Posted on 05/24/2007 6:03:30 AM PDT by Rebeleye
...he was stunned to see two large Confederate flags flying from trucks...emblazoned with the words "The South Shall Rise Again." I'm stunned, too, that people still think it is cool to fly this flag. Our society should bury these flags -- not flaunt them...because the Confederate flag symbolizes racial tyranny to so many... ...This flag doesn't belong on city streets, in videos or in the middle of civil discussion. It belongs in our past -- in museums and in history books -- along with the ideas it represents.
(Excerpt) Read more at kansas.com ...
But no quotes from Lincoln saying he knew that resupplying Sumter would lead to war. We know what Browning thought. We know what Hurlbut thought. We know what Nicolay and Hay and Petigru thought. How about what Lincoln thought?
See? There is a method to our madness.
I think he was a brilliant politician and I admire him for it. And I said that at the very beginning of the argument.
But of course, since I argue also for the South... I must be belittled and demeaned and my words twisted...
To All: Rest easy... Lincoln has been defended. The North's hands are clean. Those crazy Rebels are all to blame.
I don’t see any “secret conspiracy.” I just don’t think politicians and bureaucrats are to be taken at their word. They will always give you a lawyerly phrase that minimizes their own liability. There doesn’t have to be a secret agenda behind it, but the phrases they use shouldn’t simply be trusted. Haven’t we already learned how much governments justify under “national defense” and other high-sounding rubrics?
Well, of course his secretaries and his friend just made that up in a vacuum. He never told them what he was thinking Do you actually believe that?
And when Lamon told him Pickens' and Petigru's answers, he just dismissed it. And the memo... you got me on that on a technicality... reinforce versus resupply, so you escaped that bullet.
So, you believe Lincoln thought he could sail in the harbor and maintain the status quo regardless of what anyone told him about the reality in the South?
Okay... if that is how you perceive him. To me, your Lincoln is very stupid. Oh, well. As long as you are happy with him.
And will that warrant a "so's your mother" crack about Jefferson Davis. Oh, boy!
Take any stand-off situation. Take the Cuban Missile Crisis. If it had resulted in a nuclear conflict, we can't simply conclude that Kennedy was angling for war. He may just have been trying to stand up to the Soviets and hoping they'd back down.
Lincoln also may have expected the country to rally around a tough stance on the forts. That happened in the North after Sumter was attacked. Lincoln greatly overestimated unionist strength in the South, though, and there the reaction was against the union. I'm not saying that he calculated the results of a Confederate attack, though, just that he thought a strong stand would have won support for Washington.
Also, given that Lincoln only resupplied, rather than reinforced, the fort he might have hoped that this would not be taken as a provocative gesture. He was wrong about that, but his belief wouldn't have been irrational. He may not have taken the virulence of Southern passions seriously. If you were Lincoln and remembered close ties with Southerners in Congress you might underestimate how much they wanted war.
What some may have concluded is: if Lincoln had wanted a war and wanted to make it the rebel's fault, he would have acted as he did. But that's a deduction that won't convince everyone. It involves a degree of bias and an unwillingness to consider all the circumstances.
Do you think Bush or his successor would simply say "Please, take all you want"?
Actually yes, and I'm not saying that just to be argumentative. Lincoln was a master at hiding exactly what he was thinking, and any biography of his will bear that out. He kept his own counsel always, and never let people know what he was thinking until he was ready to make his decision. He always did. This was the man who was arguing against an emancipation proclamation with a delegation from Chicago while at the same time he had the proclamation written, reviewed by the cabinet, ready and waiting for the proper moment to announce. So yes, I can easily see how people thought Lincoln was leaning one way only to see him go the other. Especially this early in his administration.
And when Lamon told him Pickens' and Petigru's answers, he just dismissed it.
No, I don't think he dismissed anything that anyone was telling him. I think he weighed all the information carefully before making his decision. Just because he didn't follow their advice didn't mean he dismissed it.
And the memo... you got me on that on a technicality... reinforce versus resupply, so you escaped that bullet.
But I don't think it was a technicality. The two are very different and Lincoln knew that. Which is why I really think that he believed that peace might be maintained and the South would allow the status quo to continue if he made it clear that food and supplies were all he was landing. And where he knew that a reinforcement would be a match to the powder keg.
So, you believe Lincoln thought he could sail in the harbor and maintain the status quo regardless of what anyone told him about the reality in the South?
Yes. One word answer.
Okay... if that is how you perceive him. To me, your Lincoln is very stupid. Oh, well. As long as you are happy with him.
