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.
Self government.
“And where in any of that was Lincoln wrong?”
-
Nowhere.
He was speaking “truth to power” at the time.
But to read this is to realize that all was not as the
re-writers of history would have us believe of those times.
“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”
Did you somehow miss this: “I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself”? You see, he didn’t say the injustice of slavery bothers him. He said slavery itself is unjust.
“Lincoln and his cronies were mostly animated by their hatred, not for slavery, but for Negros”
Not to say that he wasn’t racist, but the Republican party was animated in its infancy largely by the free-soil movement, everything else on their platform being a carryover from decades of Whig policy, and had little to do with negroes. Now, a very compelling argument can be made that the free-soil movement was concocted as an excuse for white settlers to keep slaves from competing with them. That’s part of it. Another part, and in my opinion the bigger part, is that preventing slavery from moving into new states would hasten its assumed eventual disappearance.
Well Lincoln was a Southerner himself remember. Though he always aspired to be a snooty Northerner.
Better a snooty Northern who for all his human flaws turned against slavery than...something else.
LOL! It was a war strategy ... and a rather successful one at that.
Your whole rant forgets one simple fact: secession occurred, and the Confederacy arose, over the issue of slavery, and their "right" to keep slaves. All of the other fine talk was nothing more than window-dressing.
Secession had little to do with slavery.
Southern States were debating cessation long before 1860 BECAUSE of the decades long feud over the proper economic role of the central government. High tariffs were punishing the south beginning with the 1828 Tariff of Abominations.
The fact you fail to observe the time line of events and suffer cognitive dissonance is not my concern.
It works like this in the democrat mind. A fetus is subhuman and the property of the woman. The woman is the new slave master. As a result, the radical feminists have totally undone centuries of social evolution.
Actually, that was what made the Civil War inevitable. Pretty much any way you play the what-if game -- even if the Confederacy were freely allowed to form itself -- the South's need and desire to spread slavery, and the North's desire to prevent it, would inevitably have led to fighting.
“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.”
You seem to equate blame for secession with blame for the war, which need not have been so.
“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.”
Just because the secession was about slavery does not make secession as such invalid.
Please explain how this is "concern for himself".
P.S. I said " those who claim the anti-slavery forces were some snooty bunch of northerners" to which you replied "Well Lincoln was a Southerner himself remember."
Which was my point.
Before you start advising others to read things again, maybe you should learn to read properly the first time.
The free-soil movement may have had far more to do with protecting northern wage workers than with helping blacks (if at all). Northerners were afraid that bringing slavery to the North would cause slaves to take jobs away from themselves.
Wait, I didn’t mean to say Lincoln “didn’t say the injustice of slavery bothers him”. I meant to say Lincoln didn’t say slavery was unjust because it bothers him. He said slavery was unjust in itself.
I don’t read that in it at all. He is saying it is morally reprehensible, and at the same time he understands what the South is saying.
Yeah, right. But let me be more specific. When it came to slavery and Negroes what were Davis and his cronies animated by? Love? Brotherhood between the races? Moral justice? What?
Probably not, had the confederacy not initiated war with their attack on Sumter.
Just because the secession was about slavery does not make secession as such invalid.
No, but unilateral secession as practiced by the Southern state was invalid.
Oh, pooh. Secession had everything to do with slavery. It was the culmination of the controversy that informed the Missouri Compromise, the Great Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Those were all predicated on dealing with the Sectional Crisis, which in turn was all about slavery.
Many of the seceeding states said so outright, with Mississipi being perhaps the most explicit:
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
If you want to talk about "the proper economic role of the central government," it is impossible to do so without facing the fact that the economies of the secessionist states were utterly dependent on slavery. The "economic issue" at hand was nothing more or less than the threat of abolition of slavery, and the ruin it would bring upon the southern economy.
The threat posed to their economic well-being by the abolition movement cannot be dismissed. It is pretty much impossible to imagine secession occurring without the issue of slavery to precipitate it. The gentlemen of Mississippi, Texas, and elsewhere admitted that. If you're interested in facts, you should admit it, too.
The fact you fail to observe the time line of events and suffer cognitive dissonance is not my concern.
LOL! The facts are the facts, sir. You can ignore the facts, but they won't go away.
“Pretty much any way you play the what-if game — even if the Confederacy were freely allowed to form itself — the South’s need and desire to spread slavery, and the North’s desire to prevent it, would inevitably have led to fighting.”
I can’t accept this. Gradual and compensated emancipation worked elsewhere around the world. What makes American Southerners especially irrational? If gradual emancipation had been seriously tried at some point between the Founding and Lincoln’s election, things could have been different.
Things also could have been different without John Browne. Or if Stephen Douglas had been elected. Or if the North had negotiated peace. Or if Dred Scott had been decided differently. Or if the Missouri Compromise had stretched to the Pacific.
>>>He is saying he is embarrassed by the existence of slavery—how does that NOT show concern for those who suffer under it?<<<
If Lincoln was so embarrassed by the existence of slavery then why did he support strengthening the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, and opposed efforts in the Republican Party to repeal the law? Some links:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo104.html
Excerpt: [Lincoln] instructed his political compatriot, William Seward, to work on federal legislation that would outlaw the various personal liberty laws that existed in some of the Northern states. These laws were used to attempt to nullify the federal Fugitive Slave Act.”
http://www.lewrockwell.com/kantor/kantor69.html
Excerpt: “Abraham Lincoln consistently pledged to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law, i.e., to make northern states complicit in the perpetuation of the peculiar institution. He moreover opposed efforts in the Republican Party to repeal the Fugitive Slave Law. (See his letters to Salmon P. Chase and Samuel Galloway on June 20, 1859 and July 28, 1859, respectively.)”
“The free-soil movement may have had far more to do with protecting northern wage workers than with helping blacks (if at all). Northerners were afraid that bringing slavery to the North would cause slaves to take jobs away from themselves.”
I don’t deny that was a big part of it, especially for the average voter. That doesn’t exactly explain why abolitionists flocked to the Republican party. Except for the fact that there wasn’t really any alternative major party for them.
One State`s reason does not negate the underlying cause.
What they didn`t completely understand was basic economics.
Slavery was economically untenable. The fact that either those in the south or north didn`t get it is testament to their undeveloped economic theories and practices.
“servile labor disappeared because it could not stand the competition of free labor; its unprofitability sealed its doom in the market economy.” (mises.org/pdf/humanaction/pdf/ha_21.pdf)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.