Posted on 06/22/2013 6:03:24 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Weighing the economics of Abraham Lincoln isn’t easy to do in today’s terms. Lincoln was pro-subsidy and pro-tariff, both of which stances tend to be assigned to the interventionist left in today’s discussions. But Lincoln’s infrastructurally and financially primitive economy was not ours, and it’s worth thinking about how he might govern today given that in his words there is an unshakeable faith in free enterprise.
Lincoln was pro-business, laudatory of wealth creation (and the inequality that goes with it), against class warfare and in favor of exploiting natural resources. “Property,” he said in 1864, “is the fruit of labor — property is desirable — is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise.”
In short, the Great Emancipator was also a capitalist tool.
In his considered, wide-ranging yet agreeably brief book, Lincoln Unbound: How an Ambitious Young Railsplitter Saved the American Dream — and How We Can Do It Again, Rich Lowry finds in Lincoln a man who deeply respected an essential American freedom — the freedom to succeed and accumulate wealth without fearing the heavy hand of the government.
Lincoln’s humble background is often misread; he chafed and rebelled against what he might have been expected to see as “his people,” the Andrew Jackson populist Democrats. Instead, he took a contrarian path and joined the Whigs, stereotyped as a party of wealthy Eastern elites and no enemy to the well-off. In 1830s Illinois, to declare yourself a Whig was roughly the equivalent of being a Republican in today’s San Francisco.
It was no coincidence that Lincoln went to work as a corporate lawyer. Rather it was an instance of Lincoln’s defiance of convention.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Lincoln destroyed the Consitution to carry on his war of genocide against the Southern states. The Founding Fathers wanted a limited Federal government. Lincoln, wanted, and got, a huge socialist state where our powerful is concentrated in Washington, DC. The Founding Fathers would not recognize what this country has become......all because of the murdering railroad lawyer from Illinois.
That is such BS it cannot be dignified with a response.
The war was largely an economic war with cotton being the big business of the day.
I personally think the freesoil party had the right idea about how to deal with the issue. They recognized how expensive slavery really was and stopping its expansion west would likely end it combined with industrialization filtering south.
I once wrote an article about Lincoln’s pro-business activities, both as a lawyer and politician. He represented Illinois railroads extensively in court.
Lincoln never wanted war. He wanted to keep slavery where it was...until it died out.
It was the Southern fire-eaters who started the war...because they knew that the electoral college would keep any future pro-slavery candidate out of the White House. The House was stacked against them because immigrants would not go south and complete against slave labor. And as new free states entered the union (Lincoln’s real plan) the South would lose any chance at the White House...and with that...any chance of controlling the SCOTUS.
Lincoln was in his heart of hearts a Whig who hated slavery. But he wanted no war.
They never learn the lessons of Sam Houston who was proven to be correct.
Lincoln was a wealthy corporate lawyer who got that way helping railroads screw people.
It’s only because you’re a vet that keeps me from farting in your general direction.
The Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free the first slave. Lincoln, the con man, ignored the slaves in states that were fighting for the Union. And his “proclamation” meant absolutely nothing because he was not president of the states where it took effect, which were the Confederate States of America. Their president was Jefferson Davis, twice the man the two-bit railroad lawyer Lincoln was.
Lincoln’s attempt at turning the war into a “moral” war for slavery was nothing in the world but a ploy. He knew that England was on the verge of siding with the Confederacy, so he “freed” the slaves. Lincoln was a racist of the first degree.
“Who freed the slaves? To the extent that they were ever ‘freed,’ they were freed by the Thirteenth Amendment, which was authored and pressured into existence not by Lincoln but by the great emancipators nobody knows, the abolitionists and congressional leaders who created the climate and generated the pressure that goaded, prodded, drove, forced Lincoln into glory by associating him with a policy that he adamantly opposed for at least fifty-four of his fifty-six years of his life.”
Lerone Bennett, Jr., Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’ s White Dream, p. 19
Someone with the expertise should put together an animated debate between Lincoln and obama, using their own words.
A debate between all those obama has compared himself to, could be a whole series.
What are the names of the men you think the ‘fire-eaters’ were.
Where did they start the war and by what authority?
“But he wanted no war...”
Then why did he send Fox to Charleston with the clandestine fleet to fight its way in, and why did he congratulate Fox after the action?
The founding fathers would agree with your statement, as do I.
Because he wanted to find a way to defuse secession and resupply the union forces. Lincoln falsely believed that at heart, the people of the South were pro-union...he thought they were being led by the planter aristocracy, and once real Southerners saw his intentions public opinion would force the South back into the union.
In this he was mistaken.
Lincoln was in his heart of hearts was a racist of the nth degree.
Edwin Ruffin comes to mind. Also, the Chestnuts, the planter aristocracy, in general whose entire economic lives were tied to slavery.
They had NO authority. I believe Lincoln was right when he claimed the birth of the nation was in 1776, not 1787. There is no constitutional right to revolution...especially a conservative revolution. There is no right for people to own other people.
In his Cooper Union speech Lincoln showed that 33/38 signers of the Constitution believed they had put slavery on the road to eradication...that the 3/5ths clause was a temporary measure to allow the South time (until 1808) to come up with another system. Nobody foresaw the cotton gin.
Oddly in the South, it actually spurned some, Cleburne being one, to actually want to call Lincoln's bluff and free all slaves with mandatory conscription of blacks for the duration followed by CSA citizenship. Sadly, that idea didn't pass the CS congress until March 65 when it was too late.
And to resupply Union troops for what reason?
He was not mistaken. He intentionally started the war.
Incredibly historians make the same mistake without naming Northern fire-eater contemporaries such as John Brown and Senator Charles Sumner, and without factual evidence of governmental authorities, charged with Constitutional responsibility, that are the only people that can start wars.
Then you run on with another six irrelevant points. Why not stick with your original statement?
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