Posted on 06/23/2013 5:55:07 PM PDT by 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.”
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Grant fought a war against people who he thought had every right to secede. Grant was an alcoholic. I guess I really can’t connect the two but that conflict would make me drink heavily too.
“I hope therefore that all Constitutional means will be
exhausted, before there is a resort to force.
Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of
our Constitution never exhausted so much labour,
wisdom & forbearance in its formation & surrounded
it with so many guards & securities, if it was
intended to be broken by every member of the
confederacy at will. It was intended for perpetual
[sic] union, so expressed in the preamble,4 & for the
establishment of a government, not a compact,
which can only be dissolved by revolution or the
consent of all the people in convention assembled.
It is idle to talk of secession. Anarchy would have
been established & not a government, by
Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison & the
other patriots of the Revolution. In 1808 when the
New England States resisted Mr Jeffersons Imbargo
law & the Hartford Convention assembled secession
was termed treason by Virga statesmen. What can it
be now?” — Robert Lee, letter to his son Custis, January 1861.
Lee fought a war for a people he knew were engaged in illegal rebellion.
Robert E. Lee
Robert E Lee
So at worst, what you are saying is that both Grant and Lee fought wars that they knew to be wrong? And you place one above the other in this regard how?
"We could not and ought not to be rigidly bound by the rules laid down under circumstances so different for emergencies so utterly unanticipated. The fathers themselves would have been the first to declare that their prerogatives were not irrevocable. They would surely have resisted secession could they have lived to see the shape it assumed."
President Eisenhower was merely in error, said error being understandable after so much falsehood by others has been produced..
Of course states have rights. No longer included among them is the right to enforce bondage based on a claimed legal status as being owed service.
Never was there a state right to deny US jurisdiction, block the enforcement of laws, interfere with collection of taxes, nor to fire on US soldiers performing their duty.
That statement by RE Lee, to only defend his native state seems strangely at odds with his subsequent behavior, and his previous oath of loyalty to the US.
That is why it is so quoted by the lost causers.
Grant was, according to Lee, the greatest general of the war.
So are you so much smarter than Lee? Was Lee lying?
Of course Grant was opposed to the war. He was also opposed to secession, murder, incest, and rebellion. He fought the war as his duty.
Lee had no duty to rebel.
When hailing Saint Robert, the Lost Causers always seem of overlook the fact that, once Grant starting moving the Army of the Potomac after taking it over, it was less than eight weeks before Lee was bottled up in Petersburg and the war in the east simply became a drawn-out endgame.
We here, all live in the republic fought for by Washington, Monroe, Eisenhower, Patton, Pershing and Lincoln. Oh, and Lee and Davis before they committed treason.
Not the one fought for by the deluded members of the pretended confederate army.
“Just those that seek to justify the insurrection to further, protect, and extend slavery need to have it rubbed in their noses.”
Too bad your liberal public school education brainwashed you into thinking that. It isn’t true and you know it. Your bigotry makes you say that.
If we have an insurrection today you would parrot the liberal talking points of today just as you have been parroting the talking points about 1860. You would be one of those liberals that claim we are fighting to keep blacks and minorities down, in poverty, trying to put them back in chains, trying to put homos back in the closet, kill women by banning abortions, get rich on the backs of the poor, etc, etc, etc.
“Just that the law there permitted it in some cases, for those rich enough to purchase slaves.”
Just more liberal propaganda on your part, leaving out the North in the slave trades, not to mention they started slavery in the colonies in the first place.
Why do you hate the South so much? I know liberals claim they are all just beer drinking ignorant inbred rednecks, which is nothing but bigotry, but what caused you to hate them so much that you would lie as you do and carry on this liberal bullshit?
Really? I post this for the second time:
the seceding States cried lustily, "Let us alone; you have no constitutional power to interfere with us." Newspapers and people at the North reiterated the cry.Individuals might ignore the constitution; but the Nation itself must not only obey it, but must enforce the strictest construction of that instrument; the construction put upon it by the Southerners themselves. The fact is the constitution did not apply to any such contingency as the one existing from 1861 to 1865. Its framers never dreamed of such a contingency occurring. If they had foreseen it, the probabilities are they would have sanctioned the right of a State or States to withdraw rather than that there should be war between brothers.
Ulysses S. Grant, Chapter 16: Discussing Secession, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant
No, I don’t hate southerners. Perhaps as a southerner you feel entitled to tell me who I must or must not hate. You don’t have that authority either.
Someone just posted how the first slave owner was a black man, one Antony Johnson who used 1654 Virginia courts to extend the term of service of John Casor, another black man to life long by a Virginia judge. It was later made law in 1661 by the Virginia state legislature.
After his death, Antony Johnson, the slave owner had most of his land stolen by a white planter using a Virginia court, asserting that as a black man Johnson could not own land.
In that story, you find no Yankees, just people in Virginia taking advantage of others using corrupt judges. I hate corrupt judges, don’t you?
After pretending to an illegal and unconstitutional secession the southern insurrection opened fire on US forces at Ft. Sumter, and declared war. That, as most honest people recognize, made legal considerations moot.
Grant was many things, but he was not a lawyer. Nor was Lee.
The legal opinion is Texas v. White. I recommend you look it up. It uses short words, so you will be able to follow it.
Having just finished a beer, I would perhaps think that beer drinking rednecks would be my good friends. When I threw my barbeque parties in Texas, I invited people to bring their barbeque guns. We all got along together fine.
Although slaves were coerced by yankee slave traders in the slave trade, southern plantation owners were not. At any time any state had the right to change the domestic institution of slavery. Northern states abolished slavery before the Civil war. Southern states didn’t. That is the difference.
One can condemn northern states for not ending slavery earlier. One can condemn southern states for not ending slavery earlier. in that way they are similar.
Slave importers killed perhaps a third of their ‘cargo’ on the way. Prices for slaves in Africa were low, in the US and other slave countries were high, and that economic decision mattered more than simple humanity. In that way the slave importers were worse than the slave drivers.
The slave trade was banned by the US, using its constitutional authority as of 1808 and US Navy sent forces to assist the British patrol seeking to end the slave trade. That was a good thing. The slave traders didn’t start a war to extend their right to trade slaves. In that way the Yankee slave traders were better than the various slave drivers.
I would look carefully at the stated goals of the insurrectionists.
Just as I have looked carefully at the stated goals of the insurrection in 1861.
Where my education took place, or what were the views of my teachers don’t matter. What matters are: facts, logic, reason (Logos); Morals, virtue (Ethos). I will leave the feelings of resentment and shame (Pathos) to you. I don’t resent you. I am not ashamed of my position. If you are, perhaps you should consider changing your position.
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