Posted on 02/06/2003 1:37:27 PM PST by clintonbaiter
Marc Morano of CNSNews has reported that tours of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. aren't what they used to be. I can remember my first visit to D.C. way back when and my parents telling me about the Lincoln Memorial, and walking up the huge steps, and seeing the great man seated and looking majestic. I can even remember seeing his words etched in the stone all around me as I stood at his feet. It was striking, it was awe-inspiring.
I thought I had learned a good deal about Lincoln in school and felt like I knew him. I guess I was wrong.
Now, according to the Discovery Channel, Abraham Lincoln, Republican and the 16th President of the United States, was in reality a liberal Democrat. Moreover, not just any liberal Democrat. According to the folks at Discovery Channel, Abe Lincoln was slightly to the left of the late Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone......
(Excerpt) Read more at iconoclast.ca ...
Of course I prefer freedom for blacks over slavery for them. That you think that blacks would've been better off as slaves rather than free proves that I was exactly right about you and you have no concept of what freedom is.
BTW, more black women were raped by Union troops during and after the war than had ever been accosted by Southern whites before it. That is a simple fact of history, just like Lincoln's race prejudice.
Bwahaha! Like you have the exact number of time over 400 years that the master and his family took advantage of their situation with their female slaves. What'd they do, report to their local county clerk every time this occured so that an exact record could be kept? You're nuts. Another crazy made-up story from a neo-Confederate, but that's nothing new, is it?
Oops, should be 61. That's even more time that's being ignored.
It is a well known fact that Union troops brutalized slave women. Many union soldiers wrote about it, and many more Southerners wrote of it as well. Many union field officers didn't really consider it criminal activity when their troops victimized negroes. Their commanders at headquarters frowned on the behavior of course, but most didn't really do anything to stop it other than to criticise the fact of it's happening. Here are a few examples from the Official Records describing such occurrences:
...When there is added to this the irregularities of the soldiery--such as taking poultry, pigs, milk, butter, preserves, potatoes, horses, and in fact everything they want; entering and searching houses, and stealing in many cases; committing rapes on the negroes and such like things--the effect has been to make a great many Union men inveterate enemies, and if these things continue much longer, our cause is ruined...
John T.K Hayward, Union Agent to Simon Cameron (O.R. - Series 1, Vol 3, p.459)
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...Not only is property taken without vouchers, as required by law and my repeated orders, but property is wantonly destroyed, negro women are debauched, and ladies insulted...
General Buell, USA (O.R. - Series 1, Vol 16, Part 2, p.319)
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...A part of this brigade went to the plantation of the above-named Malone and quartered in the negro huts for weeks, debauching the females...Several soldiers came to the house of Mrs. Charlotte Hine and committed rape on the person of a colored girl and then entered the house and plundered it...
(O.R. Series 1, Vol 16, Part 2, p.275)
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...Houses were entered and all in them destroyed in the most wanton manner. Ladies were frightened into delivering their jewels and valuables into the hands of the soldiers by threats of violence toward their husbands. Negro women were ravished in the presence of white women and children...
WILLIAM DWIGHT, JR., Brigadier-General, USA (O.R. - Series 1, Vol 15, p. 373)
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...I found the prejudice of color and race here in full force, and the general feeling of the army of occupation was unfriendly to the blacks. It was manifested in various forms of personal insult and abuse, in depredations on their plantations, stealing and destroying their crops and domestic animals, and robbing them of their money. The women were held as the legitimate prey of lust...
Brigadier General Saxton, USA (O.R. Series 3, Vol 5, p.1028-29)
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I feel surprised, after the precautions that have been taken by yourself and officers, to find that many depredations have been committed near this place, and certain things done that would disgrace us even in the enemy's country, e.g., the robbing of some negroes and abusing their women.
