Posted on 04/13/2017 6:58:51 PM PDT by brucedickinson
Pittman replied, "And if Hitler had won, should the world just get over it? Lincoln was the same sort of tyrant, and personally responsible for the deaths of over 800,000 Americans in a war that was unnecessary and unconstitutional." Pittman did not respond to request for comment from TIME to clarify his remarks.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
“Why would Congress go along with Lincoln’s political shenanigans and prop up a President that few had committed to support in the 1864 election? “
I don’t know the answer to your question.
And I don’t know why Congress went along with Lincoln’s decision to kill 600,000 Americans.
The irony in that statement is deep.
“So it happens, some people make a lot of money during any wartime. But they are never the reason for war, then or now.”
Your private assurances do not resolve this matter.
I have it on good authority - from, you might say, an unimpeachable source - that the love of money is the root of all evil.
If you read the Declaration of Independence, you'll find the rebellious states identified the King's interference with slavery as justification for dissolving the political bands.
Those states included New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, and Maryland.
And I almost forgot, Virgina, North and South Carolina, and Georgia.
“That is why I am bowing out of this squabble.”
I encourage you to stand your ground. You have a responsibility to distinguish right from wrong and to proclaim the difference.
It is part of the continuing high cost of being human.
You keep making this sound like it was Lincoln's unilateral decision. History is far more complex than that. No accountability to the southern leadership? What exactly did they achieve for the sacrifice of almost an entire generation of young men? What did they think they were going to obtain in defending an institution which is morally indefensible, benefited mainly the elite of southern culture, and which even lost-cause defenders admit was doomed to extinction in a short time anyway? You're looking at the wrong political leaders to affix blame.
” So, if I understand, your point is that Lincoln was in no sense a “dictator”, but rather a constitutional President who lead by the consent & active support of his voters?”
My point is that he led by the consent and active support of his voters, and for all I know those who didn’t vote for him but opposed secession, and the Northern States. It wasn’t just him.
As to he “was in no sense a ‘dictator’”, I wouldn’t use those words. For one thing, I don’t want to try to refute every allegation that he was in some particular instance. For another, he was Commander in Chief of the military and in the military, particularly in time of war, rebellion, insurrection, some actions of any military commander can be construed as dictatorial. Anyway, if he was a dictator or not, he still led by the consent and active support of his voters, and maybe those who didn’t vote for him but opposed secession, and the Northern States. That’s my point, it wasn’t just him.
As to “rather a constitutional President”, he was elected twice, constitutionally as far as I am aware. Did he violate the Constitution? I’ve seen arguments on both sides. I don’t recall any efforts to impeach him. But whether he was a constitutional President or not, he still led by the consent and active support of his voters, and maybe those who didn’t vote for him but opposed secession, and the Northern States. That’s my point, it wasn’t just him.
As an aside, I sometimes wonder what would have happened if after secession and the firing on Fort Sumter, Lincoln had taken the position: “Okay. Bye.” Would the North have gone along with that or opposed him? Would they have tried to impeach him? Would he have won a second election or would some firebrand have been elected and the war started four years later when the South was stronger, or weaker? Or would the war have started in the West instead of the East, in the Kansas-Missouri region? Seems like those people really didn’t like each other. What happened happened so it doesn’t matter, but I wonder. I don’t know enough to do more.
“Sorry, sir, if I had misunderstood earlier.”
That’s OK. Perhaps I haven’t been clear enough.
So you keep claiming. But even if so, that is one reference to slavery among twenty eight reasons listed. In the Declarations of the Causes of Secession submitted by four Southern states they mention slaves or slavery eighty three times, and hostility towards slavery is by far their most prominently listed grievance.
“One explicitly protected slavery and slave trade, the other was silent on the subject.”
I interpret this to mean you believe the U.S. constitution is silent of the subject of slavery.
See Article 1, Section 2.
See Article 1, Section 9.
See Article IV, Section 2.
And I thought I would never get tired of shelling soft peanuts.
“And they used the Declaration of Independence to convey the moral right for their rebellion. What parts of the Declaration do you find immoral?”
Arguably, referencing slavery as a justification for the Declaration of Independence was immoral.
We like to keep you busy I guess.
