Lincoln on the Defensive

http://spectator.org ^ | June 20 2013 | By CHRISTOPHER ORLET

[Para-Ord.45]

From the time Abraham Lincoln entered the White House nearly a century and a half ago, there has been an anti-Lincoln tradition in American life. President John Tyler’s son, writing in 1932, seemed to speak for a silent minority: “I think he was a bad man,” wrote Lyon Gardiner Tyler, “a man who forced the country into an unnecessary war and conducted it with great inhumanity.”

Throughout his presidency Lincoln was surrounded by rivals, even among his own cabinet. Outside the White House, his many enemies included conservative Whigs, Democrats, northern copperheads and New England abolitionists. Wisconsin editor, Marcus M. Pomeroy, sniped that Lincoln was a

“worse tyrant and more inhuman butcher than has existed since the days of Nero.”

Shortly before his reelection Pomeroy added: “The man who votes for Lincoln now is a traitor and murderer.… And if he is elected to misgovern for another four years, we trust some bold hand will pierce his heart with dagger point for the public good.”

[donmeaker]

My understanding is the sermons of Rev. Wilburforce were published in the US, as were those of Rev. Beecher.

Those would have convinced an honest man.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

You know, weird thing about your link to a book studying civil wars in Africa. The words "Yankee" and "tariff" never appear, according to the "Search inside this book" feature at your link. Nor is there an essay by Collier and Hoeffler entitled "On Economic Causes of Civil War"m in that book, that academic paper being published elsewhere.

In fact, a Google search of that line reveals that the first part comes from "Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War" by Robert Ekelund and Mark Thornton and that the second part, after the ellipse, is a version of a line 14 pages earlier in the book.

Sorting out your sloppy historiography, it appears that what you did was pick up a review of the Ekelund and Thornton book by Tommy DiLorenzo, who himself messes up the quote about tariffs (not the first time for him to do that), and then you compound your error by mistaking DiLorenzo's citation of Collier and Hoeffler's work in another context with being the source of the botched quote.

WIth that sort of sloppiness, it's no wonder you get so much wrong.

[donmeaker]

No doubt Lincoln was out to save the Union, and there were and are good reasons to do it, which is why the US won. The US federal government had legal authority to ban slavery from the territories, and that was one part of Lincoln’s platform, and a personal goal of his dating from when he began building he Illinois Republican Party as the Anti Nebraska Party. Banning slavery from the territories would have continued the Framer’s path, putting slavery on the road to extinction.

The southern insurrection was begun to further, protect and extend the evil institution of human slavery. There were no good reasons to do that. That is why the southern insurrection failed.

Both are sides of the same coin.

[rockrr]

Also, I suspect that the transition to emancipation would have proceeded more quickly had it not been for the many Northern politicians who quietly but effectively put the brakes on any gradual emancipation because they knew that an end to slavery would result in many new House seats for Southern politicians.

A diabolical plan for sure. So clever and so well played that no one has ever documented it.

*rollseyes*

So long as the 3/5 rule existed, the South was cheated out of its proper proportion of seats in the House of Representatives.

God that's stupid! If the slavers were so concerned about proper representation why didn't they simply give their niggers the vote? Oh yea...

[central_va]

Your post, pure BS.

[donmeaker]

Whites were also kidnapped and held as slaves. Many slaves at Arlington were mostly white. It wasn’t hard to find a corrupt southern judge to agree to forged papers making anyone a slave.

Mark Twain’s story “Puddin’head Wilson” recounted a slave plantation where a white slave and a future white master were swapped by a doting mostly white ‘Mammy’, half sister to the Master. Murder and hillarity ensue.

[rockrr]

You had better be on your best behavior or you’ll get a “I never engage in a debate with anyone who serves up their own disinformation as facts”.

;-)

(dilorenzo.....Bwahhaaahaaaaaaa!)

[donmeaker]

So you deny that the US won the war?

Are you that deluded?

[Fuzz]

“They should not have urged preservation of slavery as a ground for their war for independence. But, how were they to know that in the twenty first century, culture would be dominated by liberal elitists?”

Slavery is a conservative institution?

[donmeaker]

Lincoln also wisely decided not to pick a war with Britain while the insurrection was still unsettled.

“One war at a time” he said.

