my wanting to make war between the free and the slave States, there has been no issue between us. So, too, when he assumes that I am in favor of introducing a perfect social and political equality between the white and black races. These are false issues, upon which Judge Douglas has tried to force the controversy. There is no foundation in truth for the charge that I maintain either of these propositions.
(snip)
I suppose most of us (I know it of myself) believe that the people of the Southern States are entitled to a Congressional Fugitive Slave law that is a right fixed in the Constitution. But it cannot be made available to them without Congressional legislation. In the Judge's language, it is a "barren right" which needs legislation before it can become efficient and valuable to the persons to whom it is guarantied. And as the right is Constitutional I agree that the legislation shall be granted to it and that not that we like the institution of slavery.
(snip)
I say if that Dred Scott decision is correct, then the right to hold slaves in a Territory is equally a Constitutional right with the right of a slaveholder to have his runaway returned. No one can show the distinction between them. The one is express, so that we cannot deny it. The other is construed to be in the Constitution, so that he who believes the decision to be correct believes in the right. And the man who argues that by unfriendly legislation, in spite of that Constitutional right, slavery may be driven from the Territories, cannot avoid furnishing an argument by which Abolitionists may deny the obligation to return fugitives, and claim the power to pass laws unfriendly to the right of the slaveholder to reclaim his fugitive. I do not know how such an argument may strike a popular assembly like this, but I defy anybody to go before a body of men whose minds are educated to estimating evidence and reasoning, and show that there is an iota of difference between the Constitutional right to reclaim a fugitive, and the Constitutional right to hold a slave, in a Territory, provided this Dred Scott decision is correct.

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Four months after he said slavery should be abolished, he admitted their was a Constitutional right to own slaves as well as having escaped slaves returned.

Kerry must have perfected his flip-flopping ability by reading Lincoln.

[getmeouttaPalmBeachCounty_FL]

Hopefully some definitive information regarding the genealogy of President Abraham Lincoln's mother will be unearthed in the months ahead. Our personal relation to him hangs in limbo until historians can either perform DNA testing or be able to locate correct documentation.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

No inconsistency in principle. Only the happy conviction that slavery was doomed but also the affirmation that all Constitution protections should be extended to all American citizens.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

And finally from you: "What Constitutional rights of southerners were being infringed to inspire separation?"

The threat of coercion which materialized on the evening of April 11, 1861. Secession was the last refuge of the South from the meddling and coercion of the North.

What meddling? Lincoln himself said he wouldn't interfere with the South's institutions and he didn't have the right to under the Constitution.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

This combination of Federal Law that favored Northern businessmen, Federal law prohibitions against Southern expansion of shipping, the 1860 Republican party plank proposing a federally funded transcontinental railroad, and the Lincoln supported Morril tariff would eventually turn out to be the major causes of the secession.

Too bad those guys that wrote Mississippi's secession document didn't know that in 1861. They would have at least mentioned all that and not wasted all that ink only talking about slavery.

[Lee'sGhost]

As I said, you can cherry pick or select documents that prove any point of view in this regard. (See below.) Thanks for proving me right.

I also noticed that you failed to answer my questions and that you switched from arguing that slavery was the cause to slavery was the main cause.

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In an August 22, 1862, letter to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley he explained to the world what the war was about:

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.

Of course, many Americans at the time, North and South, believed that a military invasion of the Southern states would destroy the union by destroying its voluntary nature. To Lincoln, "saving the Union" meant destroying the secession movement and with it the Jeffersonian political tradition of states’ rights as a check on the tyrannical proclivities of the central government. His war might have "saved" the union geographically, but it destroyed it philosophically as the country became a consolidated empire as opposed to a constitutional republic of sovereign states.

On July 22, 1861, the US Congress issued a "Joint Resolution on the War" that echoed Lincoln’s reasons for the invasion of the Southern states:

Resolved: . . . That this war is not being prosecuted upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those states, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and all laws made in pursuance thereof and to preserve the Union, with all the dignity, equality and rights of the several states unimpaired; and that as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease.

By "the established institutions of those states" the Congress was referring to slavery. As with Lincoln, destroying the secession movement took precedence over doing anything about slavery.

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I dare say the writer was right, as was I. Lincoln's war "saved" the union geographically, but it destroyed it philosophically as the country became a consolidated empire as opposed to a constitutional republic of sovereign states. That, my friend, is the undeniable truth. And thank you Mr. Lincoln.

[foreverfree]

bump

[foreverfree]

RasterMaster, check out http://factcheck.org/article415.html .

ff

[freedomdefender]

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union

And what's wrong with that?

