Fighting Facts With Slander

Certain neo-conservatives have responded to the publication of my book, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War , with quite hysterical name calling, personal smears, and slanderous language. The chief practitioners of this vulgar means of public discourse are Alan Keyes and employees of his Washington, D.C. based "Declaration Foundation."

On the Foundation?s Web site on Easter Sunday was a very pleasant, Christian blessing, located right below a reprinting of Paul Craig Roberts?s March 21 Washington Times review of my book (" War on Terrorism a Threat to Liberty? "). In a very un-Christian manner the Declaration Foundation accuses Roberts (and myself, indirectly) of "ignorance and calumny." According to Webster?s College Dictionary "calumny" means making false and malicious statements intended to injure a reputation, slander, and defamation. Let?s see if what Roberts said in his column fits that definition.

"Lincoln used war to destroy the U.S. Constitution in order to establish a powerful central government," says Roberts. This is certainly a strong statement, but in fact Lincoln illegally suspended the writ of habeas corpus; launched a military invasion without consent of Congress; blockaded Southern ports without declaring war; imprisoned without warrant or trial some 13,000 Northern citizens who opposed his policies; arrested dozens of newspaper editors and owners and, in some cases, had federal soldiers destroy their printing presses; censored all telegraph communication; nationalized the railroads; created three new states (Kansas, Nevada, and West Virginia) without the formal consent of the citizens of those states, an act that Lincoln?s own attorney general thought was unconstitutional; ordered Federal troops to interfere with Northern elections; deported a member of Congress from Ohio after he criticized Lincoln?s unconstitutional behavior; confiscated private property; confiscated firearms in violation of the Second Amendment; and eviscerated the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.

A New Orleans man was executed for merely taking down a U.S. flag; ministers were imprisoned for failing to say a prayer for Abraham Lincoln, and Fort Lafayette in New York harbor became known as "The American Bastille" since it held so many thousands of Northern political prisoners. All of this was catalogued decades ago in such books as James G. Randall?s Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln and Dean Sprague?s Freedom Under Lincoln.

"This amazing disregard for the Constitution," wrote historian Clinton Rossiter," was "considered by nobody as legal." "One man was the government of the United States," says Rossiter, who nevertheless believed that Lincoln was a "great dictator."

Lincoln used his dictatorial powers, says Roberts, to "suppress all Northern opposition to his illegal and unconstitutional acts." This is not even controversial, and is painstakingly catalogued in the above-mentioned books as well as in The Real Lincoln. Lincoln?s Secretary of State William Seward established a secret police force and boasted to the British Ambassador, Lord Lyons, that he could "ring a bell" and have a man arrested anywhere in the Northern states without a warrant.

When the New York City Journal of Commerce published a list of over 100 Northern newspapers that opposed the Lincoln administration, Lincoln ordered the Postmaster General to deny those papers mail delivery, which is how nearly all newspapers were delivered at the time. A few of the papers resumed publication only after promising not to criticize the Lincoln administration.

Lincoln "ignored rulings hand-delivered to him by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Roger Taney ordering Lincoln to respect and faithfully execute the laws of the United States" says Roberts. Absolutely true again. Taney ? and virtually all legal scholars at the time ? was of the opinion that only Congress could constitutionally suspend habeas corpus, and had his opinion hand delivered to Lincoln by courier. Lincoln ignored it and never even bothered to challenge it in court.

Roberts also points out in his article that "Lincoln urged his generals to conduct total war against the Southern civilian population." Again, this is not even controversial. As pro-Lincoln historian Steven Oates wrote in the December 1995 issue of Civil War Times, "Lincoln fully endorsed Sheridan?s burning of the Shenandoah Valley, Sherman?s brutal March to the Sea through Georgia, and the . . . destructive raid through Alabama." James McPherson has written of how Lincoln micromanaged the war effort perhaps as much as any American president ever has. It is inconceivable, therefore, that he did not also micromanage the war on civilians that was waged by his generals.

Lincoln?s war strategy was called the "Anaconda Plan" because it sought to strangle the Southern economy by blockading the ports and controlling the inland waterways, such as the Mississippi River. It was, in other words, focused on destroying the civilian economy.

General Sherman declared on January 31, 1864 that "To the petulant and persistent secessionists, why, death is mercy." In a July 31, 1862 letter to his wife he said his goal was "extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the people." And so he burned the towns of Randolph, Tennessee, Jackson and Meridian, Mississippi, and Atlanta to the ground after the Confederate army had left; bombarded cities occupied only by civilians in violation of the Geneva Convention of 1863; and boasted in his memoirs of destroying $100 million in private property and stealing another $20 million worth. All of this destroyed food stuffs and left women, children, and the elderly in the cold of winter without shelter or food.

General Philip Sheridan did much of the same in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, burning hundreds of houses to the ground and killing or stealing all livestock and destroying crops long after the Confederate Army had left the valley, just as winter was approaching.

