Abraham Lincoln, Stepfather of Our Country

The New American ^ | 11/11/2012 | John J. Dwyer

[IbJensen]

“Anyone who embarks on a study of Abraham Lincoln … must first come to terms with the Lincoln myth. The effort to penetrate the crust of legend that surrounds Lincoln … is both a formidable and intimidating task. Lincoln, it seems, requires special considerations that are denied to other figures.”

— Robert W. Johannsen Lincoln, the South, and Slavery

Indeed, it would not seem a safe time to critique the wisdom, motivations, and character of Abraham Lincoln. Steven Spielberg’s reverential motion picture epic Lincoln fills screens across America. The public increasingly accepts him as America’s greatest leader. Academics from the Left — and Right — compete to bestow the grandest laurels on the 16th president.

Yet, such a pursuit is ever more important for a people hurtling forward into an uncertain future, to learn from past mistakes or merely become aware they made them. One growing consensus regarding Lincoln seems credible: He has exerted more influence over the development of this nation than any other person, including the Founders. If Washington be the father of our country, surely Lincoln is its stepfather.

This article will examine the significance of this truly larger-than-life figure’s actions regarding three of the many important issues of his time: 1) the Constitution, in particular during the War Between the States, 2) emancipation and blacks, and 3) the Radical Republicans and Reconstruction.

The Constitution

“I am the President of the United States of America — clothed in immense power!” Spielberg’s Lincoln thunders. The real Lincoln proved the truth of that claim within days of the April 12, 1861 attack on Fort Sumter. In fact, the attack might have been avoided if he had not decided to reinforce Sumter. Once it occurred, he quickly unleashed a series of watershed actions that forever altered the nature of American government.

On April 13, he declared the seceding states in a condition of rebellion and called for 75,000 troops to deal with them — a declaration expressly reserved to Congress by the Constitution: “The Congress shall have the power … To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.”

On April 15, he called for Congress to return to session — but only on July 15, months after Ft. Sumter .

On April 19, he declared a naval blockade of the South.

On April 21, he instructed the U.S. Navy to buy five warships — an appropriations act needing congressional approval.

On April 27, he began the unprecedented act of suspending the constitutional right of habeas corpus.

On May 3, he called up thousands more troops — for three-year hitches — another act the law did not authorize the president to commit.

At about the same time, he ordered the Department of Treasury to pay two million dollars to a New York City company to outfit and arm his army — another appropriations act needing congressional approval.

Each one of these acts — and many more soon to follow — violated the U.S. Constitution. The majority of the U.S. public supported him, however, as the American people have supported other presidents since, when they felt the need to break the Constitution “for the public good.”

This early series of moves proved breathtaking in its shrewd efficiency. For instance, by not calling Congress back into session until July, Lincoln presented it with a fait accompli upon its return: a war months old from which there was now no turning back, unless Lincoln decided such, which he had no intention of doing. Whether or not Congress would have declared war on the South as had Lincoln, it now saw no choice but to fight.

Even Massachusetts’ Senator Charles Sumner, one of the spearheads of the Radical postwar Reconstruction and certainly no friend of the South, said: “When Lincoln reinforced Sumter and called for 75,000 men without the consent of Congress, it was the greatest breach ever made in the Constitution, and would hereafter give the President the liberty to declare war whenever he wished, without the consent of Congress.”

All this came from the hand of Lincoln, a man who as a U.S. congressman in 1848 declared: “Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right — a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize and make their own so much of the territory as they inhabit.’’

In his landmark book The Real Lincoln, Loyola College economics professor and Lincoln scholar Thomas DiLorenzo recounted how Lincoln also unlawfully “nationalized the railroads; created three new states without the consent of the citizens of those states in order to artificially inflate the Republican Party’s electoral vote; ordered Federal troops to interfere with Northern elections to assure Republican Party victories; deported Ohio Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham for opposing his domestic policies (especially protectionist tariffs and income taxation) on the floor of the House of Representatives; confiscated private property, including firearms, in violation of the Second Amendment; and effectively gutted the Tenth and Ninth Amendments as well.”

Maryland, My Maryland

Soon, the Lincoln administration crossed yet another historic line. Without notifying targeted members of the Maryland legislature of charges, or indeed possessing any charges, its troops hauled dozens of legislators it suspected of supporting secession out of their homes in front of their families in the darkness of night and threw them into prison.

The prison was temporarily located at Fort McHenry, from where Francis Scott Key wrote “The Star Spangled Banner.” In fact, Key’s own grandson would be among the host flung into captivity at the fort. He would write eloquently in American Bastille of how much the nation had changed in less than a half century, as he looked upon the U.S. flag flying at the same location as it was when his grandfather wrote his famous stanzas.

Thousands of Federal soldiers from other states voted in Maryland’s November 1861 elections, while local residents had to pass through formations of bayonet-brandishing Federals to cast their ballots. The Maryland legislature, prior to its collective jailing by Lincoln, declared: “Resolved, that Maryland implores the President, in the name of God, to cease this unholy war, at least until Congress assembles; that Maryland desires and consents to the recognition of the independence of the Confederate States. The military occupation of Maryland is unconstitutional, and she protests against it, though the violent interference with the transit of federal troops is discountenanced, that the vindication of her rights be left to time and reason, and that a Convention, under existing circumstances, is inexpedient.”

