Lincoln: Tyrant or champion or both?

I have now interviewed both Dr. Tom DiLorenzo and Dr. Richard Ferrier regarding our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln. I entered the controversy intrigued, but really without a dog in the fight. As I have too often said, "It is not a question of who is right or wrong but what is right or wrong that counts."

I am not a Lincoln hater and I don't idolize the man. Like most of you, I am an interested student.

As usual, both sides have merits and shortfalls. However, in the wake of the two interviews, myriad e-mails and having read, "The Real Lincoln" and the Lincoln-Douglas debates, I have reached personal conclusions.

But, frankly, my conclusions are tainted. I have a few pet peeves. Honesty, to me, is important both in content and in character. I consider "Duty, Honor, Country" as more than a cute phrase, but a credo. Oaths are important, significant, and not to be entered into or broken cavalierly.

When any person swears a sacred oath to "preserve and protect the Constitution," they have made a lifelong commitment. I am routinely annoyed and offended by people who take the oath and subsequently (by thought, deed and action) undermine, abrogate or attempt to alter the very document that they have sworn to "preserve and protect."

I consider those who violate that oath as being guilty of fraud, perjury and treason.

When I interviewed DiLorenzo I told him he had provided me with an epiphany. I have frequently noted that when the framers were forming the republic, Jefferson and Hamilton had a long series of debates. Jefferson was arguing for states' rights, and Hamilton wanted a big federal bureaucracy – like we have now. Historically, Jefferson won the debate.

I have been trying to figure out at what point in our history Jefferson lost. I used to think it was inertia building until 1913, and then FDR. But actually, Lincoln should get the credit for defeating Jefferson for Hamilton.

DiLorenzo said, "One of the main themes of my book is that Abraham Lincoln was the political son of Alexander Hamilton … Lincoln took up the Hamiltonian mantle of big, centralized government, centralized planning, autocratic leadership. The great debates between the Jeffersonians and the Hamiltonians were ended at gunpoint under the directorship of Abraham Lincoln, in my view. And I think that debate was ended by 1865."

Ferrier told me his complaints with DiLorenzo were "falsehood in details, sloppiness of scholarship and a fundamentally wrong-headed view of the role of Lincoln and the Declaration of Independence, and American history and our political philosophy."

I'll get to the "falsehood" charge, but "a fundamentally wrong-headed view of the role of Lincoln" is really a kinda high-handed and pretentious way of saying, "I'm right and he's wrong." Although DiLorenzo didn't say so, I suspect he probably feels the same way about Ferrier and his other critics. By extension and association, Ferrier also must feel Professor Walter Williams has a "fundamentally wrong-headed view of the role of Lincoln."

Ferrier made some good points. However, in my view, in one defense, he further diminishes his idol as disingenuous, calculating and adroit at parsing "weasel words."

In discussing slavery, he confirmed Lincoln said, "I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between white and black races, and I have never said anything to the contrary." He corrected the DiLorenzo citation, but said, "Lincoln, who was a lawyer and was careful with his words, did not say 'I do not believe in that equality. I do not think it is a good thing.' He said, 'I have no purpose to introduce it.' Those are the words of a careful lawyerly politician …"

In other words Lincoln was using Clintonian verbiage carefully qualifying the definition of what "is" is. So, when Lincoln said, "I have no purpose," Ferrier says he meant, "I don't at the moment intend to bring about such equality." And if he had said anything else in Illinois in the 1850s, he couldn't have been elected to dogcatcher. So Lincoln (according to Dr. Ferrier) was being duplicitous – in other words, dishonest.

Both these professors score points in the debate. DiLorenzo apparently misstates citations and uses quotes to support his position and ignores quotes that undercut it. By the way, Ferrier likewise seems comfortable ignoring facts that contradict his preconceived opinion.

DiLorenzo and Ferrier are academics and scholars. I am not. However, a lot of the things Lincoln did were specifically designed to abrogate, eviscerate and destroy the very document to which he swore an oath. For Ferrier and company to say, "Well, gosh, the other guys were doing it too," is not an adequate defense.

Karen DeCoster has been accused of excess in her criticism of Lincoln. However, in my view, she is right when she says he was, "A conniving and manipulative man … he was nowhere near what old guard historians would have us believe."

