After Confederate statues fall, is Lincoln Memorial next?

https://www.reporternews.com ^ | March 9, 2019 | Jerry Patterson

[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.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "And George Washington more or less ignored these "free state" laws."

Right, the President of the 1787 Constitution Convention didn't understand his own document!
Nor did the "father of the Constitution", James Madison.
Nor did the author of the most Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton.

Nor did even anti-Federalists of the time, like Patrick Henry, who opposed ratifying the Constitution -- even slaveholder Henry never claimed the Constitution forbade abolition!

Nor did 1860s Fire Eater secessionists -- not one claimed the Constitution outlawed abolition, only that Northern abolitionists made Union impossible.

Nor have any other Lost Causers I've ever seen here showed such chutzpah as to claim our original Constitution outlawed abolition!

Only DiogenesLamp, amazing.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "If free states aren't explicitly allowed, then the document cannot be interpreted as allowing them.
*YOUR INTERPRETATION!*"

Clearly the Confederate constitution might contemplate non-slave states, but only if they agreed to Confederate preconditions:

1. No laws against slavery
2. No restrictions on slaveholders' travel & sojourns
3. No opposition to slavery in Confederate territories.

So, which non-slaveholding Union states might agree to such terms?

[Bull Snipe]

your opinion is a cabal of New York bankers and Abraham Lincoln decided to drag 31,000,000 people into Civil War to protect tariffs the government collected and insurance and shipping that might have gone elsewhere. Once the decision was made, Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln alone personally orchestrated events to fool the South into firing first. I see I got that correct.

[DiogenesLamp]

You got it substantially incorrect on all the points I mentioned. Again, there was no intent to involve 31 million people. You cannot postulate a theory that having this many people involved was intended when Lincoln sent the war fleet.

It just blew up way bigger than he thought it would when he started the whole thing.

[BroJoeK]

FLT-bird: "y’all will tie yourselves into pretzels trying to convince yourselves the Leftists in Academia who came up with this Revisionist line of BS to suit their 1960s politics suddenly discovered capital T Platonic truth over 100 years after the events in question."

I went to school back when FLT-bird's own Marxist interpretations were the only ones taught by the "Leftists in Academia".
I didn't believe it then and don't believe it now, because it's not what people said at the time.

This link includes 10 quotes from the time which do support FLT-bird's economic concerns expressed at the time.
But in the first place, those concerns were misplaced & overblown and second, there's no confirmed evidence they had any direct effect on the events at Fort Sumter.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Lincoln sending the ships to Charleston, and announcing they were on their way, put the south into a bind. They could either allow the ships to supply the fort, or they could open fire. The choice to start shooting was theirs and theirs alone. As you say, “And he made a tremendous mistake in his clever little plan. He didn’t realize the degree of resistance which would arise and turn his quick little war into a horrible bloody disaster.” Only it was Jefferson Davis who made the mistake, ask Robert Toombs warned, “Mr. president at this time it is suicide, murder, and will lose every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornets nest which extends from mountains to ocean, and legions now quiet will swarm our and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it put us in the wrong it is fatal.”

[BroJoeK]

Bull Snipe to DiogenesLamp: "your opinion is a cabal of New York bankers and Abraham Lincoln decided to drag 31,000,000 people into Civil War to protect tariffs the government collected and insurance and shipping that might have gone elsewhere."

Among the Lost Cause proof-texts is this one, said to be from the New York Times March 22, 1861:

"At once shut down every Southern port, destroy its commerce and bring utter ruin on the Confederate States."

So first, can we confirm the quote itself as being both legitimate and in context?
Answer: no.

Second, here's this New York Times, from the day just before, March 21, 1861:

"There is growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go."

But we don't have the context for either quote and the one from March 21 suggests the next day's opinion may be more in the nature of "one option" than an outright demand.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp to Bull Snipe: "You forgot the 230 million that was funneling through New York with both them and Washington DC getting the bulk of it."

