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.

"--Posted on AOL"

So it must be God's truth.

How wonderfully lame.

Here's how this works.

I posted:

"Both Jeff Davis and Louis Wigfall, before resigning from the US Senate to go south, threatened the burning of Northern cities and the plunder of their populations as punishment (US Senate, CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE,10 Jan. 1861).

Stonewall Jackson urged the adoption of this policy (Henderson, STONEWALL JACKSON AND THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, London, 1898), adding that Confederate troops should fight under the "Black Flag" - no quarter, kill all prisoners - and proposing to Virginia Governor Letcher a week after Virginia's secession that he, Jackson, should set the example (Columbia, SC, DAILY SOUTH CAROLINIAN, 6 Feb. 1864).

What YOU have to do, is consult the sources, the Congressional Globe, and this book, STONEWALL JACKSON AND THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, and the Columbia, SC, DAILY SOUTH CAROLINIAN, 6 Feb. 1864.

Are these sources acurately represented or not?

If you won't consult the sources, then you obviously don't care about the points being made; they are unimportant to you.

You'd rather simply carp than add to the discussion.

Walt

Oh, they didn't? Then why did they secede from Britain?

Duh! The didn't secede from Britain! They had a good old fashion revolution. Why on earth can’t you guys understand the difference?

James Madison said it best back when this whole secession nonsense got started by the Fire Eaters down in Charleston.

But this dodges the blow by confounding the claim to secede at will, with the right of seceding from intolerable oppression. The former answers itself, being a violation, without cause, of a faith solemnly pledged. The latter is another name only for revolution, about which there is no theoretic controversy.

Robert E. Lee agreed. There is nothing wrong with revolution when faced with intolerable oppression. If you can make the case that the Confederate states were faced with intolerable oppression in 1860, please be my guest. I'll join your side if you can convince me that something the Feds were doing violated the constitution and oppressed the South. But the idea that it was Constitutional for them to withdraw from the Union without agrement from the other states, attack Federal troops, seize Federal property and ignore legetimate Federal authority because they did not like the results of an election is pure BS. No such right ever existed. The Founders did not intend anarchy.

Perhaps the case lacks definitive verification, but it is an enormous stretch to say that there is no evidence of any kind. There is Lincoln's well-known deep admiration for Clay; there is his loyal membership in the Whig party until its demise. There are Lincoln's several apparantly bitter references to Jackson's action in the matter of the national bank. Finally, there is the fact that, upon assuming the presidency and not being hampered by Southerners in the Congress, Lincoln immediately acted to implement the several principle features of the Whig economic program.

But consider:

Lincoln's extended and moving eulogy to Clay -- in which he is clearly speaking to what he admired most in Clay and what he judges to have been Clay's importance to the Union -- contains no reference to economic doctrine.

But even granting the obvious, which is that apart from slavery, the economic struggles between Whigs and Democrats were a significant share of the political debates in the 1830's and 1840's, all this shows is that Lincoln was on one side of these issues in the 1830's and 1840's. The question is whether he judged economic matters MORE important than the danger posed by the break-out of the slavery issue in the 1850's. He was a loyal Whig as long as the country was chiefly interested in the issued defining the disagreements between Whigs and Democrats. Crucial changes in political priorities occurred in the late 1840's and early 1850's -- resulting in the destruction of one national political party and the division of the other. Simply presuming that Lincoln, so involved in the birth and eventual victory of the Republican Party, was carrying on as a Whig in different clothes requires argument.

I'm sorry to have to repeat this, but there are NO bitter comments on the bank charter veto. I can only presume that you have not read the texts in question, which makes me sorry. They are not even "apparently" bitter comments. Lincoln only mentions the Bank decision and Jackson's veto to convict Douglas of switching from applauding resistance to Supreme Court decisions to condemning resistance to Supreme Court decisions, now that such resistance is inconvenient for Douglas's political strategy.