Opposing Supreme Court

Only weeks after the war commenced in 1861, Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, one of the foundational pillars of American — and Western — liberty, and preeminent among all provisions of the Bill of Rights. The right of habeas corpus (Latin for “you may have the body”) is sourced in England’s ancient Magna Carta. It requires a warrant be issued by a legitimate law-enforcement authority before a person can be arrested, prevents the jailing of a person without his being charged with a specific crime, and prohibits indefinite detention of that person without the opportunity of appearing before a legally convened court for the exercise of his rights and the hearing of his case.

Despite the central place of habeas corpus in American liberty and an armada of opinion ranging from British jurist William Blackstone to American Chief Justice John Marshall to President Thomas Jefferson that only Congress — and never the president — could suspend habeas corpus, Lincoln’s administration did just that in thousands of cases against the citizens of Federal states. (The power to suspend habeas corpus “when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it” is in Article I, the section of the Constitution enumerating congressional power.)

Federal troops arrested Marylander John Merryman without a warrant, jailed him — at Fort McHenry — and kept him there without opportunity for trial or defense. He appealed to the esteemed Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, who had already freed his own slaves.

It is difficult to conceive of the political climate in which Taney received this plea. Every day, Federal officers hauled citizens of every stripe — politicians, newspaper publishers, attorneys, business owners, common workers — from their homes and places of business for voicing the slightest criticism of the U.S. government or Lincoln, flung them into jail, and left them there. Taney had no illusions but that that fate likely awaited him if he crossed the president. Yet he ordered the release of the jailed man. Lincoln commanded his soldiers to refuse. The chief justice then penned Ex Parte Merryman, an opinion now famous in constitutional law. Delivered directly to Lincoln at his office, it informed the president that he, not Merryman, was breaching the law and the Constitution, and it ordered Merryman’s release.

At this point, Lincoln did issue a warrant of arrest — for Taney. Lincoln apologists deny this action, but contemporary witnesses corroborate it. Though longtime Lincoln colleague and Federal Marshal of Washington Ward Hill Lamon declined to serve the warrant, Lincoln had established that neither Congress, the Supreme Court, nor the Constitution would stand in the way of his carrying out the actions he deemed best for the country.

Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, 85 years old when President Lincoln issued the warrant for his arrest and dead before the end of the war, wrote in Ex Parte Merryman: “If the President of the United States may suspend the writ [of habeas corpus], then the Constitution of the United States has conferred upon him more regal and absolute power over the liberty of the citizen than the people of England have thought it safe to entrust to the crown — a power which the Queen of England cannot exercise to this day, and which could not have been lawfully exercised by the sovereign even in the reign of Charles the First.”

That king got beheaded for his dictatorial actions.

The Lincoln administration continued to express great concern over Northerners who did not exhibit what it considered sufficient loyalty, or sufficiently enthusiastic loyalty, to the United States and its war effort. After suspending habeas corpus, the president and his lieutenants shut down over 300 Northern newspapers during the struggle, throwing many of their editors and publishers in jail or prison without trials and often without charges. Approximately 13,000 other Northern citizens met the same fate.

Lincoln’s justification: “Measures, however unconstitutional, might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution, through the preservation of the nation.”

Blacks and Slavery

Abraham Lincoln’s own words on the issue of African-American slavery would shock anyone who accepts the popular myth that Lincoln was the “Great Emancipator.” While he never uttered a word against the Illinois law that made it a crime for blacks to settle in his home state, he did declare, in Springfield, on July 17, 1858: “What I would desire most would be the separation of the white and black races.”

During his famed 1858 Illinois Senate debates with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln offered eloquent criticism of American slavery, while demonstrating how different his anti-slavery views were from those of abolitionists who sought not only freedom, but political and social equality, for blacks:

Make Negroes politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this. I will say that I am not nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor have ever been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people. And I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior. And I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

Did his views change later, as president? In 1862, he declared: “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves, 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.”

Emancipation Proclamation

Yet, he “freed” the slaves the following year. Evidence abounds, from Lincoln’s own words as well as his actions, that something besides a desire to end African-American bondage fueled his historic Emancipation Proclamation. U.S. Senate Republicans launched a revolt against Lincoln in mid-December 1862, just before he signed the proclamation into law.

According to Lincoln’s old friend, Illinois Representative Orville Browning, and others, the senators demanded the president conduct a more resolute war effort, including emancipating all African-American slaves in America. They apparently threatened to bring down his administration otherwise.

Orville Browning’s diary of December 31, 1862 recorded that Judge Benjamin Franklin Thomas of the Massachusetts Supreme Court told the regretful Browning: “The President was fatally bent upon his course, saying that if he should refuse to issue his proclamation there would be a rebellion in the north, and that a dictator would be placed over his head within the week.”

This enhanced, Radical Republican-dominated effort evidently included emancipation as a method of war that would torpedo the South’s economy and ability to defend itself. A slave uprising lay within the sphere of this projection. A howling chorus of protest arose to the proclamation not only from the South, but from many of Lincoln’s opponents in the North, as well as in Europe. Horatio Seymour, soon-to-be Democratic governor of New York, called the scheme “a proposal for the butchery of [white Southern] women and children, for scenes of lust and rapine, arson and murder, unparalleled in the history of the world.”

