Posted on 06/17/2017 6:14:26 PM PDT by plain talk
People think that Abe Lincoln was such a benevolent President. He was actually a bit of a tyrant. He attacked the Confederate States of America, who seceded from the Union due to tax and tariffs. (If you think it was over slavery, you need to find a real American history book written before 1960.)
This picture is of 38 Santee Sioux Indian men that were ordered to be executed by Abraham Lincoln for treaty violations (IE: hunting off of their assigned reservation).
So, on December 26, 1862, the “Great Emancipator” ordered the largest mass execution in American History, where the guilt of those to be executed was entirely in doubt. Regardless of how Lincoln defenders seek to play this, it was nothing more than murder to obtain the land of the Santee Sioux and to appease his political cronies in Minnesota.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailycheck.net ...
Was the leader of the North such a person?
"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, of so much of the territory as they inhabit. It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines, or old laws; but to break up both, and make new ones." - Abraham Lincoln
Yes.
You're killin’ me . . . my sides!
"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, of so much of the territory as they inhabit. It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines, or old laws; but to break up both, and make new ones." - Abraham Lincoln
Please now compare that to the actual quote:
"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,-- 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, of so much of the teritory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with, or near about them, who may oppose their movement. Such minority, was precisely the case, of the tories of our own revolution. It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines, or old laws; but to break up both, and make new ones." A. Lincoln
Kindly note that your "misquote" left out two complete sentences. You didn't happen to tally that in your tally book, Mr Tallyman. That is not cool.
Anyway, please explain what the following part means, "it is the quality of revolutions not to go by old lines........but to break........and make new ones".
What Wills misses is the extent to which Lincoln was working within the established traditions of the Constitution. He misses the continuities between the Founders and Lincoln and the degree to which they'd approve of his views. After a destructive war, you can't say, "Okay, back to politics as usual." You have to make it seem that the war was worthwhile. But "a new birth of freedom" doesn't necessarily mean a transformation or betrayal of America's constitutional traditions, but a recommitment to them.
A lot of Wills' book is just him showing off how much he knows. He talks a lot about Lincoln and rhetoric as though to suggest that Lincoln was trying to pull the wool over people's eyes, deceiving them with his words. But rhetoric doesn't always mean deception. Rather, it involves the forms of argument and persuasion that we use every day.
“Anyway, please explain what the following part means, “it is the quality of revolutions not to go by old lines........but to break........and make new ones”. “
Lincoln was clearly saying “if southern people decided it was in their own best interest to leave the union, they had every legal and moral right to do so.”
And you can quote Lincoln on that.
It is bizarre revisionism. They way you describe it being about slavery, one would never guess that Slavery would have remained legal in the Union if the South hadn't left.
How can you say it was a fight over slavery when both sides had legal slavery? The Union didn't even give up slavery until December of 1865; Six months after it had been eliminated in the South.
If the Union launched a war to destroy slavery, they should have started in Maryland, where they already had their armies.
Stop the revisionist history.
The reason the UNION went to war with the South had nothing to do with slavery, at least not slavery regarding black people. Why did the Union invade?
Tariffs and taxes are not mentioned in the declaration.
Those declarations were only a few in Number, Slavery is only prominent in a few of them, and of course you have left out the ones that do mention tariff's and taxes because that does not suit your preference.
This one quite clearly says that the economic destruction perpetuated on the South by the North is the primary cause of their discontent with the existing government.
http://www.civilwarcauses.org/rhett.htm
I can tell you why. Because they studied history and realized the "official" narrative doesn't make any sense.
Yes, it was. 100%. If the North hadn’t wanted to get rid of slavery, the South would never have seceded.
So why did it take the Union an extra six months after the war to get rid of Slavery themselves?