In 1860 New York was sending Washington, DC, about $35 million per year in import tariff revenues, not $230 million.
Democrats, including Southern Democrats, not Republicans, were responsible for whatever legal structures encouraged New York's prosperity.

DiogenesLamp: "You forgot the threat caused by loss of the Southern markets to European competition."

This "threat" was not immediately apparent to even the New York Times which said on March 21, 1861:

"It cannot be denied that there is a growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go.
The Abolitionists everywhere have been in favor of a dissolution of the Union from the beginning....
The true policy of the Government is unquestionably that of masterly inactivity...
Force, as a means of restoring the Union, or of permanently preserving it, is out of the question."

DiogenesLamp: "You forgot the threat caused by loss of the Southern markets to European competition."

As my post #538 above demonstrates, the loss of Southern railroad iron would reduce the entire US market by just 10%.
It would not be a major disaster.

DiogenesLamp: "You forgot the loss of the Midwestern Markets due to Southern companies moving European products up the Mississippi Watershed"

First of all, Mississippi steamboats were not necessarily cheaper transportation to, say, Chicago, than those same steamboats on the Great Lakes or Northern East-West railroads.

But more to the point: no merchant -- none, zero, nada merchants -- were going to pay two tariffs to send European imports to, say, New Orleans, upriver to St. Louis or Chicago.

DiogenesLamp: "...and you forgot the threat caused by the capitalization of competing industries in the South."

Well... seems like DiogenesLamp has also forgotten something important about 1860 era Southerners:

"Traveling through the South in the spring of 1861, London Times correspondent William Howard Russell encountered this 'Conflict of Civilizations' theme everywhere he went.
'The tone in which [Southerners] alluded to the whole of the Northern people indicated the clear conviction that trade, commerce, the pursuit of gain, manufacture, and the base mechanical arts, had so degraded the whole race” that Southerners could no longer tolerate association with them, wrote Russell.
There is a degree of something like ferocity in the Southern mind [especially] toward New England which exceeds belief.'
A South Carolinian told Russell:
'We are an agricultural people, pursuing our own system, and working out our own destiny, breeding up women and men with some other purpose than to make them vulgar, fanatical, cheating Yankees.'

"Louis Wigfall of Texas, a former US. senator, told Russell:

'We are a peculiar people, Sir! . . .
We are an agricultural people. . . .
We have no cities—we don’t want them. . . .
We want no manufactures: we desire no trading, no mechanical or manufacturing classes. . . ..
As long as we have our rice, our sugar, our tobacco, and our cotton, we can command wealth to purchase all we want. . . .
But with the Yankees we will never trade—never.
Not one pound of cotton shall ever go from the South to their accursed cities.'(1)"

Of course, not all Southerners in 1860 felt that way, but their slaveholder leaders did, and that's important.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Any sane man would have immediately recognized that sending five warships into that array of cannons was a suicide mission.
Had they been able to follow the orders they were given, it would have been five sunk warships, and who knows how many dead soldiers/sailors."

Obviously DiogenesLamp doesn't speak for any "sane man".

Lincoln's plan originated with Captain Doubleday in Fort Sumter and Gustavus Fox -- it was to keep the large ships well off shore and send small boats under cover of darkness & fog to resupply Fort Sumter.

It was a good plan and would have worked if only Maj. Anderson had held out a few days longer.

DiogenesLamp: "And he made a tremendous mistake in his clever little plan.
He didn't realize the degree of resistance which would arise and turn his quick little war into a horrible bloody disaster."

Sort of sounds like DiogenesLamp thinks the only person dumber than Lincoln was... well… Jefferson Davis, right?

[FLT-bird]

DiogenesLamp:

My concern is demonstrating why the North had a very powerful motive to launch a war against the South, and one which had nothing at all to do with concern about the South's peculiar institution. I think the changes caused by independence would have caused a massive economic boom in the South, and so too thought the various Southern Newspapers of the time, and so too thought various Northern Newspapers of the time.