Relations between Southern slaves and their owners proved superior to such an eventuality. But Lincoln himself, when told the Constitution gave individual states and not the national government jurisdiction over slavery, claimed emancipation as a war powers act that he as commander in chief could employ — for military purposes. Indeed, he eliminated from an early draft of the decree a call for a violent uprising of slaves.

Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation quelled the Senate revolt. But his lackluster feelings for it resurfaced when he eschewed the urgings of much of his Cabinet, including Seward, Chase, Blair, and Bates, and confined his decree to those slaves in Confederate-controlled territory. That is, he freed none of the slaves over which he had control when he had the opportunity.

Wrote Lincoln’s colleague Lamon: “None of [Lincoln’s] public acts, either before or after he became President, exhibits any special tenderness for the African race.... When he was compelled, by what he deemed an overruling necessity, founded on both military and political considerations, to declare the freedom of [only the Confederates’] slaves, he did so with avowed reluctance, and took pains to have it understood that his resolution was in no wise affected by sentiment.” Lamon’s perspective on Lincoln’s actions once again seems on solid ground, in view of the president’s 1861 revocation of Federal General John Fremont’s bold emancipation of slaves in Missouri. That countermanding infuriated abolitionists and conservatives alike in the North, albeit for different reasons.

A portion of the completed Emancipation Proclamation addressed another view Lincoln had in mind for Southern, but not Union border state, slaves — “impressment” into the Federal armies, often against their will. A horrendous 68,000 of the 186,000 African-Americans who shouldered arms for Lincoln’s armies died during the war. They provided significant manpower in the desperate struggle, however, and deprived the Confederates of their services.

In the end, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation exhibited political sagacity and brilliance, hastened the demise of American slavery, probably triggered the deaths of tens of thousands more men — including many former slaves — than would otherwise have occurred, and likely contributed to America’s future morass in racial relations. In contrast, nearly every other Western Hemisphere nation that practiced slavery ended the practice peaceably. Britain, worldwide purveyors of the slave trade, did so as well, through the patient, often frustrating, but ultimately pacific emancipation effort spearheaded by the devout Christian William Wilberforce.

Freedom and Deportation

But didn’t Lincoln yearn to keep slavery out of the new territories and states of the West? Yes, along with all black people. “Now irrespective of the moral aspect of this question as to whether there is a right or wrong in enslaving a Negro,” he said, “I am still in favor of our new Territories being in such a condition that white men may find a home.… I am in favor of this not merely … for our own people who are born amongst us, but as an outlet for free white people everywhere, the world over.”

What if Congress refused to grant Lincoln’s desire for this sprawling, whites-only enclave? “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth,” he said.

Thus appears an even more startling revelation, as Lincoln stated in 1857 and many times before and after: “Let us be brought to believe it is morally right … to transfer the African to his native clime … however great the task may be. The children of Israel, to such numbers as to include four hundred thousand fighting men, went out of Egyptian bondage in a body.”

Lincoln, as did other presidents before him, wished the permanent shipment of as much of the African-American population as possible to foreign lands, and colonies established for them.

He advocated “emancipation … deportation … and their places be … filled up by free white laborers,” in New York City in 1860.

“But if gradual emancipation and deportation be adopted, they [blacks] will have neither to flee … till new homes can be found for them, in congenial climes, and with people of their own blood and race,” he declared in his 1862 State of the Union address.

This long desire resounded through the halls of Congress when he asked that body the same year to pass a constitutional amendment “colonizing free colored persons, with their own consent, at any place or places without the United States.”

President Lincoln “zealously and persistently devised schemes for the deportation of the Negroes, which the latter deemed cruel and atrocious in the extreme,” his friend Lamon wrote.

Lenore Bennett, Jr., an African-American author and no conservative or friend of the Confederacy, wrote in his massive chronicle Forced Into Glory, Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream:

Lincoln proposed ... that the United States government buy the slaves and deport them to Africa or South America. This was not a passing whim. In five major policy declarations, including two State of the Union addresses and the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, the sixteenth president of the United States publicly and officially called for the deportation of blacks. On countless other occasions, in conferences with cronies, Democratic and Republican leaders, and high government officials, he called for colonization of blacks or aggressively promoted colonization by private and official acts.

According to Bennett, the president put his plans into action when “three months after signing the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln became the first and last American president to officially deport native-born Americans for racial reasons, sending some 450 blacks, one-third of them women and children, to an island off the coast of Haiti to establish the first Lincoln colony. The island was a desolate place full of poisonous insects and snakes, and the whole affair ended in a comic-opera disaster, with scores of casualties and the survivors covered with bugs and suffering from various illnesses.”

Lincoln didn’t ignore free African-Americans, either. He lauded the American Colonization Society, established to ship blacks out of America, saying he “considered it no demerit in the society, that it tended to relieve slaveholders from the troublesome presence of the free Negroes.” He was anything but bashful about the subject, declaring in his first State of the Union address: “[It] might well be well to consider, too, whether the free colored people already in the United States could not, so far as individuals may desire, be included in such colonization.”

Radical Reconstruction

“By the gods, there will be no trouble now in running this government,” Radical Republican Senator Ben Wade promised, upon the murder of Abraham Lincoln by famed actor John Wilkes Booth. Wade scarcely overstated what lay ahead in the postwar United States with his wing of the dominant Republican Party in charge.

