Posted on 02/07/2009 7:45:28 AM PST by Loud Mime
Abraham Lincoln's Birthday is this Thursday. I thought it fitting to quote from the first Republican president's debates against Stephen Douglas. Each had an hour to present their case, hardly what the mainstream media would like.
I think, and shall try to show, that it is wrong; wrong in its direct effect, letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska and wrong in its prospective principle, allowing it to spread to every other part of the wide world where men can be found inclined to take it.
This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world; enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites; causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty - criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.
Before proceeding, let me say I think I have no prejudice against the Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist among them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist among us, we should not instantly give it up. This I believe of the masses North and South. Doubtless there are individuals on both sides who would not hold slaves under any circumstances; and others who would gladly introduce slavery anew, if it were out of existence. We know that some Southern men do free their slaves, go North, and become tip-top Abolitionists; while some Northern ones go South, and become most cruel slave-masters.
When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia - to their own native land. But a moment's reflection would convince me that whatever of high hope (as I think there is) there may be in this in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible. If they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough in the world to carry them there in many times ten days. What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery at any rate; yet the point is not clear enough to me to denounce people upon. What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment is not the sole question, if indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, cannot be safely disregarded. We cannot make them equals. It does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted; but for their tardiness in this, I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South.
When they remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowledge them, not grudgingly, but fully and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives, which should not, in its stringency, be more likely to carry a free man into slavery, than our ordinary criminal laws are to hang an innocent one.
But all this, to my judgment, furnishes no more excuse for permitting slavery to go info our own free territory, than it would for reviving the African slave trade by law. The law which forbids the bringing of slaves from Africa, and that which has so long forbidden the taking of them to Nebraska, can hardly be distinguished on any moral principle; and the repeal of the former could find quite as plausible excuses as that of the latter.
It sounds like the Democrats of old are the same as the Democrats of today; they just advocate government as our new slavemaster.
By the way, the website I pulled this from may be of interest to any persons interested in the war between the states.
ping
A logical, intelligent speech from a political figure? Surely this is fiction!
As I read the passage you highlighted I am struck by the fact that what Lincoln says he is agitated by is the embarrassment slavery causes to him. He expresses no particular concern for the slaves here. Lincoln and his cronies were mostly animated by their hatred, not for slavery, but for Negros.
What the heck are you talking about? He is saying he is embarrassed by the existence of slavery—how does that NOT show concern for those who suffer under it?
“Before proceeding, let me say I think I have no prejudice against the Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation.”
Refreshing to see someone post this for all those who claim the anti-slavery forces were some snooty bunch of northerners who denied they’d ever benefited from slavery.
It is concern for himself. Read it again.
"Refreshing to see someone post this for all those who claim the anti-slavery forces were some snooty bunch of northerners who denied they’d ever benefited from slavery."
Well Lincoln was a Southerner himself remember. Though he always aspired to be a snooty Northerner.
And ANOTHER Douglass — a black one — had THIS bit of advice. His words are as timely NOW as it was when he uttered them.
“Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate
agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the
ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical
one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a
struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never
did, and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit
to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and
wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue
until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those
whom they oppress.” Frederick Douglass August 4, 1857
Give the clearly expressed intentions of a contemporary black man, we may well find ourselves having to once again impose Douglass’ limits.
What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery at any rate; yet the point is not clear enough to me to denounce people upon.
What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment is not the sole question, if indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, cannot be safely disregarded. We cannot make them equals."
Reconstruction legitimized the 'democratic' actions of Lincoln, and, in effect, enslaved the Nation to the will of the federal government.
Nope, I can't think of a single thing to celebrate on Lincoln's birthday.
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"The federal government, then, appears to be the organ through which the united republics communicate with foreign nations, and with each other. Their submission to its operation is voluntary: its councils, its sovereignty is an emanation from theirs, not a flame by which they have been consumed, nor a vortex in which they are swallowed up. Each is still a perfect state, still sovereign, still independent, and still capable, should the occasion require, to resume the exercise of its functions, as such, in the most unlimited extent.
St. George Tucker View of the Constitution of the United States – 1803 [paragraph 337]
“Find out just what a people will submit
to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and
wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue
until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those
whom they oppress.” Frederick Douglass August 4, 1857”
Douglass describes our current situation.
There is nothing new under the sun.
What were Jefferson Davis and his cronies animated by? Just curious.
He pretty much dumped the constitution to get his way.
That being said, I am sure we are all glad slavery ended.
A big problem I have with the south was the attack on Fort Sumter and on that supply ship.
If for instance Bush was still president and Castro attacked Gitmo, we would have tore old Fidel a new one.
Secession should have been handled diplomatically at first and in the mean time the CSA could have built up their military via European help in preparation for a possible future armed conflict. Striking first was just dumb.
