Posted on 05/22/2010 2:31:12 PM PDT by AlanD
Lincoln has often been portrayed as gaining the White House largely because of the disarray of the opposition party in the general election. Closer examination reveals that his meteoric rise from prairie lawyer to chief executive came as the result of an extraordinary work ethic, canny allegiance building over three decades, and a political team not afraid of a little skullduggery.
Make no contracts that bind me, Lincoln wired his supporters. But Davis ignored him, telling his team that Lincoln aint here and dont know what we have to meet. So we will go ahead as if we hadnt heard from him and he must ratify it.
Using his contacts as a railroad lawyer, Judd convinced clients to discount fares into towntriggering an onrush of locals eager to cheer Lincolns progress.
He arranged for the printing of counterfeit ducats and quietly distributed them to Lincoln loyalists along with an appeal to show up early. While Seward supporters paraded through the streets, Lincoln enthusiasts surged into the hallmen of good lungs ready to roar for their man. Startled and then angry Seward supporters with official tickets found themselves turned away in droves. Sewards name went into nomination that day to the expected deafening shout.
The Ohio delegation chairman, David Kellogg Cartter, broke the logjam by rising dramaticallymoments after someone from the Lincoln camp reportedly promised him anything he wantsto switch four votes to the man from Illinois.
Geography and biography, packed galleries and lung power, bare-knuckle politics and deal making, and above all the brilliant strategy of casting Lincoln as everyones second choice, triumphed in Chicago. Electability trumped inevitability, and a paradigm shifted. With rival Democrats hopelessly split, delegates to that convention 150 years ago not only chose a candidatethey picked the next president.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanheritage.com ...
He should have stuck to children's books. IMHO, of course.
Sometimes it is not a bad thing to read both sides. You ask, I offered. The letters Lincoln penned are in there.
Lochlainn Seabrook is some crackpot Lost Cause revisionist who publishes his own crap through a vanity press.””
The same view is held for many of the northern press writers. Watch the nightly news for crackpots, listen to Barking obama for crackpot writers, and listen to the old media establishment for other crackpots. Name-calling and attacking the messenger is not the issue—that is the liberal approach to all opposition.
They're also Here and Here among other places. You can read them complete and unedited.
Though it was nice for Seabrook to take time away from writing about Princess Diana the moon-goddess to entertain us with his spin on Lincoln.
All one has to do is read Seabrook's self-review of his book to recognize half a dozen myths right off the bat. Seabrook isn't a messenger, he's a revisionist spinmeister.
Why take it out on the kids? ;-)
Think of it as 'tough love'.
And which myths would those be? Can you recommend any refeered publications to support your views?
For example, far from being the "Great Emancipator," as a lawyer he defended slave owners, helped create laws in Illinois that limited black civil rights, and throughout his entire life lobbied to have all Americans of African descent deported out of the U.S. He was even the head of the Illinois chapter of the American Colonization Society, an organization whose stated mission was to make America white from coast to coast.
During his two terms in office, Lincoln also committed countless crimes, among them starting a war without congressional approval, subverting the Constitution, illegally suspending habeas corpus, shutting down over 300 Northern newspapers, imprisoning or deporting fellow Northerners who advocated peace, and rigging elections. And this is just a partial list!
His partial list is enough to identify his scribblings as a work of fiction.
“Can you recommend any refeered publications to support your views?”
I wasn’t looking for a website, but something of the sort above—a publication that has passed peer review. Your posting from his website doesn’t do much to prove myth or otherwise.
"Soft spoken" is exactly how Lincoln is usually described.
Was Lincoln a "tyrant"?
Only if you define the word "tyrant" to mean, in effect: "any leader I disagree with."
But in fact, Lincoln was no more of a tyrant than, say, Jefferson Davis or any other US war-time president.
In most of our wars, Congress gave a US president as much power as he needed to win it. Lincoln was no exception.
Read the book: The Real Lincoln.
Slavery created a lot of problems for not only blacks but for many free whites who didn’t want to have to compete against slave labor along with humanitarian reasons. Wealthy industrialists had no use for slavery either, as they needed educated workers, and slavery created a bad business and moral environment for them.
The only place where slavery was welcome was where it was spectacularly profitable and where an entire economy could be built around it. Tolerating slavery strictly for the benefit of a few rich people who enjoyed having some house slaves was out of the question.
The best place to establish a new slave state in the territories was obviously Kansas, with its farm economy. When Slavery in Kansas crashed and burned, it was obvious that it could not spread anywhere in the existing territories.
Are we supposed to believe that slavery which was soundly rejected in Kansas with a favorable geography, was going to be accepted in a mountain state like Montana or Wyoming?
That idea is ludicrous and Southerners at the time knew it was ludicrous. That is why after Bleeding Kansas, they started really pushing to expand to Central America.
I'd say you have ludicrous down pat.
For a good belly-laugh, yeah.
Well, if Lincoln where shown to have mowed down a girl scout troop on the steps of the whitehouse with a machine gun you would make excuses for him, so you’re not much of a reliable critic of any books critical of him.
Wasn’t that among the many spurious claims that DiLorenzo made?
And you no doubt already believe that Lincoln gunned down a Girl Scout troop on the steps of the White House, and can no doubt point to half a dozen Lost Cause websites that detail it, so I'd say your no less biased in your way than I am in mine.
Lincoln advocated having blacks voluntarily move back to Africa, and was shocked that so many blacks refused to.
African-Americans have always complained about racism but not enough to make them want to go back to Africa.
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