Lincoln: Tyrant, Hypocrite or Consumate Statesman? (Dinesh defends our 2d Greatest Prez)

thehistorynet. ^ | Feb 12, 05 | D'Souza

[x]

When I teach Civil War, I offer five probable options as to cause: Irrepressible conflict, slavery, sectionalism/nationalism, and competing economies. That said, I announce,"You have paid your money. Now take your choice. Personally, I favor irrepressible conflict as will most people who pass this course."

Wouldn't an irrepressible conflict have to be about something? Wouldn't there have to be some ground or reason why things couldn't be reconciled or repressed?

[TexConfederate1861]

No, but I approve of Lincoln's Demise, but then you know that....

And to educate you just a little: "Sic Semper Tyrannis"
(Thus be it ever to TYRANTS) is the state motto of Virginia..........

[TexConfederate1861]

Explain your meaning?

[TexConfederate1861]

My Pleasure:

Lincoln was the first President to rule by virtue of Executive Order.

Lincoln destroyed the government of the states, and replaced it with a Centralized Government, no longer subject to the states.

[cyborg]

I asked you what you mean by 'not worth it'. What would have been the alternative? Please explain.

[TexConfederate1861]

Hehehe! :)

[TexConfederate1861]

It wasn't worth it.
Slavery would have died out on it's own.

[TexConfederate1861]

The South would have seceded, slavery would have died out for economic reasons, eventually, for common defense reasons, both countries would have rejoined, stronger, more united, without hatred or bias, or sectional conflict.

(My belief anyway)

[cyborg]

One could have the same kind of argument about this country at the time of the Revolution don't you think?

[mhking]

Lincoln started this country down the road to big government, and destroyed our republic, in his attempt to "save" it. The only thing good that came from his actions, was that slaves were freed. But the price to our country was NOT worth it.

"Not worth it?"

You mean to tell me that it would have been better for the country for my forefathers to remain in bondage? And what about subsequent generations?

[NMC EXP]

So you still believe the civil war was about slavery?

[djreece]

That was the belief at the time of the Revolution -- that slavery was a dying institution. But economic forces and developments had brought about a resurgence of slavery, thus leading to the conflict.

Putting up with slavery for even one day in the United States is what was not worth it.

Slavery is still practiced in some parts of the world. If half of the United States had continued to embrace it by becoming a confederacy, there is no telling where we would be today in terms of slavery's acceptance in the civilized world. It is also likely that the North would have been economically ruined and then taken over by the South, and slavery may have continued to this day.

[Californiajones]

Had not the South taken up arms to protect their "peculiar way of life" enslaving other human beings, Lincoln would not have had to defend the Union and the Constituation against the attack. But Lincoln himself regretted with blood-laced sweat that Thomas Jefferson didn't take care of the immoral slave issue at the start.

[mhking]

So you still believe the civil war was about slavery?

Completely? No.

But my question was regarding the freedom of the slaves.

[libertarianben]

Well the North didn't exactly have the best of love for black either. I'm not texconfederate.

[cyborg]

I know about the north and agree.

[Iris7]

I can't put my hands on my own source, having not thought about this subject in over twenty years. However, there are several hits on Bennet's recent "Forced Into Glory"

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/ref=s_sf_b_as/002-0798763-4442408

---

"ABRAHAM LINCOLN, the American president revered as "The Great Emancipator" for leading the war to abolish slavery, was really a racist who used offensive language to describe black people and wanted all Afro-Americans deported, according to newly published research which has prompted controversy in the United States.

Far from being the willing forefather of today's multicultural America, President Lincoln advocated reserving the west of the country for whites, supported a law forbidding black people to settle in his home state of Illinois and was fond of racist jokes. He used two State of the Union addresses to call for the deportation of black people and shortly before his assassination in 1865 said of the thousands of slaves to be freed at the end of the Civil War: "I believe it would be better to export them all to some fertile country with a good climate which they could have to themselves."

