Posted on 07/27/2003 5:08:19 PM PDT by thatdewd
Edited on 05/07/2004 6:46:56 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
"It must be admitted, truth compels me to admit...Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man. He was preeminently the white man's president, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at any time during the last years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people, to promote the welfare of the white people of his country." Frederick Douglass, noted African-American leader.
Tripe.
Yawn. As usual, your charges do not withstand intellectual scrutiny. Here is how one of the nation's most brilliant legal minds, himself an abolitionist, responded to that claim in 1867. Refute his reasoning if you dare:
"The Constitution says: "Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."
This is the only definition of treason given by the Constitution, and it is to be interpreted, like all other criminal laws, in the sense most favorable to liberty and justice. Consequently the treason here spoken of, must be held to be treason in fact, and not merely something that may have been falsely called by that name.
To determine, then, what is treason in fact, we are not to look to the codes of Kings, and Czars, and Kaisers, who maintain their power by force and fraud; who contemptuously call mankind their "subjects;" who claim to have a special license from heaven to rule on earth; who teach that it is a religious duty of mankind to obey them; who bribe a servile and corrupt priest-hood to impress these ideas upon the ignorant and superstitious; who spurn the idea that their authority is derived from, or dependent at all upon, the consent of their people; and who attempt to defame, by the false epithet of traitors, all who assert their own rights, and the rights of their fellow men, against such usurpations.
Instead of regarding this false and calumnious meaning of the word treason, we are to look at its true and legitimate meaning in our mother tongue; at its use in common life; and at what would necessarily be its true meaning in any other contracts, or articles of association, which men might voluntarily enter into with each other.
The true and legitimate meaning of the word treason, then, necessarily implies treachery, deceit, breach of faith. Without these, there can be no treason. A traitor is a betrayer --- one who practices injury, while professing friendship. Benedict Arnold was a traitor, solely because, while professing friendship for the American cause, he attempted to injure it. An open enemy, however criminal in other respects, is no traitor.
Neither does a man, who has once been my friend, become a traitor by becoming an enemy, if before doing me an injury, he gives me fair warning that he has become an enemy; and if he makes no unfair use of any advantage which my confidence, in the time of our friendship, had placed in his power.
For example, our fathers --- even if we were to admit them to have been wrong in other respects --- certainly were not traitors in fact, after the fourth of July, 1776; since on that day they gave notice to the King of Great Britain that they repudiated his authority, and should wage war against him. And they made no unfair use of any advantages which his confidence had previously placed in their power.
It cannot be denied that, in the late war, the Southern people proved themselves to be open and avowed enemies, and not treacherous friends. It cannot be denied that they gave us fair warning that they would no longer be our political associates, but would, if need were, fight for a separation. It cannot be alleged that they made any unfair use of advantages which our confidence, in the time of our friendship, had placed in their power. Therefore they were not traitors in fact: and consequently not traitors within the meaning of the Constitution.
Furthermore, men are not traitors in fact, who take up arms against the government, without having disavowed allegiance to it, provided they do it, either to resist the usurpations of the government, or to resist what they sincerely believe to be such usurpations. It is a maxim of law that there can be no crime without a criminal intent. And this maxim is as applicable to treason as to any other crime. For example, our fathers were not traitors in fact, for resisting the British Crown, before the fourth of July, 1776 --- that is, before they had thrown off allegiance to him --- provided they honestly believed that they were simply defending their rights against his usurpations. Even if they were mistaken in their law, that mistake, if an innocent one, could not make them traitors in fact.
For the same reason, the Southern people, if they sincerely believed --- as it has been extensively, if not generally, conceded, at the North, that they did --- in the so-called constitutional theory of "State Rights," did not become traitors in fact, by acting upon it; and consequently not traitors within the meaning of the Constitution."
To cite that plank, despite its undisputed controversy among southerners, as the cause of the war begs several important questions. Specifically: If those territories were the central cause of secession, then why did the southern states secede in the first place thereby voluntarily renouncing any previous claim they had to those territories? And if the GOP was truly interested in restricting slavery from the territories, why did they object so strongly to that same voluntary abandonment of any claim to them by the south? From the existence of these questions it may be inferred that other issues were at hand beyond slavery in the territories, and in fact if one looks to the historical records he may find southern objections to many other planks of the GOP platform than the territories issue.
Here is one such sample as given in the United States Senate, Feb 13, 1861 by Virginia senator and soon to be CSA secretary of state RMT Hunter: "Mr. President, what justification can there be for it? Every other abuse that I have heard of, somehow or other, is justified by the Chicago platform. If we want to take the proceeds of the public lands to pay the public debt, the Chicago platform, with its homestead bill, stands in the way. If we want to resist an appropriation of between one hundred and two hundred million dollars to three Pacific railroads, the Chicago platform requires that too. Its principles have become a sort of higher law; higher than the Constitution, higher than public justice, higher than public credit. Let everything else fail and perish so that the principles of the Chicago platform are carried out!"
