After Confederate statues fall, is Lincoln Memorial next?

“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?

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.”

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.

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.

Why not just accept the North's offer of slavery effectively forever by express constitutional amendment?

Because while the Corwin Amendment may have protected slavery in perpetuity, it only protected it where it already existed. The Confederate Constitution protected slavery throughout the entire Confederacy and any territories it may have acquired in the future, and made slavery just as impossible to end as the Corwin Amendment did. Plus it protected slave imports. Given that, why go back to the partial protections of the Corwin Amendment when you had far more slavery protections under your new constitution?

Or it could be that what they wanted was to run their own affairs without sending 40% of their export revenue to New York, and God only knows how much of the rest to Washington DC.

Always left out of these discussions is the fact that these two cities were collecting *MOST* of the money produced by the South.

Same two f***ing cities that are still trying to control the rest of us today.

If slavery and protection thereof had been the big issue to them, slavery by express constitutional amendment would have addressed those concerns.

Let’s run through the math again.

15 slaveholding states at the time. 3/4s of all states required to pass a constitutional amendment. Ergo, to abolish slavery at some future date, it would take 45 states voting to pass that future amendment over the objections of the 15 slaveholding states. 45 + 15 = 60. How many states are in the US currently? The answer is of course 50. Ie not even close to enough.

Slavery would have been irrevocable without the approval of the slaveholding states. They could do basic math back then too. They all understand it would have meant slavery effectively forever. Yet the original 7 seceding states turned it down. If it was “all about slavery” why would they?

Slavery wasn't going to expand anywhere. I've proven this over and over again by posting modern maps of Cotton growing. I've also found out that in various congressional debates, such as on the Crittenden compromise,

"There was considerable agreement on both sides that slavery would never flourish in New Mexico. "

I now believe this "We had to prevent EXPANSION of slavery was just made up astro turf crap to prevent congressional representation that would ally itself with the Southern states. More representation in the Congress would upset New York and Washington DC's sweet deal where the bulk of Southern export profits fed the appetites of both cities.

No real possibility of slavery expanding into the territories was ever going to happen.

Slavery wasn't going to expand anywhere. I've proven this over and over again by posting modern maps of Cotton growing.

Conflating slavery with cotton production is absurd. Many slave states had little or no cotton production, but plenty of slaves. In the west, slaves could have been used in mining, as was done since antiquity. But if we accept that slavery could only be where cotton was grown, you'd have to include California, Arizona, Nevada, Kansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. So, basically the entire southwest to the Pacific.

Why do you think the confederate constitution went to such lengths to protect slavery in the territories they might acquire?

DiogenesLamp:

I now believe this "We had to prevent EXPANSION of slavery was just made up astro turf crap to prevent congressional representation that would ally itself with the Southern states. More representation in the Congress would upset New York and Washington DC's sweet deal where the bulk of Southern export profits fed the appetites of both cities. No real possibility of slavery expanding into the territories was ever going to happen.

You nailed it. It was all about votes in the Senate. Once the Southern states were out, they couldn't have cared in the least about expansion into the Western states. They no longer needed votes in the US Senate to protect their economic interests....ie to keep themselves from being exploited even worse than they already were. I've posted this before but it bears repeating:

In 1860, in the New Mexico Territory, an area which encompassed the area presently occupied by the States of New Mexico and Arizona, that there were a grand total of 22 slaves, only 12 of whom were actually domiciled there. If the South intended to be a “Slave Power,” spreading its labor system across the entire continent, it was doing a pretty poor job of it. Commenting on this fact, an English publication in 1861 said, “When, therefore, so little pains are taken to propagate slavery outside the circle of the existing slave states, it cannot be that the extension of slavery is desired by the South on social or commercial grounds directly, and still less from any love for the thing itself for its own sake. But the value of New Mexico and Arizona politically is very great! In the Senate they would count as 4 votes with the South or with the North according as they ranked in the category of slave holding or Free soil states”.

DiogenesLamp:

Or it could be that what they wanted was to run their own affairs without sending 40% of their export revenue to New York, and God only knows how much of the rest to Washington DC. Always left out of these discussions is the fact that these two cities were collecting *MOST* of the money produced by the South. Same two f***ing cities that are still trying to control the rest of us today.

This is exactly what it was about all along. Northern Newspapers were full of editorials saying that if the Southern states became independent they would prosper and the North would lose out financially on a massive scale. The South was generating the vast majority of the exports and paying the vast majority of the taxes. That's to say nothing of the shipping, banking, insurance and import/export business and all the salaries and commissions generated from them.

DiogenesLamp: "No real possibility of slavery expanding into the territories was ever going to happen."

Bubba Ho-Tep: "...if we accept that slavery could only be where cotton was grown, you'd have to include California, Arizona, Nevada, Kansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico.
So, basically the entire southwest to the Pacific. "

Right, but more than just cotton states:

In the 1850s slavers competed vigorously with free staters in Kansas -- that's what the 1857 Lecompton Constitution was all about.
Despite support from Democrats in Washington, slavers lost Kansas.
In Oklahoma territory by 1860 slaves were 14% of the population.
In 1859, New Mexico's territory legislature passed the Act for the Protection of Slave Property.
California had thousands of slaves before 1850 -- both Africans & Indians.
After 1850 slavery was sloooooooowly eradicated.
In Nevada & Utah, both thinly populated territories, slavery was lawful and slaves reported.
In Nebraska territory, slavery was tolerated, if not encouraged.

