Posted on 03/10/2019 7:34:32 AM PDT by NKP_Vet
“In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil in any country.” — Robert E. Lee 1856
Could Gen. Robert E.l Lee’s sentiments deter the “tear down those monuments” crowd?
Probably not.
Given their current success in removing monuments to Confederate generals, ignorant politicians and those whose hobby is going through life seeking to be offended, soon will run out of things to be offended by. Why not broaden the list of "offensive" symbols to include slave owners George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and a host of other founders?
Here in Texas you could add slave owning Texas heroes such as Sam Houston, Jim Bowie and William Travis.
Should we banish from public view all monuments to past historical figures who supported white supremacy, advocated secession or made racist comments?
Consider Abraham Lincoln. In addition to the Lincoln monument in the nation’s capital, there’s probably not a major city in the country without a school, street or park named after Lincoln (Abilene once had Lincoln Middle School).
What do Lincoln's own words tell us about “Honest Abe”, "the Great Emancipator?"
During one of the famous 1858 debates with Sen. Stephen Douglas, Lincoln explained to the crowd: “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races . . . I am not now nor have ever been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people . . . there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be a position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
Lincoln's prejudices weren’t limited to blacks.
During another debate with Douglas, Lincoln opined: “I understand that the people of Mexico are most decidedly a race of mongrels . . . there’s not one person there out of eight who is pure white”.
In Lincoln's 1861 inaugural address, he endorsed a constitutional amendment, known as the Corwin Amendment, which would forever protect slavery where it existed, telling the audience: “I have no objection to its (Corwin Amendment) being made express and irrevocable”. Lincoln's goal was to save the Union, writing to abolitionist Horace Greeley: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it”.
Virtually all white men of that time were white supremacists. Lincoln was no exception, and his comments belie his reputation.
Was Lincoln opposed to secession?
Consider his remarks he made in Congress on January 12, 1848: “Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one which suits them better. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much territory as they inhabit.” This is exactly what the seceding states did in 1861.
Another discomforting fact for today’s advocates of political correctness: In 2011 I sponsored a commemorative license plate for Buffalo soldiers, iconic black U.S. cavalrymen who served on the frontier. Couldn’t today's Native Americans claim buffalo soldiers participated in a genocidal war against an entire race of people - the American Plains Indians – enslaving them on reservations?
If we’re going to measure Confederates of 150 years ago by today’s standards, shouldn’t we do the same with Lincoln?
Today, it's Confederates. Who’s next? Buffalo soldiers? Our nation’s founders? Our Texas heroes? The possibilities are limitless.
Jerry Patterson is a former Texas land commissioner, state senator and retired Marine Vietnam veteran.
“And yet he was objectively less “racist” than nearly anyone from the south.”
On a scale of 1 to 2, where one is slightly pregnant and 2 is very pregnant, how far along was Lincoln?
No, what I post are facts, and quotes with sources. What you post is nothing more than your laughable opinions.
I don’t doubt that soon the clarion call will be made to take down a number of monuments in D.C., Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, even the Washington Monument because in the eyes of the SJW’s, Socialists, and Revisionist Historians they are all bad and Racist.
You wouldn’t know a fact if it smacked you upside the head.
Yet another scintillating fact filled response from you!
Had the Southern States not seceded from the Union, the XIII, XIV, and XV Amendments, as they now exist would not be in the Constitution.
At least you recognize the truth, even if you don’t practice it ;’}
Yet more witty repartee from you in which you show your keen grasp of history!
Your quote from the Greeley letter was cut so as to make it appear to say the opposite of what Lincoln actually meant.
Your quote about "mixed breed bastards" was from a letter to Lincoln. It wasn't something he actually said.
That is what we call "taking quotes out of context."
The "Fudge" comment was from Lincoln's unpublished notes. There's no telling if he actually made the comment or what he actually might have meant by it. Was he saying that "Negro equality" was absurd demagoguery or that the use of the bugbear of racial equality as an argument for slavery expansion was absurd demagoguery? We don't really know for sure.
We could call that "quoting without context."
Lincoln was explicit in his white supremacy, his opposition to Blacks being treated as equals and his abhorrence at the thought of White and Black mixing.
Of course. But no more so than anyone else at the time. In fact, far less than most of his contemporaries. He probably didn't like interracial marriage anymore than most of our grandparents did, but the fact that he talked about it so much in the debates was most likely due to the fact that so many of the voters hated the idea far more than he did. You find Lincoln talking about miscegenation in public because the topic was very much on votes mind and was something the Democrats used to attack him with, but the topic doesn't seem to turn up much in his private papers and letters, so far as I know.