As America’s most terrible conflict ground to a blood-drenched conclusion in the spring of 1865, the military leaders of both sides wished for a return to productive lives for the Confederate population and a peaceful welcoming them back into the fold by Unionists. Lincoln also wished to put the war — which his side had won and which had devastated both the population and property of the Confederates — behind them, to welcome the South back into the social and commercial fold, and to resume building the United States, now with the Industrial Revolutionized might of the North, the Union preserved, and the slaves freed. But that war, for which Lincoln himself provided the guiding hand, had hurt too many and destroyed too many others. Countless Southerners would no doubt have put the same bullet into Lincoln’s head that John Wilkes Booth did. Among Booth’s last words upon his own death a few days later: “Tell Mother I died for my country.”

Radical Republicans had existed in sometimes uneasy alliance and sometimes tense conflict with the pragmatic president. They held ideological convictions he did not. Like Lincoln, they wished for a centralized national government, but for different reasons. They intended to wield it as a cudgel in pursuit of a generally socialistic political platform. As a group, they were social progressives and either abolitionists or strongly anti-slavery. Many did not share the traditionalist Christianity common to Northern conservatives and Southerners. For Radical Republicans, embittered and philosophically reinvigorated by the harrowing marathon of war, the death of Lincoln both cleared the way and further motivated them for harshly “reconstructing” a Confederacy that stood diametrically opposed to them in nearly every conceivable way.

With both the Confederates and Lincoln gone, the Radical Republicans unleashed a hurricane of change. They sent Southern congressmen home when the latter arrived in Washington, D.C., to resume representation of their states. Supposedly well-intentioned Radical programs like the Freedman’s Bureau and the Civil Rights Bill resulted in the legally sanctioned theft of vast tracts of land owned by former Confederates. When President Andrew Johnson opposed their unconstitutional actions, they stripped power from him — impeaching him in the House and coming within one Senate vote of removing him from office.

The Radicals put their heart into passing three new constitutional amendments that officially ended all American slavery, granted citizenship to African-Americans, and extended to them the right to vote. Ruthless and unconstitutional tactics riddled even these laudatory accomplishments, however; and many white former Confederates lost their own rights to vote and to hold office. Plus, one of the new amendments, the 14th, laid the groundwork for the federal government to greatly expand its own power through future amendments and court interpretations.

Dissatisfied with the response to their program from a crushed people now humiliated by military occupation and beset with economic calamity, the Radicals jettisoned the legal jurisdiction guaranteed to states by the Constitution; deprived hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Southerners of their constitutional right to trial by a jury of their peers for crimes ranging from assault to murder; filled juries with Radical sympathizers and supporters; and gave Republican President Ulysses S. Grant the unilateral right both to unleash martial law and to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. No Southern citizen had a right to redress in any of these situations.

This ruthless reign of one-party dominance led to carpetbag governments backed by the bayonet; a cavalcade of government-supported private-sector boondoggles, such as the railroads, mining, and Wall Street financial speculators; the robber barons; the Black Friday Stock Market Crash; the most corrupt presidential administration (Grant’s) in U.S. history; the Gilded Age; the Ku Klux Klan; lasting enmity between the black and white races in the South; and the permanent recasting of what Radical leader Wendell Phillips branded “a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell” — the American Constitution.

Short and Sweet

Upwards of 20,000 books have come off the printing presses about Abraham Lincoln, with seemingly as many opinions regarding the central driving force behind his historic actions. So what was it? Lincoln himself summed up his “political principles” when he first ran for political office, the Illinois State Legislature, in 1832: “I presume you all know who I am. I am humble Abraham Lincoln. My policies are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance. I am in favor of a National Bank, in favor of the Internal improvements system, and in favor of a high protective tariff.”

Never for the next 30-plus years would he veer from that course. Historian DiLorenzo called Lincoln’s presidential elections and success the triumph of mercantilism, the late 17th- and early 18th-century British system of massive dispensation of governmental favors to favored business allies.

Edgar Lee Masters concurred, chronicling how Lincoln dedicated his career to carrying forward Henry Clay’s so-called American System of government: “Henry Clay was the champion of that political system which doles favors to the strong in order to win and keep their adherence to the government. His system offered shelter to devious schemes and corrupt enterprises. He was the beloved son, figuratively speaking, of Alexander Hamilton, with his corrupt funding schemes, his superstitions concerning the advantage of a public debt, and a people taxed to make profits for enterprises that cannot stand alone.”

Lincoln’s questionable actions regarding the Constitution and blacks; his unleashing of the Federal military in an unprecedented campaign of total war against the men, women, children, and aged of the Confederate states; and his humane desires for reconciling with the South — they all lay sourced in the headwaters of a strong, consolidated nation, even empire. It offered glittering jewels for its adherents, as well as unnoticed dangers, new firebells in the night. It does so still.

[IbJensen]

States have the right to defend themselves against the onorous, monolithic monster known as the central socialist government.

There are lessons to learned in more intelligent reading about the real history of Honest Abe. There are many similarities between what he did and what the current imbecile in the White Hut is doing to the nation and its citizens.

The nation can’t withstand four more years of Bronco Bama’s communist ruination.

He is truly a fool when one considers that the number 57 holds great meaning for him.

Bama says there are 57 states.

Bama bought 57 Christmas trees for the White Hut.

Bama is considering Kerry for SOS, a man who married 57 varieties.

[IbJensen]

I think the North wanted a show of force against the sessessionists and thought that would end the ‘rebellion’ within a week or so. What Lincoln set out to do was a whole hog approach, applauded by the Union generals. Sherman vicariously enjoyed his march to the sea and his attempt to burn the heart out of the South.