You know what planks he was talking about? It wasn't the territories one. He was talking about the tariff plank and the other interventionist economic planks, all of which the south found almost universally offensive.
The Republican party never proposed removing the rights of the States. Insofar as their actions in initiating and carrying out the civil war were concerned, indeed they did. It is also a matter of mathematical fact that the financial policies sought and intended by the incoming republican administration would have delivered ruin to the southern economy while simultaneously benefitting the north.
The Southern attempt to leave the Union was a rebellion. If they had filed suit, and gained independence by legislation, or by winning a case at the Supreme Court, that would have been another matter. They did not.
If you recall the winter session of 1860-61, many attempts were made by the southern states to reach either compromise or peaceful division in the congress and by way of negotiation. Northern radicals from the Charles Sumner wing stonewalled practically every effort from southerners and moderate northerners alike. If you also recall, shortly after secession the southern states that desired to leave repeatedly sent commissioners to Washington for the purpose of meeting with Lincoln and negotiating a peaceful separation. They were even hosted by southern senators whose states had not yet seceded. Lincoln refused to meet with them while his subordinates provided them with nothing but evasion and misleading pledges that Lincoln would not do what he later did, among them attempting to reprovision Fort Sumter.
Rather, they passed various state acts, and did not care to negotiate the terms of their departure.
Not so. They passed state acts of secession as an assertion of what they believed to be their right, yet still attempted repeatedly to negotiate and secure a peaceful departure. Practically all of the southern congressmen's resignation speeches called for a peaceful separation and urged their northern counterparts to meet them for negotiation. They even offered on the floor of the united states senate to negotiate prices of acquisition by which the federal forts and properties could be purchased. Shortly after the first six states seceded they sent commissioners to Lincoln for the purpose of negotiating a peaceful separation. Lincoln refused to even meet with them.
The newer states, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, had more than the usual hipocracy, since they were created by the Federal Government, existed on land bought by all the states, or were defended by armies raised from all the states.
Wrong. Texas was no more created or bought by the federal government than the moon. It achieved its independence with an army of its own and voluntarily joined the union in 1845 by annexation treaty. The following year its borders were violated, as had habitually been the case for over a decade, by the dictator president of Mexico and, as a member of the union in full and equal standing, it was afforded the same military protection of the nation given to all members. The remainder of those states you mention existed on lands that had been purchased nearly 60 years prior and had been taxpaying contributers to that same union ever since. Seeing as the constitution affords no privileges to the original 13 states over those that joined after them, to cite this as a reason against their exercise of secession is a fraud. It further neglects to account for those states that were among the original 13 and also exercised secession.
The southern states appealed only to the sword.
False. They left pleading for a peaceful separation and repeatedly attempted to negotiate one with Lincoln by all reasonable means available to them. It was Lincoln who refused to hear it and refused at all costs to meet with them. It was Lincoln who consciously opted for a path that he knew would lead to war with the initial 7 CSA states by instigating confederate fire at Fort Sumter by sending a fleet of warships rather than seeking a dialogue with them about resolving the situation. And it was Lincoln who directly brought about that war's expansion into 6 other states after Sumter by recklessly acting against them as well rather than attempting to secure their membership in the union by civilized means.
The South may have lost militarily (only because we were deprived of vital raw materials), but I assure you, dear sir, that the heart of the South has never fallen but rather it beats on in the chests of those who adhere to its beliefs; beliefs that mirror those of our Founding Fathers.
Deo Vindice!
You mean like Liar Lincoln?
Bump for a good read.
Or did you simply come here to spew further attacks upon Jeff Davis himself without regard to the actions currently being pursued by some in Kentucky?
My personal view is that Lincoln was in fact an abolitionist, and that he proceeded on two lines while acting with the Republicans. The public line which Lincoln took, and the GOP as well, was that they opposed the extension of slavery to the Territories. The other line was the line I think he pursued from 1856 onward, of seeking the destruction of slavery itself, and of the South if need be, and ending the economic threat to freesoil agriculture that slavery represented. Southern farmers knew this competitive threat no less well than freesoilers in the Old Northwest states who opposed slavery in the Territories. Southern freeholders resented the planters and the slaves both, because the presence of slaves in the community introduced a social inequality, or rather documented it, which their egalitarian, Jacksonian character reviled in principle but couldn't do anything about politically because the law and politics were entirely in the hands of the professional and planter classes.
Northern freesoil farmers opposed slavery in the Territories (and Lincoln followed their interest) because they feared that slaveowners would preempt the best lands in the new Territories the way they had done in Texas by gaming the Spanish and Texan land-grant system. How Southern freehold farmers felt about this issue is not recorded in any discussion or treatment of the subject I've seen, but when it was time to choose sides, they stayed with their States and their neighbors.