General Howard, USA (O.R. Series 1, Vol 47 Part 2, p.33)
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In the library at the University of South Carolina are many diaries and letters filled with reports of how the occupying union troops treated the slave women. Here is just one exerpt, as it typifies what happened at many plantations:
"...in one instance, a servant saving her young mistress by taking her place & another servant's death being caused by the brutality in her advanced pregnancy. I told Liddy (her servant) of this and she says that few knows what had taken place at Dr. Milling's plantation, because the negroes were so ashamed they could not bear to tell. The wretches (union troops) staid there a week & gave themselves loose rein in the most indecent manner without the men daring to interfere to save their wives..."
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The behavior of union troops toward black slave women is a well documented fact of history, one documented by both sides. Topics of this nature are often avoided by modern historians for obvious reasons. To Southerners, both black and white, these things were well known. Ask older black people born and raised in the South about it, and they will probably remember stories of it from their own families. The feelings of one union soldier describe it best:
"While on picket guard I witnessed misdeeds that made me ashamed of America...for example about five miles from the fort about 8-10 soldiers from the New York 47th Regiment chased some negroe women but they escaped, so they took a negro girl about 7-9 years old, and raped her." - John Bessemer, November 17, 1862.
I think some on here would deny the possibility that a country could end slavery on its own. LOL - They're probably emailing Jaffa and McPherson right now wanting to know why they didn't write about ol' Abe's ghost "liberating" Cuba, which MUST have happened since they ended slavery.
Cause the thing didn't pass until a day or two before the inauguration. He can't exactly say "I support the ratification of that constitutional amendment that just passed" when it is not known yet if it will pass. When it did pass though, he added it to the speech and endorsed the thing's ratification.
and with the notation that he had not seen the amendment that was passed.
Henry Adams documented that Lincoln personally lobbied for the thing in the week before his inauguration. That lobbying was confirmed in the New York Tribune the week before his inauguration. Seward also notified him of the amendment's contents back on December 26th of the previous year. He is known to have met with the House sponsor of the bill, Thomas Corwin, before it passed to discuss it. And, perhaps most telling of all, he paraphrased the thing in his speech. In other words, The Lincoln was fibbing when he claimed he had not seen it on March 4th.
Why do his communications with Duff Green in late December 1860 say that he is not in favor of amending the Constitution?
Because Duff Green approached him as an agent of the Buchanan administration and The Lincoln was averse to their activities. He had plans of his own instead. That much is documented in practically every substantial history of the period and in the correspondence to and from him with his allies in congress (a group that roughly included Trumbull, Seward, and Hamlin)
Lincoln entered office opposed to slavery but without any mandate, as he saw it, to do away with it.
So instead he pushed a constitutional amendment to protect it?
That is a long way from actively taking steps to protect it.
Yet that is exactly what he did with his amendment.
LOL - Sorry I missed that little gem. Wlat was the biggest liar around until you showed up. He constantly lies about what documents and court cases say. It's a standard tactic of his. Check his sources. When he says a letter "proves" this or that, go to the source and see. When he says a court case "proves" this or that, go to the source and see. Most of the time he's wrong, completely wrong, and the documents he quotes often prove the opposite of what he claims, or at best don't even apply at all.
LOL - Your denial of that word in the quote is simply a ridiculous ruse, because no one but you claims it was in the quote. GOP used the word himself in descriptive discourse in a followup, and your irrational mind fixated on that, and substituted it for the actual quote. A perfect example of your irrational thought processes.
Your false accusations against me of drug use and Marx support is further evidence that neo-Confederates are false accusors and will just make up crazy things to fit their agenda and therefore their accustions against Lincoln should be taken with a grain of salt.
I only suggested drug use to be kind and offer a public excuse for your irrational behavior that would not entail some sort of insanity on your part. As to the Marx support, if you don't want people thinking you're a Marxist, don't engage in apologetics on Karl's behalf. A grain of salt is good to take with everything if you think about it. Unless you're on a salt-free diet that is. BTW, You're false accusations against me of racism and slavery loving is further evidence that neo-unionists are false accusers and will just make up crazy things to fit their agenda and therefore their excuses for Lincoln should be taken with a grain of salt - LOL.
Wow, so do I (and probably everyone else too).
Things weren't easy for a lot of people through the 19th and 20th centuries.
