Posted on 04/02/2002 9:45:23 PM PST by VinnyTex
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.
April 3, 2002
Thomas J. DiLorenzo [send him mail ] is the author of The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (Forum/Random House 2002) and professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland.
Copyright 2002 LewRockwell.com
"As far as President Lincoln was concerned, this was ex post facto.
Sorry.
When President Lincoln acted, there was no constraint on him.
Walt"
Sort of sounds like you're saying since those grubby Mountain People were not Tidewater Aristocrats, they had no right to their own sovereignty under the Constitution. I'm still trying to figure out who they were lying to, but I guess if the neo rebs don't like the outcomes, someone must have done something underhanded.
Even though these people wanted no part in the treason of Richmond, they were somehow bound to Richmond even though Richmond did not consider itself bound to the Constitution? What were the people to do? Go without a state government for the duration? Join a rebellion they opposed? Or claim the sovereignty as Citizens of the United States? From a legal standpoint, there was no Virginia legislature in the United States until the people of the western counties organized there own. The Virginia legislature had removed itself from its proper place in the Federal system and had no legal standing whatsoever and no sovereignty of the people or the land. Legally speaking, if the people of the Western counties had not acted, they would have reverted to a 'state of nature' or territorial status and would have had no voice in Congress.
It might have been added, that whilst the Constitution, therefore, is admitted to be in force, its operation, in every respect must be precisely the same, whether its authority be derived from that of the people, in the one or the other of the modes, in question; the authority being equally Competent in both; and that, without an annulment of the Constitution itself its supremacy must be submitted to.The only distinctive effect, between the two modes of forming a Constitution by the authority of the people, is that if formed by them as imbodied into separate communities, as in the case of the Constitution of the U.S. a dissolution of the Constitutional Compact would replace them in the condition of separate communities, that being the Condition in which they entered into the compact; whereas if formed by the people as one community, acting as such by a numerical majority, a dissolution of the compact would reduce them to a state of nature, as so many individual persons.
But whilst the Constitutional compact remains undissolved, it must be executed according to the forms and provisions specified in the compact. It must not be forgotten, that compact, express or implied is the vital principle of free Governments as contradistinguished from Governments not free; and that a revolt against this principle leaves no choice but between anarchy and despotism.
--James Madison
Well, doesn't Thomas Jefferson count? He obviously didn't believe all the popular slanders and misconceptions. I don't think Lincoln ever slandered blacks, though he said some things that seem to me to represent misconceptions he imbibed by observing the deportment of slaves -- which was very often deliberately deceptive and dissembling, black historians of slavery warn us.
"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Many intelligent Southerners may have had opinions about Negroes similar to Lincoln's, which they'd have done well to keep to themselves in the Deep South, where the continuing threat of slave revolt distorted the issues and the public danger acted as a brake on speech -- a phenomenon we've been rediscovering ourselves, these last six months.
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.
So the column is a response both to Keyes' WND piece, and my characterization of the Roberts article.
I'd like to handle the rebuttal of the above first, and go on to the new specifics DiLorenzo raises second.
I understand that there is some overlap, but this seems to me more orderly.
Thanks for the reply.
Regards,
Richard F.
After all, I've got to be just as tough as Walt. I can't be embarrassed by these throw-down quotes like this that you aren't supposed to be able to find since they're not in "The Record". I've got more self-respect than that. Besides, I have to define the parameters of the discussion, so I can "win". There are lurkers out there I need to reach!
Don't you think?
As for "ignorance" and "calumny", I suppose that if you used the word "calumny", you're prepared to back it up as such, and not just overcharacterize an overcharacterization.
As to "ignorance", that's an easy one: anyone who doesn't possess divine knowledge is ignorant in some degree or other, so we can call one another that until the cows come home. If DiLorenzo made actual errors, then it becomes a matter of just correcting his recounting of the record, doesn't it? Unless you want him to sink out of sight from embarrassment, never to be heard from again.
"As far as President Lincoln was concerned, this was ex post facto.
Sorry.
When President Lincoln acted, there was no constraint on him.
The difference is that Texas V. White and The Prize Cases when compared to Milligan is that the former cite extant law.
Milligan, I am surprised to find out, actually supports President Lincoln's actions any way.
"It is essential to the safety of every government that, in a great crisis, like the one we have just passed through, there should be a power somewhere of suspending the writ of habeas corpus. In every war, there are men of previously good character, wicked enough to counsel their fellow-citizens to resist the measures deemed necessary by a good government to sustain its just authority and overthrow its enemies; and their influence may lead to dangerous combinations. In the emergency of the times, an immediate public investigation according to law may not be possible; and yet, the peril to the country may be too imminent to suffer such persons to go at large. Unquestionably, there is then an exigency which demands that the government, if it should see fit in the exercise of a proper discretion to make arrests, should not be required to produce the persons arrested in answer to a writ of habeas corpus.
The Constitution goes no further."
How about that.
Milligan only speaks to military tribunals, not Habeas Corpus. Bringing it into play is only more obfuscation by the CSA apologists.
More from Milligan:
"This nation, as experience has proved, cannot always remain at peace, and has no right to expect that it will always have wise and humane rulers, sincerely attached to the principles of the Constitution. Wicked men, ambitious of power, with hatred of liberty and contempt of law, may fill the place once occupied by Washington and Lincoln; and if this right is conceded, and the calamities of war again befall us, the dangers to human liberty are frightful to contemplate.
Sounds to me as if the SCOTUS is comparing Washington and Lincoln.
That's a good comparison.
Walt
You don't see the Michael Jordans, Barry Bonds, Jesse Jackson and Johnnie Cochrans of the world hauling butt back to Africa, where the life expectancy is less than 40 years and they live in poverty - they remain here earning millions and riding in limosines. Your choice, you decide. Lincoln wanted them gone. Jackson worked to integrate them into society. Which is a better indicator of the heart? Defying laws against teaching, or compliance and asking Butler how soon the Navy can be made ready to deport them?
