Posted on 11/19/2001 6:28:43 AM PST by tberry
ABRAHAM LINCOLN: AMERICA’S GREATEST WAR CRIMINAL
By Ron Holland
from Southern Caucus http://www.southerncaucus.org
Abraham Lincoln should without a doubt be named America’s greatest war criminal. His war of invasion not only killed over 600,000 innocent Americans but it was obvious from his earlier speeches that he had previously advocated the prevalent constitutional right of democratic, state by state secession. Lincoln’s War also effectively overthrew the existing decentralized, limited federal government that had existed and governed well in the US since established by America’s founding fathers. Lincoln bastardized a respected federal government with limited powers into a dictatorial, uncontrollable Washington federal empire.
Because of Lincoln, the former American constitutional republic fell from a dream of liberty and limited government into the nightmare big government we have today without the earlier checks and balances of state sovereignty. After Lincoln, In foreign policy, the US forgot George Washington’s warning about neutrality and we became an aggressive military abroad until today we have troops defending the Washington Empire in over 144 nations around the world.
The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connections as possible. It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances, with any portion of the foreign world.—George Washington
Lincoln shares his war criminal actions with other well know tyrants that waged war on their own people. History shows us that politicians make war against their own citizens even more than against foreign nations. The reasons are often to establish and preserve their power base, as was the case in the Russian Revolution and the Mao Revolution. For others, like Hitler, it was misguided super patriotism and racism that brought death to tens of millions. Sadly, in the case of Abraham Lincoln’s war against the Confederacy and Southern civilians, it was all for money, company profits and government tariff revenues. A simple case of political pay back in return for the Northeastern manufacturing interests that supported the Republican Party and his campaign for the presidency. Early in his career, Abraham Lincoln was an honorable statesman who let election year politics and the special interests supporting his presidential campaign corrupt a once great man. He knew what he was doing was wrong and unconstitutional but succumbed, as in the case of many modern day politicians, to the allure of money, power and ego.
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 that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right - a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. 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 of the territory as they inhabit. -- Abraham Lincoln January 12, 1848
This quote above shows Lincoln as a statesman 12 years before he plunged the United States into its most disastrous war. Suffering a death toll so high in death rates as a percentage of total population, his act of carnage ranks with the political genocides of Stalin, Lenin and Mao during their communist revolutions. A death toll so great that it dwarfs the American deaths in all of our many declared and undeclared wars before and since this American holocaust of death and destruction.
From the following quote you can see that later Lincoln radically adjusted his rhetoric to meet the needs and demands of his business establishment supporters and financial supporters.
No state, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union. Plainly, the central idea of secession, is the essence of anarchy. --Abraham Lincoln
Why the complete change in rhetoric and actions? Simple, to preserve high tariffs and corporate profits for the Northeastern business establishment. Lincoln who earlier in his career had obviously favored the right of peaceful secession, provoked a war that killed 600,000 Americans, as a pay back to the eastern manufacturing establishment that bankrolled his presidential campaign. These special interests would have suffered serious financial loss if a low tariff Confederate States of America were allowed to peacefully, democratically and constitutionally secede from the United States in lawful state constitutional conventions of secession which were identical to the ratification conventions when they had joined the Union. Thus the real reasons for the death and destruction of Lincoln’s War were covered up and hidden by historians who continue, even today, to deny the truth and hide the ultimate costs of Lincoln’s American holocaust. While Lincoln’s death toll is small in comparison to total deaths by Mao, Lenin, Stalin and Hitler, there are many similarities between these men. In the Russian Civil War, from 1917 - 1922 around 9 million died under Lenin and we must add another 20 million under Stalin from 1929 to 1939. The Mao communist regime in China killed 44 to 70 million Chinese from 1949 – 1975.
Still the US constitutional republic, as established by our founding fathers, was in effect destroyed by Lincoln’s unconstitutional war just as surely as Mao and Lenin over threw the existing Chinese and Russian governments. The multitude of Lincoln apologists would say that this is just another Confederate argument certainly not accepted by most historians. I might counter that the opinions and books of these "so called" establishment historians who live off my tax dollars through government funding at liberal controlled universities and think tanks are prejudiced towards Lincoln and Washington DC. They are no different from the official government historians in China, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Their job is to lie to the American people and cover up a true and honest account of our history in order to support the government and political system in power.
