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
Two reasons. First, the radicals were not content with keeping it in their states. They wanted to expand slavery to the west. There were major profits to be made.
The second reason was that the more politically astute realized that it was only a matter of time before the entrance of more free states from the midwest and far west would have broken the legislative block that the solid south had in congress.
Slavery in the south was not the issue. The northern albolitionists were not close to gaining enough political power to end slavery there. It was the expansion of slavery for both economic and political reasons.
I don't know about Georiga, but up here in Pennsylvania, criminals have no right to vote. Georiga was in a state of rebellion in 1864. They had no right to vote.
Your reply speaks volumes for the depth and literacy of those who seek to diefy a man who drampled all over the Constitution.
Prov. 17:15 "He that justifieth the wicked and he that condemneth the just, even they are an abomination to the Lord."
Do you really like the etrenched bureaucracy, the big government, the high taxation we have in Washington today? If so, you are right in praising Lincoln.
BTW, John "Osama" Wilkes Booth also thought of Lincoln as a war criminal. Apparently, his spiritual progeny lives on.
Jeff Davis rode a big white horse,
Abe Lincoln rode a mule.
Jeff Davis was a gentleman,
Abe Lincoln was a fool.
If you are dreaming of life as a poet I wouldn't quit my day job yet if I were you.
The South was disenfranchised ;o)
Davis did impose martial law, conscription and repressive measures at various times. The book to read on this subject is Mark Neely's "Southern Rights: Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate Constitutionalism." Because we all know about Lincoln, people judge him in a vacuum and assume that Confederate leaders weren't doing similar things.
Davis was also a prime backer of our military expansion into the Southwest. A good thing in my estimation, but not the sort of thing non-interventionists and anti-statists would automatically approve of. Davis was not a regular guy just trying to get government off his back, either. He was a part of an elite of its own that aspired to build up a state for itself. Many Southern highlanders recognized this and either were unimpressed, uncooperative or outright rebellious. The fact that he was not a libertarian in the modern sense doesn't in itself make Davis worse than other statebuilders, but why pretend he was something that he wasn't just because he didn't win?
And to you and yours too. And I offer this Thanksgiving gift as reprinted in this morning's Pittsburgh Tribune Review
Everyone must admit, Lincoln got this one right. It is a special day. God Bless.
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President Abraham Lincoln established the national Thanksgiving holiday 138 years ago. Though the commemoration of Thanksgiving dates to 1621, its modern observance is a Lincolnesque legacy.
As has become our annual custom on this fourth Thursday of November, we reprint the 16th president's dedication of Nov. 26, 1863, as a national day of ``Thanksgiving and Praise.'' Once again being a nation at war, much of the language is - and all of the sentiments are - exceptionally apropos this year:
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The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.
In the midst of a civil war of unequal magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggressions, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.
Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.
No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.
And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
-- A. Lincoln, Nov. 26, 1863
There were no illegal or unconstitional actions committed by Lincoln. Some of the actions of the Radical Republicans were illegal, but then again, when faced with an extreme immoral situation in which people's freedom isn't respected (slavery), it may have been more immoral to not do anything as most of the people usually do in cases like these. Thank God for Lincoln, the Radical Republicans, and the North's victory.
Walt
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