Yep. Its very clear both sides were motivated primarily by the same thing people are always motivated by - MONEY. It certainly wasn't slavery. The North was just fine with that so long as they got to keep profiting so much from it. Even the original 7 seceding states turned down the Corwin Amendment and were looking forward to economic independence. But of course the PC Revisionsts can't bear to admit that despite how overwhelming the evidence is for it.

[BroJoeK]

FLT-bird: "Its very clear both sides were motivated primarily by the same thing people are always motivated by - MONEY.
It certainly wasn't slavery."

Except that for some people, slavery was MONEY:

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world."
Mississippi "Reasons for Secession", January 1861

Here "material" means MONEY.

"They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States...
They have impoverished the slave-holding states by unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance.
They have refused to vote appropriations for protecting Texas against ruthless savages, for the sole reason that she is a slave-holding State.
Texas "Reasons for Secession" February 2, 1861

So, Northern abolitionist impoverished" slave-holding states -- sounds like MONEY to me.

"The fairest portions of the world have been turned into wildernesses, and the most civilized and prosperous communities have been impoverished and ruined by Anti-Slavery fanaticism."
Robert Rhett's "Address to Slaveholding States" December 1860

Abolitionists impoverished "civilized and prosperous communities" -- sounds like MONEY to me.

FLT-bird: "The North was just fine with that so long as they got to keep profiting so much from it."

Well, not all in the North, this man for example:

"You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted."
A. Lincoln "Letter to Alexander H. Stephens" (December 22, 1860)

FLT-bird: "Even the original 7 seceding states turned down the Corwin Amendment and were looking forward to economic independence.
But of course the PC Revisionsts can't bear to admit that despite how overwhelming the evidence is for it."

The important fact is that Corwin was supported by all Democrats, opposed by most Republicans.
No evidence has ever been presented here that a) Lincoln directly supported Corwin or b) "the original 7 seceding states" were ever asked to consider, or ever did consider, Corwin as a reason to end secession.
Corwin was a Democrat solution to secession.

[BroJoeK]

"Treason and Rebellion or the Constitution under Union and Laws..."

Right, our Lost Causers tell us slavery had nothing to do with it, just Marxist economics & class warfare, and that's what I learned in school years ago.
But slavery was important in nearly every step along the way, from "Reasons for Secession" to Contraband and the Emancipation Proclamation.

They want to ignore slavery, pretend it didn't matter.
I'm saying it did matter, a lot.

[Bull Snipe]

or b) “the original 7 seceding states” were ever asked to consider, or ever did consider, Corwin as a reason to end secession.”

President Lincoln, on Mar 16th 1861, sent a letter to the Governors all of states including the states that had seceded. This letter was a transmittal of the Corwin Amendment and stated “an authenticated copy of a Joint Resolution to amend the Constitution of the United States.”

The only surviving copy of Lincoln’s original cover letter is that which was sent to the Governor of the state of Florida.

So the seven seceding states received a copy of the Corwin Amendment from President Lincoln. One might assume, that by forwarding the amendment to the seceded states, Lincoln was tacitly asking for their consideration. Even though he makes no such request in his cover letter.

[DiogenesLamp]

Lincoln sending the ships to Charleston, and announcing they were on their way, put the south into a bind. They could either allow the ships to supply the fort, or they could open fire. The choice to start shooting was theirs and theirs alone.

They could sit and do nothing, and the ships would open fire on them, and so too would the fort join in.

You are ignoring the fact that those warships had orders to use force to complete their mission if necessary, so as far as the Confederates knew, they were going to be fired upon. If they were being fired upon by both the ships and the fort, many more would die, so Beauregard did what any rational military man would do. He neutralized the fort before the ships could be brought to bear against him.

The fault for starting a war lies completely with the man who sent warships with instructions to attack people. Your side keeps trying to flip the chain of responsibility away from the guy who initiated violent events, and on to people who were having to respond to the violence Lincoln initiated by sending warships against them.