History shows us that a fair and honest discussion of Lincoln’s wartime actions will not be possible as long as the Washington political establishment remains in power. Since Lincoln, the Washington Empire has reigned supreme and omnipotent and for this reason, establishment historians have never honestly debated the Lincoln war crimes.
Consider this. Was a fair and honest account of Lenin or Stalin written and published during the Soviet Communist regime? Of course not. Could a less than worshipful history of Hitler’s Third Reich have been published until after 1945? No! Even today, with only nominal communist control of China, an honest appraisal of Mao’s revolution and crimes against the Chinese people still is not possible. It is no different today in the United States than it is in Red China or was in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Just as Lenin’s statue could not be toppled in Red Square until after the fall of the Soviet Communist government, or the truth about Hitler couldn’t be told until after defeat of Nazi Germany, it is the same here in the United States. It is my hope that someday, in the not too distant future, a true account of the war crimes of Lincoln will be discussed, debated and even acknowledged. The Lincoln Memorial should be remodeled to show the horrors of "Lincoln the War Criminal" with the opportunity for all to visit Washington and learn how war crimes, genocide and holocaust are not just crimes that foreign politicians commit. Government and political tyranny can and has happened here just like in Germany, China and the Soviet Union and that through education and honest history, it will never happen here again.
In the future, may we have the opportunity to learn about the Nazi holocaust at the United States National Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and then have the chance to visit the Lincoln War Crimes and American Holocaust Museum a few blocks away. One will state for all the world that NEVER AGAIN will a tyrant or government be allowed to target, exterminate and destroy an ethnic, racial or religious minority. The other will pledge NEVER AGAIN in America will we allow a president or government to make unconstitutional war against Sovereign states or their citizens and then cover up the truth up for over 145 years.
We should start today with an honest appraisal of what Lincoln really did to Dixie, how our black and white innocent noncombatants suffered under his total war policy against civilians. Finally we should address the cost in lives, lost liberty and federal taxes the citizens of the US have had to endure because our limited constitutional republic was destroyed.
Abraham Lincoln was a great man, a smart politician and he could have been an excellent president, had he considered the short-term costs of his high tariff and the long time price every American had to pay for his war of invasion. It is time to stop worshipping Lincoln and educate the public about the war crimes he committed against the citizens of the Southern States so this WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN
Completely false.
"We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have beendefeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States... They have denounced as sinful theinstitution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
(from South Carolina Decl. of Secession)
"...[the Northern States] have united in the election of a man to highoffice of the President of the United States, whose opinions and purpose are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that the `Government cannotendure permanently half slave, half free,' and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction."
--Texas declaration of secession
And here is what Texans thought of the Republican party:
"They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, andavow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a
negro slave remains in these States." --Texas Declaration of Secession.
The Mississippi secession convention began their declaration of causes with the statement, "Our cause is thoroughly identified with the institution of African slavery."
Soon to be CSA congressman Lawrence Keitt, speaking in the South Carolinasecession convention, said, "Our people have come to this on the question ofslavery. I am willing, in that address to rest it upon that question. I think it is the great central point from which we are now proceeding, and I am notwilling to divert the public attention from it."
"As soon, however, as the Northern States that prohibited African slaverywithin their limits had reached a number sufficient to give their representation a controlling voice in the Congress, a persistent and organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners of slaves in the Southern States was inaugurated and gradually extended. A continuous series of measures was devised and prosecuted for the purpose of rendering insecure the tenure of property in slaves. . . .
Emboldened by success' the theatre of agitation and aggression against the clearly expressed constitutional rights of the Southern States was transferred to the Congress. . . .
Finally a great party was organized for the purpose of obtaining the administration of the Government' with the avowed object of using its power for the total exclusionof the slave States from all participation in the benefits of the public domain acquired by al1 the States in common' whether by conquest or purchase; of surrounding them entirely by States in which slavery should be prohibited; of those rendering the property in slaves so insecure as to be comparativelyworthless' and thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars. This party' thus organized' succeeded in the month ofNovember last in the election of its candidate for the Presidency of the UnitedStates... the productions in the South of cotton' rice' sugar' and tobacco' for the full development and continuance of which the labor of African slaves wasand is indispensable.'
--Jefferson Davis
From the Confederate Constitution: Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 4: "No billof attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right ofproperty in negro slaves shall be passed."
