Posted on 09/26/2009 2:45:33 PM PDT by HokieMom
LEXINGTON, Va. (AP) -- Americans must pay attention to challenges to democracy today just as Abraham Lincoln did by fiercely opposing slavery, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas told a conference on the 16th president's legacy Friday night.
"We are part of something far greater than ourselves," Thomas told more than 300 people at Washington and Lee University.
Many in Lincoln's time didn't realize the threat that slavery posed to the principles on which the nation was founded, Thomas said.
"What a miserable job he had. He wasn't popular," Thomas said, "but he did what was right."
Thomas received a standing ovation from the audience in Lee Chapel, where Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee is buried.
He told conference participants he isn't a Lincoln scholar, but admires him greatly.
"My interest in him has been deeply personal and long-standing," said Thomas, who grew up in segregated rural Georgia in the 1950s and 1960s. "We thought of him then as the great emancipator."
The 61-year-old Thomas is the Supreme Court's second black justice. The first was Thurgood Marshall, whom he replaced in 1991.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
I’m sure he did. I have the deepest admiration for Justice Thomas.
Nope. But Congress is by the Constitution quite explicitly given power to suspend habeas corpus during time of war or insurrection.
Lincoln destroyed the US Constitution and what is arguably its most defining, important, and revolutionary principle, that just a government only derives just powers via the consent of the governed. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus, imprisoning thousands of domestic political rivals, writers, newspaper owners. He assumed executive control over communications, federalized, and censored the telegraph networks. He exiled a member of Congress who dared oppose his unconstitutional federal income tax and protectionist tariffs. He rigged elections, sometimes at the point of the gun. He confiscated private firearms. He confiscated private property. He nationalized the banking system. He made slaves of Northerners by institutionalizing conscription. His government ran death camps. He is also the center of a creepy personality cult. As for fascism... OK I should have just called the bastard a damned dictator. An authoritarian scum that destroyed the republic and ushered in the imperial presidency and an unquestioned scope of central power. Even pro-Lincoln biographers concede that he was a dictator.
And when those governed choose armed rebellion as their means of leaving, the Constitution gives the government the authority to suppress it.
He suspended the writ of habeas corpus...
An act allowed under Article I, Section 9 when circumstances warrant it.
...imprisoning thousands of domestic political rivals, writers, newspaper owners.
Utter nonsense. Studies done on the period state that few were jailed for political purposes, and fewer still were writers or newspaper men. In his book on the subject, Mark Neeley identify most of the jailed as draft dodgers, suspected deserters, defrauders of the government, swindlers of recruits, ex-Confederate soldiers, and smugglers.
He assumed executive control over communications, federalized, and censored the telegraph networks.
You badly overstate the government role in communications, and I would point out that censoring communications during wartime was not unique to the rebellion but has occured in every war we've been in as a necessary security procedure.
He exiled a member of Congress who dared oppose his unconstitutional federal income tax and protectionist tariffs.
Completely false. Clement Vallandigham was not a member of Congress, he'd been defeated in the previous election. Vallandigham was jailed on the orders of Ambrose Burnside, not Lincoln, for statements advocating an end to the war and success for the Southern rebellion, not against the income tax or tariffs. Far from jailing him, Lincoln ordered him freed and sent to confederate territory where he was immediately escorted to the coast and put on the first blockade runner heading out of town.
He rigged elections, sometimes at the point of the gun.
Laughable.
He confiscated private firearms.
Details please.
He confiscated private property.
The Confiscation Acts gave the government the right to seize private propert without compensation if that property was being used to support the rebellion. Nothing illegal in that.
Complete and utter nonsens.
As for fascism... OK I should have just called the bastard a damned dictator.
Since accuracy is of not importance to you then you might as well.
Even pro-Lincoln biographers concede that he was a dictator.
For example?
I think you are describing the real dictator, Jefferson Davis, a veritable gun-grabbing, peasant conscripting. habeas corpus suspending, constitution ignoring human engine of slavery.
Considering the treason he was faced with, that's not a bad description of Lincoln.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln#Civil_liberties_suspended
"During the Civil War, Lincoln appropriated powers no previous President had wielded: he used his war powers to proclaim a blockade, suspended the writ of habeas corpus, spent money before Congress appropriated it, and imprisoned 18,000 suspected Confederate sympathizers without trial."
I'm sure if Obama did that is this time of war, you'd be pleased as punch...right?