"A new kind of soldier was needed" for this kind of work, writes Roberts. Here he is referring to my quotation of pro-Sherman biographer Lee Kennett, who in his biography of Sherman wrote that "the New York regiments [in Sherman?s army] were . . . filled with big city criminals and foreigners fresh from the jails of the Old World." Lincoln recruited the worst of the worst to serve as pillagers and plunderers in Sherman?s army.

Lincoln used the war to "remove the constraints that Southern senators and congressmen, standing in the Jeffersonian tradition, placed in the way of centralized federal power, high tariffs, and subsidies to Northern industries." Indeed, Lincoln?s 28-year political career prior to becoming president was devoted almost exclusively to this end. Even Lincoln idolater Mark Neely, Jr., in The Fate of Liberty , noted that as early as the 1840s, Lincoln exhibited a "gruff and belittling impatience" with constitutional arguments against his cherished Whig economic agenda of protectionist tariffs, corporate welfare for the railroad and road building industries, and a federal government monopolization of the money supply. Once he was in power, Lincoln appointed himself "constitutional dictator" and immediately pushed through this mercantilist economic agenda ? an agenda that had been vetoed by president after president beginning with Jefferson.

Far from "saving the Union," writes Roberts, Lincoln "utterly destroyed the Union achieved by the Founding Fathers and the U.S. Constitution." The original Union was a voluntary association of states. By holding it together at gunpoint Lincoln may have "saved" the Union in a geographic sense, but he destroyed it in a philosophical sense.

Paul Craig Roberts based his column on well-documented facts as presented in The Real Lincoln. In response to these facts, in a recent WorldNetDaily column the insufferably sanctimonious Alan Keyes described people like myself, Paul Craig Roberts, Walter Williams, Joe Sobran, Charles Adams, Jeffrey Rogers Hummell, Doug Bandow, Ebony magazine editor Lerone Bennett, Jr., and other Lincoln critics as "pseudo-learned scribblers," with an "incapacity to recognize moral purpose" who display "uncomprehending pettiness," are "dishonest," and, once again, his favorite word for all who disagree with him: "ignorant."

"Ignorant" and "slanderous" is the precise language one should use to describe the hysterical rantings and ravings of Alan Keyes and his minions at the so-called Declaration Foundation.

The DF is in its death throes before our eyes. That group always seemed a little off to me, just as Dr. Keyes seemed just the least bit odd. My mother, rest her soul, supported Dr, Keyes in the last primary held before she passed on in '96. I doubt she would support him after learning of his association with this misguided social club called the DF.

Lincoln and Webster both based their fantastic notion that the union preceded the states on the DoI. They tried to hold the DoI up as superior to the US Constitution, just as the DF is doing today, and their purpose was to circumvent the Constitution. I can only conclude that circumventing the Constitution is still the aim of people who will use such a weird construct to support their agenda.

What on earth are you talking about? That is the most convoluted garbage I have ever read, son. Stop and pinch yourself a little here. It is the federal government which has established this holocaust against the unborn, not the states. While the states still held their rightful power to decide whether or not abortion was to be illegal, abortion was illegal almost everywhere.

How can you possibly hope to make the point that the federal government must clean up the mess it has made by exercising even more unconstitutional power? Please retreat to the safety of you social club's site. You're absolutely destroying what little credibility Dr. Keyes and your club have.

You boys may as well start working on your grand finale. I know you have one in the works somewhere in the fevered single consciousness you all so obviously share. Trot it out so that it can be dismantled.

Your response is silly....it is not ok to pull out of a union you voluntarily joined...but it is ok for a part of you to voluntarily pull out of existing boundaries and join up!

It does not matter a bit if you think it is ok or not, it was perfectly Constitutional. The previous Virginia legislature went by it's own accord into a state of treason. Those members who refused to engage in treason formed a restored legislature, and that legislature was recognized by Congress. That restored legislature agreed to the formation of a new state and congress accepted that.

While the states still held their rightful power to decide whether or not abortion was to be illegal, abortion was illegal almost everywhere.

No it wasn't. There were only a few states in the union where you couldn't get one for "one reason or another". In the others, there were restrictions more in name than fact. In Pennsylvania it was 'illegal' unless necessary to 'protect the health' of the Mother, so every woman who wanted an abortion just said it would mess up her mental health to have a baby and some Doc would sign the papers. The old state laws were so full of loopholes you could drive an 18 wheeler through them.

Same with divorce. Up till the 70s, you couldn't get a divorce in New York unless there was infidelity. So people who really wanted a divorce would just swear there was even if there wasn't.

Stopping abortion is more about changing minds than changing laws.

I can agree that for some of the pantywaist republicans the fear of a racism charge is the basis for their insane stance. For those pulling the strings, however, there can be no consideration of 'states' rights' because they regret the inclusion of the 9th and 10th amendments to the Constitution.

Those who harbor that regret are the purest and truest of the republicans, because that party was founded on the principle that a lie is as good as the truth if you can get it shouted louder than anything else being said. The fact that these people pretend to be at odds with the democrats should be the one lie of theirs which stands head and shoulders above the rest of their lies. They prefer the view that the US is indeed a legislative democracy, not a republic of sovereign states in voluntary union.