In none of those clauses is slavery specifically mentioned. In all of them it's implied. The first, last, and only mention of slavery is in the 13th Amendment. Unlike the Confederate Constitution which is quite explicit on the subject and mentions it ten times.
“So you keep claiming.”
Claim? It’s in the text of the Declaration of Independence. Look it up.
He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.
Jefferson is excoriating the Crown for imposing and enforcing the act of slavery upon the colonies. And very specifically he is accusing Great Britain of inciting indian attacks and slave rebellions. The words left behind in the DOL are clear, and clearly do not say what what's his name implies:
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
And of course he does this as a prelude to imply a "they all do it" bunch of gibberish. His agenda is shameless but not very clever.
“Whether you like it or not, the Willey Amendment is a historical fact which argues against your impugning of Lincoln’s motives.”
That is an interesting comment. What were the provisions of the Willey Amendment?
Let's look at the phrase in question: "He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us,...".
You keep claiming that Jefferson is referring to slave insurrections. But in an earlier draft of the Declaration, that clause was worded as "he has incited treasonable insurrections among our fellow citizens, with the allurement of forfeiture and confiscation of our property." Do you honestly think that Jefferson, or anyone else at Congress, would have considered slaves "fellow citizens"? And if not citizens then how could they ever be regarded as "treasonable"?
Also look at how Jefferson used the term insurrection on other occasions. In a 1787 letter to James Madison Jefferson wrote, "The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given more alarm than I think it should have done. Calculate that one rebellion in thirteen states in the course of eleven years, is but one for each state in a century and a half. No country should be so long without one. Nor will any degree of power in the hands of government prevent insurrections." In his 1806 message to Congress Jefferson wrote, "In a country whose constitution is derived from the will of the people directly expressed by their free suffrages, where the principal executive functionaries and those of the legislature are renewed by them at short periods, where under the character of jurors they exercise in person the greatest portion of the judiciary powers, where the laws are consequently so formed and administered as to bear with equal weight and favor on all, restraining no man in the pursuits of honest industry and securing to every one the property which that acquires, it would not be supposed that any safeguards could be needed against insurrection or enterprise on the public peace or authority. The laws, however, aware that these should not be trusted to moral restraints only, have wisely provided punishments for these crimes when committed." Do you think it likely that Thomas Jefferson would use the same word to describe a slave uprising and the act of a free people rebelling against tyranny?
You see something and imply a meaning that is not necessarily borne out once you examine all the evidence.
It gradually emancipated the slaves and forbade the importation of new slaves into West Virginia. It didn't completely satisfy anyone but compromises seldom do.
“Arguably, referencing slavery as a justification for the Declaration of Independence was immoral.”
Where did that happen? I just read the DOI, albeit quickly, and didn’t see the word “slave” or “slavery”. I did a word search of it and it won’t search past “sla”. The search box turns red at “slav”.
Do you mean the words “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us...” to include slave insurrections? If so, which slave insurrections did “He” excite, and how did he “excite” them so as to provide grounds for the complaint?
You apparently know more about this than I, so give me a convincing argument.
I've never seen that word in any Founding document.
Words they used, and then only rarely, included "disunion" or "dissolve".
So far as I can tell, the word "secession" only came out decades later, pre-Civil War.
Yes, this article on the 1814 Hartford Convention throws around the word "secession" quite liberally.
But there are no quotes from the time where the term was actually used.
Nor is there any firm definition of exactly what all it implied -- i.e. some process, or civil war?
Regardless, and despite how much our pro-Confederates try to confuse this issue, secessions alone in 1861 did not start Civil War and neither did forming a new Confederate government.
Civil War only came because the Confederacy provoked, started, declared and waged war on the United States.
You are totally without intellectual honesty.
But any time you wish to lean something about truth-telling, feel free to post your ideas on the subject.
“It is part of the continuing high cost of being human.”
I’ve done it too many times. Time and again, since before there were personal computers, with zealot after zealot, I’ve cast pearls before swine and seen them trampled in the mud.
I’m in my sixties, now, and younger hands will have to seize the guidon. I will contradict these fanatical bigots, just so that third parties will know that there is another point of view, but my days of posting 15,000 words a day are over.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.