This became a war of vengeance to show those who indeed hated what the union and the presidency had become exactly what would happen to them the next time. And believe me, because of the evil that emanates from Washington today and the odor of totalitarianism that emanates from Bama’s White Hut, there could indeed be a next time.

This slavery issue is a non-starter, for starts. The slaves would have been given their freedom and passage back to the dark continent if the Yankees had their way intially. Even Secretary Seward AND Lincoln thought the idea had merit.

After the surrender, some Northern carpetbagging bureaucrats wanted to grant each slave 40 acres and a mule which was tantamount to communism.

Now they live huddled in a decrepit Detroit tenenment in a muslim neighborhood waiting for the mailman. This current status can be credited to Lyndon Bird Johnson and his ‘Great Society’ the forerunner to today’s miserable federal charity host of programs.

[BroJoeK]

IbJensen: "I think the North wanted a show of force against the sessessionists and thought that would end the ‘rebellion’ within a week or so."

One simple fact to remember is that, in early 1861, most northerners were outraged -- not so much by secession itself, since many said "let them go" -- but by secessionists' unlawful forceful seizures of many Federal properties: forts, armories, arsenals, ships, customs houses, mints, etc.
In early 1861, before the Confederacy's assault on Fort Sumter, when northerners talked about "enforcing the laws" they meant recovering those Federal properties.

At the time of Lincoln's inauguration, on March 4, 1861, he still hoped to win back reunion peacefully, saying:

"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, Is the momentous issue of civil war.
The government will not assail you.
You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors.
You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend" it.
I am loth to close.
We are not enemies, but friends.
We must not be enemies..."

Lincoln intended to hold the two remaining forts -- Sumter and Pickens -- and did not yet know the moment of crisis was already upon them.
But within a few days, Fort Sumter's commander advised Washington that his food stores would run out by mid-April.
Something had to be done, and quickly.

Lincoln decided to resupply -- not reinforce -- Fort Sumter, so long as peace remained.
But by April 1861, the Confederacy had whipped itself into a frenzy of war-fever, and would accept nothing less than full surrender of Fort Sumter.
When Lincoln continued to refuse, the Confederacy chose war -- first in assaulting Sumter and three weeks later, formally declaring war on the United States.

So a key historical fact to understand here is that prior to the Confederacy's formal declaration of war on May 6, 1861, there was no war -- no Union army had "invaded" the Confederacy, not one Confederate soldier had been killed in battle, and President Lincoln was publicly committed to keeping the peace.

Of course, once the Confederacy had unmistakeably started and formally declared war, then everything changed.
Still, Lincoln's April 15 proclamation had very limited goals:

"I deem it proper to say that the first service assigned to the forces hereby called forth will probably be to re-possess the forts, places, and property which have been seized from the Union; and in every event, the utmost care will be observed, consistently with the objects aforesaid, to avoid any devastation, any destruction of, or interference with, property, or any disturbance of peaceful citizens in any part of the country."

The Union's full demand for Unconditional Surrender and destruction of slavery took years to develop.

IbJensen: "Sherman vicariously enjoyed his march to the sea and his attempt to burn the heart out of the South."

Sherman's victory at the Battle of Atlanta came more than three years after the Confederacy's declaration of war.
By this time, hundreds of thousands of soldiers had died, and the Confederacy itself had practiced "total war" in every Union territory it invaded.
Indeed, much of the destruction blamed on Union General Sherman's "march to the sea" (November - December 1864) actually resulted from Confederate General John B. Hood's efforts to destroy Confederate supplies, to keep them out of Union hands.

As for your allegation that Sherman "vicariously enjoyed his march to the sea", there is a similar type famous quote from Confederate General Robert E. Lee:

"It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it."

The simple fact of the matter is that no sane soldier "enjoys" war, but every soldier prefers ("enjoys") victory to defeat.

IbJensen: "This became a war of vengeance to show those who indeed hated what the union and the presidency had become exactly what would happen to them the next time."

Of course, there will never, ever, be a "next time" just like the original Civil War.
That can't happen again.
But if by "next time" you mean more generally, "the next time a group of slave-holding secessionists starts and declares war on the United States they will again be defeated unconditionally, and their slaves freed without compensation" then, yes, of course, you are correct in that.

IbJensen: "This slavery issue is a non-starter, for starts.
The slaves would have been given their freedom and passage back to the dark continent if the Yankees had their way intially.
Even Secretary Seward AND Lincoln thought the idea had merit."

First of all, it's important to understand that going all the way back to President Thomas Jefferson (1801 to 1809), several people had calculated the costs, and proposed the Federal government should purchase freedom for slaves, including some ideas about returning freed slaves to Africa.
Indeed, purchasing every slave at peak 1860 market values would have cost the nation less than half of what the Civil War cost.
So Lincoln's original ideas on these matters were by no means new, and they failed for the same reasons those same ideas had failed under previous presidents:

• Slave-holders would not agree to voluntarily sell their slaves, and would go to war to prevent government enforced freedom for slaves.

• Lincoln talked seriously to former slaves about returning to Africa, and almost to a man, they didn't want to go!

• The $ numbers involved -- circa $3 billion in 1860 = around $10 trillion in today's values -- seemed insurmountable, except when compared to the total costs of the Civil War: circa $10 billion in 1860, equivalent to $33 trillion today.