Good for Lincoln, I wished he had done more to our enemies. He was faced with a traitorous insurrection whose fondest wish was the intervention of foreign powers to kill their fellow Americans in the defense of their precious slavery. If Obama or any other president was faced with a similar group of America haters I would hope he'd do the same thing as Lincoln.
I'd rather have been a Southern sympathiser in Lincoln's North than a Union sympathizer in Jeff Davis's banana republic.
Maybe Obama can imprison you with no trail just because he, you know, suspects.
If the CSA was indeed a separate nation, as they claimed, then they were giving aid and comfort to their country’s enemy, to the extent in many cases of burning bridges, killing soldiers, etc.”
What?
Lincoln and his leftist henchmen cared nothing about the Constitution or the Founders intent! Just like their brethren in the New England States in present day America...
oh,no— Captain Kangaroo is attempting to paint America’s Bolshevik revolution as something noble
Most of the Founders had fought in the Revolution. They handled the Tories a great deal more harshly than Lincoln handled traitorous CSA sympathizers.
Look, you can’t have it both ways. If the CSA was a foreign nation, as it and its US supporters claimed, then US citizens conspiring and/or acting to aid and comfort a nation at war with the USA were indisputably guilty of treason by the Constitution’s definition.
If the CSA was not an actual foreign nation, it and its supporters were among the “enemies domestic” the Constitution speaks of.
The Constitution is a very stretchy document. The Founders never intended it to stretch over a civil war. That’s why they allowed for civil rights to be suspended in time of emergency.
One thing is certain no matter where you fall of north and south. We are still dealing with much of the same crap now as we were in 1860 some 150 year later. Race issues, Federal Government issues and self determination issues.
Traitorous?
Many {Like myself} would like to take part because we want not by force...Many of the States joined the Federal Compact and made it clear that they reserved the right to leave! During the debates{in Madison's writings} He made it clear that if either party violates the Constitution it becomes VOID and of no force... Whom formed whom? We, the delegates of the people of Virginia . . . Do, in the name and behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the people of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression, and that every power not granted thereby remains with them at their will . . .
Who isn't? When we recognize that Lincoln's opponents were even more deeply flawed men with an even more deeply flawed ideology, he doesn't look so bad.
He was not, as many claim, such an advocate of abolition, and only resorted to emancipation when the Union became desparate to defeat the Confederacy.
As opposed to whom? Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, who were just dying to free all the slaves? Lincoln didn't have the authority to free all the slaves, so he took the first step and encouraged Congress and the states to finish up.
And then he only freed the slaves in Confederate States where the Union Army had already invaded and conquered.
Actually not. The Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in areas still in rebellion. Areas under Federal control, like the parishes in Southern Louisiana were exempted.
But the EP was a sign that slavery was on its way out and would be gone if the Union won the war. That was more than slaves had gotten from any other administration.
Lincoln’s great legacy is seen in an ever-growing, all powerful central, federal government in Washington DC, not the states.
So is George Washington's. So is the Founding Fathers. But, really, the great growth of the federal government had to wait for the 20th century progressives and the New Deal.
In short, Lincoln “freed the slaves” by “enslaving [all] free men.”
Again, as opposed to whom? Do you really think anyone would have been freer in the Confederacy?
Remember, that Davis's government did pretty much what Lincoln's did with respect to civil liberties. What was done wasn't a result of some Lincolnian ideology. It had to do with winning the war.
And all the restrictions Southern states imposed on free speech where slavery was concerned didn't indicate a happy future for liberty in an independent South.
No, Lincoln wasn’t the devil as some Southern Partisan’s might charge, but he was far from the virtuous, apolitical idealist he is often portrayed as in popular history and culture...
Okay, fair enough. Lincoln wasn't by any means perfet. He was a politician, like others who make a living in politics. But you have to judge him in comparison to those others. Judged by some ideal standard, everyone fails.
The reason people keep bringing up Davis is that Davis is falsely portrayed as being right about the Constitution and Lincoln is falsely portrayed as some sort of Great Satan.
Jefferson Davis and the reb gang were among the worst public figures in our history, but even I would not call them Bolsheviks. True, greed and power lust was at the heart of their treason, but I feel that many of them deluded themselves into believing that their power grab was the latter day counterpart to the revolution of the Founders.
#1
I SAID: He was not, as many claim, such an advocate of abolition, and only resorted to emancipation when the Union became desparate to defeat the Confederacy.
YOU SAID: As opposed to whom? Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, who were just dying to free all the slaves?