Mostly a result of the disaster in race relations caused by the way 'reconstruction' was carried out. If it had not happened that way, just think how much less suffering there would have been over those many decades.
The fact that you think blacks would've been better off as slaves proves that you have no real sense of what freedom is and that I never mischaracterized you at all.
LOL - Your irrational thought processes have yet again led you to a false conclusion about my beliefs that allows your deranged mind to desperately cling to it's manufactured reality. I read they have a number of new medications that might help someone with your "cognitive disabilities". You should enquire with your physician regarding possible treatment.
That's because the media dishonestly pushes an economically fraudulent ulterior motive of big government and taxes. Kennedy's action, by the way, was based on a precedent by Calvin Coolidge about 35 years before him.
Those opposed were simply trying to find any reason to oppose them
And you know this how? I ask because absolutely no reason exists in the record of those speeches themselves to indicate anything of the sort. Then again, I suppose your statement comes from the same mind reading capabilities that allowed you to discover those bible code rantings that identify America as the "chosen country" as well.
because slavery got them behind industrially.
To the contrary. Capitalism got them ahead agriculturally because that is where they had comparative advantages. It would have been STUPID of them to industrialize in markets where they were comparatively disadvantaged. We've been over this before, indicating to me that you have no interest in understanding the economics of the time. Only a habitually dishonest individual would behave in the manner you do. How do you propose the government be financed in the 1800s since there was no income tax?
Low, restrained revenue tariffs not unlike the 1857 one.
Ha! Boloney! You think it's better to have a one-dimensional economy?!
To the contrary. An economy need not be exclusively one-dimensional, but the law of comparative advantages dictates that in order to achieve the most, it should shift its production over to that area in which it has the comparative advantage. For the south, that meant agriculture.
Looks like it would've been. LOL They lost the war partly because of less industrialization.
A major reason for the war coming about was that the south was hurt by a redistributive economic policy designed to enrich the industrialists. To combat the south's dissent, those industrialists invaded, on which grounds you irrationally conclude the south's "error" to have been proven since that invasion eventually worked. Such reasoning is circular and therefore irrational.
You are wrong. The South has indeed expanded industrially
In its own respective sectors it certainly has. That is because markets, such as oil refining, arose and because laws, such as right to work, attracted companies.
and is now competing effectively economically with the North.
In financial ability, they were competing effectively with the North in 1860. The south made 75% of the entire nation's exports during that period. It was a different kind of economic activity than the north's, but it financially matched and in some cases surpassed anything the north had, and all that despite the south's lower population. If you doubt me, go make your case that an economy that is outperforming another by 3 to 1 in exports cannot compete with that other economy. Just don't whine to me when they laugh at you and call you an idiot.
You are dead wrong.
To the contrary. Capitalism got them ahead agriculturally because that is where they had comparative advantages. It would have been STUPID of them to industrialize in markets where they were comparatively disadvantaged. We've been over this before, indicating to me that you have no interest in understanding the economics of the time. Only a habitually dishonest individual would behave in the manner you do.
Every region with a large population needs a way to move merchandise. Whether ports, railroads, or whatever. Find landlocked regions with large populations and you'll see a form of shipping.
But not export-oriented deep sea ports.
In New Orleans, there is water so their best form of shipping is ports. In Denver, there is no water so their best form of shipping is rail and trucking.
Exactly, and you are proving my point precisely. That market type X works for one region does not mean it works for all others, be it ports and railroads or agriculture and manufacturing.
Whether a person works for a railroad or for a port, his purpose is the same.
You've just proven my point even further. When a person operates a farm or a factory, is his purpose also not the same? Is it not to make money? You admit that putting a port where geography makes a railroad more effective is unwise and vice versa. Why can't you admit the same for other market activities? For the very same reasons, putting a factory where geography makes a farm more effective is also unwise.
I repeat that slavery made the South one-dimensional
Repeat it all you like and flap your arms while you are at it. The repeating will not make it so though, and the arm flapping will not give you flight. Like it or not, the south's economy was a result of market-dictated comparative advantages. Slavery was but the labor attribute - an unfortunate and immoral one - but still just the labor attribute.
