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After Confederate statues fall, is Lincoln Memorial next?
https://www.reporternews.com ^ | March 9, 2019 | Jerry Patterson

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.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events; US: Virginia
KEYWORDS: criminal; despot; dishonestabe; dixie; honestabe; liberalfascism; lincoln; purge; tyrant; warcriminal
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To: FLT-bird; BroJoeK; rockrr
First you were talking about Abraham Lincoln, now you are talking about the Black Codes - not the same thing.

The pre-Civil War Black Codes did indeed restrict the rights of African Americans in some Northern states. They were not always strictly enforced. Most of those laws were repealed in the mid-19th century, before or after the Civil War. The fifteenth amendment ended voting restrictions in the North and what remained was laws against interracial marriage. That's not to say that discrimination ended, just that the situation you described didn't exactly apply after the Civil War.

In the South after the Civil War restrictive Black Codes were being introduced to replace the old Slave Codes that had controlled African-Americans and restricted their rights. It's hard to see what Lincoln may have had to do with Southern states imposing segregation and Black Codes. I'd say that the very fact that Black leaders were free to come to the White House and discuss the plan with Lincoln suggests that conditions in the North weren't as oppressive as you claimed and that Lincoln wasn't committed to forcible relocation either.

41 posted on 03/10/2019 12:12:24 PM PDT by x (Pinging BroJoe because I know how much you love talking with him.)
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To: wardaddy
Former austere poster Goetz von Berlichingen was astute when he determined decades ago here that this is purely an imposition of political will by force of one group over another

Politics usually involves one group's political will being imposed on another. But why "by force"? It's up to you. If your representatives vote to keep the statues, you'll keep them. If they don't, you won't. And you can always relocate them to private property.

42 posted on 03/10/2019 12:16:43 PM PDT by x
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To: rockrr
Originally named in honor of Rufus King, King County was re "dedicated" to mlk

William Rufus King.

Rufus King was different old-time politician.

Given the salacious rumors about William Rufus King and James Buchanan, slaveowner WRK might be making a comeback among the politically correct.

43 posted on 03/10/2019 12:21:12 PM PDT by x
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To: x

My mistake - thanks.


44 posted on 03/10/2019 12:28:36 PM PDT by rockrr ( Everything is different now...)
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To: DoodleDawg

“No, because Lee didn’t really have a problem with slavery.”

Wasn’t it Lee that wrote: “Slaves, obey your earthly masters . . .”

Or, am I thinking about someone else?


45 posted on 03/10/2019 1:15:04 PM PDT by jeffersondem
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To: jeffersondem; gandalftb
jeffersondem: "The link wanted a dollar to read the article from the Washington Post.
Too high a price to pay."

Try this link, no cost:


46 posted on 03/10/2019 1:20:29 PM PDT by BroJoeK ((a little historical perspective...))
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To: UnwashedPeasant

Here’s a book of evidence:

Father Abraham: Lincoln’s Relentless Struggle to End Slavery

by Richard Striner (Author)


47 posted on 03/10/2019 1:35:49 PM PDT by buridan
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To: x

Yes, I’m well aware the Black Codes were something else. What I was getting at was “voluntary” might be what somebody says. It might be what is in the legal code. That does not mean that was the reality. As the Black Codes in the North demonstrate or as official laws on the books saying Blacks could vote in Pennsylvania for example demonstrate is, that was not the reality. Make it impossible for Blacks to earn a living and they will leave “voluntarily”. Have any Black person aware that terrible things will happen to them if they do try to vote and they won’t try it as was the case in Pennsylvania. You can’t come along 150+ years later without knowing the reality on the ground, read the word “voluntary” in somebody’s statement and grasp what the reality was without knowing the context.

Lincoln wasn’t committed to forcible relocation. Of course if local laws and conditions made things difficult if not impossible for Blacks and this spurred many to “voluntarily” leave, he’d have been just fine with that - and yes Martha, the Black Codes were very strictly enforced in the Northern states which wanted to keep Blacks out.


48 posted on 03/10/2019 1:43:11 PM PDT by FLT-bird
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To: wardaddy

Leftists have always been incredibly shortsighted - not to mention hypocritical.


49 posted on 03/10/2019 1:46:06 PM PDT by FLT-bird
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To: jeffersondem
Or, am I thinking about someone else?

Probably someone else. Lee wrote "Considering the relation of master and slave, controlled by humane laws and influenced by Christianity and an enlightened public sentiment, as the best that can exist between the white and black races while intermingled as at present in this country, I would deprecate any sudden disturbance of that relation unless it be necessary to avert a greater calamity to both." And that was in January 1865.

50 posted on 03/10/2019 1:50:49 PM PDT by DoodleDawg
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To: jeffersondem
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865). Political Debates Between Lincoln and Douglas 1897.