You also missed Lincoln's passage about an African-American woman:
'In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of any one else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others'.
That was a kind of equality and it was much more than most other Americans of Lincoln's day would have granted colored people.
There is a reason millions of Blacks did not leave the economically devastated South and move North at the conclusion of the war. They were trapped there for years unable to move to the North or anywhere else due to the virulent racism of Northerners.
A major reason was the "economic devastation of the South" which meant great poverty for Blacks. They didn't have the funds to up and move. Many were unskilled and unlikely to find much work outside the cotton or tobacco fields.
The freedmen did understand that they'd be discriminated against in the North -- it wasn't going to be easy for them when employers would much rather hire fellow Whites -- but there was nothing more "virulent" there than there was in the South.
Plus, you truly underestimate the desire of Southern planters to hold on to their workforce. It wasn't Yankees "trapping" anybody. Before the mechanization of agriculture really took hold, landowners did all they could to keep their workers in debt and on the plantation. It was only when plantation labor wasn't needed so much that large numbers of African Americans were allowed and encouraged to leave by the landowners.
The men that fought in the WBTS would not recognize this PC country today. And it’s a damn shame. They killed each other wholesale and gradually came to have the deepest respect for each other.
“Thousands of Civil War veterans lived far into the 20th century. In 1913, 54,000 Union and Confederate veterans gathered at Gettysburg for the battle’s 50th anniversary, and an astonishing 2,000 were still alive to show up for the battle’s 75th anniversary in 1938. (Both events are represented in the library’s film and audio collections.) The last verified Union veteran died only in 1956, and the last Confederate in 1951. From the early 1900s through the 1940s, they were filmed, recorded and interviewed at reunions, parades and other patriotic events where, as the century advanced, they came increasingly to seem like ambulatory trophies from some distant age of heroes.
Most of the 20th century shows bent, bewhiskered and ribbon-festooned vets mingling with old comrades, visiting monuments, swapping memories and – a favorite trope of the era – shaking hands with their former enemies. By the late 1930s, faced with the looming threat of totalitarianism in Europe and Japan, Americans were more interested in national unity than they were in reliving old divisions. Typically, in a sound-only radio address at Gettysburg covered by NBC News in 1938, Overton Minette, commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic (the leading Union veterans’ organization) declares, to the sound of ceremonial cannon fire, “Let [us] be an example to the nations of the earth. . . that the deepest hate can be resolved into love and tolerance.” Following him, the Rev. John M. Claypool, the commander-in-chief of the United Confederate Veterans, drawls, “I have to forgive my brother here for anything that may have occurred between us. We can’t hold anything against each other.”
Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/civil-war-veterans-come-alive-in-audio-and-video-recordings-97841665/#VF2Bs1gltU763vBG.99
Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter
Ken Burns gave us a skewed view of postwar attitudes by focusing on the two "Blue-Gray" Gettysburg reunions of 1913 and 1938. It's understandable - they were a great story and he got great film (and audio) from them - but they weren't so typical as many now believe.
Wait, are you going to maintain that Lincoln did not on several occasions speak of his horror at the idea of “miscegenation”?
We both know he did. The context is truthful.
We “don’t know” if Lincoln was not only opposed but fiercely opposed to equality?
Once again, we both know he was. He said so quite openly many times.
We will have to agree to disagree about Lincoln being more flaming or less flaming than most others at the time in his racism. What is beyond dispute is that he was an open and avowed racist. This was not merely something he said for public consumption either - as you and his other apologists would have it. He said similar things in private and among small groups or to individuals as well. Every indication is that he believed exactly what he said on the subject.
As to Blacks not moving up North:
Any claim that their failure to move was due to a lack of funds is comical. They could have and certainly would have taken the old (free) heel-toe express had they been allowed to move there. They weren’t. The Northern states were quite clear in not wanting Blacks and in making it practically impossible for them to move there. Multiple states like Kansas and Oregon explicitly banned them. Others like those in the Midwest and Northeast passed laws designed to keep them out and back that up with white mob violence against Blacks as well as a refusal to work alongside them.
So the Negro [in the North] is free, but he cannot share the rights, pleasures, labors, griefs, or even the tomb of him whose equal he has been declared; there is nowhere where he can meet him, neither in life nor in death. In the South, where slavery still exists, less trouble is taken to keep the Negro apart: they sometimes share the labors and the pleasures of the white men; people are prepared to mix with them to some extent; legislation is more harsh against them, but customs are more tolerant and gentle. -Alexis De Tocqueville, “Democracy in America”, Harper & Row, 1966, p.343.