Unless they kill a vital war industry and we are taken captive because of it.
Show where such an industry has ever been "killed" by dumping resulting in capture.
But once we close and sell all of our steel mills
You are not reading what I post. Lower prices from abroad adjust the world price and lead to decreased domestic production. That does not mean domestic production will disappear.
we have to depend on foreigners to refine out steel for us
Then why not buy back the domestic mills? and they may not be there in time of war.
So all the steel producers everywhere in the world are going to get together and gang up on us all at once?
Perhaps even our our main supplier of steel may be our enemy, then we're dead.
That's a non-sequitur. Nothing exists to prevent us from increasing domestic production, or from buying at a slightly higher price from another steel supplier who is not our enemy.
I know how markets work.
As evidenced by your rantings here and on FR, no. You don't.
I also know it takes steel to win wars and we better protect at least some capacity to produce it in case there is war.
Protect it from what? Why can't we simply increase that capacity if needed, as will happen anyway whenever the market demands it?
No, it's a foreign company selling below cost for a time to remove the competition from the marketplace so they can gouge us later.
How can they gouge us later if the second they quit dumping and start "gouging," the market will cause domestic steel to go back into production? To use an analogy, let us suppose that we both own gas stations across the street from each other - the only two in town, both charging about 1.50 a gallon. Now suppose I can afford to cut my prices to 75 cents a gallon, seize the entire market, and it puts you out of business since you can't sustain the losses. What do you think would happen if I then raised my prices to 5 dollars a gallon? Do you seriously think that the poor people of the town would be stuck forever having to pay me that outrageous price for gasoline? Of course not! Either you would reopen your station or somebody else, realizing there was money to be made by undercutting my price and monopoly, would come along and do the same. As soon as that happens, I'll have to cut my prices to compete and we'll both be back at 1.50 a gallon - exactly where we started. For that reason, my attempts to dump and then gouge the local gas market will have been in vain. Since there are no significant barriers to entry at home absent of the government internally blocking it by statute, nothing exists to stop the exact same thing from happening.
Yes there is. Once the steel-producing factories are sold and refitted, it takes a long time to get them back up.
Not if there's a demand for steel. When shortages come along, markets are induced to build their equipment faster. To use another analogy, consider what happens with road construction projects. Typically they progress slowly when they are expanding an existing road etc. But notice what happens when an unplanned incident occurs, such as a pillar being hit underneath a major bridge on the interstate? That pillar may have taken weeks to put there initially when little reason or purpose existed to build it at an exceptionally fast rate. But when the existing bridge is shut down because of it causing major problems in the heavy traffic that normally crosses it, they send an all night crew and make the repairs a top priority. Suddenly what once took weeks without demand to finish is done in a day or two under heavy demand.
Everyone but Britain and Israel.
So Spain, Poland, Italy, and Australia are our enemies now as well? Funny, cause I thought they were all with us. In fact, I thought the Euro count as of yesterday was 18 with us and only 3 against us.
Ezekial, Chapter 38 says that about all of them, yes, will be against us and we'll have a hard time with it.
Oh. So this is your bible code thingy. Figures. And I suppose you also buy those videos on armageddon that the lady with the big hair sells on channel 68 around 3 AM?
It takes a long time to restart a steel factory
Not if there's a heavy demand to do so. Markets adjust quickly when something is in shortage meaning there is money to be made.
Yes, every state with a large population should have a significant economy in the area of shipping
That it should, but I did not ask about economies of shipping because types of shipping vary widely just like types of manufacturing and types of agriculture. I asked if Colorado should have a seaport.
the particular field of shipping depending on that particular state's geographics, either ports, trucking, air, or rail.
Yes. It does. And so do a state's economic markets. Thank you for again proving my point.
The North has just as good farmland as the South.
As I said, go start an orange, cotton, and sugarcane farm in Minnesota if you think so. Get back to me when you've proven that you can grow as good there as you can in Florida.
