Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

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
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 61-8081-100101-120 ... 641-650 next last
To: Pelham

Oh for Christ Sake, look what crawled out from under a rock. Listen jerkoff, on the 25th. of last month marked 29 years the booze and I parted company. You ought to keep your nose in it.


81 posted on 03/10/2019 5:11:04 PM PDT by jmacusa ("The more numerous the laws the more corrupt the government''.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 80 | View Replies]

To: x

Nobody need make Lincoln THE foremost racist in the country. It was quite clear where he stood by his own words.

“Negro equality! Fudge! How long, in the government of a god, great enough to make and maintain this universe, shall there continue to be knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagogue-ism as this?” Abraham Lincoln

“I can conceive of no greater calamity than the assimilation of the Negro into our social and political life as our equal. . . We can never attain the ideal union our fathers dreamed, with millions of an alien, inferior race among us, whose assimilation is neither possible nor desirable.” -Abraham Lincoln

“anything that argues me into . . . [the] idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a horse chestnut to be a chestnut horse. . . . I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. (Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1832-1858, New York: The Library of America, 1989, edited by Don Fehrenbacher, pp. 511-512)

“Our republican system was meant for a homogeneous people. As long as blacks continue to live with the whites they constitute a threat to the national life. Family life may also collapse and the increase of mixed breed bastards may some day challenge the supremacy of the white man.” Abraham Lincoln

There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races ... A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas ... Abraham Lincoln

As for the Black Codes and the racism practices in the North, this from SlaveNorth:

” The legal history of the black codes in these two states is essentially similiar, and in fact Illinois simply continued Indiana’s code when it organized as a territory.

The new states that entered the union in the North after the gradual emancipation of northern slaves were just as concerned as the old ones with maintaining their racial purity. To do so, they turned to an old practice in the North: the exclusion law. Slaves could not be brought into the Northwest Territories, under the ordinance of 1787, but slaves already there remained in bondage. Once states began to emerge from the old territories, most of them explicitly barred blacks or permitted them only if they could prove their freedom and post bond. Ohio offered the first example, and those that followed her into the union followed her lead on race.

Both Indiana (1816) and Illinois (1818) abolished slavery by their constitutions. And both followed the Ohio policy of trying to prevent black immigration by passing laws requiring blacks who moved into the state to produce legal documents verifying that they were free and posting bond to guarantee their good behavior. The bond requirements ranged as high as $1,000, which was prohibitive for a black American in those days. Anti-immigration legislation was passed in Illinois in 1819, 1829, and 1853. In Indiana, such laws were enacted in 1831 and 1852. Michigan Territory passed such a law in 1827; Iowa Territory passed one in 1839 and Iowa enacted another in 1851 after it became a state.

In Indiana in 1850 during the constitutional debate in the state, one speaker had frankly acknowledged, “It would be better to kill them off at once, if there is no other way to get rid of them. ... We know how the Puritans did with the Indians, who were infinitely more magninimous and less impudent than the colored race.”

Not content with mere legislation, Illinois, Indiana, and Oregon had anti-immigration provisions built into their constitutions. In Illinois (1848), in clause-by-clause voting, this clause was approved by voters by more than 2 to 1. Most of the opposition to it came from the northern counties of the state, where blacks were few. In Indiana (1851), it was approved by a larger margin than the constitution itself. In Oregon (1857), the vote for it was 8 to 1. The Illinois act stayed on the books until 1865. Such laws were served blacks as grinding reminders of apartheid intentions and legal subjugation, and they offered white authorities and mobs excuses for harassment and violence against blacks.

The Black Codes dealt with more than just settlement. Oregon forbid blacks to hold real estate, make contracts, or bring lawsuits. Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, and California prohibited them from testifying in cases where a white man was a party. When the Illinois state constitution was adopted in 1818, it limited the vote to “free white men” and excluded blacks from the militia.

