Posted on 12/15/2012 3:17:01 AM PST by IbJensen
Is this the reason Abe’s tormented soul is reputed to be haunting the White House still? Can’t he can’t find peace after what he did? More people died in the Civil War than in all other U.S. wars, combined, and their blood and the violations of the Constitution, are on his hands.
Perhaps Obama keeps bumping into Lincoln's ghost in the halls of the White Hut during the night.
In modern times, Lincoln would be prosecuted as a war criminal.
Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government...
THIS, and THIS ALONE, is the reason and purpose of the 2nd Ammendment. Not hunting, target practice or collecting.
Sorry if this remark is off topic, but the Lincoln quote just seemed relevant in light of recent events.
I’m from Brooklyn, NY, and I’m leaning more towards calling the Civil War the War of Northern Aggression.
The real Lincoln proved the truth of that claim within days of the April 12, 1861 attack on Fort Sumter. In fact, the attack might have been avoided if he had not decided to reinforce Sumter.
He didn’t just reinforce it. He ordred that the reinforcement be done in such a way as to provoke an attack to give pretense for war.
In modern times, you replace ‘Lincoln’ with ‘Obama’, you can’t touch him, and his actions either go unreported by mainstream media, or are blasted all throughout the media, depending on whatever action it is.
Thank you for this post.
Yet without that strong, resolute, and committed Lincoln, the United States would have been lost and all of the good that we have done for the world would have been lost with it.
It makes one wonder, however.
By employing tactics that the leering loon currently enjoying imperial power, it would appear he’s looking over Lincoln’s shoulder.
Why history regarding Lincoln was so shaded is somewhat of a mystery. If he was passing himself as a conservative (which he definitely was not) duty bound to save the union by violating the Consitution, then the Republicrat Party should be ashamed.
I’ve often wondered what would have happened had the South won the war against the conscripted North whose ranks were packed with newly-arrived foreigners. Those who believe the Civil War was fought over slavery are seriously misguided.
There was nothing consitutional about that evil war and there’s no way, had I lived at that time, that my support wouldn’t have been with the South.
Finally someone speaks the truth; Lincoln was a tyrant
I agree. Today, it seems like most conservative talkers of the Republican persuasion can barely clammer enough praise on Lincoln to satisfy their fetish with him. I’m one Republican who you will never hear praising Lincoln.
Great post, for more on Lincoln read Prof. Thomas DiLorenzo’s books on Lincoln. Lincoln, indeed, was a tyrant.
More rehashed neo-confederate nonsense. The slavemasters who started the war portrayed as innocent victims of the tyrant Lincoln. No mention of the fact that secession happened long before Lincoln became President. Was Democrat Buchanan a tyrant also?
Any President had the duty to defend the Constitution and put down the rebellion. Buchanan failed to act and Lincoln acted belatedly.
The good we did in the 20th Century was to bail out Europe from a war that was so convoluted very few make sense of it today! We did manage to get thousands of our young men killed in order to save France’s bacon!
WWII was one where our fearless leader goaded the axis powers into an act of war. The goading began a decade or so earlier when FDR boldly informed Britain to drop Japan as one of their key allies. They did and Tokio knew why and hated us and the Brits ever since. Of course this is just one of many.
The end of the war left China in the hands of the evil Mao to kill as many millions of his own people as he could.
We left battered Eastern Europe in the hands of the cruel Stalin to make their lives as miserable as they were under Hitler.
In Korea we stalemated and left the evil power in the North free to cause us mischief and to receive bribes for playing nice, which they never did.
In Viet Nam we lost.
We shouldn’t have invaded Iraq.
We should have bombed the hell out of Afghanistan and destroyed the oil fields of the sly Saudis and not placed troops on the ground to be maimed purposely so they could bring their damaged bodies back to America to show the fruits of war against islamists.
Now our great foreign policies pump money into nations that hate us. This is money we borrow from the Chinese who also hate us.
What good have we done? What have we lost excepting our honor?
Lincoln shut down many of northern newspapers(the MSM of the day)that opposed him and prosecuted the publishers/owners, those who supported him were left alone.
The issue of habeas corpus remains with us today, with both President Bush and President Obama concurring with President Lincoln, and with the Supreme Court of our day concurring with the Supreme Court of Lincoln’s Day.
I was doing some work on the Mexican-American War, and remarked to my coauthor, a Southern Boy, that the Mexicans refer to that war (in Spanish) as “The War of Northern Aggression.” He said, “Aren’t they all?”
My third of three comments (this one not short):
Lincoln is condemned both for making war on the South and for not immediately ending slavery. This is not fair. You should make up your mind:
Was Lincoln wrong, perhaps even evil, when he was a candidate for supporting the Republican position to forbid slavery (only) in the territories and not forbidding it where it was established? And, then, initially as President, sought to keep Virginia and other states of the mid-South in the Union? And, then, for a time, even when fighting got underway, for leaving the door open a bit, for a time, for the possibility of a negotiated settlement?
Or, was he wrong, perhaps even evil, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation and, thus, for transforming the war into a war to free the slaves?
Here’s my position:
The Whigs and then the Republicans were wrong, in the sense of incorrect, but not evil, for not indicating that they would favor compensated emancipation. Their nuanced position on the issue put slaveowners at risk of loss. And, “win-loss” often results in violent conflict. We should always seek at least “win-no loss,” and even try for “win-win” when we can.
But, to criticize my own position, the problem with emancipation wasn’t the freeing of the slaves, it was what to do with them subsequently.
Emancipating a large number of uneducated and propertyless people, who would assume the various rights of citizenship, is not a good idea. It is predictable that they would vote to redistribute the wealth and would tend to do things like run enormous deficits.
Although some defenders of slavery eventually would make a genetic argument to justify the South’s “peculiar institution,” my reading of history tells me most of the Founders and most people through the early history of the Republic were concerned with granting citizenship, including the vote, to so many people who had not “assimilated” into the culture of a free society. Thus, by the mid 19th Century, Whigs and later Republicans were concerned about immigrants from the poor and backward Catholic countries of Europe, as well as what to do upon any freeing of the slaves.
The best retort I have for my own self-criticism is twofold:
First, in the North, the private charity system sought to assimilate immigrants into our free society, by demanding work and encouraging thrift. Accordingly, in Boston, where the private charity system got underway, there developed something like a conveyor belt of new immigrants arriving and then being transformed into people capable of acting as citizens of a free society.
Second, maintaining or even restoring a property qualification for voting could have been sufficient to keep attempts to re-distribute the wealth in check. The property qualification insured that voters would consider both the cost as well as the benefit of government spending. Unfortunately, for various reasons, universal male suffrage had become the rage (universal white male suffrage in the South), so that democracy combined with masses of ignorant and propertyless people equaled real problems.
Such is the justification for all tyranny. Your nieve attachment to Lincoln is in no way different from the setimental attachment blacks and progressives feel to Obama. Indeed they are the same. Both deny the corruption of evil.
Both make the outrageous claim that our very existence depends upon the merciless application of terrorism against all who stand in the way of their progressive agenda.
The greatest good we can do for the world is to be a shining city, an example of free men and women working together without government intrusion. Reagan said it best when he demanded that government IS the problem.
The Lincoln legacy is government, overreaching and overpowering. Nothing good came of Lincoln's presidency. The party of Lincoln. Humbug!
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it—all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.
I have always wondered why historian omit this little piece of history.....
I have also thought Lincoln needed to get that out there to relive his conscience....
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