The best way I have ever seen it expressed is by Robert S. Henry in "The Story of Reconstruction" (opening paragraphs of chapter 32):

"While the Reconstructionists worked away at remaking the states of the South to the new pattern, the leaders in Congress kept on with their part in the grand design of making the government immediately responsive to the will of the people as understood, interpreted and applied by themselves.

The whole way of thought of the Reconstructionists was to identify the welfare of their party and the success of its every policy with the welfare of the nation. Quite sincerely, for the most part, they believed that the safety of the nation depended upon the continuance in power not only of the Republican party but of their particular sect of Republicans. The majority of the reconstructionists in Congress were men convinced of the purity of their motives and the righteousness of their mission, and impressed with the idea that from the electorate, if not from Deity itself, they had received a mandate for their course. It is an exalted state of mind not unknown in public life in times of stress and crisis."

This was written in the 30s by a man who lived through reconstruction and who was a keen observer of the antics of politicians. The similarities between the radical republicans of the 1860s and Keyes's sect of republicans today are striking. Those same similarities are apparent in any comparison with the Stevens/Sumner gang c.1865-77 and whichever sect of contemporary republicans one cares to examine, with the exception of the Southern conservatives who have been temporarily roped into the big tent and who are currently leaving it in disgust over the antics of the current crop of republicans in office.

Save your revised version for kids who weren't around back then, son. Abortion was a strictly regulated medical prcedure before the Supremes decided to nullify the 10th amendment.

Now, I can agree that changing minds is more important than changing laws. One thing that should change in the minds of Americans is the bizarre idea that the Supremes can make law by a ruling. The minds of state legislators should change from the prostration before the Supreme Court to a standing on Constitutional law. Three or four states simply issuing laws that there will be no abortion on demand within their borders would do the trick. The feds would have no legal leg to stand on by demanding that their law is supreme because they have no law. All they have is legal precedent which can be overturned by the current Supreme Court.

Those members who refused to engage in treason formed a restored legislature,....

Oh, please. Rowdee is right, you guys want it both ways. This is what we mean when we say that your side has only one principle: "we win!"

Well, you're wrong, you're palpably and nakedly wrong, and you would do a whole lot better to save yourself the embarrassment of standing up for these fictions, and just admit that Congress broke the Constitution when it dealt with a rump, phone-booth convention.

The West Virginians did not have sovereignty. The People, viz. the whole people of Virginia, acting within their rights as Sovereign, exercised their right to revolution after 30 years of discussion and five months of exploration of last-minute alternatives, by assembling in convention and voting as the People to take their sovereign State out of the Union.

Virginia, as a State, had the right to secede from the Union. Western Virginia, as something less than a State, had no equivalent right to break away from Virginia -- and everyone in Congress knew it, they just broke the Constitution to pack the Senate with a couple more Unionist-Abolitionist votes.

They still at least pretend to believe it. Without that basic lie, their whole construct collapses like a house of cards. Lincoln included it in his Gettysburg address by opening with "fourscore and seven years ago". That statement was recognized by newspaper editors in those days as a palpable lie, but since the GAR engraved Lincoln's deluded ranting of that day in marble at the temple of his cult in DC, it has been taught as gospel truth in our schools.

If Lincoln's BS is to be believed, our form of government was designed and put into effect on July 4th, 1776. That would come as shocking news to the men who framed the document which currently serves as the supreme law of the land. It would also shock the first President of the government created in that document. Washington knew full well that he was by no means the first President of all the states, only the first President of the union of states created by the US Constitution.

An absolute and dedicated ignorance of history is necessary in order to swallow this DF nonsense. By 'ignorance' I mean the old definition of the word taught in school when I was a child, which is that ignorance isn't lack of knowledge it's the practice of willfully ignoring the available knowledge. "A willful ignorance of fact" is how my teachers put it.

I'd have to agree that it was illegal. The "Full Faith & Credit" Clause (Article IV, section 1) states that "the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State" be given FULL (complete) credit. It does not say that if the federal government dislikes them it can refuse to recognize them ex post facto. Their Declarations of Secession were executed within the existing laws.

Also in Article I, Section 2: "When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies." If the seceding state were still a member of the Union - then THAT state - and only that state - could elect replacements.

Oh come on, 4CJ, you'r really reaching now. That passage from Article I, Section 2 pertains to Congressmen, not state representatives. The Constitution does not give the federal govrnment the authority to tell states how to fill vacancies in their legislatures. And since the Federal government should be working with local authorities to combat rebellion, then it should make every effort to identify and recognize those authorities. Since much of the Virginia legislature were ringleaders in that rebellion Congress recognized those who didn't and allowed them to partition the state.

..."It does not matter a bit if you think it is ok or not, it was perfectly Constitutional"....

Whatever you say, President Clinton.....continue to pick and choose how the Constitution works....you and your ilk do more damage to the Country than even the liberals--because you are cloaked as a 'friend', a 'conservative', someone 'who can be trusted cause we think alike'....God help the Republic because there aren't enough good men left to do it....deceit under whatever cover is still deceit.

Good day.

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