Indiana’s anti-immigration rule was challenged in the case of a black man convicted for bringing a black woman into the state to marry her. The state Supreme Court upheld the conviction, noting that, “The policy of the state is ... clearly evolved. It is to exclude any further ingress of negroes, and to remove those already among us as speedily as possible.”

There was no legal segregaton in Indiana’s public schools: none was necessary. The white citizens of the state would keep the schools racially pure more thoroughly than any legal provision could. A court upheld the white-only Indiana public schools in 1850, finding that, in the eyes of the state, “black children were deemed unfit associates of whites, as school companions.”

On closer examination, even the designation of “free state” can be question in a case like that of Illinois. Illinois, as a territory where slaves were held, had been restricting the freedom of black residents since before it became a state. In December 1813, Illinois Territory prohibited free blacks to immigrate to the territory and decreed all who did must leave within 15 days after notice or receive 39 lashes. As a state, it maintained the black codes inherited when it had formed part of Indiana, and thus continued its system of what one historian has described as “registered and indentured slavery.”

[S]he permitted non-resident slave-owners to hire their slaves to citizens of Illinois for a period of twelve months, yet not give the slave his freedom; and justified her act with the excuse that laborers were wanted to erect mills and open up the country, and that salt could not be profitably manufactured by white men.

When the legislature once attempted to alter the black law to strip out the provision that allowed slaves to be imported into the colony, the governor vetoed it.

Furthermore, Illinois wouldn’t even emancipate the few old slaves who had been in the territory since before 1787. Every person bound to service or indenture in the territory was to continue as such under state government, though children born of such persons were to be emancipated — the boys at 24, the girls at 18.

The first General Assembly under the constitution fastened slavery on Illinois more firmly than ever by re-enacting the old laws regarding free negroes, mulattoes, servants, and slaves, and by adopting what in the Southern States would have been a slave code. Thenceforth, no negro, no mulatto, either by himself or with his family, was to be suffered to live in the State unless he produced a certificate of freedom bearing the seal of some court of record of the State or Territory whence he came; nor until the certificate, with a long description of himself and of each member of his family, had been duly recorded in the county in which he proposed to live. Even then the overseers of the poor might expel him at any time they saw fit.

As for blacks already living in Illinois in 1818, they were required to report to the circuit clerk before June 1, 1819, register their names, show evidence of their freedom, and have him issue a certificate. Any free black person in Illinois without such a certificate would be considered a slave and a runaway, and was liable to be arrested, arraigned before a justice, advertised in the newspapers for six weeks by the county sheriff. If no “owner” came forth to claim the black person, the county still could sell him or her as an indentured servant for one year.

In other matters, too, the early law of Illinois was indistinguishable from a slave state code:

To employ an uncertified negro was to incur a fine of a dollar and a half for each day he labored; to harbor a slave or servant, or hinder his recapture, was felony, punishable by a fine of twice the value of the man and thirty stripes on the bare back; to sell to, or buy of, or trade with a slave or servant without consent of the master was absolutely forbidden. If a slave was found ten miles from home without a permit, he was liable to arrest and flogging. Should he appear at any house or farm without written permission from his master, the owner of the place to which he came might give him ten lashes well laid on. Should he commit any offense for which a white man would be fined, he was to be whipped at a rate of twenty lashes for every eight dollars of fine.

“To all intents and purposes,” McMaster concludes, “slavery was thus as much a domestic institution of Illinois in 1820 as of Kentucky or Missouri ....” And in fact a few years later, Illinois itself attempted to become a slave state.

http://slavenorth.com/northwest.htm

So much for the myth of the virtuous North.


82 posted on 03/10/2019 5:13:15 PM PDT by FLT-bird
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 57 | View Replies]

To: jeffersondem

If Lincoln did indeed “fight to free the slaves” it would seem awfully strange then that he supported the Corwin Amendment which would have enshrined slavery in the constitution expressly and protected it effectively forever.