The "salient fact" is that slavery can only prosper when vigorously enforced by governments.
In thinly populated western territories such enforcement did not exist so slaves were generally few.
But stronger enforcement would mean more slaves, and that was the key issue for Republicans.

DiogenesLamp: "I now believe this 'We had to prevent EXPANSION of slavery' was just made up astro turf crap to prevent congressional representation that would ally itself with the Southern states.
More representation in the Congress would upset New York and Washington DC's sweet deal where the bulk of Southern export profits fed the appetites of both cities."

Washington DC and New York were ruled by Southern & Northern Democrats almost continuously from 1801 until secession in 1861.
Whatever economic arrangements they agreed to had nothing to do with average Northern Republicans.

Slavery wasn't going to expand anywhere. I've proven this over and over again by posting modern maps of Cotton growing.

Thomas Jackson owned as many as 10 slaves at points during his adult life. Are you saying that Jackson and men like him would look at the territories and say, "Well since cotton won't grow there then that nowhere I would want to live?"

Not all slaves worked the fields. Or weren't you aware of that.

Yes we have been down this road before. I showed you were wrong and provided the quotes and sources to back it up. As usual, you provided nothing but your opinions.

I provided quotes from the actual Confederate constitution. And I'll do it again.

You said, "The Confederate Constitution banned the slavery trade from anywhere it had been banned from prior to secessionist everywhere except other states. It also permitted states to join which did not allow slavery." You are correct that Confederate states could continue trading slaves between themselves. But article I, section 9, clause 1 specifically protects slave imports from one country. So by all means please provide your evidence that the Confederate constitution is wrong.

You said, "It also permitted states to join which did not allow slavery." Article 1, section 9, clause 4 of the Confederate constitution said, "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed." Article IV, section 2, clause 1 said, "The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired." Article IV, section 3, clause 1 says, " In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States." So by all means please tell us how an existing Confederate state could outlaw slavery within its borders or how a non-slave state could be created from any territory the Confederacy acquired.

FLT-bird: "Confederate Constitution …permitted states to join which did not allow slavery.
Why reject slavery forever when the Confederate Constitution offered no more protections for slavery than existed under the US Constitution?"

The Confederate Constitution added three new protections in support of slavery not found in the US Constitution:

Article 1, Sect 9(4) says no law can be passed against slavery.
Article 2, Sect 2(1) says no restrictions or limitations on slaveholders' travel & sojourn with slaves, anywhere.
Article 4, Sect 3(3) says slavery will be enforced in all CSA territories.

Lost Causers claim non-slaveholding states could join the Confederacy, but clearly if only theoretically, by accepting such "rights" of slaveholders throughout the Confederacy.

So on the question of which Constitution protected slavery better, even considering Corwin, there simply was no contest.
The Confederate constitution provided 1861 Fire Eater secessionists with every protection for slavery they believed was missing from the US Constitution.

FLT-bird: "Let’s run through the math again.

15 slaveholding states at the time.
3/4s of all states required to pass a constitutional amendment.
Ergo, to abolish slavery at some future date, it would take 45 states voting to pass that future amendment over the objections of the 15 slaveholding states.
45 + 15 = 60.
How many states are in the US currently?
The answer is of course 50.
Ie not even close to enough.
Slavery would have been irrevocable without the approval of the slaveholding states."

When it suits his purposes, FLT-bird himself points out that slavery by 1860 was dying out in Border South states like Delaware, Maryland & Missouri.
Slavery & slavers were also highly unpopular in huge regions of western Virginia, eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, northern Alabama, northern Arkansas & northern Texas.
All of these in time could reduce strong slaveholding states from 15 to, say, seven or eight.

Then the math of constitutional amendments would become less daunting.

FLT-bird: "In 1860, in the New Mexico Territory, an area which encompassed the area presently occupied by the States of New Mexico and Arizona, that there were a grand total of 22 slaves, only 12 of whom were actually domiciled there."

Well, that's not quite true:

"On June 19, 1862, Congress prohibited slavery in all US territories.
New Mexico citizens petitioned the US Senate for compensation for 600 Indian slaves that were going to be set free.[14]
The Senate denied their request and sent federal agents to abolish slavery.
However, when Special Indian Agent J.K. Graves visited in June 1866, he found that slavery was still widespread, and many of the federal agents had slaves.
In his report, he estimated that there were 400 slaves in Santa Fe alone.[15]
On March 2, 1867, Congress passed the Peonage Act of 1867, which specifically targeted New Mexican slavery."

So slavery was more important in New Mexico than some Lost Causers wish to admit.

Bird-brain shows his ignorance once again with the foolish statement, “Once the Southern states were out, they couldn’t have cared in the least about expansion into the Western states.”

Had he ever read anything more than dilorenzo he would know that agents of the confederacy were active in every state and territory throughout the west and northwest. The insinuated themselves into local politics and agitated for admission to the little rebellion.

And yes, they wanted their slaves to accompany them wherever they wandered.

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