He also habitually used the word "nigger" to describe black people, something which would have shocked and dismayed the hundreds of thousands of civil rights activists in the Sixties who made the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC the focus of some of the biggest demonstrations the city has seen.

The assault on President Lincoln's character and record in a book called Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream, was produced over seven years by Lerone Bennett Jr, the executive editor of Ebony, a magazine aimed at black Americans. Mr Bennett regards what he calls the "Massa Lincoln myth" as a 135-year-old problem, "one of the most extraordinary efforts I know to hide a whole man and a whole history, particularly when that man is one of the most celebrated men in American history".

The evidence of Lincoln's true racial beliefs is easily found, he says, in his writing and speeches. Lincoln blamed black people for the Civil War, declaring: "But for your race among us there could not be a war, although many men on either side do not care for you one way or another."

Although in popular history he is given the credit for the Emancipation Proclamation - which itself did not directly call for the elimination of slavery - he only issued it under pressure from other Republicans in Congress, Mr Bennett said. However, Lincoln was seized upon by progressive Americans following his assassination, which came soon after the Confederate surrender. There was "an explosion of emotion" in the North and Lincoln was "appropriated, he was used", Mr Bennett said.

By the late Sixties Lincoln's death was put in the same bracket by civil rights campaigners as the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the black Church leader. The book has prompted controversy among academics with one black professor calling it "a compelling critique" of the revered president's life. But Lincoln's defenders are infuriated by the attack."

---

"In the latter part of 1999 a book was released whose publisher made the bold claim that it would set history on its ear.

The book is entitled Forced Into Glory - Abraham Lincoln's White Dream and its author, Lerone Bennett, Jr., has made headlines by challenging our current thinking about Abraham Lincoln and his image as The Great Emancipator.

Far from being a racial egalitarian, Mr. Bennett portrays Lincoln as a white supremacist whose real objective as President was the "ethnic cleansing" of America. According to Mr. Bennett's book, "[Lincoln} did everything he could to deport Blacks and to make America a Great White Place. If Lincoln had his way, Oprah Winfrey, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesse Jackson, Sr., Muhammad Ali, Maya Angelou, and even Clarence Thomas would have been born in slavery. If Lincoln had his way, there would be no Blacks in America at all. None."

Mr. Bennett sums up his view of Lincoln writing, "Unlike [Martin Luther] King, unlike [Wendell ]Phillips, unlike [Frederick] Douglass, but like [Thomas] Jefferson, Lincoln dreamed of an all-White nation, governed by White people, only for White people."

To accomplish this all-White nation, Lincoln sought to use a plan, which Mr. Bennett describes throughout his book as "DEPORTATION," more commonly known to historians as "colonization."

According to Mr. Bennett, Lincoln's real policy as President was the implementation of the age-old plan of establishing colonies in foreign lands where America's Blacks could be shipped; thus, in Mr. Bennett's words, "cleansing America of both free and freed Blacks."

Mr. Bennett is not an aberration on the historical scene. He and his thesis are real. He has become a highly sought-after speaker on the Lincoln circuit. Since publication of his book, Mr. Bennett has appeared in nearly every major publication in the country and more important, he has been invited as the featured speaker at the most prestigious Lincoln conferences throughout the country."

---

Bennett, who is black, has really stirred up a hornet's nest. Bennett calls the conventional view held mostly in the North "mythic", and I find this true. Myself, I pretty much forget that this stuff is not common knowledge.

[libertarianben]

The South never wanted to take over the North. Where did you get that? The South wanted to be its own nation. This was not a Civil War, a civil war is a war between parties seeking to take over one government. This was the second american revolution, war between the states, war of rebellion or the war of northern aggression are much better titles. Choose whatever you like. Why wasn't a war fought before 1861 to end slavery if the north hated slavery so much?

[libertarianben]

Walter Williams, who is black as well, also doesn't hold Lincoln up to a pedestal either.

[rdb3]

So you still believe the civil war was about slavery?

---

Did he say that?