Posted on 04/29/2002 10:04:22 PM PDT by davidjquackenbush
Okay, you are having a hard time with this.
The fact that President Lincoln refused to rescind the EP shows he was not indifferent to slavery. It shows he took a strong moral position that DiLorenzo's "research" ignores.
Walt
These "Lincoln: Saint or Tyrant" threads are almost a daily attraction, and are generally more erudite than the rest. One can learn a lot of interesting trivia in these discussions. The most entertaining is the sophistry employed to maintain the statist's historical dogma that Lincoln was a freedom-loving servant of "the people".
Thus the War of Northern Aggression continues... enjoy the show!
Okay, this is giving you a hard time.
If that was true, where does Donald get his interpretation that Lincoln rigged the New York election? Tea leaves?
Walt
In the link in your one post, where Donald is quoted, he provides not even a secondary source let alone a primary one.
Walt
Certainly there was plenty of evil done on all sides. But the pride, arrogance, brutality, hypocrisy etc. on the part of the South was in spite of whatever gentility was there as well.
And the North's brutality, ruthlessness, pride, arrogance etc. was in spite of the good-heartedness toward all men that resided so much there.
We are all flawed critters who, but for the Grace of God, are capable of most any evil imagineable.
THEREFORE, methinks the nose tweaking, trying to wrench blood from the turnip that these threads hostile to Lincoln--well--that they must originate in SOME sort of DEEEEEP SEATED hostility at authority of some sort from some pretty intense childhood experiences. It's difficult for me to explain it to myself any other way. Perhaps there are reasons I haven't come up with yet.
Are you referring to a situation described like this?
"...several editors have confessed a fear of having their offices closed, if they dare to speak the sentiments struggling for utterance. It is indeed a reign of terror."
If so, that was describing the situation in 1862 Richmond. The south suspended habeas corpus, jailed dissenters without trial (including a former congressman) and on a per capita basis held more political prisoners by far than the North did. No condemnation for Davis or his actions?
The Republican Congress even created three new states -- Kansas, West Virginia, and Nevada -- to help rig the 1864 election in favor of Lincoln, so concerned were they over pervasive antiwar sentiment and massive desertions from the federal army.
Kansas was admitted on Jan. 29th, 1861, with the approval of President Buchanan, and Senator Stephen Douglas in favor of the admission.
DiLorenzo can't write two paragraphs without a falsehood.
Don't rely on him, and your arguments will be more respectable.
The source for the Donald quote is: "Lincoln Reconsidered" Vintage Books, 1961, p. 81.
You prove fraud -- in the primary sources.
This is not a primary source. Go to the primary records to prove that President Lincoln did anything out of the ordinary towards fixing an election.
Ah yes, the Great Walt, setting down the rules of debate that everyone must follow. Everyone, but Walt himself, that is. Let's take a look at the example he sets:
In the 1862 election, the Republicans lost seats in Congress and barely retained their majority because of the opposite of what you say -- so many Republicans were in the army and not at home to vote.
Gee, I didn't notice any sources listed for this statement. Now why would that be? Let's see..., first you'd have to know the political affiliation of several hundred thousand soldiers; then you'd have to know how many were under voting age; then you'd have to know how many weren't registered to vote; then you'd have to know how many were not citizens and thus ineligible to vote.
After you finished up that little task, you'd have to seriously crank up your crystal ball and factor in the tendency for House seat losses in an off-year election - some from boredom and some from the inevitable disaffection resulting from administration policies in the two previous years; and finally, you'd have to calculate how may votes were lost to dissatisfaction with the management of the war.
Well, I'm sure with your talents all this is a simple matter. I'm equally sure you have scoured the primary source material down to examining precinct records and military enlistment documents to support your claim.
If my confidence is misplaced, then you're simply unwilling or incapable of engaging in honest debate.
He acknowledged this as a Constitutional right, and repudiated it as a natural or real right. But because the Constitutional provision was part of the bargain that made our experiment in self-government possible, he judged it his obligation to respect the fugitive slave clause.
Lincoln knew, as I'm sure you do, that sometimes positive law contradicts natural law, and that a good man can sometimes find himself in the position of needing to give his assent to bad positive law in order to sustain as much of the good positive law, and of natural law, as he can.
It would be so very welcome if opponents of Lincoln would make these basic distinctions so that we can have a mature discussion of Lincoln's real moral choices. Treating his prudential support of the Fugitive Slave Law and his fundamental moral opposition to slavery as "contradictory" and "lying" is just superficial. It ignores all context and circumstance.
By the same logic, giving a cigarette to a person to help him steady his nerves to enter a "stop smoking" clinic is a lying contradiction. (Just to save us both trouble, this example is like and unlike the slavery case. I trust you not to take advantage of this fact, but to attend to the likeness.)
And many of his peers did think exactly that. His own VP, Stephens left Richmond in 62 and rarely returned for the remainder of the war. It seems that Alexander Stephens would rather sit in GA and lash out at Davis and his increasing "dictatorial powers."
Stephens brother, Linton responding to conscription of poor civilians and the suspension of Habeas Corpus said, "He is a little, conceited, hypocritical, snivelling, canting, malicious, ambitious, dogged knave and fool."
Unlike his state's rights rhetoric prior to becoming president, Davis turned into a despot who centralized power and took away states rights of the Confederate states.
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