Article IV, Section 3, Paragraph 3: "The Confederate States may acquire new territory . . . In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and the territorial government."
From the Georgia Constitution of 1861:
"The General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves." (This is the entire text ofArticle 2, Sec. VII, Paragraph 3.)
From the Alabama Constitution of 1861: "No slave in this State shall beemancipated by any act done to take effect in this State, or any other country." (This is the entire text of Article IV, Section 1 (on slavery).)
Alexander Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, referring to the Confederate government: "Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, uponthe great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery . .. is his natural and normal condition."
[Augusta, Georgia, DailyConstitutionalist, March 30, 1861.]
A North Carolina newspaper editorial: "it is abolition doctrine . . . the very doctrine which the war was commenced to put down."
[North Carolina Standard,Jan. 17, 1865; cited in Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 835.]
Robert M.T. Hunter, Senator from Virginia, "What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?" "If the Republican party with its platform of principles, the main feature of which is the abolition of slavery and, therefore, the destruction of the South, carries the country at the next Presidential election, shall we remain in the Union, or form a separate Confederacy? This is the great, grave issue. It is not who shall be President, it is not which party shall rule -- it is a question of political and social existence."
[Steven Channing, Crisis of Fear, pp.141-142.] Senator Hunter of VA. During the Negro Soldier Bill debate on March 7, 1865, theS OUTHERN HISTORICAL SOCIETY PAPERS notes him as stating his opinion of the Bill as follows:
"When we had left the old Government he had thought we hadgotten rid forever of the slavery agitation....But to his surprise he finds that this Government assumes the power to arm the slaves, which involves also the power of enamcipation....It was regarded as a confession of despair and an abandonment of the ground upon which we had seceded from the old Union. We had insisted that Congress had no right to interfere with slavery, and upon the coming into power of the party who it was known would assume and exercise that power, we seceded....and we vindicated ourselves against the accusations of the abolitionists by asserting that slavery was the best and happiest condition of the negro. Now what does this proposition admit? The right of the central Government to put slaves into the militia, and to emancipate at least so many as shall be placed in the military service. It is a clear claim of the central Governmentto emancipate the slaves."
"If we are right in passing this measure we were wrong in denying to the old government the right to interfere with the institution of slavery and to emancipate the slaves."
"He now believed....that arming and emancipating the slaves was anabandonment of this contest - an abandonment of the grounds upon which it had been undertaken."
The record, and not lies, myth and wishful thinking, shows that the clear cause of the war was the attempt to perpetuate slavery.
The war was brought on by the slave holders.
Here is a very clear statement that may help you understand:
"One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it."
A. Lincoln, 3/4/65
Walt
Anyway, as usual let me point out the major fallacy with your Reply No. 113. Slavery was not all that profitable; in fact you have claimed in various threads that the South was bankrupt and needed propping up from Federal revenues. Therefore, your assertion that a few leaders deceived an entire voting populace into their scheme to expand slavery for their own profit is absurd.
"Sherman is not only a great soldier, but a great man. He is one of the very great men in our country's history. He is an orator with few superiors. As a writer he is among the first. As a general I know of no man I would put above him. Above all - he has a fine character - so frank, so sincere, so outspoken, so genuine. There is not a false line in Sherman's character - nothing to regret." - General Ulysses S. Grant
The fact is that many ships were built specifically for the slave trade in the New England shipyards. Quite often, probably more than not, they were sold to northern interests, and captained by northerners. The English were heavily involved as well. The Spaniards were involved to some extent but not as much as the two afore-mentioned groups.
How can you say that the NE states/colonies were far ahead of Virginia in the discussion of ending slavery. Read George Mason, George Washington, and also read up on some of the issues you alluded to. Before the Am. Revolution began their was serious discussion in Virginia about the evils of slavery, etc.
It is, to a large extent, an accident of time and place that the North didn't have slavery and the South did. If the land and climate were more suited to large plantations, as in the South, and if that first Dutch shipload of Africans had landed in Plymouth instead of Jamestown, how would history be different? If the Pilgrims had landed in Virginia, as they were intending to do until a storm forced them up north, how would their descendent feel about slavery?
If slavery wasn't profitable then why did the number of slaves grow 24% between 1850 and 1860? If slavery wasn't profitable why did the south have 60% of the wealthiest men in the country but only 30% of the population? If slavery wasn't profitable then why was the southern per capita income 50% higher than in the north? People say that slavery wasn't profitable and slavery was dying out but can provide no evidence to support those claims.
