Replies

Nothing President Lincoln did was beyond the powers of the president as described in the Constitution.

#####

Maybe you can tell us where the Constitution gives the president the right to take possession of newspapers by military force and arrest the editors, writers, and publishers for printing anti-war editorials. Or perhaps you can tell us where the constitution gives the president the right to send the army into a state to assure that the citizens vote the way he wants them to.

Lincoln’s order to General John Dix on May 18, 1864 ordered him to use military force to take possession of the New York World and the Journal of Commerce and arrest the editors, publishers, and proprietors. He also sent the army into Maryland to vote and arrest anyone who voted for session. The troops watched each ballot being marked in Baltimore and arrested anyone who voted for session.

Dr. DiLorenzo is not the first historian to note that Lincoln was a dictator. Clinton Rossiter called him a dictator, as did James Ford Rhodes and James G. Randall. None of these writers can be called Lincoln haters. They are all Lincoln apologists, but they still agree that Lincoln was a dictator.

Lincoln destroyed the union of states and created an empire. Prior to the War Between the States there was no dictionary that defined a state as a political subdivision subjugated to the rule of another political entity. A state was a sovereign country.

Prior to the subjugation of the States by Lincoln, when the states were acting together as the United States, people would say “the United States ARE doing thus and so”, after the destruction of the union people said “the United States IS doing thus and so.” The first being plural and the second being singular.

The union was founded much as we are seeing the formation of the European Union today. As with the formation of our union, the European states are joining a union not creating a country. In fact, New York and Virginia explicitly added the right to secede to their ratification documents when the union was formed. There never would have been a union if the states didn’t think they could pull out when their interests demanded it.

The facts differ from the spin and the politically correct version of history advanced by the elite media and leftist teachers unions. But the facts don’t change. Lincoln was a despot, a dictator, destroyed the union, and subjugated the states and the peop

Maybe you can tell us where the Constitution gives the president the right to take possession of newspapers by military force and arrest the editors, writers, and publishers for printing anti-war editorials.

The Supreme Court in 1862 ruled that the entire executive power rests in the president.

The right to free speech does not include calling for the overthrow of the lawful government. If you look at the record, you'll see that Lincoln erred on the cautious side, if anything.

Lincoln himself addressed your rant in some detail in an 1864 letter:

"It was in the oath I took, that I would, to the utmost of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I have publically declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did understand however that my oath to preserve the constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving by every indispensible means, that government--that nation--of which that constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation, and preserve the constitution? By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensible to to the preservation of the of the Constitution, through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it..."

4/4/64

You know it's old J. Davis who whacked the states rights guys as thoroughly as Lincoln ever did. Oh yes.

Consider this text:

"Conscription dramatized a fundamental paradox in the Confederate war effort: the need for Hamiltonian means to achieve Jeffersonian ends. Pure Jeffersonians could not accept this. The most outspoken of them, [Governor] Joseph Brown of Georgia, denounced the draft as a "dangerous usurpation by Congress of the reserved rights of the states...at war with all the principles for which Georgia entered into the revolution." In reply Jefferson Davis donned the mantle of Hamilton. The Confederate Constitution, he pointed out to Brown, gave Congress the power "to raise and support armies" and to "provide for the common defense." It also contained another clause (likewise copied from the U.S. Constitution) empowering Congress to make all laws "necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers."

Brown had denied the constitutionality of conscription because the Constitution did not specifically authorize it. This was good Jeffersonian doctrine, sanctified by generations of southern strict constructionists. But in Hamiltonian language, Davis insisted that the "necessary and proper" clause legitimized conscription. No one could doubt the necessity "when our very existence is threatened by armies vastly superior in numbers." Therefore "the true and only test is to enquire whether the law is intended and calculated to carry out the object...if the answer be in the affirmative, the law is constitutional."

--Battle Cry of Freedom, James McPherson P.433

Ouch, ouch, ouch!

Yes, old Jefferson Davis himself invoked the powers of Congress to coerce the states! What a hoot! You know, Old JD might as well have had a copy of the 1819 Supreme Court decision on McCullough v. Maryland in his back pocket. He seems to have lost it after the war:

Mister Chief Justice Marshall gave the opinion of the Court:

"Among the enumerated powers, we do not find that of establishing a bank or of creating a corporation. But there is no phrase in the instrument which, like the articles of confederation, excludes incidental or implied powers; and which requires that everything granted shall be expressly and minutely described. Even the 10th amendment, which was framed for the purpose of quieting the excessive jealousies which had been excited, omits the word "expressly," and declares that the powers "not delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the states are reserved to the states or to the people," thus leaving the question, whether the particular power which may become the subject of contest, has been delegated to the one government, or prohibited to the other, to depend on a fair reading of the whole instrument.

...The subject is the execution of those great powers on which the welfare of the nation essentially depends. It must have been the intention of those who gave these powers, to insure, their beneficial execution. This could not be done, by confining the choice of means to such narrow limits as not to leave it in the power of congress to adopt any which might be appropriate, and which were conclusive to the end."

