Presidents from Illinois seem to suck.
Lincoln worship annoys me to no end!
the man was a monster who deserved far worse than he got.
Just about every word except “and” and “the” in this so-called “review” is false, bad history, bad interpretation of historical facts, and otherwise bogus.
I'm sorry, but anyone that cannot recognize that slavery was the only reason for the civil war is simply deluding themselves.
Yes, yes, state's rights, industrial tarriffs, property rights, the 10th amandment, etc etc; but every single arguement resolved down to slavery and the economics built upon it.
It was only the war that ended the evil of slavery and it was Linclon that made certain that slavery was ended.
Thank God for Abraham Lincoln.
Regarding “causes of the war”, there was plenty of hypocrisy on both sides. Slavery was certainly a major factor as stated in a number of the sothern states own declarations.
Moreover, there was political support in the south to forcibly annex places like Cuba in odrer to get more pro-slavery senators. Forcible annexation and allowance of secession seem to be mutually exclusive to me.
That said, I believe that the individual states retained enough sovereignty to secede, regardless of the consistency or value of their underlying reasons. This should have been addressed in the original Constitution.
Disingenuous.
South Carolinas proclamation of secession clearly stated the reason to be the constitutional right to slavery. Article IV. And specifically the Northern states disinclination to enforce it.
The South ultimately fought because of slavery, and that alone.
Anything else is spinning afterwards.
Why the North fought is another matter.
Disingenuous.
South Carolinas proclamation of secession clearly stated the reason to be the constitutional right to slavery. Article IV. And specifically the Northern states disinclination to enforce it.
The South ultimately fought because of slavery, and that alone.
Anything else is spinning afterwards.
Why the North fought is another matter.
Having said that I think true history points to Lincoln as being the greatest president in our history...
“Lincoln refused to meet with Confederate commissioners who came to Washington to negotiate a peaceful separation in February of 1861.”
But then he had no more authority to negotiate a peaceful separation than the Obama administration has to “Peacefully grant the State of...to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government” in accord with the various petitions we read about.
“He did not seek a constitutionally required declaration of war...”
Why would a declaration of war be constitutionally required? If they were not acknowledging the right to secede, it would be a matter of an internal insurrection, not an external threat. “The Conch Republic is a micronation declared as a tongue-in-cheek secession of the city of Key West, Florida from the United States on April 23, 1982.” If somebody really wanted to make an issue of it, would Congress have to declare war against the Conch Republic just because they say they are a nation, or could Florida just send in the cops/national guard?
Spielberg has a tin ear for history. “Amistad” was a colossal artistic and commercial failure. And though it’s unpopular to say, absent the magnificent first twenty minutes of “Saving Private Ryan,” that film stinks up France.
“Lincoln” is a hit with the critics, but once the castor oil fans dutifully see it opening weekend, along with a bunch of school kids forced to watch it so they can write their “themes,” no one will pay to see it.
Lincoln was a Statist. Nuff said.
"I think slavery is wrong, morally, and politically. I desire that it should be no further spread in these United States, and I should not object if it should gradually terminate in the whole Union." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume III, "Speech at Cincinnati, Ohio" (September 17, 1859), p. 440.
"Now, I confess myself as belonging to that class in the country who contemplate slavery as a moral, social and political evil, having due regard for its actual existence amongst us and the difficulties of getting rid of it in any satisfactory way, and to all the constitutional obligations which have been thrown about it; but, nevertheless, desire a policy that looks to the prevention of it as a wrong, and looks hopefully to the time when as a wrong it may come to an end." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume III, "Lincoln-Douglas Debate at Galesburg" (October 7, 1858), p. 226.
"I have always hated slavery, I think as much as any abolitionist." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume II, "Speech at Chicago, Illinois" (July 10, 1858), p. 492.
"I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume II, "Speech at Peoria, Illinois" (October 16, 1854), p. 255.
Wow. There’s an unbiased review of Lincoln. Not.
Why would ANY conservative give money to liberal Hollywood? It’s nuts. Let’s show more pride than paying the kapo to beat us.
Another producer, writer faux historian making a buck off of reconstructed history, the Lincoln Fairy Tale™. Sic semper tyrannis.
Why did a South in which only a relative minority owned slaves go to war to keep slavery as an expression of its supposed state sovereignty? For the South, freeing the slaves was recognized to be the end of one set of familiar problems and the beginning of other problems with no clear solutions -- problems that would affect every white Southerner, not just the slave holders.
First, once the slaves were freed, how would they house, clothe, and feed themselves, and how would the South's rural plantation economy function without their labor? How would slaveholders be compensated?
Second, if empowered with the vote and civil liberties equal to whites, impoverished and ignorant freed slaves could be expected to make their influence felt, resulting in corruption, the election of unsuitable officials, and high spending and taxes. There would be much detriment to whites in general and to the property owning class in particular.
Third, the presence of a large, poor, uneducated, restive and resentful mass of freed Black slaves would give rise to an enduring race problem. Notably, the Northern states were unwilling to accept freed slaves into their own states. That was too much trouble, and trouble of a kind that the South was better equipped to deal with and deserving the burdens of as punishment of a sort of rough justice.
As it was, after the failure of Reconstruction and much turmoil and hardship, the eventual resolution for the Southern agrarian economy was a combination of sharecropping , Black farmers on small free holdings, and a large pool of menial Black servants and laborers useful to Southern whites.
Copying laws from the North, virtually all the South adopted a rigid system of Jim Crow laws and a social code that marginalized Blacks for generations. Literacy and property requirements, poll taxes, and other manipulations that severely restricted the right to vote and ended the brief era of relative Black political power in the South.
Might events have taken a better course if Lincoln had lived? Maybe, maybe not. The profound discontinuity of the Civil War changed the country and changed Lincoln, moving both toward advocating greater equality between the races, while remaining uncomfortable with the many problems of applying the principle in practice.
Thus the Civil War led Lincoln far beyond his previous views as to race, and the failure of his African colonization efforts made clear that country would have to find a new path forward that accepted the permanence of a a massive population of former Black slaves.
Yet the contours of history are not as malleable as they may seem, and it is quite possible -- even likely -- that Reconstruction under Lincoln would have failed like it did under Johnson and Grant.
The Great Centralizer.