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As a matter of fact, Robert E. Lee was a LONG TIME advocate of abolition. He personally freed ALL his slaves in 1838, long before the War Between the States. Jefferson Davis, on the other hand, was pro-slavery, and he and Lee were clearly at odds on this issue on a long term basis. Lee, however, chose to serve in the Confederate Army NOT BECAUSE HE SUPPORTED SLAVERY, but because he supported the Constitution, which made the STATES SOVEREIGN, not Washington, DC. He could not, therefore fight against Virginia. No one denies slavery was the fatal flaw of the Confederacy — but the outcome of that war created an even greater flaw in the fabric of our nation, which is coming to fruition only now...
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#2
YOU SAID: The Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in areas still in rebellion. Areas under Federal control, like the parishes in Southern Louisiana were exempted... But the EP was a sign that slavery was on its way out and would be gone if the Union won the war.
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This is true. Lincoln’s “freeing the slaves” ONLY applied to places in the Union or under Union control. So, the slaves were freed in the areas STILL in rebellion against Washington DC. In other words, NOT ONE SLAVE WAS ACTUALLY FREED. The reality is, Lincoln was hoping the slaves in those areas would rise up in rebellion against their Confederate Masters — which never happened. That slavery was on its way out was an already foregone conclusion by almost ALL in the States. It had been outlawed in England in the 1830’s due to Wilberforce’ tireless crusade, which took a generation. It had become economically infeasible in many areas of the South already. Given time, attrition and economic realities would have ended slavery. But that would not have achieved the ends desired by those in the North and in Washington, DC. Slavery served as a convenient pretext to force the ascent of Federal power over the States, to subvert the Constitution and to “enslave” all free men to the whims, policies and purse strings of Union politicians. They achieved their goal — and again, we are only now seeing the logical end of the usurpation of their ill-gotten powers.
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#3
I SAID: Lincoln’s great legacy is seen in an ever-growing, all powerful central, federal government in Washington DC, not the states.
YOU SAID: So is George Washington’s. So is the Founding Fathers. But, really, the great growth of the federal government had to wait for the 20th century progressives and the New Deal.
_____
Here, you’re dead wrong. George Washington and the Founders designed a federal government that was firmly checked and limited by not only 3 separate branches, but by ALL the individual State governments. For the most part, these checks and balances worked — UNTIL the War Between the States (WBTS). It was THEN that the Feds gained clear power by brute force over the several states that this vision of the Founders was destroyed.
You are right to this extent, it was not until the advent of the Progressives and FDR’s New Deal that we see Federal power exerted to extremes consistently. But that was not for lack of trying. The Radical Republicans wanted Reconstruction to be the “model” of this new type of Federal control — but some of the Union states, AND President Andrew Johnson, were having none of it. Johnson was even almost impeached because of it. And the citizens of the Southern States were having NONE of it. In 1876, after over 11 years of military rule, Washington dictates and massive white voter disenfranchisement, they Feds had to back off. Some of the Southern States managed to elect their own governments again, and were threatening another insurrection (read about the “Red Shirt Rebellion” for example). Despite the use of pitting the races against each other, they still failed to achieve their goals — at that moment. But the animosity they used between the races STILL serves their purposes today!
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#4
I SAID: In short, Lincoln “freed the slaves” by “enslaving [all] free men.”
YOU SAID: Again, as opposed to whom? Do you really think anyone would have been freer in the Confederacy?
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As I said earlier, as opposed to the vision and Constitution of our Founders. What Lincoln’s war produced was a muted, largely hollow, gutted Constitution that Washington revises, ignores or “reinterprets” at their whim — something they largely COULD NOT DO before the WBTS. That’s just ONE reason we need the States to reassert the Tenth Amendment NOW — it’s the only way to RESTORE the Republic.
You ask if I really think anyone in the Confederacy would have been “freer”? We shall never know for a certainty — but I am quite willing and comfortable in saying YES. Yes, indeed!
That is not true. Lee was not an abolitionist. It's just nonsensical to say that Lincoln wasn't an abolitionist (he wasn't) and Lee was (he certainly never was).
Lee freed some slaves because his father-in-laws will dictated it, and that was in 1862 during the Civil War.
Lee, however, chose to serve in the Confederate Army NOT BECAUSE HE SUPPORTED SLAVERY, but because he supported the Constitution, which made the STATES SOVEREIGN, not Washington, DC.
Not many serious scholars would accept that reading of the Constitution.
He could not, therefore fight against Virginia.
In spite of the oath he had when he became an officer?
No one denies slavery was the fatal flaw of the Confederacy — but the outcome of that war created an even greater flaw in the fabric of our nation, which is coming to fruition only now...
Try slavery for a while and see if you still feel that way.
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