I agree completely with those who date the downfall of the republic from Lincoln's presidency.

I would say that before Lincoln America was a fairly loose confederation of soverign states. He helped make us one country with a common currency (introduced in 1861) and, far more important, overarching national loyalties.

The constitution is not a religious document. Madison referred to bills of rights, in general as being "parchment promises" -- easily made, easily broken. If Lincoln had followed constitutional writ without exception, Maryland would have been ungovernable and Washington, D.C. lost. No President, not then, not now, will ever allow that merely because of a generalized pledge to uphold our often vague constitution. Practical people can find a way to uphold principal as much as possible without allowing the constitution to be a suicide pack, and that is what Lincoln did. Conservatives should set high standards, but not utopian standards no real flesh and blood politician will follow.

As for your slavery comment, as DiLorenzo points out in many of the nations that slavery was abolished in worldwide(all without war)....

What you conveniently forget is that slavery always ended due to government action, either through legislation or buy-out or something along those lines. And it was always done in the face of strenuous opposition from the slave owners themselves. And it overlooks the fact that it died out in Haiti somewhat suddenly and very violently.

...that it died out from north to south as it was doing here.

Slavery was a colonial issue for Great Britain and Spain. To say that it died out 'north to south' shows little understanding of geography. Slavery in Brazil was more of a 'west to west' thing since it was mainly along the coastal plain. Slavery in the American south wasn't dying out period. It was very profitable, had grown between 20 and 25% in the decade prior to the war, and you would be hard pressed to come up with a quote from a southern leader who thought it was dying. If it was, then why protect it in your constitution and why launch a war to defend it?

Most northerners did not want the war to continue, or was that riot in New York from people storming the army recruitment centers trying to get in?

And yet the Northern armies never melted away like the southern armies did. The Northern armies didn't have to resort to extending enlistments, or depend on conscription to the extent the south did. In 1864, when the 3 year enlsitments ran out, the overwhelming majority of the Northern army could have gone home but they didn't. Why not?

You know that's really interesting but also one of the most ridiculous statements I've read(at least in the past week)...

I have to take issue here. I think that weikel is right. The right of ANY state to secede was part of the Confederate constitution. That means that any time that a Governor gets a hair up his butt, the state would secede for the Confederacy. There would be no unity in the Confederacy, and eventually, it would fail. War amongst the sucessionist states would be likely as tensions mount over water, borders, a woman....whatever.

The very weak US would not have been able to intervene to stop it. It would be a VERY different world than we live in now, and most certainly not for the better....

Fact is, lincoln needed a scapegoat to continue his economic war, and by mid-war slavery was about as good as anything.

The Civil War was about slavery but also about our form of government, just like Lincoln said in the Gettysburg Address. Sure, slavery would have eventually died out in the South, even if it had won its war. But so would have freedom. Read the great alternative history novel on what would have happenned if the South won: Bring the Jubilee(1953) by Ward Moore.

The deep Southern states had to expand. Why? Because slavery was dying out in the more northern states of the Confederacy. But that still doesn't truly point out lincoln's reasoning for preventing slavery to other states now does it? Perhaps we should look to the tyrant's mouth to see what he had to say about slavery expansion

Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska, or other new territories, is not a matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go there. The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these territories. We want them for the homes of free white people. This they cannot be, to any considerable extent, if slavery shall be planted within them. Slave States are places for poor white people to remove FROM; not to remove TO. New free States are the places for poor people to go to and better their condition. For this use, the nation needs these territories

So one of lincoln's main concerns to prevent slavery spreading was to prevent blacks, if they later became free, from living next to white people. Sounds reasonable to me < /sarcasm> And we built a monument to this guy? Could somebody refresh me on why we did that again?

Time to kick some neoconfederate keyster can you post those facts of all the Southerners hung after secession merely for being loyal to the Union.

