[LS]

I have read this, and many other slams against Lincoln. They are ridiculous. I could portray John C. Calhoun, the "voice" of the South, as an out-and-out MARXIST, because in many instances he was: he believed in the "labor theory of value," thought that eventually lower-class whites would ALSO be indentured and even slaves, and constructed his fabled "constitutional" defense out of whole cloth. He stood with Henry Clay and Daniel Webster for the centralized Bank of the United States, for tariffs (except when it hit South Carolina) and for INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS. When you compare him and Lincoln, Lincoln is a "small government guy."

Moreover, the Lincoln haters always want to get away from slavery, and will use any contortion they can to try to make the Civil War about something else. Yet isn't it interesting that the most LOGICAL AND VOCAL supporters of Southern slavery, Calhoun and Fitzhugh, were both MARXISTS. Fitzhugh out and out said that in his perfect world, whites as well as blacks would be slaves, because we are all "cannibals, cannibals all!" They HATED capitalism and free enterprise. Lincoln loved it. I've written plenty of articles with the research to prove it. He defended private corporations as an attorney; fought for business rights.

The only people with "feet of Clay" were the slaveholders who wanted a MASSIVE Southern government that confiscated property, drafted soldiers, and even considered freeing slaves (i.e., taking the very property they claimed to be fighting for) to save their butts.

[BlackElk]

The fact that you mention Fitzhugh demonstrates that, right or wrong, yours is an educated and informed opinion. I remember reading Fitzhugh as a college student decades ago before the world went nuts. I was not impressed with his arguments then and probably would not be impressed now. I find the suggestion that John Caldwell Calhoun was a Marxist to be a bit unlikely but I will give some consideration just because you cited Fitzhugh in an age when most graduating high school seniors cannot place the Civil War within fifty years of its actual dates.

May I respectfully suggest that Lincoln, in the crisis of the war, did institute a personal income tax, later found unconstitutional by Salmon P. Chase, his Treasury Secretary whom he had appointed to replace Roger B. Tawney as Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court?

I will certainly grant you that it is a dangerous business to view historical figures through the prism of our own very different times. I don't think Lincoln was ever evil. I do think that his last year in office is the basis of his reputation as Father Abraham and that, if he had lived, the South would have fared much better than it did because Lincoln was perfectly capable of restraining the Radical Republicans as Andrew Johnson obviously was not. I also believe that military reconstruction of the South (Yankee oppression) would not have occurred as was suggested by Lincoln's speech on the State House steps at Richmond on the Tuesday of assassination week.

Finally, free enterprise has its virtues but it is no God.