Sorry, that was Walt's argument not mine. I simply pointed out the absurdity of that position.
What extant law?
What extant law?
Texas v. White cites the Constitution itself in form of the Preamble.
The Prize Cases cite the Militia Act of 1792.
Walt
BZZZZZZT! Fifteen yards for argumentum ad populum, a.k.a. "rabble-rousing". The real reason the West Virginians didn't possess Sovereignty was that ..... they weren't the People of Virginia! They were, instead, "some people in Virginia". It makes all the difference......but I told you that, and backed it up with arguments, so.....TWEEEEEET! Fifteen additional yards for slothful induction!
I'm still trying to figure out who they were lying to, but I guess if the neo rebs don't like the outcomes, someone must have done something underhanded.
More appeal to emotion. Sorry, no sale.
Even though these people wanted no part in the treason of Richmond, they were somehow bound to Richmond even though Richmond did not consider itself bound to the Constitution?
Yes.
From a legal standpoint, there was no Virginia legislature in the United States until the people of the western counties organized there own. The Virginia legislature had removed itself from its proper place in the Federal system and had no legal standing whatsoever and no sovereignty of the people or the land.
Not true. The People of Virginia still existed, they still enjoyed their Sovereignty (unless you tell me now that you think that Sovereignty is something you can take away from a People like a driver's license!), and they still had their state government: they hadn't gone anywhere. They might not have been sending Senators to Washington, and however recreant federal officials might have considered the Virginians, they were still (under U.S. law) citizens of the United States and Virginia was a State of the Union -- and the Congress had no right to let another group speak for them, or to pretend to speak as or for them.
[Quoting Madison] It might have been added, that whilst the Constitution, therefore, is admitted to be in force, its operation, in every respect must be precisely the same, whether its authority be derived from that of the people, in the one or the other of the modes, in question; the authority being equally Competent in both; and that, without an annulment of the Constitution itself its supremacy must be submitted to.
The only distinctive effect, between the two modes of forming a Constitution by the authority of the people, is that if formed by them as imbodied into separate communities, as in the case of the Constitution of the U.S. a dissolution of the Constitutional Compact would replace them in the condition of separate communities, that being the Condition in which they entered into the compact; whereas if formed by the people as one community, acting as such by a numerical majority, a dissolution of the compact would reduce them to a state of nature, as so many individual persons.
You've misconstrued Madison. He was pointing out that the United States was composed of citizens who enjoyed sovereignty as Peoples of the several States, not as The People of the United States, before the Union was formed by ratification of the Constitution: he thus contradicts Lincoln directly, who maintained that The People and The Union that they made predated the formation of the States and so was superior to them.
This statement, besides hosing Lincoln thoroughly on the sources of Sovereignty, also shows that the Union, composed of 13 Sovereigns, would if dissolved revert to 13 Sovereigns: but if it had been composed out of the mass of people undifferentiated (as it would have been in e.g. Revolutionary France), then on dissolution, there would be no Sovereign Peoples and their States, but only anarchy.
The Madison quotation makes my case, not yours, and is quite precisely a road map to what should have happened on dissolution of the Union.
Ex parte Bollman and Swartwout - where Marshall stated that the suspension of the writ could only be performed by Congress was in 1807, well after the amended Militia Act of 1795. So now you are arguing that a Supreme Court decision is overturned by the actions of a President?
The precedent of the states seceding in 1776 and 1787, obviously, was extant when the Confederacy acted.
This really IS too easy.
Good. Buy the book.
Here are some quotes about Lincoln from Sandburg's book:
"Herndon wrote that Lincoln was 'the most secretive man' he ever knew."
He quotes another attorney friendly to Lincoln:
"While guilty of no duplicity, he could hide his thoughts and intentions more efficiently than any man with a historical record."
”Yes.”
Also according to Madison, what Richmond did in seceding was a “violation of a sacred obligation.” You contend that the people of the Western counties of Virginia were still somehow held to Richmond and compelled to also violate that obligation even though the actions of Richmond we outside the law?
I think no court would ever hold that claim nor deny loyal citizens of a large section representation based on illegal actions that they had no control over. By continuously maintaining Federal courts and forming a restored legislature, they established themselves in good faith with the Union as the legitimate government of Virginia. Congress was bound to recognize them and seat representatives from areas where elections could be held.
As for Jackson's school, it is well described in Byron Farwell's biography of Jackson down to the start time of the classes and the syllabus.
Individual ancecdotes on treatment of blacks down south are all well and good because I'm sure that those instances happened. But compare them with official actions like the Virginia Manumission Law of 1806 which gave manumitted blacks 12 months to leave the state or they could be sold back into slavery; the 1844 Carolina Amusement Law which made it a criminal offense for blacks to play sporting games with whites; the 1830 Louisiana Expulsion Law which required all free blacks to leave the state within 60 days. There was, I swear to God, something passed in 1841 called the South Carolina Observing Law which made it a criminal offense for blacks and whites to look out the same window. The fact of the matter is that between 1830 and 1860 the number of free blacks in the south either remained virtually static or actually declined and it was due to laws like these, and the one in Mississippi which debated, but did not pass, a bill which would have required all free blacks be deported to Liberia and the county that they were living in be billed for the expense. Next door in Alabama, the state Supreme Court issued a ruling in a case called Trotter v. Blocker in 1838. That ruled that a slave could not be given his freedom since freedom was a gift and the slave did not posess the legal capacity to accept the gift. So individual stories and random acts of kindness are one thing. Government sanctions are another and the record does not support your view that things weren't all that bad down south.
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