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.
And since Jefferson Davis and Robert Lee and Thomas Jackson were also white supremecists then I suppose you have a healthy hatred for them as well? Or just Lincoln?
and a tyrant who ignored the right to secession...
No such right to secede unilaterally exists.
...ignored the 10nth Amendment...
On the contrary, Lincoln was well aware of the 10th Amendment. Especially the powers denied to the states by the Constitution part.
...ignored habeas corpus...
Article I gives the government the power to suspend habeas corpus in times of rebellion.
...committed war crimes by sacking and burning whole southern cities...
Complete and utter nonsense.
...ans used the emancipation as nothing more than a war gambit.
Finally something we can agree on. And it was a very successful war gambit, wasn't it?
Once again, Lincoln signed the proclamation as nothing more than war propaganda.
No you were right the first time - war gambit. It denied the South the assistance of all that slave labor. In that it was very successful.
Which was?
That business about the southern need to spread slavery was a Northern propaganda bugaboo. Any such need was based on maintaining parity in the Senate and ended once the South seceded.
BTW the Confederate constitution addressed this issue by requiring a super majority to admit new states. The Confederates were keenly aware that the admission of new states had been the primary source of all their disputes with the North since independence and they also knew slavery was already dying out in the upper South. Secession is feared by the political class because it suddenly creates new political majorities and minorities. But adding new states presents exactly the same problem. Remember the first secession movement had begun in New England in response to the Louisiana Purchase. The requirement for a super majority would have made it very unlikely the Confederacy would have been expansionist.
“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?”
We all know he wasn’t an abolitionist. He was a conservative, and not willing to go so far. That doesn’t mean everything he said is tinged by a disregard for negroes. It’s easy to be radical on the issue 150 years after the fact. In the midst of history, most people aren’t willing to move heaven and earth to stamp out things they don’t like.
Wow....great quote!
Not quite. I see the war as inevitable, because the South's desire to spread slavery westward, and the North's desire to the contrary, had been coming to a head at least as early as 1820. Armed conflict over commonly-desired territories was already a fact.
Given the demographics of north and south, it was inevitable that the North should eventually gain the upper hand politically, which made abolition an eventual certainty. By 1860 it was almost a fact. The South recognized that they faced a stark choice: to accept abolition and face economic ruin; or to seceed in order to protect slavery and thereby preserve their economic position. Secession was a logical, if morally repugnant choice, but it could not have prevented war. At best it would have delayed war by a year or two, but war would have come in the west regardless.
Just because the secession was about slavery does not make secession as such invalid.
Perhaps -- there's a fine debate to be had about that. But secession as it actually occurred does not help your case, because it was about slavery. Secession in defense of an abomination is abominable in itself.
“No, but unilateral secession as practiced by the Southern state was invalid.”
I’m not sure what you mean by unilateral. Are you referring to the fact that the leadership didn’t accurately represent its public? ‘Cause I bet that’s so. Although the common man fought like he did once the war started. But his homeland was being invaded, so it was a natural response.
I don't think it had much effect in that respect. There were no slave revolts during the war for example. What the EP did achieve was to close off the possibility of direct assistance for the Confederacy from Britain or France.
>>>Article I gives the government the power to suspend habeas corpus in times of rebellion.<<<
Article I gives the congress the power to suspend habeas corpus, not the executive. Lincoln usurped power from the congress, which is tyranny.
“Not quite. I see the war as inevitable, because the South’s desire to spread slavery westward, and the North’s desire to the contrary, had been coming to a head at least as early as 1820. Armed conflict over commonly-desired territories was already a fact.”
I have to agree with the above poster who said that the expansion issue would have largely floated away with an independent Confederacy. No doubt the two nations would have competed over Western territory. But the slave interest was landed and wealthy, and not prone to frontierism. Plus, Western agriculture was not as conducive to slave farming.
LOL! You're delusional.