[Colonel Kangaroo]

I dare say the writer was right, as was I. Lincoln's war "saved" the union geographically, but it destroyed it philosophically as the country became a consolidated empire as opposed to a constitutional republic of sovereign states. That, my friend, is the undeniable truth. And thank you Mr. Lincoln.

There may have always been a few that maintained that the states were sovereign, but there is also a long tradition of those who held Lincoln's view-Lincoln did not originate this. From James Monroe's first inauguration address:

"Under this Constitution our commerce has been wisely regulated with foreign nations and between the States; new States have been admitted into our Union; our territory has been enlarged by fair and honorable treaty, and with great advantage to the original States; the States, respectively protected by the National Government under a mild, parental system against foreign dangers, and enjoying within their separate spheres, by a wise partition of power, a just proportion of the sovereignty, have improved their police..."

A just proportion of sovereignty within separate spheres is not the absolute sovereignty claimed by the secessionists. Monroe and Lincoln held the same position on this.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

With each state’s voting on the massive question of secession from the Union, their legislatures determined that a document should be published, outlining the reasoning and causes of their disunion.

Tennessee voted to remain in the Union, but that didn't stop the slavery lovers in the legislature from ignoring the expressed will of the people in taking Tennessee out of the Union and inviting the rebel hordes in to "defend" the state.

None of the original 7 and eventual 11 ordinances mentioned slavery as a cause of their decision to leave the Union.

The 11 ordinances didn't give ANY reason for separation. They were only legal documents stating the facts. The justifications were the parallel documents giving cause.

[RasterMaster]

What about these:

[MamaTexan]

No inconsistency in principle.

LOL! They are all his words. He was against slavery, but recognized the Constitutional authority that allowed it.

He let his personal convictions trump the Constitution and failed to uphold his sworn oath to adhere to the terms of the compact.

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the affirmation that all Constitution protections should be extended to all American citizens.

Please show me the Constitutional Article that gave him the authority to promote someone from 'property' to 'citizen'.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

ME:the affirmation that all Constitution protections should be extended to all American citizens.

YOU:Please show me the Constitutional Article that gave him the authority to promote someone from 'property' to 'citizen'.

I wasn't referring to emancipation of slaves. I was talking about Lincoln's desire to extend Constitutional protection to all citizens, be they northern or southern. Lincoln hated slavery and the efforts to subvert the precedent of the Northwest Ordinance, but he also loved the Constitution and the rights it granted to all Americans.

[Ditto]

I have read that no Christian minister in Springfield would endorse him for president, apparently because of his lack of church affiliation.

"Put money in my collection plate, or else you're not a Christian"?

[MamaTexan]

I was talking about Lincoln's desire to extend Constitutional protection to all citizens, be they northern or southern.

LOL! Extend is a word used if your offering something, not if you will force something on them, will-they, nil-they.

His protection was neither required nor desired. Slavery was an institution when the states were formed, the Revolution was fought and the Constitution was signed.

Those that wished to live in a slave free state were welcome to go to the single State that never allowed slavery....which, I believe, was Massachusetts.

That state was the ONLY non-slave state at the signing of the Constitution. The Founders felt it was up to the State, not the newly formed federal government, to make that decision.

Lincoln ran roughshod over almost a hundred years of the established legal FACT of States abiding by their own choices on the issue. This is in adherence to the Constitutional compact. The document Lincoln swore to uphold.

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and the rights it granted to all Americans.

Please show me the Constitutional authority that grants the ability to define the following terms-
Person
Property
American
Jurisdiction

The federal government was given a specific area in which to operate. Lincoln released the genie from the bottle, and God help us, we'll never get it back in there again.

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However true, therefore, it may be, that the judicial department is, in all questions submitted to it by the forms of the Constitution, to decide in the last resort, this resort must necessarily be deemed the last in relation to the authorities of the other departments of the government; not in relation to the rights of the parties to the constitutional compact, from which the judicial, as well as the other departments, hold their delegated trusts. On any other hypothesis, the delegation of judicial power would annul the authority delegating it; and the concurrence of this department with the others in usurped powers, might subvert forever, and beyond the possible reach of any rightful remedy, the very Constitution which all were instituted to preserve.
James Madison, Report on the Virginia Resolutions

[Colonel Kangaroo]

Lincoln upheld the Constitution as he said he would from the start. Had the secessionists stayed in the union in 1861 they faced no loss of their rights as citizens under the Constitution. But Lincoln could not support the continuing desire of the slaveowning South to subvert the established right of Congress to control slavery in the territories. It's all very simple unless one s trying to justify the unjustifiable selfish power grab of a group of slavery loving southern politicians.