If you want further confirmation of this claim, Look on page 90 (Page 108 of the PDF) of this book. (Originally published in 1887)
After the court had adjourned, I went up to the bench and thanked Judge Taney for thus upholding, in its integrity, the writ of habeas corpus. He replied, " Mr. Brown, I am an old man, a very old man" (he had completed his eightyfourth year), " but perhaps I was preserved for this occasion." I replied, "Sir, I thank God that you were." He then told me that he knew that his own imprisonment had been a matter of consultation, but that the danger had passed, and he warned me, from information he had received, that my time would come.
http://mdhistory.net/sources_secondary/brown_msa_sc_5458_51_1494.pdf
Slavery was legal in the United States. Why would they need to secede to "preserve" it? Indeed it lasted longer in the Union than it did in the Confederacy. It took the Union another six months after the war to end legal slavery in the Union.
Lincoln fought the South to maintain the Union
To maintain economic control of revenue producing states in the South that produced nearly 75% of all Federal revenues prior to the War. It was about money.
You do know that Abraham Lincoln supported the Corwin Amendment which would have made slavery permanent and irrevocable in the Union?
If you don't believe me, go read Lincoln's first inaugural address. Lincoln was willing to keep slavery. What he wasn't willing to do was to let the South trade freely with Europe outside of his economic control.
I believe this is correct. What would have happened is that Southern trading ports would have supplanted New York as the dominant economic force in the region. I believe the Washington/New York business axis understood this, and felt it was absolutely essential to their continued survival to destroy Southern efforts to become independent of their economic control.
I think that if the South had been left alone, it would have devastated the Original Union economically, and it would have eventually dominated and overcome the original Union.
To get an idea of why I think this, just look at the map of "Red" that constitutes our national elections. The Southern influence still spread into the MidWest. It would have spread more if they had been able to keep their wealth and economic activity.
Yes, the Union would likely not have survived, but the Confederacy would have eventually supplanted it. At least this is one possible scenario I see.
Because the South believed that more Free States were going to be admitted to the Union and that would result in there being enough States so that an abolition amendment could be adopted without any Slave State ratifying.
As for the economic argument, slavery was key to the antebellum South's economy. To abolish slavery was to collapse the Southern economy. So when it came to the antebellum South, the economy and slavery were fundamentally linked. Also, remember the Southern States cited slavery as their principal reason for seceding.
Here is a piece of history I learned this last year. Lincoln sent a war fleet to Charleston to attack the Confederates, and the orders of this war fleet were known to the confederates. They knew those ships were coming there to attack them because that was what the orders said which were issued to these warships.
They knew these ships were going to attack them, and that's why they thought it was necessary to take control of Ft. Sumter. They didn't want to get caught between the guns of the warships and the guns of Ft. Sumter.
But they don't teach stuff like that in the history books. It doesn't fit the narrative.
Then how did you learn it, if not from a history book?
Yes it is, and you are one of the people doing it.
The first blood drawn in the Civil War was in Union territory. Pro-slavery forces killed four Union soldiers in Baltimore. See the Pratt Street Massacre.
I cannot speak to this because I have no knowledge of it other than to point out that Baltimore was in Maryland, which was a Union state.
Furthermore, Union troops had always occupied Ft. Sumter in South Carolina prior to the Civil War.
And this is completely untrue. Ft. Sumter had *NEVER* had a garrison until Major Anderson in the dark of a December night in 1860 suddenly seized the Ft while it was being worked on by Contractors.
This sudden armed seizure of the fort greatly Startled the people of Charleston who regarded it as the first belligerent act of the war.
South Carolina mentioned taxes and tariffs a lot.
Piecing it together from bits and pieces that took a long time finding on the internet.
Things like telegrams sent between various parties such as the Department of the Navy and the Ships it was sending. Telegraphs between General Beauregard and Secretary of War Walker.
Books about the economics of the period. Editorials from newspapers of the time. I even have an editorial from the "National Republican" (Official party newspaper in Washington D.C.) saying Lincoln was going to give up Ft. Sumter.
Take a look. March 11, 1861. Third article on the page.
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82014760/1861-03-11/ed-1/seq-2/
The bits and pieces I have found do not always fit into the history I was taught in school. In fact, they often contradict it.
You’ve been told this before several times on numerous threads. The only way that slavery could be ended in the north was through the amendment process. Lincoln was not a dictator and could not just unilaterally end slavery. He did however encourage congress to write and pass such an amendment which did end slavery in the US.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.