Now, why is Jefferson Davis following precedents more rightly in Lincoln's camp?

Of course this makes old JD a lying two-faced son of a bitch, but you surely knew that.

Walt

Lincoln’s order to General John Dix on May 18, 1864 ordered him to use military force to take possession of the New York World and the Journal of Commerce and arrest the editors, publishers, and proprietors.

It didn't take long to find this. Note that it shows DiLorenzo as the charlatan he is:

The Great Civil War Gold Hoax

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/gold.html

It was May, 1864. Grant was closing in on Lee in Virginia, and Northerners were growing hopeful that the long, terrible ordeal of the Civil War would soon be over.

Then on Wednesday May 18, New Yorkers read in two of their morning papers, the New York World and the New York Journal of Commerce, that President Lincoln had issued a proclamation ordering a day of fasting and prayer on May 26 as well as the conscription of an additional 400,000 men into the Union army on account of "the situation in Virginia, the disaster at Red River, the delay at Charleston, and the general state of the country."

The implication of the proclamation was clear. Evidently the war was not going as well as had been hoped, thus raising the possibility that the conflict might drag on for years to come, putting further strains on the nation's economy and manpower. In reaction to this news, share prices on the New York Stock Exchange plummeted, while gold, considered to be a safe, inflation-proof investment, immediately rose in value.

After the initial shock of the news had worn off, people began to wonder why the proclamation had appeared in only two papers. By 11 o'clock on that Wednesday morning a large crowd of merchants, suspicious that the proclamation was not true, had gathered outside of the offices of the Journal of Commerce on the corner of Wall and Water Streets. Even Gen. McClellan, a presidential candidate and former commander of the Union troops, made his way to the Journal to see what was going on. The nervous editors of the paper insisted that the proclamation was true and offered as proof an Associated Press dispatch bearing the announcement that they had received earlier that morning.

However, it soon became clear that the proclamation was not real. Shortly after 11 a.m. the Associated Press issued a statement denying that they had sent such a dispatch, and at 12:30 p.m. a telegram was received from the State Department in Washington, signed by the Secretary of State, William H. Seward, declaring that the proclamation was "an absolute forgery." Word that the proclamation was bogus quickly spread throughout the city. Unfortunately, by that time the damage to stock prices had already been done.

As the dust settled the means by which the deception had been perpetrated became clear. The World and the Journal had received their information, as they received most of their information, via an Associated Press dispatch brought over from the local telegraph office by a courier (a young street urchin). The dispatch had arrived at 3:30 a.m., just after the night editors and proofreaders had gone home, leaving the night foreman at each paper as the only person responsible for reviewing the dispatch and deciding whether to insert it in the morning's edition. This moment between the departure of the night staff and the arrival of the day staff was, in fact, the only time during the entire day when a single person was responsible for reviewing incoming news. Whoever had mastermined the deception evidently knew this would be the case and had timed the arrival of the dispatch accordingly.

The night foremen on duty at the World and Journal read the dispatch, noted that it appeared to be a legitimate Associated Press dispatch, and ordered the few remaining compositors on duty to make room for it in the edition then being prepared. The papers often received telegrams very early in the morning from Washington, so there seemed to be no cause for suspicion in this case.

Other city papers had received similar dispatches. However, unlike the World and the Journal, their foremen had decided to double-check the information before printing it. They sent out messengers to nearby papers to determine if everyone had received similar dispatches (The World and the Journal happened to be fairly remote from the other papers). Learning that not every paper had received the dispatch, their suspicions were raised, and they decided not to print the proclamation until they could verify it further.

When President Lincoln learned of the false proclamation, he grew infuriated and ordered that the papers that had printed it be closed down and their proprietors arrested. Soldiers acting on his orders seized the offices of the two papers. They even seized the office of the Independent Telegraph Line, even though this business had nothing at all to do with the hoax. The ensuing furor that erupted over Lincoln's suppression of the press became one of the greatest scandals of his presidency.

In the meantime, detectives had tracked down the perpetrators of the crime. On Saturday morning, May 21, they arrested Francis A. Mallison, a reporter for the Brooklyn Eagle. Mallison quickly confessed that he had been an accomplice to the crime, but claimed that Joseph Howard, Jr., the city editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, was the real mastermind behind the scheme. The detectives then arrested Howard at his residence in Brooklyn. Howard submitted quietly and later made a full confession, whereupon he was sent to Fort Lafayette.

As a newspaper man, Howard had an intimate knowledge of the news business and was therefore in a perfect position to commit such a crime. He knew that the best way to get bogus information into a paper would be by delivering it at the moment when the night foreman briefly assumed editorial control. He also knew that any word of a delay in the war effort would cause a quick rise in the price of gold. With these two pieces of information in hand, he had hatched his plan.

Howard had forged Associated Press dispatches onto which he copied his false Presidential proclamation. On Tuesday, May 17, he then invested heavily in gold. The next morning, with Mallison's help, he sent the fake dispatches through couriers to the offices of the various city papers, and when the stock market opened later that day, Howard simply waited for the bad news to hit, sold his investment, and pocketed a handsome profit.