Wealth in the South is very difficult to pin point using today's ideas. Land rich and cash poor, don't you know. Wealth was very fluid, and didn't necessarily stay with one person or family very long. Quite often it came down to a crop or two to keep the plantation or farm going, and a bad crop might mean selling off acreage to pay debts.
Your grasp and understanding of history are quite deficient. An open minded research project into the "rights" in the North of those whom you name as the "oppressed" in the South during that time in history is in order.
Here is something to help you on your way!
KENTUCKY SECESSION DOCUMENT
Whereas, the Federal Constitution, which created the Government of the United States, was declared by the framers thereof to be the supreme law of the land, and was intended to limit and did expressly limit the powers of said Government to certain general specified purposes, and did expressly reserve to the States and people all other powers whatever, and the President and Congress have treated this supreme law of the Union with contempt and usurped to themselves the power to interfere with the rights and liberties of the States and the people against the expressed provisions of the Constitution, and have thus substituted for the highest forms of national liberty and constitutional government a central despotism founded upon the ignorant prejudices of the masses of Northern society, and instead of giving protection with the Constitution to the people of fifteen States of this Union have turned loose upon them the unrestrained and raging passions of mobs and fanatics, and because we now seek to hold our liberties, our property, our homes, and our families under the protection of the reserved powers of the States, have blockaded our ports, invaded our soil, and waged war upon our people for the purpose of subjugating us to their will; and
Whereas, our honor and our duty to posterity demand that we shall not relinquish our own liberty and shall not abandon the right of our descendants and the world to the inestimable blessings of constitutional government:
Therefore,
Be it ordained, That we do hereby forever sever our connection with the Government of the United States, and in the name of the people we do hereby declare Kentucky to be a free and independent State, clothed with all power to fix her own destiny and to secure her own rights and liberties.
And whereas, the majority of the Legislature of Kentucky have violated their most solemn pledges made before the election, and deceived and betrayed the people; have abandoned the position of neutrality assumed by themselves and the people, and invited into the State the organized armies of Lincoln; have abdicated the Government in favor of a military despotism which they have placed around themselves, but cannot control, and have abandoned the duty of shielding the citizen with their protection; have thrown upon our people and the State the horrors and ravages of war, instead of attempting to preserve the peace, and have voted men and money for the war waged by the North for the destruction of our constitutional rights; have violated the expressed words of the constitution by borrowing five millions of money for the support of the war without a vote of the people; have permitted the arrest and imprisonment of our citizens, and transferred the constitutional prerogatives of the Executive to a military commission of partisans; have seen the writ of habeus corpus susupended without an effort for its preservation, and permitted our people to be driven in exile from their homes; have subjected our property to confiscation and our persons to confinement in the penitentiary as felons, because we may choose to take part in a cause for civil liberty and constitutional government against a sectional majority waging war agasint the people and institutions of fifteen independent States of the old Federal Union, and have done all these things deliberately against the warnings and vetoes of the Governor and the solemn remonstrances of the minority in the Senate and House of Representatives:
Therefore,
Be it further ordained, That the unconstitutional edicts of a factious majority of a Legislature thus false to their pledges, their honor, and their interests are not law, and that such a government is unworthy of the support of a brave and free people, and that we do therefore declare that the people are thereby absolved from all allegiance to said government, and that they have a right to establish any government which to them may seem best adapted to the preservation of their rights and liberties.
Source: Official Records, Ser. IV, vol. 1, p. 741.
[Adopted 20 November 1861, in Russellville, Logan County, by the legislature in flight from the invading yankee enemy.]
If you figure that, of the 3.2M slaves in 1850, 30% or so are of child-bearing/producing age, that's approximately 1M. Half would be women, so that's 500,000; each having one is half a million right there. Then, you have those who were young in 1850 but of procreational age by the latter part of the decade (i.e. a twelve-year old in 1850 would be perfect age to reproduce by 1858).
Life spans among slaves were increasing as time went on (they weren't worked to death or then starved to death when they were too old for the fields, Ditto), so a natural increase of .75M over a decade for a population that started at 3.2M isn't to be unexpected.