I would be interested in which features of the Whig economic program Lincoln "immediately acted to implement." Pointing, as DiLorenzo does, to the fact that some things that Southerners had blocked for years were passed by a Congress dominated by Northerners at war with Southerners hardly seems a smoking gun of Lincoln's "real agenda." He made it clear in his presidential stump speeches for Whig candidates in the 1840's that he believed a President's task was not to propose legislation, but to judge what the Congress, heeding the people, passed, and to presume its validity as willed by the people unless he had very strong reasons to oppose it. Under the circumstances of 1861, needing as he did the support of the Congress, it doesn't seem terrible significant that he signed what Congress passed, beginning in the summer of 1861. But I don't know that history --

I do know that DiLorenzo's book is as dishonest here as elsewhere. He gives no evidence that Lincoln was particularly eager while in the White House to advance this agenda (internal improvements, tariff, nationalized finance), and generally treats whatever the Congress did as something Lincoln was maneuvering to accomplish -- with no evidence.

Further, he makes no mention that I can find of the fact that such things as easy credit, internal transportation, and increased federal revenue (tariff increases) ARE ALSO CONSISTENT WITH A DESPARATE ATTEMPT TO WIN A WAR. The intellectual dishonesty is breathtaking.

I am a strong opponent of economic centralization. I am for abolishing the income tax, and elimination of the Fed, and an end to tariff socialism. I think Lincoln was wrong on the tariff, probably naive on the dangers of centralized banking and economic projects. But I also think that it is perfectly clear that he cared about these matters because he cared about the flourishing of this free republic, and when a greater danger arose, he pretty much put all economic concerns aside.

On your next post, it is certainly true that hostility to slavery expansion is consistent with an agenda of flourishing economic liberty. And Northerners did have a pretty clear sense that slavery in a state made economic liberty die in the cradle. But, again, the idea that Lincoln's life-long, and then dramatically intensified, focus on containing slavery was all along driven by economic considerations is just not in the texts. Whenever he gives an argument such as "containing slavery gives white men opportunity" (which is quite rare, by the way) he also invariably makes the point that the most important reason that slavery must be contained because it is WRONG.

DiLorenzo's dishonesty is revealed above all in the fact that he almost never even gestures toward alternative explanations. Jaffa's whole BOOK "Crisis of the House Divided" is divided into "The Case for Douglas" and "The Case for Lincoln." He strives to understand, and then to evaluate, Douglas. And THEN he turns to Lincoln. DiLorenzo only mentions what serves his theory, or manifest caricatures of objections. He NEVER lets those of another view be heard in full sentences, much less extended quotations. His quotations are longest on matters of rape and pillage, where we get about one long paragraph per page of "smoke billowing" and "women screaming." But when he quotes serious scholars on matters of difficult or complex judgment, he either restates their conclusions for them, or cuts what they say into a sentence fragment.

The only long Lincoln quotations in the book -- the only ones I can find that even contain complete sentences from Lincoln, are the quotations in which he appears to doubt the equality of negroes. Everywhere else in the book we get sentences like this:

"Lincoln argued that secession would 'destroy" the government, but such an argument was simply foolish."

Okay, I'll stop.

I can't stop.

I just reviewed DiLorenzo's entire book, page by page. He gives Lincoln several long block quotes in the chapters on "Lincoln's Opposition to Racial Equality," and "Why Not Peaceful Emancipation." These chapters prove, of course, that Lincoln cared not a whit about negroes or Emancipation.

In the ENTIRE REST OF THE BOOK, Lincoln gets ONE complete sentence quotation -- if you don't count the tendentious epigrams which occasionally adorn chapter title pages. Meanwhile, historians, critics, and other actors of the day get block quotes and extended exerpts.

Here's the one sentence, from the First Inaugural:

"The power confided in me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property, and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion -- no using force against, or among the people anywhere"(emphasis added).

About which sentence the good doctor comments thus:

To Lincoln, slavery was just another political issue subject to compromies. But protectionist tariffs--the keystone of the Republican Party platform--were nonnegotiable. He promised to wage war on any state that refused to collect enough tariff revenue, a truly bizarre stance. What other American president, in his first address to the American people, would have threatened a bloody war on his own citizens over the issue of tax collection? He was essentially threatening American citizens with death and annihilation unless they continued to pay a tribute (and at a considerably higher rate) to the central government. How else could one interpret his threat of a military invasion? The Real Lincoln, page 237

But at least he let Lincoln speak a whole sentence, that one time.

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