Many of you know that knowledge of these warships undermines the claim that the South started it. I had absolutely never heard of this before three years ago, and so the question must be asked, why is this highly significant piece of information seemingly always left out of most high school history books telling of the events?

Trying to keep it out of public knowledge is a virtual admission that it doesn't fit the narrative the powers that be wish the people to believe.

Lincoln was the aggressor. The bulk of his cabinet told him that if he did what he was contemplating, it would cause a war. Major Anderson, upon hearing of the plan, said it would initiate a war.

All these people are on Lincoln's side, and all of them asserted that he would be responsible if his orders triggered a war.

That too seldom gets pointed out to the public.

[DiogenesLamp]

Yep. Its very clear both sides were motivated primarily by the same thing people are always motivated by - MONEY. It certainly wasn't slavery. The North was just fine with that so long as they got to keep profiting so much from it. Even the original 7 seceding states turned down the Corwin Amendment and were looking forward to economic independence. But of course the PC Revisionsts can't bear to admit that despite how overwhelming the evidence is for it.

They cannot accept it. It makes their side into the bad guys, and they have lived too long with the belief that their side did a great and moral thing.

They sweep aside all proof to the contrary because it is painful to believe that not only were they duped by the power cabal that still controls the nation today, but that their "champions" did a very evil thing in invading and murdering people because they were tricked by the power cabal in Washington DC into believing lies.

It's like waking up and finding out your Uncle was a Nazi who herded Jews onto the trains. It's too horrible to accept, thus they will grasp at any straw to prevent themselves from acknowledging the enormity of what we are trying to tell them.

It's emotional, and I understand why they don't want to believe what the evidence shows.

[DiogenesLamp]

So the seven seceding states received a copy of the Corwin Amendment from President Lincoln. One might assume, that by forwarding the amendment to the seceded states, Lincoln was tacitly asking for their consideration. Even though he makes no such request in his cover letter.

Absolutely agree. Lincoln had hoped that this evidence of the US strongly protecting slavery would convince them to stay in the Union.

It obviously wasn't what they wanted though. What they wanted was out.

[Bull Snipe]

or maybe they were not going to trust the Lincoln administration regardless. After all slavery was legal in the Constitution and there was a recent Supreme Court decision that very clearly stated the Federal Government had absolutely no authority to interfere with the institution of slavery in any state where it was legal.
As long as the slave states maintained parity in the Senate, slavery was safe. As long as A Democrat or a Southerner was President, slavery was safe. But now anti slave Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate. The incoming President was a Republican. The deep South states felt that the Government would at some time in the future take adverse action against the labor system that made the South wealthy. I seriously doubt that the deep South states would have seceded had John Breckenridge been elected President.

[DiogenesLamp]

or maybe they were not going to trust the Lincoln administration regardless. After all slavery was legal in the Constitution and there was a recent Supreme Court decision that very clearly stated the Federal Government had absolutely no authority to interfere with the institution of slavery in any state where it was legal. As long as the slave states maintained parity in the Senate, slavery was safe. As long as A Democrat or a Southerner was President, slavery was safe. But now anti slave Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate. The incoming President was a Republican. The deep South states felt that the Government would at some time in the future take adverse action against the labor system that made the South wealthy.

This is the popular theory, but more accurately stated. Many people say it's all about the "expansion" of slavery, but that claim doesn't pass cursory examination.

I have long said that the reasons for the South wanting to leave are irrelevant to their right to leave for any reason. The only salient point here is whether or not an association voluntarily joined can be voluntarily left.

The Declaration of Independence says "yes", and the Constitution is silent on the matter. The concept of "Freedom of Association" requires the corollary of "Freedom of Disassociation", and so by the base foundation of natural law, people cannot be required to associate with people whom they do not wish to associate.

Whatever were the South's reasons for wanting independence, they had a right to have it, and so I see efforts to focus on their reasons as attempts to deliberately distract from the core principle involved.

"Consent of the governed."

[Bull Snipe]

Do you really think that the deep South states would have seceded if Breckenridge had been elected President.