I think the Eastern Whigs and Republicans used the slavery issue as a wedge issue to split the agrarian, anti-tariff West into North and South -- men like Simon Cameron would be an example of this group, and Seward. In this, the interests of Eastern and Western Republicans diverged somewhat. The original Abolitionists stand somewhat apart, but their agenda corresponds more closely, I think, with Lincoln's. I think Lincoln intended to emancipate, and then "repatriate" the slaves, and that he doubted the ability of the white and black communities to coexist peacefully in a single society.
Your splenetic, partisan and sectionalist vaporing does you no credit. Those people were your peers. If you don't believe that, then we can't have this discussion.
As long as "our own standards" aren't code-talk for swallowing big draughts of Hamiltonian, big-government, Northern-triumphalist Kool-Aid about Southerners as the Hateful and Hated Other.
So that's your excuse, you believe Lincoln was worse? Where is GOP 'tu quoque' capitalist when you need him.
"Finally a great party was organized for the purpose of obtaining the administration of the Government' with the avowed object of using its power for the total exclusion of the slave States from all participation in the benefits of the public domain acquired by al1 the States in common' whether by conquest or purchase; of surrounding them entirely by States in which slavery should be prohibited; of those rendering the property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless' and thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars. This party' thus organized' succeeded in the month of November last in the election of its candidate for the Presidency of the United States... the productions in the South of cotton' rice' sugar' and tobacco' for the fu11 development and continuance of which the labor of African slaves was and is indispensable.'
--Jefferson Davis
Lawrence Keitt, speaking in the South Carolina secession convention, said, "Our people have come to this on the question of slavery. I am willing, in that address to rest it upon that question. I think it is the great central point from which we are now proceeding, and I am not willing to divert the public attention from it."
From the Confederate Constitution:
Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 4: "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."
Article IV, Section 3, Paragraph 3: "The Confederate States may acquire new territory . . . In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and the territorial government."
From the Georgia Constitution of 1861:"The General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves." (This is the entire text of Article 2, Sec. VII, Paragraph 3.)
From the Alabama Constitution of 1861: "No slave in this State shall be emancipated by any act done to take effect in this State, or any other country." (This is the entire text of Article IV, Section 1 (on slavery).)
Alexander Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, referring to the Confederate government: "Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery . . . is his natural and normal condition." [Augusta, Georgia, Daily Constitutionalist, March 30, 1861.]
A North Carolina newspaper editorial: "it is abolition doctrine . . . the very doctrine which the war was commenced to put down." [North Carolina Standard, Jan. 17, 1865; cited in Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 835.]
Robert M.T. Hunter, Senator from Virginia, "What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?"
Alfred P. Aldrich, South Carolina legislator from Barnwell: "If the Republican party with its platform of principles, the main feature of which is the abolition of slavery and, therefore, the destruction of the South, carries the country at the next Presidential election, shall we remain in the Union, or form a separate Confederacy? This is the great, grave issue. It is not who shall be President, it is not which party shall rule -- it is a question of political and social existence." [Steven Channing, Crisis of Fear, pp. 141-142.]
Everyone knew the war was caused by slavery.
Walt
In answer to your question, I could not care less if you raise a statue to a constitution-trashing racist like Jefferson Davis. How's that for an opinion?
..which says not a word about the institution of slavery, which Lincoln denounced in that very speech.
Lincoln's opposition to slavery is a consistent thread in his life, notwithstanding his higher goal of preservation of the union.
Lincoln's views on race changed a good deal in the remaining seven years of his life, the result in good measure of an extended correspondence with Frederick Douglass, not to mention the courageous example set by black union soldiers in the final years of the war.
I don't buy Cunningham's DiLorenzo-esque whitewash of the Confederacy. But I am not in agreement with this PC move to remove Davis's statue from the Kentucky statehouse. For better or worse (and there is plenty of both) Davis is an important part of American and Kentucky history. Removing him will not do anything to better the plight of blacks in the state or the country.
The move (very typically) smells of racial grandstanding.
One person in the afternoon audience was determined to attend the inauguration reception that evening at the White House. Arriving at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Frederick Douglass found himself barred at the door by two policemen. When he protested, they informed him that their "directions were to admit no one of color." Douglass quickly replied that there must be some mistake, for "no such order could have emanated from President Lincoln." ...Before long, however, Douglass found himself being escorted out a window that had been set up as a temporary exit because there were so many visitors. Douglass saw the trick and asked a passing guest to tell Mr. Lincoln that he was being detained. The appeal reached the president.All of the handshaking stopped as Douglass entered the East Room. As he approached, Lincoln called out, "here comes my friend DOuglass." Douglass was certain that Lincoln's greeting was said in such a voice "that all around could hear him." Taking Douglass by the hand, the president said, "I am glad to see you. I saw you in the crowd today, listening to my inaugural address; how did you like it?"
Douglass responded, "Mr. Lincoln, I must not detain you with my poor opinion, when there are thousands waiting to shake hands with you."
"No, no, " Lincoln answered, "you must stop a little Douglass; there is no man in the country whose opinion I value more than yours. I want to know what you think of it?"
"Mr. Lincoln, that was a sacred effort," Douglass replied.
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