Well, about 640 federals were murdered by CSA forces in three incidents:

Lawrence, KS

Fort Pillow, KY

Saltville, VA

In addition to that, 40 Texans whose only crime was loyalty to the Union were hanged during the month of October, 1862 in Gainseville, Texas by CSA oficials --except for about 14, who were lynched while CSA officials looked on. Their names:

Nathaniel, Clark, Wernell, Richard Martin, Grandpaw Burch, H.J. Esmond, Ward, Evans, Clem Woods, Wolsey, Manon, Leffel, A. B. McNeice, Wash Moirris, Wesley Morris, Thomas Floyd (shot), John Crisp, James Powers, Rama Dye, J. Dawson, Wiley, K. Morris, Barnes, Milburn, W. Anderson, Gross, Ward,, Dr. Johnson, Childs, Senir, Childs, Junior, Hampton, Locke, Foster, Fields, D. Anderson, D. Taylor, R. Manton, Jones, carmichael, Henry Cochran.

This info if from "Civil War Recollections of Lemuel Clark".

Needless to say, nothing like any of this can be shown to have been done by Union forces.

Walt

If it was, then why protect it in your constitution and why launch a war to defend it?

The way that line reads you know it does more for slow manumission than it does for expanding or continuing slavery. The only new slaves could come from the US and if the US was for ending slavery within its borders, at least that's what our northern history books tell us, there would be no more slaves coming in to the Confederacy.

Secondly, considering what was done at the draft riots and the position the north was in post-Gettysburg, would you go AWOL and with the consequences exhibited in NY to citizens, would you even want to?

I have no dcelusions about him believing in racial equality but he was an abolitionist( a realistic one) that statement from him proves nothing. All it says is that he wanted the territories to be places for poor whites to go and make a better life for themselves. He knew that slavery had all sorts of negative effects the freed blacks actually went to the territories in large numbers after the civil war( something like 25% of cowboys were black).

War amongst the sucessionist states would be likely as tensions mount over water, borders, a woman....whatever.

And you don't think this nation came close to that at least one time in the early 19th century? States argued, as they were wont to do, and several threatened secession unless they got their way. And believe it or not, not one war until lincoln wanted his money from Charleston

You forgot the execution of 22 North Carolinians by Confederate forces under the command of Maj. Gen. George E. Pickett. These men were part of 55 men of Company F, Second North Carolina Union Volunteer Infantry and were captured on February 2, 1864. Although they were wearing the uniform of the United States Army, they were charged with being confederate deserters and were hanged in Kinston, North Carolina as an example to other Unionists.

but he was an abolitionist( a realistic one)

Hmmm, would that be why he was quoted in British newspapers as not wanting to be painted with the 'abolitionist brush' in 1861? Or maybe that's why he wrote his letter to Horace Greely saying he didn't care if the slaves were freed or not as long as the union was saved? If he was an abolitionist at heart than Davis was a Catholic

Weren't a lot of Union loyalist hanged in Tennesee( which had many loyal areas too) I wish I had the specific instances on me.

Yes, dozens of east Tennesseans were hanged simply for loyalty to the old flag. Thirty-one thousand Tennesseans served with Union forces. I am reading now "Shrouds of Glory" which indicates that several units of loyal Tennesseans and Kentuckians played a role in wrecking Hood's army outside Nashville.

If you attend a University of Tennessee football game, you'll hear the band play a flourish based on "Rally 'Round the Flag" after a good play .

Walt

The way that line reads you know it does more for slow manumission than it does for expanding or continuing slavery.

That can't be true because the constitution forbids any law that might interfere with the institution of negro slavery. On the contrary, it was a means of protecting it by ensuring the supply of slaves from Virginia and North Carolina (which were not part of the confederacy when the constitution was adopted) would not be cut off.

...would you go AWOL

But they wouldn't have to, billbears. Their enlistments were up and they were free to go home if they wanted to. Unlike Davis who forced those enlisted to stay in the army, the majority of the Northern army could have called it quits and gone home. Instead the overwhelming majority reenlisted. Why would they do that if they didn't believe in their cause of preserving the Union?

Weren't a lot of Union loyalist hanged in Tennesee( which had many loyal areas too) I wish I had the specific instances on me.

Here is one specific instance. One of my mother's relatives was a farmer near what is now Johnson City, Tennessee. He was a Unionist and some of Isham Harris's men killed him for it in April 1861.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.