So ideas for peacefully abolishing slavery failed under Lincoln, just as they had under previous presidents.

IbJensen: "After the surrender, some Northern carpetbagging bureaucrats wanted to grant each slave 40 acres and a mule which was tantamount to communism."

"40 acres and a mule" refers to Union General William Sherman's 1865 Order Number 15, which granted mostly abandoned farmland in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida to about 10,000 freed-slave families.
After Lincoln's assassination, Order 15 was revoked by President Andrew Johnson, and the land returned to its previous owners.

Curiously, "40 acres and a mule" in rural farmland, represented around $500 in 1860 values, multiplied times, let's say, a million 1865 freed-slave families, would cost the government $500 million to provide as "just compensation" for slavery.
And $500 million in 1860 corresponds to around $1.5 trillion today, or roughly the size of the US annual deficit. So the relative cost of "40 acres and a mule" is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the many trillions of dollars in welfare and other such payments made since President Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" programs in the 1960s.

So, where you might call "40 acres and a mule" "communism", I'd put it into the category of "teach a man to fish" versus today's policies to forever "feed a man a fish" and thus keep them forever dependent on big-government's largess.

[Ditto]

He's doing the Confederates a courtesy by assuming that they did not actually want the war that they started.

A pretty high percentage of them in major Confederate states like Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia wanted no part of secession. They well knew it would mean war, just as most in the North knew it would mean war.

None expected the war would be as horrible as it was, but all informed people, both North and South, including the rabid secessionist leaders knew damn well it would mean war. They just allowed their egos to convince them that they would have an easy victory.

And the war, which was pretty much hard wired to explode since the founding of this country, came and extracted a terrible vengeance.

Back to Lincoln's second Inaugural address.

Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

[IbJensen]

Today all lands labeled ‘Federal’ should be returned to the respective states in which they’re located. The problem with a monster government that comes after everything they get their hands on is that eventually it’s your land and possessions they’re after!@

Promising 40 acres and a mule is communism. Where does the land come from? How about the mule?

[BroJoeK]

IbJensen: "Today all lands labeled ‘Federal’ should be returned to the respective states in which they’re located."

Returned? Your word implies those lands once belonged to the states, and were somehow illegitimately appropriated by the Federal government.
The truth of the matter is quite different.

In general "Federal lands" were purchased (i.e., 1803 Louisiana Purchase) or won (i.e., 1848 Mexican War) before the resulting states were even designated as territories.
So that land was Federal land from Day One, and as such the Feds can rightfully determine conditions to sell or grant it to others.

About 28% of all US territory is Federal Land, or around 636 million acres.
If on average that land is worth, say, $1,000 per acre, we could sell it all, and pay off about 4% of our national debt.
If it's worth $2,500 per acre, now we are up to paying off 10% of national debt.

US Federal Lands:

This map shows Louisiana Purchase, Mexican War and other Federal Acquisitions:

---

IbJensen: "Promising 40 acres and a mule is communism.
Where does the land come from? How about the mule?"

I'll set aside the fact that you somehow mis-learned the definition of "communism" as: "anything IbJensen finds disgusting".
But "communism" does have a real definition, and it's government ownership of the means of production, which is not what we're looking at here.
But we'll set all that aside...

Union General Sherman's January 1865 Special Field Order Number 15 designated abandoned lands and Islands of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.
Sherman's obvious purpose was to put those lands back to work, and provide homes for thousands of freed slaves then following the Union Army.
About 10,000 (or 18,000 according to this) of such 40-acre lots were distributed before President Andrew Johnson cancelled the order (Fall 1865) and returned those abandoned lands to their previous owners.

The larger issue here is: what was "just compensation" for former slaves, and "40 acres and a mule" has been cited as a generally accepted standard.
I have merely pointed out that the total values of "40 acres and a mule" both in, say, 1865 and today are far less than any of the following:

• The cost to purchase freedom for every slave in 1860, which was $3 billion then, equivalent to around $10 trillion today.

• The total cost (just in treasure) of the Civil War, which was around $10 billion then, equivalent to $33 trillion today.

• The costs over 40 years of President Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" programs, and similar give-aways, currently running around $1 trillion per year.
  Of course, not all that welfare goes to descendants of slaves.
  But my argument here is simply that "40 acres and a mule" was not only cheap, but (assuming the land was properly paid for, not just seized), was far more moral than endless welfare, which only creates dependency on government and destroys families, with all it's resulting social pathologies.

[IbJensen]

The lands the federales ‘own’ should belong to the states in which they’re located.

Sherman was a deranged animal.

[BroJoeK]

IbJensen: "The lands the federales ‘own’ should belong to the states in which they’re located."

According to which law, principle, precedent or past practice?

IbJensen: "Sherman was a deranged animal."

No more "deranged" than Confederate generals who laid waste to Union territories they invaded.
Indeed, far less "deranged" than any WWII leader who directed bombing of enemy civilian targets.

The term for it is "total war", it's been practiced throughout history, and by contrast with mass murders in other wars, Union General Sherman's version was much kinder and gentler.

[tacticalogic]

According to which law, principle, precedent or past practice?

How can you have a working republic if the national government can arbitrarily lay claim to and assume control of the territory of a State?

[BroJoeK]

tacticalogic: "How can you have a working republic if the national government can arbitrarily lay claim to and assume control of the territory of a State?"