Politics is the art of the possible.

The 13th Amendment freed only about 50,000 slaves, but was a good thing to that exent. Some 3 million had been freed by the combination of the EP and the advancing federal armies, a much better thing for the various slaves.

Sherman’s army particularly sought out large plantations during their march to the sea. The slaves were usually happy to point out where provisions were hidden, and where the US Army was, the whippings of slaves would end.

Junteenth is the celebration of the date when Texas slaves were notified of the EP. Of course the slave power hid that document from the slaves as much as possible, but by your count that should be blamed on Lincoln too, right?

[Tau Food]

Douglass talked John Brown into a raid on Harpers Ferry (then in Virginia). Brown had been raised by a pacifist father, but Brown was taught to hate and kill by abolitionists like Douglass. Just before the raid, Douglass visited Brown near the Maryland farm that Brown was using as a staging area for his terrorist raid. Just like Charles Manson, Douglass sent Brown forward but declined to actually accompany Brown on his murder spree.

[Tau Food]

I heard a great joke today.

"Knock, knock"

[donmeaker]

I would suggest that John Brown was taught to hate and kill by proslavery Border Ruffians in Kansas and supporters of slavery in the US Senate. By using defensive tactics and field fortifications he was able to turn back a much larger force of pro slavery raiders that had previously murdered Free Staters and ransacked Lawrence Kansas.

on May 21, 1856, a group of Border Ruffians entered the Free-State stronghold of Lawrence, where they burned the Free State Hotel, destroyed two newspaper offices and their printing presses, and ransacked homes and stores.

The following day, on the afternoon of May 22, 1856, South Carolina Democrat Preston Brooks physically attacked Massachusetts Free Soil Senator Charles Sumner in the Senate chambers, hitting him on the head with his thick cane. Sumner was blinded by his own blood, and staggered away until he collapsed, lapsing into unconsciousness. Brooks continued to beat Sumner until his cane broke. Several other senators attempted to help Sumner, but were blocked by Rep. Laurence Keitt, holding a pistol and shouting “Let them be!”, as retaliation for insulting language Sumner had used against a relative of Brooks in a speech denouncing Southerners for pro-slavery violence in Kansas.

These acts in turn inspired Brown to lead a group of men in Kansas Territory on an attack at a proslavery settlement at Pottawatomie Creek. During the night of May 24, the group, which included four of Brown’s sons, led five pro-slavery men from their homes and hacked them to death with broadswords. Of the men initially taken captive during the three cabin raids that night, Brown’s men let two of them— Jerome Glanville and James Harris— return home to Harris’ cabin after questioning them regarding their involvement in violence against free-state settlers and being satisfied that they had not participated in any (the other man taken from that cabin, William Sherman, did not fare as well and was killed with swords at the edge of a nearby creek).

In August 1856, thousands of proslavery men formed into armies and marched into Kansas. That same month, Brown and several of his followers engaged 400 proslavery soldiers in the “Battle of Osawatomie”. The hostilities raged for another two months until Brown departed the Kansas Territory, and a new territorial governor, John W. Geary, took office and managed to prevail upon both sides for peace.

[donmeaker]

In mid-1859, the Wyandotte Constitution was drafted; this document represented the prevailing abolitionist view. It was approved by the electorate by a 2-to-1 margin, and Kansas entered the Union as a free state pursuant to its terms on January 29, 1861.

See, a happy ending!

[donmeaker]

Without being for slavery, they had no reason for secession. There was no other reason.

[Tau Food]

I am impressed. You, sir, have read some history and have for the most part accurately related some important facts about John Brown. (There is, however, evidence that Brown could not have actually learned about the attack on Sumner as early as you suggest, but that's nitpicking.)

You ignore the influence of Frederick Douglass. They lived together for a time. Just before Harpers Ferry, Douglass came down to Maryland to visit with Brown and to discuss the raid. Douglass got scared and refused to go with Brown on the actual raid.

Almost exactly 110 years later, Charles Manson adopted the Douglass strategy of not actually showing up for the killing-spree he inspired and then claiming innocence. Manson got the idea from Douglass.

[rockrr]

This thread was weird to begin with but now it’s gone over into the Twilight Zone ;-)

[rockrr]

"Knock, knock"

"Don't do it!"