Since the South stayed one-dimensional
In types of agriculture, the south was multidimensional. In exporting, it was also multidimensional. Yet just because it didn't have smelly coal refineries, you assume it was inherently "bad" or "inferior." I hate to break it to ya, but that "one-dimensional" economy outpaced the industrialized and high-population north in exports by 3 to 1.
So why didn't Illinois and Indiana just stay one-dimensional with agriculture if they could just grow wheat and corn?
Cause in certain parts of those two states, other resources existed to give them comparative advantages in other things. For the same reason, Louisiana did not just grow sugarcane. Other parts were good for cotton and cotton industries emerged in those parts respectively.
Slavery kept the South from industrializing and therefore tariffs hurt the South worse.
Your logic, aside from being factually flawed, is circular. The southern economy was superior in areas of trade because its economy maximized the advantages of trade. It is just plain silly to argue that they should have forgone that to avoid tariffs. As I noted previously, that makes as much sense as you burning the contents of your wallet and bank account so you can enjoy the benefits of welfare and food stamps.
Because Americans will be drawn to where out talents take us and where the income level takes us, and right now that's not steel production
But it will become steel production if domestic demand emerges.
Every area of great population needs an infrastructure to ship goods.
But some are better suited to certain modes than another. Just the same, every area of great population needs a way to make money and goods to produce. But some areas are better suited to certain types of goods than others.
So as long as we have uranium, we don't have to have tanks, planes, artillary, etc.?
Well, I suppose a few pounds of our uranium can make their entire steel industry into a glowing green wasteland for years.
Boloney.
Call it what you like, it is still a matter of economic fact.
You're trying to claim that tariffs are meant to transfer wealth to business owners.
PROTECTIVE tariffs are.
That's not true, protective tariffs are meant to protect an industry from foreign competition
And exactly what do you think that means? To protect it means to pass a law that prevents any domestic competition from competing with that industry. When this is done, the home market shifts entirely to the protected industry at a higher price than before. That protected industry accordingly recieves reciepts it would not have previously - they are redistributed to it.
You sound like a liberal with your class warfare crap.
Class warfare? Where? The only liberal notions in this debate are coming straight from you. Your mercantilist rants in defense of protection sound like something straight out of the AFL-CIO playbook. Are they?
We also know that lower rates help the economy, but most of our population thinks that higher taxes are better.
The polls don't show so, and in fact the only people who do "think" that are the democrats and the media. But you and I both know they are perpetrating a fraud when they say so in order that they may achieve their leftist political agenda of tax and spend.
An economic downturn in the late 1850s cut revenue to the government. Many thought that the best way to raise revenue was to raise tariffs.
And had they done it for revenue purposes, they would have been correct. But they did not do that. They enacted a protectionist tariff for explicitly protectionist reasons, not revenue ones. Lincoln himself said so.
You're trying to say that the government deliberately raised rates to cut revenue to the government and to worsen the economy. Why would they deliberately do that?
Because they thought they could get away with it by shifting the economic harm they did onto the south while reaping the redistributionist benefits of the tariff for themselves. Why do you think the leftists propose tax hikes right now even though they are bad for the economy as a whole? They do it because they think they can make somebody else pay for it (the middle class and upper class) while reaping the "benefits" (increased government spending) for themselves.
Between 1790 and 1865+, they went up and down.
You are intentionally padding the mean. That is a dishonest and deceptive statistical tactic.
You are just being argumentive.
No. I am calling you on a dishonest statistical tactic. You are padding the mean.
There is 75 years between 1790 and 1865. You want to look at 14 years of that and ignore the other 56.
No. I want to look at an accurate portrayal of those 14 years. In order to obscure that, you arbitrarily set boundary years prior to that to provide you with 56 years of padding on your mean. If one were to look at 30 years of tariff policy, for example, and attempt to describe it, that must be done accurately.
Suppose for this example that the tariff alternated up and down for the first 15 of those 30 years. Then suppose that the second 15 were consistently low. If you took the mean, it would suggest that the tariff alternated up and down once every 2 years. Surely you can see how that is a deceptive portrayal though, can you not? You should be able to because it is exactly what you are doing.
I've never denied that.
Consider this text from the SC secession ordinance:
"We the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, that the ordinance adopted by us in convention on the 23rd day of May, in the year of our lord, 1788, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and also all Acts and parts of Acts of the General Assembly of the State ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed; and that the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states, under the name of the United States, is hereby dissolved."
In reply:
"Conscious that this document bore upon its face the plain contradiction of their pretended authority, and its own palpable nullity both in techincal form and essential principle, the convention undertook to give it strength and plausibility by an elaborate Declaration of Causes, adopted a few days later (December 24th)-- a sort of half-parody of Jefferson's masterpiece. It could of course, quote no direct warrant from the Constitution for secession, but sought to deduce one, by implication, from the language of the Declaration of Independence and the Xth amendment. It reasserts the absurd paradox of State supremacy-persistantly miscaled "State Rights" --which reverses the natural order of governmental existance ; considers a State superior to the Union; makes a part greater than the whole; turns the pyramid of authority upon its apex; plants the tree of liberty with its branches in the ground and its roots in the air.
The fallacy has been has been a hundred times analysed, exposed, and refuted; but the cheap dogmatism of demagougues and the automatic machinery of faction perpetually conjures it up anew to astonish the sucklings and terrify the dotards of politiics. The notable point in the Declaration of Causes is, that its complaint over grievances past and present is against certain states, and for these remedy was of course logically barred by its own theory of state supremacy. On the other hand, all its allegations against the Union are concerning dangers to come, before which admission the moral justification of disunion falls to the ground, In rejecting the rememdy of future elections for future wrongs, the conspiracy discarded the entire theory of republican government.
One might have thought that this might have exhausted their counterfeit philosophy--but not yet. Greatly as they groaned at unfriendly state laws--seriously as they pretended to fear damage or spoilation under future federal statutes, the burden of their anger rose at the sentient and belief of the North. "All hope of remedy," says the manifesto, "is rendered vain by the fact that the public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanctions of a more erroneous religious belief."
This is language one might expect from the Pope of Rome; but that an American convention should denounce the liberty of opinion, is not merely to recede from Jefferson, to Louis XIV; it is flying from the town-meeting to the Inquisition."
"With all their affectation of legality, formality, and present justification, some f the members were honest enough to acknowledge the true character of the event as the culmination of a chronic conspiracy, not a spontaneous revolution.
"The secession of South Carolina," said one of the chief actors, "is not an event of a day. It is not anything produced by Mr. Lincoln's election, or by the non-execution of the Fugitive Slave Law. It is a matter which has been gathering head for thirty years." This with many similar avowals, crowns and completes the otherwise abundant proof that the revolt was not only aganist right, but that it was without cause."
--John G. Nicolay, 1881
The south had no call of grievance that would warrant revolution. That is the rub for your position.
Oh, and the erroneous religious belief was that slavery was not ordained in the Bible.
Walt
I believe that it was the nature of the southern acts that was wrong. I don't think that the Union should be perpetual if some states want out. But the acts of secession were unilateral and that is where the south went wrong. Any act of secession must be done with the approval of at least a majority of the parties affected. Instead of a negotiated end to the Union, the southern states just walked away from it, abrogating responsiblity for their share of the the obligations incurred while part of the country. They compounded the problem by siezing all public property that they could, and shooting at any that the government insisted on holding on to. That was the cause of the death and destruction resulting from the rebellion and Lincoln was not responsible for that.
Lincoln did no more to enlarge the power of the central government than Andrew Jackson did, and didn't come close to Presidents like Teddy Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson or FDR. It is merely the fact that Lincoln did not agree with the southern interpretation of the Constitution that causes you to label him a 'big government' president. Lincoln's alleged Constitutional infractions pale by comparison to those committed by the Davis government. If you want a prime example of a big government, constitution trashing, power grabbing regime with socialistic policies then look no further to Richmond. Imagine what the confederate government would look like today with a beginning like that.
But in the final draft he could have said something to the effect that he supported the amendment just passed and worked for its passage. Instead he refers to it as the amendment that he hadn't had a chance to even see yet. I think you explanation is a bit weak.