But if it is a wrong, he cannot say people have a right to do wrong. He says that upon the score of equality, slaves should be allowed to go in a new Territory, like other property. This is strictly logical if there is no difference between it and other property. If it and other property are equal, his argument is entirely logical. But if you insist that one is wrong and the other right, there is no use to institute a comparison between right and wrong. You may turn over everything in the Democratic policy from beginning to end, whether in the shape it takes on the statute book, in the shape it takes in the Dred Scott decision, in the shape it takes in conversation, or the shape it takes in short maxim-like arguments,—it everywhere carefully excludes the idea that there is anything wrong in it.

That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles—right and wrong—throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, “You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.” No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle. Page 431

https://www.bartleby.com/251/pages/page431.html

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature -- opposition to it is in his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks, and throes, and convulsions must ceaselessly follow. Repeal the Missouri Compromise -- repeal all compromises -- repeal the declaration of independence -- repeal all past history, you still can not repeal human nature. It still will be the abundance of man's heart, that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.

--October 16, 1854 Speech at Peoria

The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown, and proclaim his subjects free republicans sooner than will our American masters voluntarily give up their slaves. --August 15, 1855 Letter to George Robertson -

http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/robert.htm

You know I dislike slavery; and you fully admit the abstract wrong of it.

--August 24, 1855 Letter to Joshua Speed - -

http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/speed.htm

The slave-breeders and slave-traders, are a small, odious and detested class, among you; and yet in politics, they dictate the course of all of you, and are as completely your masters, as you are the master of your own negroes. --August 24, 1855 Letter to Joshua Speed =

http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/speed.htm

51 posted on 03/10/2019 2:13:32 PM PDT by GOPJ (Democrats are attacking Ivanka & Jared ostensibly on security clearances - reality is antisemitism)
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To: jeffersondem

Clean out your cookies and get the Post articles for free, they are tracking you, or better, use a VPN.


52 posted on 03/10/2019 2:16:27 PM PDT by gandalftb
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To: jeffersondem; FLT-bird; BroJoeK; rockrr

Perhaps you were thinking of the eminent Virginian statesman Thomas J. Randolph, who advocated for emancipation in 1832:

https://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/3883

The Virginia emancipation debate of the 1830s rarely consisted of extreme abolitionist views. However, some Virginians did have opinions about whether or not the institution of slavery was politically and economically necessary. Randolph suggested that the gradual emancipation plan would not hurt the state economically, as it “levies no money tax upon the people - each slave pays his own removal by his hire.”


53 posted on 03/10/2019 2:24:37 PM PDT by gandalftb
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To: NKP_Vet; All

In time, the commies will destroy every monument and book to erase our collective memory of what America once was.


54 posted on 03/10/2019 2:27:17 PM PDT by TexasRepublic (Socialism is the gospel of envy and the religion of thieves. Socialism is governmental theft!)
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To: TexasRepublic

Neo-Conquistadors?


55 posted on 03/10/2019 2:34:22 PM PDT by sparklite2 (Don't mind me. I'm just a contrarian.)
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To: gandalftb

demojeff has an agenda that isn’t square with history, reason, or reality. His stock in trade is the loaded “gotcha” that begs a misinterpretation.

You’ll get no honest answers from him.


56 posted on 03/10/2019 2:41:57 PM PDT by rockrr ( Everything is different now...)
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To: FLT-bird; BroJoeK
Of course if local laws and conditions made things difficult if not impossible for Blacks and this spurred many to “voluntarily” leave, he’d have been just fine with that.

Presumably that would apply to virtually all Whites, none of whom wanted to make things easier for African-Americans.

You would have a hard time making Lincoln into any kind of prime offender here since he was even willing to give the vote to some African-Americans at the end of the war.

the Black Codes were very strictly enforced in the Northern states which wanted to keep Blacks out.

In the 1860 census there were over 7,000 Blacks in Illinois and over 6,000 in Michigan. Whoever was enforcing the laws wasn't trying very hard.

57 posted on 03/10/2019 2:42:10 PM PDT by x
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To: Dilbert San Diego
Seattle is in King County. Originally that was named for a Vice President of the United States, but a few years ago the local politicians changed it to be in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.

So they could re-brand Washington State as being in honor of Booker T. Washington...except that his views are scorned nowadays as not radical enough.

58 posted on 03/10/2019 2:55:56 PM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: GOPJ
“The slave-breeders and slave-traders, are a small, odious and detested class, among you; and yet in politics, they dictate the course of all of you, and are as completely your masters, as you are the master of your own negroes. —August 24, 1855 Letter to Joshua Speed “

Using this quote, and the others you cite, a case can be made that Lincoln had in his heart the desire to overthrow the pro-slavery provisions of the United States Constitution.

As an educated man, he must have known he could not get the votes to over-throw the pro-slavery U.S. Constitution peacefully.

What Lincoln would need was a pretext.

59 posted on 03/10/2019 3:04:39 PM PDT by jeffersondem
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To: DoodleDawg
“Probably someone else.”

That's just one of the things I admire about you: your ability to keep straight faces.

When you act oblivious to history, it comes across as totally believable.

60 posted on 03/10/2019 3:17:31 PM PDT by jeffersondem
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