It seems strange too that he would be against abolition in areas the Union controlled, yet by his own words, he was: “I am a little uneasy about the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia” Lincoln March 24 1862 in a letter to Horace Greeley, New York Tribune editor

It also seem strange he would tell members of his own party that they did not go to war to put down slavery, yet he did:
“Lincoln remained unmoved. . . . ‘I think Sumner [abolitionist Charles Sumner] and the rest of you would upset our applecart altogether if you had your way,’ he told the Radicals. . . . ‘We didn’t go into this war to put down slavery . . . and to act differently at this moment would, I have no doubt, not only weaken our cause, but smack of bad faith.’ Vindication of the president’s view came a few weeks later, when the Massachusetts state Republican convention—perhaps the most Radical party organization in the North—defeated a resolution endorsing Fremont’s proclamation.” (Klingaman, Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, pp. 75-76, emphasis added)

There is a lot more but you get the gist.


83 posted on 03/10/2019 5:29:19 PM PDT by FLT-bird
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 66 | View Replies]

To: Pelham

Exactly. Funny thing is the vast majority of Southerners would have supported their defense of their ancestors and former leaders had not so many even supposedly conservative Northerners joined with the PC Revisionists in attacking the South’s heritage and history. Now, we’ll be only too happy to support the Cortes’s/Omars and Tlaibs of the world as they set their sights on the Northern states’ heritage.


84 posted on 03/10/2019 5:32:21 PM PDT by FLT-bird
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 67 | View Replies]

To: FLT-bird; BroJoeK; rockrr
“Our republican system was meant for a homogeneous people. As long as blacks continue to live with the whites they constitute a threat to the national life. Family life may also collapse and the increase of mixed breed bastards may some day challenge the supremacy of the white man.” Abraham Lincoln

No. That's not Abraham Lincoln. That is someone writing to Abraham Lincoln.

You are also taking quotes out of context from the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and including a contextless fragment from his notes that may not have been publicly delivered.

In the debates, Lincoln is countering Douglas's arguments by assuming that Douglas's assumptions could be true but that Douglas's policies would have bad effects. Just how far Lincoln actually shared Douglas's sentiments about race and for how long is something people argue about. Nobody would say he was a modern egalitarian integrationist, but not everything he said in the debates can be taken at face value.

And you cut and paste a whole section of slavenorth that mostly deals with an earlier period that came to an end with the Civil War (or shortly before or shortly after). Not so relevant to the situation in the 1860s.

You may have somehow gotten the idea that I like having endless discussions with you. I don't. BroJoeK may not mind. Maybe you can take it up with him. Or maybe with somebody else. Enjoy.

85 posted on 03/10/2019 5:35:41 PM PDT by x
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 82 | View Replies]

To: FLT-bird

And yet he was objectively less “racist” than nearly anyone from the south.


86 posted on 03/10/2019 5:44:09 PM PDT by rockrr ( Everything is different now...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 82 | View Replies]

To: FLT-bird; BroJoeK; DoodleDawg
It seems strange too that he would be against abolition in areas the Union controlled, yet by his own words, he was: “I am a little uneasy about the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia” Lincoln March 24 1862 in a letter to Horace Greeley, New York Tribune editor

Stop quoting out of context. A fuller version of the quote is:

I am a little uneasy about the abolishment of slavery in this District, not but I would be glad to see it abolished, but as to the time and manner of doing it. If some one or more of the border-states would move fast, I should greatly prefer it; but if this can not be in a reasonable time, I would like the bill to have the three main features---gradual---compensation---and vote of the people---

In other words, Lincoln was all for emancipation in the District of Columbia. Lincoln had propose abolition in the District years before when he was a Congressman. But he had some scruples about how emancipation was going to be implemented by the 1862 legislation.

I still don't enjoy this. These misquotes are a big reason why.

87 posted on 03/10/2019 5:53:02 PM PDT by x
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 83 | View Replies]

To: x

Lincoln was quite clear that he was no abolitionist and that the North did not go to war over slavery. The Northern dominated US Congress passed a resolution in 1861 saying exactly that.