I spent a lot of time studying the Census records when I worked at the National Archives; they're fascinating records with a lot to teach us about who we were. They should always be used when doing research. About your ending statements regarding the slaves' value in the overall measurement of wealth, that was part of the problem. Much of the wealth was in slaves; land by itself was a hindrance because of taxes; and of course cash wealth was not the same as it is today.
Southern plantation owners had much the same relationship with Northern agents as they had with British agents in colonial times: a cycle of debt that created a symbiotic relationship. The British brought goods that the plantation owners couldn't always pay for. The owner depended on the trade ship showing up, and knew it would because the agents needed to collect their due from the previous season or year, but of course more goods were sold on credit and the cycle went round and round.
One of the few things about which I'll ever agree with Thomas Jefferson is his statement that slavery is like holding a wolf by the ears: you can't let go, but you also don't know how much longer you can hold on! I think we'll both agree that it is the great tragedy of American history that we'll never know for sure what would have happened had the war not occurred.
In actual fact, they were attempting to claim these rights for themselves while denying them to others.
The fact that northern states were not fully "democratic" by today's standards is irrelevant.
In the final analysis, it all comes down to your definition of what constitutes "a people," according to the Declaration of Independence, which is justified in throwing off a government which it feels no longer serves its needs.
Few would claim that the relevant unit is that of the individual or family. Southerners enthusiastically crushed dissident movements in large areas of the individual states, thus making it plain that counties or regions of states were not "a people" according to their definition. In what is now West Virginia this attempt to crush the Unioinists failed, due mainly to geography.
The entire war was fought over whether a bare majority (in many cases) of voters in a state were "a people" which had the right to take their states out of the Union, thereby forcing all others in their state to cease being citizens of the United States. Or had the United States become a single "people" which could only be dissolved with the consent of the entire "people?"
Fascinating. A self-proclaimed minority of the state legislature claims the right to take its state out of the Union!
Jefferson held on to him and went broke in the process, so too the south. Massive bankruptcies hit them with each real depression in the economic cycle. The real alternative on the table at the time relative to the South were the Crittenden amendments, and had the south chosen to stay in Congress or come back, they surely would have passed. They nearly passed without the votes of the southern states in Congress. They entailed a constitutional amendment preserving slavery forever in the slave states and extending the Missouri compromise line through California. This was the great fear of the abolitionists, fortunately offset by southern dreams of empire in the Caribbean. What would have happened to blacks under this notion is hard to figure. The master's retaining control of them, they might well have been shipped out of the old south in ever increasing numbers. As it was, about 40,000 a year, mostly from Virginia, were already undergoing this process in the late 1850's. How many left the state going to Cuba to later return to other states from the Cuban market is not clear.
Southern census reports are excellent but they were not always entirely accurate in every respect. They were largely handled by DeBows, and they had a tendency to take the proper pro-slave slant. Since under Federal law importing slaves was illegal, no one was going to answer to that. Illegal slave imports are generally reckoned at about 80,000 a year in the 1850's, but certainly no one went out of their way to document this in the census. It does show up in bills of lading of Spanish owned ships. Much of the traffic went through Cuba. The markets there were open and legal, and the run across to the US quite short.
The other great flaw in the census was on literacy. Pre-war census reports show literacy rates in the south among whites which were far far higher than those discovered by the Freeman's Bureau when it started giving handouts and running schools in the south for poor whites. The obvious conclusion is that census takers went around asking the questions and filling out the forms, and that a lot of folk simply replied 'yes' to the literacy questions when it was not really the case. When it came down to signing for needed food and supplies, it was hard to find anyone who could read the instructions on how to fill out the necessary applications and forms, let alone actually fill them out.
The figure comes from the Royal Navy, and was quoted in Parliament by Gladstone. It is of course an estimate as no one gave the Royal Navy exact figures. It is true though that the need for an accurate estimate was a matter of grave concern in Parliament at the time as Britains dealing in the interdiction of the slave trade played a key role in the determination of her foreign policy regarding the US. She had 29 ships on duty and so has a very good claim to collecting the best estimates based on evidence, and all of the evidence is a matter or military record.
Correlating evidence comes from reviews of the numbers seizures and intercepts. The demand for slaves rose drastically in the cotton boom of the 1850's, and DeBows, who did handle most of the census work in the south, was calling in 1860 in it's publications for at least a million more to be brought into the south in the next decade.
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