Want quotes from other foreign observers? I can provide them as we both know.
No, it was not a lack of fund or a lack of job skills that kept Blacks in the economically devastated South after the war. It was virulent racism on the part of White Northerners.
Once again, we both know he was. He said so quite openly many times.
Fiercely? Doubtful. He said he didn't favor full equality between the races. In that he was a typical 19th century American. But was he more opposed to equality than other Americans? No. The issue came up during his campaigns and he had to address it.
And once again context. What "we don't know" is what that fragment about "fudge" was supposed to be mean about "Negro equality." That's not at all clear.
This was not merely something he said for public consumption either - as you and his other apologists would have it. He said similar things in private and among small groups or to individuals as well.
You will have to provide some evidence of that.
Multiple states like Kansas and Oregon explicitly banned them. Others like those in the Midwest and Northeast passed laws designed to keep them out and back that up with white mob violence against Blacks as well as a refusal to work alongside them.
So you've never heard of the Exodusters? Figures. I don't deny that Northern Whites didn't want to work beside Blacks. But once again, you are mixing up prewar and postwar developments. Exclusionary laws were a pre-war phenomenon and were repealed after the Civil War.
And hey, Virulent, you don't even address the planters' desire to keep workers down on the plantation. They weren't going to be picking the cotton themselves.
Bear in mind, though that some small group meetings weren't truly private. Editors and politicians met with presidents and those meetings were as political and as significant as anything said on a podium before a crowd. Still, if you have evidence, provide it.
P.S. You missed this quote as well:
My friends, I have detained you about as long as I desire to do, and I have only to say, let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man, this race and that race, and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position, discarding our standard that we have left us. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.
I can't say which quotes represent his truest and deepest feeling, but apparently he did say it and didn't deny saying it, though it couldn't have done his political career more good than harm.
I'm left wondering what really want with all this. Lincoln's dead and you're still alive. Count yourself lucky and walk away with that win.
again, he did not merely pay it lip service for votes at the moment - which alone would be rather damning. By all accounts he believed in the flamingly racist statements he made publicly and repeatedly. He said similar things to small groups and to individuals. There is zero evidence he did not believe what he said.
And once again context. What "we don't know" is what that fragment about "fudge" was supposed to be mean about "Negro equality." That's not at all clear.
LOL! C'mon! You're trying to weasel here and you're not very convincing at it. Lincoln was an open and avowed racist. His own words make that clear and while you say there's no evidence he was more racist than most others, I'd say he was. He not only thought nonWhites not the equal of Whites, he ethnically cleansed Indians and tried to deport Blacks. He was head of the American Colonization Society which was dedicated to the purpose after all.
He sarcastically told his old friend Alexander Stephens that newly freed blacks would have to "root hog or die" to scratch a living out of the soil. Then there is this from Frederick Douglas:
Frederick Douglass says the President of the United States has become an “itinerant colonization preacher,” who has made himself look “ridiculous” by pitching this idea that we should leave the nation of our birth https://psmag.com/news/remember-that-time-abraham-lincoln-tried-to-get-the-slaves-to-leave-america-55802
There is of course much more for anyone who cares to look and who is not interested in simply making excuses for Lincoln. You say exclusionary laws against Blacks were repealed after the war. Yes its true they were.......years and years after the war. Blacks did not start moving North in any numbers until the 1880s despite the fact that the South had been plunged into dire poverty. Hint: that's when Blacks finally could move North. Even then there were riots against Blacks in several Northern states.
Does your excuse making for Lincoln and his plain words ever end? You have an excuse for seemingly everything. 1 quote out of 6 was out of context. Oh he was just pandering to voters. Oh this statement even though made to a small private group was for public consumption. Oh that statement we can't actually prove he said even though its directly in line with everything else he said and sure sounds like him. etc etc. The parade of excuses never ends.
as for the whole "beating up on dead people" argument just like the presentism arguments I'd say ya came to Jesus a little late. We said the same things for years when PC Revisionists applied late 20th and 21st century standards of morality to Confederate leaders from 150+ years ago. Well goose, gander etc. If we're gonna do that for one side then we need to do it equally for the other.
Robert E. Lee high school in Houston was not just renamed, but torn down. A new school was built next to it and named after a corrupt school administrator who was/is a black woman that no one recognizes.
Forward comrades.
Like most Lost Cause Losers he would prefer to climb a tree to tell a lie rather than stand on the ground and tell the truth.
You confuse politics with living your life
Everything political affects one’s life.
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