An Unnecessary Horror

Lew Rockwell ^ | 12/03/2001 | Myles Kantor

[sheltonmac]

Every once in awhile it's nice to throw in a good Lincoln-bashing thread to get under someone's skin! ;-)

[donmeaker]

The interesting thing was that the North was growing faster than the south. One could not work in the south without degrading oneself. One could not use high technology because all labor had to be done by unskilled slaves. Lincoln would have to enforce the fugitive slave law, but he stood for limitation of slavery to where it currently existed, to wit, free territories and reversal of the Dred Scott decision. In fact, the north had stomached the Fugitive Slave Law for 10 years, because it meant that they needed to pass the slave to Canada, and then the slave could come back with papers from Canada. It was a weak law for that reason, and enforcing it was not a major problem. The south benefited from runaway slaves, for the most recalitrant, those who would knife the master in his bed, would usually prefer to run away.

It was the south who set up an illegal compact between states, specifically forbidden by the Constitution. It was the south which sought alliance with foreign powers to gain continued government subsidy of their peculiar institution. Hurrah for Lincoln!

[Brigadier]

Anybody have change for a five? Now that they have made the portrait of the Tyrant larger, they are even worse!

Deo Vindice,
Brigadier

[ravinson]

In fact, there was nothing necessary about smashing the consensual cornerstone of American government...

Slavery was "the consensual cornerstone of American government"? Whatever you want to believe, Confederate glorifier-breath.

[Tauzero]

Great post.

[shuckmaster]

The tyrant who destroyed America needs to be bashed on a fairly regular basis.

[wasp69]

Slavery was "the consensual cornerstone of American government"? Whatever you want to believe, Confederate glorifier-breath.
5 posted on 12/4/01 12:25 AM Eastern by ravinson

Wow, sheltonmac, look who's back! And there was absolutely no delay in the first insult to be hurled.

[wasp69]

It was the south who set up an illegal compact between states, specifically forbidden by the Constitution.

The South legally withdrew from the Union, state by state, thereby once again becoming seperate sovereign bodies before forming their own government.

[WhiskeyPapa]

bump

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

A very interesting article, but just for a second forget the intent. Look at the content. The Unnecessary Horror is the author's disregard for one of the cardinal rules of simple and direct writing: "Never use a dollar and fifty cent word when there's a good ten center handy."

sanguinary
exculpation
odious
counterfactual

Just a pet peeve.

[WhiskeyPapa]

The South legally withdrew from the Union, state by state, thereby once again becoming seperate sovereign bodies before forming their own government.

The forming of confederacies and alliances is explicitly forbidden in the Constitution. And the people, acting through special conventions called for the purposed agreed that the Constitution would be the supreme law of the land.

Your position is fantasy.

Walt

[stainlessbanner]

FL was an independent republic before joing the confederacy. It withdrew from the Union and was on it's own for a while.

[Lazamataz]

Slavery was "the consensual cornerstone of American government"? Whatever you want to believe, Confederate glorifier-breath.

I have glorifier-breath. When I breathe on wilting flowers, they bloom again. HhhhhAAAAAAAAAhhhhhhhhhhhhhh........

[billbears]

Bump to that!!

[William Terrell]

Whatever you want to say about slavery, there are certain facts you can't argue with. One of the formeost facts is that America was consolidated under a central government who had sovereignty over the states.

This was the second stage in suborning America. The first was moving from a confederation to a federation and the third was the setting in place of social institutions presided over by the newly empowered central government. The fourth was locking these social institutions into law and custom.

We are in the fifth stage now, the federal government finally moving into the full use of actual powers that were only potential after the war between the states, and have been slowly, carefully implimented over the decades.

But it all started with Lincoln. If he had been stopped the federalization step would have been minimal. Slavery? The feds were not concerned with slavery; they were concerned with maximizing power over all the people. The slavery issue was just to get enough useful idiots on board.

I take it that you agree with and support the expanded federal power creep. You would have to if you supported Lincoln's war and goals. It's interesting to note that your thoughts are still conditioned by the slavery dogma.

Certainly slavery was bad, but was a doomed institution. The South was already moving toward mechanical farming implimentation. The war was hurried along and pressured. If not slavery could not have been used in the way it was: to entice fools to enter on a path to tyranny.

Evidently, the fools today still buy it.

[ravinson]

We are in the fifth stage now, the federal government finally moving into the full use of actual powers that were only potential after the war between the states, and have been slowly, carefully implimented over the decades. But it all started with Lincoln.

Nonsense. Read Tocqueville's "Democracy in America". He predicted twenty years before Lincoln set foot in the White House that majoritarian tyranny would result in an ever-expanding federal government:

“After having thus successfully taken each member of its community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arms around the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

The federal government under Lincoln actually expanded very little compared to any 20th Century president (and many 19th Cnetury ones). In fact, one of the main counterforces to big government in the late 1800's was Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field, a Lincoln appointee, who among other things declared the federal income tax law of 1894 unconstitutional, expressing a fear of "a war of the poor against the rich".

Take a look at a chart of the growth of federal spending and you'll see that it was relatively slowly but steadily growing until the 1900's, when it took off like a rocket into the stratosphere. Lincoln had nothing to do with that.

To the extent that Lincoln did (like most Presidents) expand the federal role, he only did so in response to a determined effort by the Confederates to preserve slavery (which they apparently didn't know was dying in you look at their declarations of secession). If you want to blame any Civil War era political figure for an expansion of the federal government, blame Jefferson Davis and his followers, who gave the federal government the best excuse it ever had to expand its power. The Confederates proved quite effectively that it wasn't only Washington politicians who were tyrannical.

The feds were not concerned with slavery...

Nevertheless, slavery was snuffed out as a direct result of the Civil War and Lincoln's leadership.

I take it that you agree with and support the expanded federal power creep.

No, I just see no point in glorifying a group of people who so vividly demonstrated that individual states can be just as tyrannical as the feds.