This was actually not the first time Howard had been guilty of deception. In 1861 he had written a false story in which he claimed that Lincoln had travelled in disguise through Baltimore wearing "a Scotch cap and long military cloak" while on his way to Washington to assume the Presidency. Howard was 35 years old when he perpetrated the gold hoax. The New York Daily Tribune described him in this way: "of medium height, has dark eyes and hair, is rather bald, is pale and slender, with regular features, and wears a mustache."

Remarkably enough, Howard ended up serving less than three months of his sentence before Lincoln ordered his release on August 22, 1864. The President was apparently moved by the appeal of Henry Ward Beecher, a friend of Howard's wealthy father, who pleaded that the young man was only guilty of "the hope of making some money."

Lincoln might also have leaned towards leniency on account of the fact that Howard's false proclamation turned out to be true. On July 18, two months after the hoax, Lincoln did issue a call for more men. Howard was only wrong about the number of men. He had estimated that 400,000 would be needed, but Lincoln, in reality, asked for 500,000.

References: Wert, Jeffrey D. "The Great Civil War Gold Hoax". American History Illustrated 1980 15(1): 20-24. Harper's Weekly. Saturday June 4, 1864. Vol. VIII. No. 388. p.365-366. New York Daily Tribune. May 19-May 26, 1864.

Walt

The union was founded much as we are seeing the formation of the European Union today. As with the formation of our union, the European states are joining a union not creating a country.

Not according to the Supreme Court decades before the ACW.

The sovereignty of the United States rests on the people, not the states.

John Jay, first Chief Justice, 1793:

"It is remarkable that in establishing it, the people exercised their own rights and their own proper sovereignty, and conscious of the plenitude of it, they declared with becoming dignity, "We the people of the United States," 'do ordain and establish this Constitution." Here we see the people acting as the sovereigns of the whole country; and in the language of sovereignty, establishing a Constitution by which it was their will, that the state governments should be bound, and to which the State Constitutions should be made to conform. Every State Constitution is a compact made by and between the citizens of a state to govern themselves in a certain manner; and the Constitution of the United States is likewise a compact made by the people of the United States to govern themselves as to general objects, in a certain manner. By this great compact however, many prerogatives were transferred to the national Government, such as those of making war and peace, contracting alliances, coining money, etc."

--Chisholm v. Georgia, 1793

Chief Justice John Marshall:

"The subject is the execution of those great powers on which the welfare of a nation essentially depends. It must have been the intention of those who gave these powers, to insure, as far as human prudence could insure, their beneficial execution. This could not be done by confining their choice of means to such narrow limits as not to leave it in the power of Congress to adopt any which might be appropriate, and which were conducive to the end...to have prescribed the means by which the government, should, in all future times, execute its powers, would have been to change, entirely, the character of the instrument, and give it the properties of a legal code...To have declared, that the best means shall not be used, but those alone, without which the power given would be nugatory...if we apply this principle of construction to any of the powers of the government, we shall find it so pernicious in its operation that we shall be compelled to discard it..."

From McCullough v. Maryland, quoted in "American Constitutional Law" A.T. Mason, et al. ed. 1983 p. 165

As to Virginia:

"The mischievous consequences of the construction contended for on the part of Virginia, are also entitled to great consideration. It would prostrate, it has been said, the government and its laws at the feet of every state in the Union. And would this not be the effect? What power of the government could be executed by its own means, in any states disposed to resist its execution by a course of legislation?...each member will possess a veto on the will of the whole...there is certainly nothing in the circumstances under which our constitution was formed; nothing in the history of the times, which justify the opinion that the confidence reposed in the states was so implicit as to leave in them and their tribunals the power of resisting or defeating, in the form of law, the legislative measures of the Union..."

ibid, p. 169-70

And James Madison: "The doctrine laid down by the law of Nations in the case of treaties is that a breach of any one article by any of the parties, frees the other parties from their engagements. In the case of a union of people under one Constitution, the nature of the pact had always been understood to exclude such an interpretation." (Remarks to the Constitutional Convention, July 23, 1787).

"That the United States form, for many, and for most important purposes, a single nation, has not yet been denied. In war, we are one people. In making peace, we are one people. In all commercial regulations, we are one and the same people. In many other respects, the American people are one; and the government which is alone capable of controlling and managing their interests in all these respects, is the government of the Union. It is their government and in that character, they have no other. America has chosen to be, in many respects, and in many purposes, a nation; and for all these purposes, her government is complete; to all these objects it is competent. The people have declared that in the exercise of all powers given for these objects, it is supreme. It can, then, in effecting these objects, legitimately control all individuals or governments within the American territory.

The constitution and laws of a state, so far as they are repugnant to the constitution and laws of of the United States are absolutely void. These states are constituent parts of the United States; they are members of one great empire--for some purposes sovereign, for some purposes subordinate."

--Chief Justice John Marshall, writing the majority opinion, Cohens v. Virginia 1821