Seward also notified him of the amendment's contents back on December 26th of the previous year.
Seward informed Lincoln of the compromise proposals he made which were approved by the Committee of 13 which included wording that would later become the amendment. Lincoln did not reply to the message or give his opinion of it in writing, at least that I have found.
He is known to have met with the House sponsor of the bill, Thomas Corwin, before it passed to discuss it.
Corwin carried on an extensive correspondence with Lincoln between the election and the inaugural, but in none of the dozen or so letters he sent to Lincoln was the amendment mentioned. And there is no evidence that Lincoln ever replied to Corwin. If Lincoln was so deep in the plotting then don't you think the subject would have come up at least once?
So instead he pushed a constitutional amendment to protect it?
Others pushed it. Lincoln had no power to prevent it, and did nothing to push ratification once it left Congress.
If memory serves, this was the only country that fought a war to end slavery [ALLEGEDLY, since Lincoln stated otherwise].
He could have and probably should have admitted his role, but The Lincoln was a habitual liar and for reasons known only to him chose to fib on that ocassion.
Seward informed Lincoln of the compromise proposals he made which were approved by the Committee of 13 which included wording that would later become the amendment.
Yes. And he specifically stated in his letter that he proposed the suggestions conveyed to him by Thurlow Weed in a message directly from Lincoln.
Lincoln did not reply to the message or give his opinion of it in writing, at least that I have found.
He replied to Seward on
Corwin carried on an extensive correspondence with Lincoln between the election and the inaugural, but in none of the dozen or so letters he sent to Lincoln was the amendment mentioned. And there is no evidence that Lincoln ever replied to Corwin.
Yet the newspapers reported the two met in late February to discuss the amendment.
If Lincoln was so deep in the plotting then don't you think the subject would have come up at least once?
It did - in an in person meeting.
Others pushed it. Lincoln had no power to prevent it
The main eyewitness account of the amendment says the exact opposite:
"On the very morning of the 4th of March the Senate passed the Amendment to the Constitution by exactly the necessary vote; and even then it was said in Washington that some careful manipulation, as well as the direct influence of the new President, was needed before this measure, so utterly innocent and unobjectionable, could be passed" - Henry Adams, The Great Secession Winter of 1860-61, March 1861
Nonsense. President-elect Lincoln had given Weed a list of resolutions and suggested that Seward introduce them in the Senate. The resolutions are outlined in the Collected Works, Volume IV, Page 156-57 and read as follows:
Resolved: That the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution ought to be enforced by a law of Congress, with efficient provisions for that object,not obliging private persons to assist in it's execution, but punishing all who resist it, and with the usual safeguards to liberty, securing free men against being surrendered as slaves ---
That all state laws, if there be such, really, or apparantly, in conflict with such law of Congress, ought to be repealed; and no opposition to the execution of such law of Congress ought to be made---
That the Federal Union must be preserved."
Nowhere was there any suggestion that a constitutional amendment of any sort, much less one supporting slavery, be proposed nor did he support the idea.
He replied to Seward on...
I stand corrected. But in the letter President-elect Lincoln said that he opposed totally any compromise which allowed expansion of slavery into the territories. President-elect Lincoln went on to say, "As to fugitive slaves, District of Columbia, slave trade among the slave states, and whatever springs of necessity from the fact that the institution is among us, I care but little..." That doesn't sound like a man up to his armpits in planning the Constitutional amendment to me.
Yet the newspapers reported the two met in late February to discuss the amendment.
But there is no documentary evidence of the meeting and no real indication that Lincoln was involved in planning the Amendment.
"On the very morning of the 4th of March the Senate passed the Amendment to the Constitution by exactly the necessary vote; and even then it was said in Washington that some careful manipulation, as well as the direct influence of the new President, was needed before this measure, so utterly innocent and unobjectionable, could be passed"
Eyewitness? It looks like Mr. Adams is reporting what he heard and not what he witnessed. Seward was a lose cannon, a man convinced that he should be president and not Lincoln. It would be surprising if he took orders from, and depended upon the approval of the man he held in low esteem.
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