James McPherson
This book must be taken seriously. Bennett gets some things right. ... But Bennett gets more wrong than he gets right. The book suffers from crucial flaws. Least important are the factual errors, for there are not many.
McPherson abjectly admits he could not find factual errors, but buries his admission in partisan puke.
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Edward Steers, Jr.
Bennett begins his book with the notion that Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave and that Lincoln deliberately exempted slaves in those areas under Union control to keep slavery alive as long as possible. ... Bennett is correct in concluding that the Emancipation Proclamation freed few if any slaves.
As Steers must admit Bennett is correct, it is not just a notion.
Mr. Bennett's revisionist approach to history is not new.
The Trial, Edited by Edward Steers, Jr., page xxv, Thomas Reed Turner:
It is only in the last twenty years that historians have begun a re-examination of the events of the Lincoln assassination, once again reconsidering issues such as the fairness of the military trial. In taking this new look, revision of previously held views has begun to emerge. In the first place, the military court was not convened with the certainty that it would convict."
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Mr. Bennett's book is not without factual content and many of his quotations drawn from Lincoln are accurate.
A typical example of the putrescent slop served up by Mr. Steers. Mr. Steers notes that Mr. Bennett's work is not without factual content. At nearly 700 pages, it is loaded with factual content, and neither Mr. McPherson nor Mr. Steers were able to cite errors of factual content.
"Many" of his quotations drawn from Lincoln are accurate. There are many, many quotes of Lincoln, with a source provided, many attributed to the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Steers fails to show any quote as being inaccurate. Accordingly, "many" are accurate, as in about 100%.
The Emancipation Proclamation was NOT an executive order or a legislative act. It was a military order whose sole LEGAL justification was under the War Powers granted the President in the Constitution. The reason for this is because the President had no authority to issue such an order except as a military decree to injure the military capability of the Confederacy. Both Bennett and Seward sound as if Abraham Lincoln held the power to abolish slavery at any time he chose.
Where does the President derive the authority to issue such and order to injure the military capability of the Confederacy? Is he imbued with some extra-Constitutional power as commander-in-chief?
If the Confederate states were going to rejoin the Union, they would now do so without slavery.
Steers said it. It must be true.
On July 17, 1862, Congress passed the Confiscation Act that authorized confiscating the property of anyone supporting the rebellion, but only after being given 60 days' notice, allowing sufficient time for them to return voluntarily to the Union. Failing a return, their property was to be confiscated -- but ONLY, and this is SO important -- by the Federal courts.
If Mr. Steers says so, and he does, then it must be true. Once upon a time, the Union confiscated property -- but ONLY, and this is SO important -- with the approval of a Federal court in each individual instance. And they all lived happily ever after.
While it is true that Lincoln supported colonization and even asked Congress to appropriate funds for colonizing Blacks, his support for colonization ended abruptly on January 1, 1863, with the issuance of his final Emancipation Proclamation.
Another putrescent pantsload.
Butler's Book, Benjamin F. Butler, 1892, pp. 903-8
April 11, 1865
"But what shall we do with the negroes after they are free? I can hardly believe that the South and North can live in peace, unless we can get rid of the negroes. Certainly they cannot if we don't get rid of the negroes whom we have armed and disciplined and who have fought with us, to the amount, I believe, of some one hundred and fifty thousand men. I believe that it would be better to export them all to some fertile country with a good climate, which they could have to themselves.
Lincoln's colonization policy, in my opinion, was not aimed at Blacks as most people believe -- it was aimed at whites!
The man is as certifiably demented as Mary Lincoln and Boston Corbett. To see him try to sell that pile of revisionist slop to a Black audience would be priceless. As it is, one does not find biographies praising Lincoln written by Black historians.
Frederick Douglass said: "Mr. Lincoln takes care in urging his colonization scheme to furnish a weapon to all the ignorant and base, who need only the countenance of men in authority to commit all kinds of violence and outrage upon the colored people of the country." (FD 3:267)
Lincoln denied that slavery "could be at once eradicated, without producing a greater evil, even to the casue of human liberty itself" (CW 2:130, Lincoln's italics).
And what was this envisioned greater evil to the cause of human liberty than slavery?
Abe was not anti-slavery, he was anti-Black. He did not seek to rid the continent of slavery, he sought to rid the continent of Blacks. Indeed, Abe not only sought to rid the continent of Black people, but any non-white color of the rainbow as well.
Abe. Unlike Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Abe dreamed of an endless vista of White America. There would be no n-----s, as Lincoln chose to call them without any elision. There would be no Mexican mongrels, as he called them. Nor would we have any of those American Indian savages either. No, Abe was a true White Supremecist.
In Peoria he said he wanted the territories "should be the happy home of teeming millions of free, white, prosperous people, and no slave among them" (CW 2:249)
He said it again. The territories "should be kept open for the homes of free white people" (CW 2:363)
And again. "We want them [the territories] for the homes of free white people." (CW 3:311)
And again. In defense his interest in the territories, Abe the pimp said to Douglas, "I think we have some interest. I think that as white men we have. Doe we not wish for an outlet for our surplus population, if I may so express myself?" (CW 3:311)
Abe said: If Northerners permitted slavery to spread to the territores, "Negro equality will be abundant, as every White laborer will have occasion to regret when he is elbowed from his plow or his anvil by slave n-----s" (CW 3:378). There goes Abe with that N-word again.
No sir. We can't be having any of that Negro equality, now can we? The White laborer should never permit such a thing. And Abe had the final solution in hand.
Abe spelled it out: "Is it not rather our duty to make labor more respectable by preventing all black competition, especially in the territories?" (CW 3:79)
Abe believed it was our duty. The duty of the white man. The duty to make labor more respectable. It was the sacred obligation of the superior White race, so ordained by god and Abraham, one and the same, to prevent ALL black competition.
Abe was not just for keeping slaves out of the territories, he was for keeping out or removing all non-whites from the territories. Abe had a White Dream. It did not include Blacks. The rest of the rainbow was excluded as well.