Please read my post #126 above to learn how it is that 28% of all US territory belongs to the Federal Government.
The answer is, the Federal Government owned this land from the beginning -- i.e., Louisiana Purchase, Mexican War, etc.
That land was Federal land before there was a territory, or even Americans there, much less a state.

So the Federal Government did not "lay claim" to land which previously belonged to states.
Rather, the Federal Government granted some of its lands to form territories and eventually states.

So, I'll ask again: what law, principle or prior practice requires the Federal Government to sell off, or give away, all of its property?

As for possible Federal seizures of private property (i.e., for roads or military purposes), I'm certain that all laws applying to eminent domain and just compensation apply to Federal as well as state and local governments.

If you can cite examples where the Feds have seized private property without just compensation, then I certainly agree that is overstepping its limits.
Indeed, I'm pretty sure that many environmental regulations amount to unlawful takings without just compensation -- just the kinds of things states should oppose and courts should be striking down.

[tacticalogic]

That land was Federal land before there was a territory, or even Americans there, much less a state.

The original 13 States existed before the federal government. Texas was an independent republic before it joined the Union, through the efforts of it's citizens, not the US Government. Supposedly the States that came from purchased US territory entered the Union as sovereign States, with all the Constitutional protection of the original 13. You seem to be under the impression the States were created by the national government, not the other way around.

[BroJoeK]

tacticalogic: "The original 13 States existed before the federal government."

Yes, I know that's an article of faith amongst our Neo-Confederate secessionists (of whom perhaps Mike Church the best known?), but I follow Abraham Lincoln's logic in these matters:

From Lincoln's July 4, 1861 message to Congress: "Our States have neither more nor less power than that reserved to them in the Union by the Constitution, no one of them ever having been a State out of the Union.
The original ones passed into the Union even before they cast off their British colonial dependence, and the new ones each came into the Union directly from a condition of dependence, excepting Texas; and even Texas, in its temporary independence, was never designated a State.
The new ones only took the designation of States on coming into the Union, while that name was first adopted for the old ones in and by the Declaration of Independence.

Therein the "United Colonies" were declared to be "free and independent States"; but even then the object plainly was not to declare their independence of one another or of the Union, but directly the contrary, as their mutual pledge and their mutual action before, at the time, and afterwards abundantly show."

Yes, these are all matters of definitions of terms (i.e., what is a "colony" versus a "territory", "state" or "Union", etc.), but in fact, Lincoln makes a valid point: the Union (First and Second Continental Congresses) was first formed by colonies, which were not yet states, and only the Union's Declaration of Independence first transformed them from colonies into states.
So Lincoln was correct to say: the Union made the states, not the other way around.
No state, in 1776 or later, declared its independence of the Union, and no original state had an independent existence outside the Union.

And every state after the original 13 was directly created by the Federal Government, which purchased or won the territory often before any Americans even lived there.

---

tacticalogic: "Texas was an independent republic before it joined the Union, through the efforts of it's citizens, not the US Government."

Texas had been a republic barely a year, in 1836, when it first proposed annexation to the United States.
The United States refused, and for nine years Texas suffered defeats and insecurity at the hands of Mexico and various Indian tribes.
Finally, in 1845 Congress agreed to annex Texas, and Texans voted their approval.
The deal cost the US $10 million in Texas' debts to be paid off.
That $10 million in 1845 is equivalent to around $82 billion in today's values, but at a time when total Federal Revenues were equivalent to circa only $300 billion (2% of GDP).
So, in terms of today's Federal revenues, that $10 million was equivalent today to taking on the burden of another $400 billion debt.

The deal annexing Texas also cost the US a major war with Mexico.
That was $71 million plus 25,000 deaths, equivalent in today's terms to $600 billion and 400,000 deaths.
In terms of today's Federal revenues, that $71 million for the Mexican-American War was equivalent to several trillion today.

Point is: While Texans were eager to become a state, for obvious reasons, the US was reluctant to accept Texas, and when it finally did, the price of Texas was very high.

Finally, when the Republic of Texas became the State of Texas in 1845, it assumed the same status as every other United State.

---

tacticalogic: "Supposedly the States that came from purchased US territory entered the Union as sovereign States, with all the Constitutional protection of the original 13."

Certainly, constitutionally speaking, no state is "more sovereign" than any other state.

---

tacticalogic: "You seem to be under the impression the States were created by the national government, not the other way around."

It is absolutely a fact of history that 37 of 50 states did not help create the Federal Government, and were instead created by it.
Of those original 13, it can certainly be debated as to which came first, the chicken or the egg?
I take Lincoln's argument on this, which is that colonies created the Union which then declared them free and independent states.

So, as Lincoln said, the Union came first, then the original 13 states.

[tacticalogic]

Our States have neither more nor less power than that reserved to them in the Union by the Constitution, no one of them ever having been a State out of the Union. The original ones passed into the Union even before they cast off their British colonial dependence

They declared their independence from Britain in 1776. Acting as independent, sovereign States they drafted and ratified the Articles of Confederation in 1781. They did not "pass into the Union" until the ratification of the Constitution in 1789. You may follow Abraham Lincoln's logic if you wish, but history records a different reality.

[RegulatorCountry]

You’re too vague upon American history to be offering such commentary. Crack a book or two and get back to us.

[Ditto]

So, I'll ask again: what law, principle or prior practice requires the Federal Government to sell off, or give away, all of its property?