88 posted on 03/10/2019 5:58:27 PM PDT by FLT-bird
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 87 | View Replies]

To: rockrr

and yet that’s bullshit. Lincoln was as racist as anyone at the time.


89 posted on 03/10/2019 5:59:28 PM PDT by FLT-bird
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 86 | View Replies]

To: jmacusa
“My parents never told me they ‘’owned me’’ nor said they paid an amount of money to anyone in order to have a child.”

My post #75 was about abortion, not a live birth.

The two things are different. Your argument is not responsive - it's more of a clap-back. An ill-mannered one.

90 posted on 03/10/2019 6:04:28 PM PDT by jeffersondem
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 78 | View Replies]

To: x

You claim I’m taking quotes “out of context”. That is ridiculous. 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.

and I showed from the extensive quote that has a lot of direct sources supporting it that the North was extremely racist and had been for some time. I could have provided further quotes from De Tocqueville and other observers who said it was if anything, more racist than the South was. The customs were harsher, and people refused to even mix with blacks while engaging in all sorts of apartheid practices to keep Blacks out.

Its not like these laws or practices ended with the war either. 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.


91 posted on 03/10/2019 6:04:48 PM PDT by FLT-bird
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 85 | View Replies]

To: FLT-bird

And arguably less “racist” than nearly anyone from the south.


92 posted on 03/10/2019 6:09:23 PM PDT by rockrr ( Everything is different now...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 89 | View Replies]

To: jeffersondem

Well, there was the emancipation proclamation. Also his efforts to get the 13th amendment passed.

There’s also the last paragraph of the letter he sent to Horace Greeley. For some reason lost causers always “forget” to include this last paragraph of the letter, like the writer of the above article.

“I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.”

This belief alone, that all men everywhere should be free, puts him morally head and shoulders above any leader of the confederacy.


93 posted on 03/10/2019 6:18:21 PM PDT by OIFVeteran
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 38 | View Replies]

To: jeffersondem

You’re an ill minded person.


94 posted on 03/10/2019 6:22:29 PM PDT by jmacusa ("The more numerous the laws the more corrupt the government''.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 90 | View Replies]

To: OIFVeteran
“Well, there was the emancipation proclamation. Also his efforts to get the 13th amendment passed. There’s also the last paragraph of the letter he sent to Horace Greeley. For some reason lost causers always “forget” to include this last paragraph of the letter, like the writer of the above article. “I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.” “

Are these things evidence that President Lincoln was “fighting to free the slaves?”

95 posted on 03/10/2019 6:26:00 PM PDT by jeffersondem
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 93 | View Replies]

To: rockrr

And that’s complete bullshit. Lincoln was as racist as they came back then - which was quite bad considering it was a racist age.


96 posted on 03/10/2019 6:26:31 PM PDT by FLT-bird
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 92 | View Replies]

To: FLT-bird

The facts say otherwise - but then you’ve never bothered yourself with facts.


97 posted on 03/10/2019 6:41:28 PM PDT by rockrr ( Everything is different now...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 96 | View Replies]

To: rockrr

No the facts - and Lincoln’s repeated statements are quite clear. But like the PC Revisionist Leftists you take after, facts are mere inconveniences.


98 posted on 03/10/2019 6:49:26 PM PDT by FLT-bird
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 97 | View Replies]

To: OIFVeteran
“This belief alone, that all men everywhere should be free, puts him morally head and shoulders above any leader of the confederacy.”

Based on Lincoln's expressed words, you have to question if “free” then actually means what “free” is thought to mean today.

Said Lincoln: “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 nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that 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.”

Perhaps Lincoln's "free" meant free to leave the country.

99 posted on 03/10/2019 6:52:10 PM PDT by jeffersondem
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 93 | View Replies]

To: FLT-bird

See - there’s more of your specialty, the antithesis of facts or truth. You really suck at this!


100 posted on 03/10/2019 6:54:44 PM PDT by rockrr ( Everything is different now...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 98 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 61-8081-100101-120 ... 641-650 next last

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.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson