Posted on 12/15/2001 10:52:58 AM PST by shuckmaster
A statue of Abraham Lincoln in Carle Park in Urbana, Illinois, was hit with an act of vandalism which, while not particularly damaging to the materials of the sculpture, did nothing for the image of dignity associated with our 16th president.
The vandals painted Lincoln's face white, then daubed the eyes with black paint. Local officials described the effect as looking as if Lincoln was auditioning to join the rock band KISS.
The bronze statue was installed in the park in 1927 and is green in color from the patina bronze acquires when exposed to the elements. It was created by famed sculptor Lorado Taft and depicts Lincoln as he looked as a young circuit-riding lawyer.
The statue has been a frequent target of misguided mischief in the past, according to Urbana Park District Superintendent of Operations Joseph Potts. It is located directly west of Urbana High School as well as being fairly close to the main campus of the University of Illinois.
"We've had people put a Santa hat on it or hang plastic breasts on it," he said. "It's more funny than it is destructive sometimes."
Potts said that the current attack involved only water-based paint, which was easily removed with soap and water. He added that occasional inscriptions of vulgarities with markers are considerably more difficult to remove.
The park district and city officials have had off-and-on discussions for several months over relocating the statue from Carle Park to another site, possibly downtown or to a historic site associated with Lincoln's activities in Champaign-Urbana. School officials have said they favor the move since the statue attracts students and others who gather there to smoke, forcing school janitors to clean up discarded filters on a regular basis.
A committee is being formed to look into ways to improve Carle Park, including possibly better protecting the statue, according to Renee Pollock, a member of the Urbana Park District advisory committee. Park District Executive Director Robin Hall said the neighborhood committee might want to add lighting for the statue, which he said could help deter vandalism.
Courtesy of: Civil War Interactive: The Daily Newspaper of the Civil War www.civilwarinteractive.com
In the meantime, I plan on continuing to find amusement in provoking frustrated rantings from whiskey walt. He seems to be very easy to set off on a rant, and doesn't even realize it when he's being led around on a leash in debate. That's what is so amusing about the whole thing!
Name one. - walt
See above regarding your response to your straw man argument, which I called you on.
Wrong.
Name a --factual-- error that I made.
Walt
No, I think I'll stand by that statement because I made it in response to your claim that justices - plural - who disagreed with Lincoln were thrown in jail. In fact, Taney spent not a moment in prison is due to the fact that he was never in any danger of arrest. The stories that Lincoln swore out an arrest warrent are based on Ward Lamont's stories. I have never seen a copy of the warrant or any solid evidence that it ever existed. Now what other Supreme Court justices were jailed?
The commander at Sumter had informed Washington in March that he would have to surrender within 6 weeks if his command was not reprovisioned. What little food was coming from shore ended on the orders of the confederate government on April 2nd. Your claim is false.
I think that I'll stick by this claim, too, because it is supported by numerous books and websites. Lincoln's own correspondence to Winfield Scott on March 9th, to William Seward on March 15th, and to Major Anderson through Simon Cameron on April 4th all reference supplies. If dry stores were scarce to begin with, and Major Anderson's correspondence seems to indicate that they were, then fresh supplies would not last long after they were cut off. Ending the supply of food to the fort on April 2nd would have put the garrison on very short rations within a week or so.
Davis' departure speech
That speech was made on January 21 before Davis was faced with the task of building his so-called nation. In light of the fact that he ignored the advice of Robert Toombs, who accurately identified the affect that firing on Sumter would have, would indicate that Davis didn't care about that reaction and would, in fact, relish it.
Second claim?
Yeah, second claim. First claim was that South Carolina was independent. Second claim was that Lincoln arrested justices. One, two. Let me guess, southern school system graduate right?
In a way, but by way of your analogy, I think any reasonable person can see that I have just demonstrated that it fails the test of application disasterously.
In your opinion, perhaps. But your analogy is based on unsupported claims of South Carolina offers to purchase the fort and the contention that their actions were legal and that they were, in fact, a soverign nation. Why would South Carolina choose to pay for this one fort when they and the other southern states simply appropriated the other federal facilities? Sumter was a federal facility, it was not an outpost in a foreign shore. It was not hundreds of miles away from the United States it was three miles off shore of the United States. South Carolina's actions were not legal in the eyes of Lincoln and, later, the Supreme Court. Lincoln was not in the wrong in hanging on to Sumter.
Well,l just as a for instance, you said the "Star of the West" was a tug boat. That is a misstatement of fact, and one, I will bet, you were well aware of
Walt
Hey, hey! I am a graduate of that great state university in Knoxville, and we have....we have...we have a GREAT football team!
Walt
Do I take it that now you are changing your position, considering that you stated earlier that the war started the previous december?
That was a perhaps too clever attempt at humor. At least it was lost on you, I reckon.
Walt
Considering the source of the above statement, I tend to be skeptical of the assertion.
Yeah, well like I say, insults have to suffice when you can't marshal the facts.
Walt
Make that Slave Based Agriculture, and I'll agree with you. The Midwest was agricultural too, but it was solidly on the side of the Union, even though many of its economic interests coincided with the South. The people in the midwest were willing to farm their own land, 40 acres at a time. The South was controlled totally by wealthy aristocrats who used slaves to work thousands of acres at a time. The aristrocrats never walked behind a plow.
That war was about economics only in the sense of protecting the slave industry. It was about a small group of wealthy and corrupt slavers attempting to protect and expand their evil institution. They were willing to break the Union and send hundreds of thousands of mostly poor white farmers to their deaths all for the purpose of protecting and expanding their wealth.
Harumph.
I was surprised and glad to see yesterday on the CNNSI.Com site that they had a poll asking people to chose the best football in the country from five:
1. Nebraska
2.Miami
3. Florida
4. Florida State
5. Tennessee.
That's pretty good company.
On the other hand, (ahem) UT just raised their tuition 20% because they can't or won't fund education properly. I live in Atlanta now, so I am not as up to date as I like to be, but I seem to remember that Tennessee passed a lot of those Clintonesque health care programs and that has just about bankrupted the state. Good on them for trying though.
Walt
What makes this most interesting of all? Is that this park is located in the epicenter of Liberalism; Illinois' version of Madison, WI, or Bezerkely, CA.
...any more Left & this place falls off the edge of world into sheer oblivion.
When the war started it was widely thought in Europe that there was no way the north could subdue the south. The territory was enormous, etc. And that was probably true. But the CSA leadership never developed a grand strategy, and its military leaders bumgled away any chance of military victory.
Now, people will now begin pounding their key boards. Who should we hold up as successful CSA generals? Pemberton? Bragg? Joe Johnston? John Bell Hood? Okay, how about Lee? He usually gets a good press. But what Lee did was dissapate his force in offensive operations, where prudence could have kept him going much longer. Oddly, he eschewed George Washington's policy of maintaining his army intact and picking his actions for a policy that guaranteed heavy casualties he could ill afford. Look at Antietam. Except for McClellan''s blundering, he would have been crushed, and he still took heavy casualties. In the Seven Days Battles, he took more casualties every day than McClellan did. Onlly Little Mac's timidity made him look good. And Gettysburg...well or course he wrecked his army at Gettysburg.
Lee's reputation mostly hangs on one battle--Chancellorsville. And that was a great victory for him. But the CSA could VERY WELL have become a separate nation. The CSA leaders just blew it.
Walt
Yes they did. My goodness, across the entire Confederacy, I'd bet there must have been six or seven hundred black slave owners, some of them wealthy. But then again, there were six or seven million blacks who spent the lives in chains.
Why in God's name do you think the fact that some small number of blacks owned slaves somehow justifies slavery and legitimizes the tragedy and slaughter the corrupt Southern Slaveocracy brought upon this country? That is the ultimate in moral relativism.
Well face it, J; it'd be convenient.
What-with JJ just north of Chambana (and IL's crown jewel, UIUC) by say, a two hour drive or so?
Low "Shipping & Handling" charges might be an extra-attractive bonus for a Reverend/Poverty Pimp on a budget?
"Jerks. Liberals are such jerks."
Yea-yea...true, true. ;^)
...some things just speak for themselves.
Similarly, had the rebels maintained the stand-off peacefully they could have appealed to a large and receptive public in the North and perhaps have gained legitimacy for their rebellion. Faced with a large, peaceful movement to sever the Union, there would have been little hope of quelling the rebellion with force. But the rebels were already committed to unilateral action and to scant concern for legal formalities.
What one sees in all this talk of secession is a dismissal of the ties that Union created, the common property and debts and obligations incurred by the nation and people and federal government. Three quarters of a century of providing for the common defense dismissed in a day, with the demand that whatever had been pledged to the union over that period to defend the country be disgorged to the rebels. Perhaps this would be the result of a properly organized and legitimate dissolution of the union, but it was not something that when unilaterally demanded, should simply be surrendered on demand. Had enough people really wanted a liquidation of the union, it could have been effected by the nation as a whole with concern for the rights of the concerned parties.
It's the combination of victim feeling and aggression in the secessionists that is most unappealing. The nation that Washington's troops had bled for and great statesman had made sacrifices for dismissed by the Lords of the Lash as a tyrant because the government sought, as the Founders did, to limit the spread of slavery. It's as ugly a picture as anything produced by the Rockwell school of Lincoln hatred. And it's this attitude of the secessionist leaders -- that they were victims persected by an evil Union -- that riles me most. After 1865 this view was understandable, but not in 1860.
At every turn they took the wrong step. Wrong in trying to expand slavery. Wrong in splitting their party because it was insufficiently pro-slavery. Wrong in breaking with the Union because they lost the election. Wrong in firing on Sumter and calling down upon themselves the wrath of the remaining states.
Did Lincoln try to provoke the rebel government? I don't know. A lot of things happened that can be interpreted in different ways. Also it's not clear how our knowledge today relates to what was known at the time. A peaceful mission to reinforce a fort that will eventually run short of provisions: was that a provocation or a desire to avoid greater provocation? Had Lincoln taken the small margin of being more passive and circumspect that day or that week, he would have had to relieve the fort the next week or month.
Davis and his regime had a free choice in how they reacted. They had -- in their own minds -- much to gain by starting a war, and no one forced them to fire when they did. A fort resupplied but not reinforced posed little threat to the Confederacy. If one blames Lincoln for sending food to the fort before starvation was imminent, surely Davis was more at fault for attacking before a real invasion in force was imminent. But this was typical of the secessionist movement. Their own demands always came before everything else. The greater national trauma was as nothing compared to the little rock in Charleston harbor.
Like the Cuban Missile Crisis, Sumter was a difficult situation all around. You are probably inclined to go easy on Davis and the rebels because Sumter was within the borders of South Carolina, and because you believe that a state could leave the union simply by passing an ordinance of secession. I don't think that idea is sufficiently proven, and regard revolution as a very serious act. Do what you have to do to get rid of a tyrant, but if you want your independence from a constitutional and republican union, work within the established channels to achieve your goal, and don't treat your elected government as though it were a tyrant.
If I'm harder on Davis than on Lincoln, it's also because Rockwell, Sobran, Stromberg, Adams, Hummell and others scarcely focus on the defects and illegalities of the Confederacy. They take Lincoln as a tyrant who overthrew the "Old Republic," forgetting that the attempted secession was the real end of that era, and that the vices attributed to Lincoln -- and others besides -- were shared by the Confederate leadership. Southern nationalism and secession were not the heritage of 1787 -- on balance, it's not entirely clear they were the legitimate heritage of 1776.
I am prepared to grant that many Southerners deeply felt that their "Southern Rights" were in danger (it's not at all an established fact that "state's rights" were at risk in 1860, other than the presumed right to secede). And the conflict between "Southern Rights" and "Northern Rights" -- between two sets of notions about rights and the organization of society -- was probably inevitable and irreparable. But we shouldn't be afraid to take a long, serious look at just what "Southern Rights" meant in 1860. To say that they were convinced of the justice of their cause at the time, as indeed they were, shouldn't mean ignoring the mistakes they made or the values and assumptions that underlay their claims.
LOL!! Just read this and it goes to show your true knowledge of the Founders. Jefferson influenced the Kentucky Resolution(which stated that Kentucky at any time could pull out of the voluntary union if they so wished), and Jefferson urged Virginia to invalidate the federal Alien and Sedition Acts because he felt the federal government was overstepping its bounds.
Sure sounds like a man that union is overwhelming of all to me < /sarcasm>
Well, Jefferson had nothing to do with framing the Constitution.
Too, the quote at issue plainly says people who want to consider dissolving the Union may be left alone because reason will correct such errors. Your position, as usual, is a joke.
Walt
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