And where in any of that was Lincoln wrong?
Their slavery-dependent incomes, primarily -- with a nice patina of fancy talk to rationalize their defense of a moral abomination.
It's not necessary to paint them as fully evil (as our neo-confederate friends are brainlessly wont to do with Mr. Lincoln) because they were not. They had many good qualities as well.
Mr. Davis and his cronies stand as powerful examples of something we all do from time to time: mistake our own comforts and desires for what is right. How often have we all angrily defended something that, deep-down, we know is wrong? I've done it -- perhaps you have, too.
This does not absolve Mr. Davis, et al, of guilt for attempting to propagate and protect an atrocity ... and their positions of power make their guilt all the greater. But it would be a mistake to think we're incapable of the same sorts of things.
War was inevitable, even if your approach were the way things had gone. And the South would still have lost, regardless, for the same reasons they lost in any case: they were not capable of sustaining a total, industrial war such as the Civil War became.
As for "striking first," it was dumb ... and also completely predictable.
thanks...to read later.
I particularly like how Lincoln acknowledges his awareness of who was who...
Lincoln was a white supremicist and a tyrant who ignored the right to secession, ignored the 10nth Amendment, ignored habeas corpus, committed war crimes by sacking and burning whole southern cities ans used the emancipation as nothing more than a war gambit.
September 13, 1862, Lincoln said, “ Understand, I raise no objections against it [slavery] on legal or constitutional grounds ... I view the matter [emancipation] as a practical war measure, to be decided upon according to the advantages or disadvantages it may offer to the suppression of the rebellion.”
Lincoln responding to an op-ed piece in the then NY Tribune,who called on Lincoln to immediately and totally abolish slavery,
” My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. “
Once again, Lincoln signed the proclamation as nothing more than war propaganda.
Your H.O. humbly forgets that the Southern states brought a decades-in-the-making crisis to a headby seceeding -- prior to Lincoln's inauguration, and the reason they did so was to protect their "right" to keep slaves.
It's all very nice to blame Mr. Lincoln, but he didn't force anybody to seceed -- he had no power to do so in any case, at the time the secessions began. The blame for that, ma'am, belongs with those who started the ball rolling in the first place.
And ... you seem to use the term "moral issues of slavery" as a way of suggesting that it should not have been addressed by making a clean end of it. How ... convenient.
You also forget that the secession convention of your own state, among others, said outright that maintaining the institution of slavery was the reason they seceeded. You can defend that if you wish.
>>>It sounds like the Democrats of old are the same as the Democrats of today; they just advocate government as our new slavemaster. <<<
Actually, it is Lincoln’s form of “republicanism” that is more like the democrat ideology of today. Lincoln despised states rights, and preferred instead a strong central government. Conservatives of today are more like the non-slaveholding, old-South Democrats (and there were many more non-slaveholders than slaveholders). Lincoln was also an unapologetic racist who believed whites to be intellectually superior to blacks, much like the democrat party of today. Some links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e6PBcMkE1M
This is a very good YouTube lecture on Lincoln by Professor Thomas DiLorenzo
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/wilson7.html
Excerpt: “At the time when Lincoln inaugurated coercion against the seven seceding Southern states, there were (rounding off 1860 census figures) 1,387,000 slaves in the seceded states and 1,817,000 (or over 56 per cent of the total American slave population) still in the Union, including nearly 3,700 in the District of Columbia and 18 in New Jersey. It is hard to draw much of a moral to support military conquest of seceding states from that, especially as Lincoln had already declared that he had neither the right nor to desire to interfere with slavery in the states.
And what about the 488,000 free black people in the United States, more than half of whom were in the slave states. How can they be “hostages” when they discouraged and often forbidden from entering Northern states where the black population was, according to much testimony, extremely depressed and oppressed!”
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo31.html
Excerpt: “The truth is that Lincoln repudiated the dictum of the Declaration of Independence that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. He also unequivocally denied that “all men are created equal.” “I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races,” he said in the August 21, 1858, debate with Stephan Douglas. “Free them [slaves], and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this . . . . We cannot, then, make them equals,” he continued.”
http://www.lewrockwell.com/wilson/wilson22.html
Excerpt: “Of course, the greatest Presidents, according to the Mainstream Intelligentsia (MSI), are those who grew the federal government the most and who exercised the most dictatorial power – that being their definition of greatness. The whole enterprise of such ratings has always seemed fishy to me. What do we mean, for instance, by Great? Genghis Kahn, Hitler, and Mao were great – in the sense that they made a great impact on history. Being Great in history is not necessarily a good thing. And greatness is surely a matter of perspective. Many may have profited from the doings of a great President, but there are also many who suffered. I doubt if very many of the 600,000 Americans who died in the War to Prevent Southern Independence would be all that enthusiastic about the greatness of Honest Abe Lincoln if they were allowed to vote. “
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