History is not "propaganda." The Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, and the ongoing political controversy that informed the Sectional Crisis during that entire period, were about the westward spread of slavery. The fact that they happened also to be the major milestones in the run-up to the Civil War is no mere coincidence.
The warfare in "Bloody Kansas" was about the spread of slavery, and began years before secession became a fact. Had Southern secession been "successful," that violence would have spread, and without the ties of union that had heretofore kept it from spreading.
The Civil War was inevitable. The only difference would have been where the real fighting begun -- the war would most likely have started in the west, rather than at Fr. Sumpter.
The debates of the constitutional convention hit a mudbog when the issue of slavery was brought to the floor. George Washington, and others, said that we would be one nation, no matter what it took.
The Constitution allowed for slavery, but gave the government the power to end slavery. The Articles of Confederation had it’s advantages....but only for the States.
Many times I had wondered how long it would have took for slavery to have ended without violence. A few more years, but it was on its way out.
Yeah, let's look at that for a moment because DiLorenzo deliberately omits one of the three clauses. From Goodwin's book, page 296:
"...Lincoln relayed a confidential message to Seward that he had drafted three short resolutions. He instructed Seward to introduce these proposals in the Senate Committee of Thirteen without indicating they had been issued from Springfield. The first resolved that "the Constitution should bever be altered so as to authorize Congress to abolish or interfere with slavery in the states." The second would amend the Fugitive Slave Laws "by granting a jury trial to the fugitive." The third recommended that all state personal liberty laws in opposition to the Fugitive Slave Laws be repealed."
Here we see why Thomas DiLorenzo is a crap historian. By omitting reference to the second clause he reduces the meaning of the third clause, because if the fugitive slave is guaranteed a jury trial before being returned to slavery then that made all state and local personal liberty laws, which had be constantly struck down as unconstitutional, moot. States didn't have to guarantee the slaves legal protection, the federal government did. And as for the first clause, note that Lincoln said that Congress would not be able to interfere with slavery in the states where it existed. The clause excludes the territories, where Congress could exercise it's constitutional control and interfere with slavery to its heart's content. So Tommy's attempt to portray Lincoln as pro-slavery is absolute nonsense.
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.
And as President did you expect Lincoln to refuse to enforce those laws? If so, how?
“There were no slave revolts during the war for example”
The point of the ploy wasn’t to encourage slave revolt. It was to steal away all slaves the Union army came across. And there were plenty of working slaves liberated.
To say that, you must ignore the historical fact of the sectional crisis that had arisen precisely over the issue of the expansion of slavery into the territories. And you'd likewise have to ignore the fact that warfare had already broken out in Kansas over the issue.
You don't get to just pick your facts to defend a vague idea of "right to seceed." The real secession arose over the issue of slavery, and war was inevitable for that reason.
The question is an attempt at moral equivalence. Davis, Jackson, and Lee were not trying to impose a political order on the North. Their motivations were defensive.
Self government is the correct answer. We can argue over whether specific things Lincoln or Davis did was right; but the war was about who gets to decide what is right.
Hundreds of thousands of them ... they became quite a burden on the Union armies, in fact.
Nonsense. Article I, Section 9, Clause 2 reads, "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." It is silent on who may suspend it should such a suspension become necessary. You will note that unlike Section 8, Section 9 does not begin with the words "Congress shall have the power to. So your claim that Lincoln usurped Congressional power and imposed a tyranny is incorrect.
In defense of what? Ah.... slavery, of course. Let's not play games with "moral equivalence," FRiend, because Mr. Davis, et al, were "defending" an abomination.
I believe my response was to a cult-like statement about Lincoln. In any case, The Real Lincoln, by Professor Thomas DiLorenzo, is there for all to see, if they so desire. Professor Walter Williams' critique of "The Real Lincoln" is well worth a read. Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/w-williams1.html
Excerpt: "The Real Lincoln contains irrefutable evidence that a more appropriate title for Abraham Lincoln is not the Great Emancipator, but the Great Centralizer.
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