Under the "Tyrant Lincoln" (at least according to the Lost Causers who infect this site like freak'n Bed Bugs with their non historical nonsense) the Federal government ceded million of acres owned through both the Homestead Act (which the Slave Power opposed for 20+ years) and then the Land Grant College Act, which ended up with more millions of more acres sold off and the proceeds used to establish most of the schools that are now called 'Something or Another State University.'

Without the sale of Federal Lands, those schools would have never been created.

The Feds still own way too much land, and perhaps it is time to sell the rest off to pay off this horrendous debt we have. My only concern is the the Chinese might be the only people able to afford it. ;~((

[Sherman Logan]

Lincoln decided to resupply -- not reinforce -- Fort Sumter, so long as peace remained. But by April 1861, the Confederacy had whipped itself into a frenzy of war-fever, and would accept nothing less than full surrender of Fort Sumter. When Lincoln continued to refuse, the Confederacy chose war -- first in assaulting Sumter and three weeks later, formally declaring war on the United States.

I think there is tremendous misunderstanding of what was going on in the six weeks between Lincoln's inauguration and the fall of Sumter.

During this period the CSA consisted of just seven states. Davis and its other leaders, not being idiots, were perfectly well aware the CSA was too small to be viable, particularly if it came to war. They desperately needed to grab off some of the Upper South and Border states. The more they got the better their chance of survival.

So the six weeks basically consisted of the highest stakes poker game in US history between Davis and Lincoln.

If the CSA acquired all the 7/8 states in play, the job of reconquest would have been too big for the remaining states of the Union, as Lincoln later admitted.

If the Union kept the loyalty of all remaining slave states, the CSA would collapse pretty quickly in the event of war. Just much too small a white population.

As it turned out, of course, the CSA grabbed 4 of the states in play, and the Union retained 4, or 5 if you count WV. As a result the forces were balanced evenly enough that we had a long bloody war instead of a short, decisive one.

For much of this period many in the North believed in what turned out to be pretty much an illusion of the strength of southern Unionism. In a time before opinion polls these kinds of mistakes were easy to make.

Lincoln outplayed Davis, bluffing him into firing the first shot. Doing so rallied the Upper South to the CSA, but alienated the Border (which initially tried to be neutral but eventually went with the Union), and rallied the North to the Union.

[BroJoeK]

tacticalogic: "They declared their independence from Britain in 1776.
Acting as independent, sovereign States they drafted and ratified the Articles of Confederation in 1781.
They did not 'pass into the Union' until the ratification of the Constitution in 1789."

Sure, you can say that, but we are talking about fine points of word definitions.
Lincoln implied, and I agree, that "the Union" began with the First Continental Congress in 1774.
This Union, not individual states, then declared the colonies to be "free and independent states", but states of the Union itself.

And all states remained within the Union throughout the periods of Contenental Congresses, Articles of Confederation and the new Constitution.

The Articles themselves were first drawn up by the same Continental Congress, and at the same time, mid-1776, as the Declaration of Independence.
So the Articles were in effect and operating from Day One of Independence, and ratified by all but Maryland within a year of submission.

Indeed, the very name of the Articles is:

"Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union" -- in operation since 1776.

Point is: as Lincoln said, no state existed before the Union declared it independent, and no original state existed outside the Union before the new Constitution was ratified.

So, as to which came first, the chicken or the egg, I agree the Union created the states.

[BroJoeK]

RegulatorCountry: "You’re too vague upon American history to be offering such commentary.
Crack a book or two and get back to us."

LOL, and your unique expertise on this subject is what, exactly?
Hmmm... strike that, let's go back to basics -- when did you first learn to speak English?

;-)

[BroJoeK]

Sherman Logan: "Lincoln outplayed Davis, bluffing him into firing the first shot."

Thanks, I agree with everything you posted, except this notion that Lincoln somehow "tricked" Davis into firing the first shots.

In reality, the Confederacy was eager for a confrontation -- in my words "cruisin' for a bruisin" -- precisely because that is what secessionists, especially in Virginia, needed to satisfy Virginia's ratification statement requirement for:

"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..."

Without some serious incident which secessionists could label "injury or oppression", Unionists still dominated at the Virginia secession conference in Richmond.
That's what motivated Jefferson Davis, not some "trickery" by Abraham Lincoln.

There is a fascinating account of Virginia's change from Unionist to Secessionist in Nelson Lankford's 2007 book, "Cry Havoc, the Crooked Road to Civil War, 1861."

[BroJoeK]

Ditto: "The Feds still own way too much land, and perhaps it is time to sell the rest off..."

I don't know how much Federal land is "too much", but if you look at the map in post #126 above, you'll quickly notice that nearly all of it is west of the Rocky Mountains, in lands rather thinly populated.
Somewhere I remember hearing that Nevada is 90% owned by the Federal Government, including the radioactive sections, Area 51, etc...

Including oil and minerals underground, doubtless some of this land is quite valuable, but above ground mountains, desert and Alaskan tundra are likely best suited for current employment as preserves for nature and aliens (Area 51), etc... ;-)

And the whole idea of selling off Federal lands (to the Chinese!), just to pay off the National Debt strikes me as so stupid, somebody needs to Gibbs slap these b*st*rds and shake them strongly: what the h*ll do they think they are doing?
Get their finances in order or resign and go home.