And the alternative is...what? That Lincoln deliberately chose his path to start the war? If that was his goal there were a lot surer ways to do it. Why not dispense with the message altogether and set out to land troops first along with the food, and add some ammunition while he was at it? You can choose to believe that absent any evidence to support you. As long as you are happy.
LOL! That’s what keeps us all plodding on, right?
Lincoln was a brillant politican. He may have lost the Lincoln-Douglas debates, but he set Douglas up to lose the 1860 election. That is how acute his political instincts were.
That's why your argument does not work for me no matter how expertly you parse the sources or vigorously you argue. This savvy political operator... in you defense of him, suddenly is as innocent and naive as a babe in the woods when it comes to the political crises involved at Sumter.
Does not sound like the Lincoln I have come to know and respect.
And Hays and Nicolay... knew him very well. They did not make it up and neither did Browning.
Did anyone ever answer your questions about Gitmo?
One of the points that is being missed is the sheer illogical nature of claiming that sending supplies (not reinforcements) to an established fort on Federal land to a strictly defensive garrison is a casus belli.
If anything, the firing on the Star of the West and the seige of Fort Sumter were just cause for Lincoln to attack. But he refrained until after the attack on Ft. Sumter. Fort Moultrie had already been abandoned by this point as well.
Alright, fair enough. Sorry. We Union partisans on these threads are used to seeing Lincoln described, by the southern brigade, as the single worst human being between Atilla the Hun and Hitler, and ourselves likened to Nazis for supporting the United States position in that war (see post 838)
I just believe that he wasn't politically naive to think that he could sail into the harbor and not get a war.
Maybe not, but it still left the choice to actually start shooting in southern hands, and as I showed earlier today, the south had very good, expedient reasons to want the shooting to get started, e.g., to stiffen softening southern public opinion and to swing the upper south into their camp.
Trust but Verify comes to mind. I gather from Davis's April 29, 1861, speech to the Confederate Congress that he was busy after Lincoln's call for 75,000 troops, asking for the volunteers previously authorized by the Confederate Congress for the defense of the Confederacy.
Oh, you mean send commissioners to Washington to negotiate all issues concerned with the separation like the Confederacy did? That might be OK, but I sincerely doubt La Raza Unida could afford to pay for what they want to take.
But it is not up to me. It's up to the Californians. However, if La Raza Unida agreed to take some obnoxious Hollywood actors and actresses with them I might call it a deal.
It is a sorry situation that politicians of the last 40-odd years have put us in.
It’s one thing to be a business major, but quite another to claim that gives you some basis for academic standing. There was an old saying in my particular college within my university: “The limit of “major” as GPA->0 is “business”.
“In short, another “oops” for you.”
Not really, no. Not even peer-review, but “journalism” and the local op-ed crank. I really could be more condescending about this, but I think I’ll let it slide for the time being. I would suggest not pushing the “business major” thing as an academic credential. There’s nothing wrong with a degree in business, but it’s most known - particularly at the undergraduate level - as a degree that lets one drink rather heavily....
“Um...so you really don’t get that I was saying both Lincoln and Howe were talking about God’s judgment on the nation for slavery?”
What you don’t get is that Howe and Lincoln were not on the same page. Lincoln viewed this as a stain on the entire country, Howe wanted to destroy the South. Howe was the wife of on of Brown’s backers, after all.
What was God’s judgment for slavery to be on the nation of Israel, by the way? By 1865, Lincoln was suffering from the death and destruction that war had wrought on the union he sought to preserve. That was his goal, by the way. Not the abolition of slavery, although he was personally against it. The actual radical abolitionists like Howe wanted not only slavery eradicated (good) but by massacre (bad). The 1833 Act of Parliament abolishing slavery in the British Empire would have been a better model.
Your side in this brought Lincoln’s address in as evidence for the meaning behind the lyrics of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, not I. The two were written by people not political allies and 4 years apart.
“You really don’t get that even after I posted the paragraph where Lincoln talks about God’s wrath being visited on the nation?”
Lincoln wasn’t Howe... and Howe viewed that wrath only applied against half the nation with the armies of the North as some sort of avenging angel. She ignored the culpability for it shared between South and North. Lincoln did not.
“And you’re criticizing my reading skills? Good gravy!”
If this is the extent of your comprehension of this argument, yes, I am.
Let’s not forget that the 14th is interpreted in ways it was never intended to be. THAT is the source of our current predicament. Along with our despicable leadership, of course.
You’ve posted several times to this thread since I answered your questions. Why haven’t you answered mine? Cat got your tongue?
No, but honestly I didn't expect them to.
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