Lincoln: Tyrant or champion or both?

WorldNetDaily ^ | May 6, 2002 | Geoff Metcalf

[Korth]

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.

There is no point in having a written Constitution if it is not going to be obeyed by government officials. If "flesh and blood" politicians take the oath to the Constitution, they are bound to follow the Constitution, whether they like its provisions or not. And if "flesh and blood" politicians find parts of the Constitution objectionable, they can work to amend by the processes provided by the Constitution itself.

[Coleus]

Yes, I have to agree, 10th amendment flushed down the toiled, marshall law, put in 3 states:W.Virginia, Nevada and Nebraska (I think) into the union without congressional approval, etc. He wasn't as great as we think and really against what today's conservative republican is all about, Less Government control, more liberty, states' rights, etc.

[Non-Sequitur]

Why the constant complaints about constitutionality or unconstitutionality of Lincoln's actions, billbears? What did Jefferson Davis care about constitutionality? The man who said, "...the true and only test is to enquire whether the law is intended to and calculated to carry out the object...If the answer be in the affirmative, the law is constitutional" The man who didn't bother to establish an entire branch of the confederate government. You complain about Lincoln's actions, regardless of whether they were ever found to be unconstitutional or not, but apparently have no problems living with the actions of your man Red Jeff. Why is that?

[Non-Sequitur]

Can you show us any of those post Sumter editorials crying for the tariff?

[billbears]

The point is that the government didn't have any time to establish itself before it was under attack. I don't remember the United States starting off in perfect Constitutional harmony from July 4, 1776 on, do you? Even after the war with the Articles of Confederation it was a full 13 years after the first secession before the US had its system in place (which actually took a second secession from the original Union established by the Articles and not lincoln's imaginary 'union has always existed' statements). I mean we Southerners can do things a bit better than y'all up north but give me a break!! If the South would have been allowed to leave peacefully, I imagine the Confederacy would not have been as large as it was in the first place. However lincoln started attacking sovereign territory and misreading old Acts to fit his cause so the membership in the Confederacy exploded

Secondly, if the South had been allowed to leave peacefully, the SCOTCS would have been established Constitutionally and Davis probably wouldn't have made half the statements he did. Actions out of necessity which lincoln caused.

[Non-Sequitur]

If you read the northern papers of the day, before lincoln shut them down illegally...

The first political prisoner of the Civil War was a newspaper reporter. He printed something that Beauregard didn't like and the general tossed him in the slammer. On a per capita basis more people were jailed without trial and in violation of their civil rights in the confederacy (8000) than in the Union (13,000 to 25,000 depending on the source. No worries about them, billbears?

[Aurelius]

"They rebelled when Lincoln issued a call for volunteers after the south had initiated hostilities at Sumter."

You forgot to add: "having been deliberatly provoked by Lincoln." Although you very well know that to have been the case.

[Twodees]

You win the booby prize for most inarticulate post. When you figure out what you were trying to say, let us know.

[stand watie]

!

[Aurelius]

What we need is a rating system like the one at that other forum. Any post from Non-Sequitur containing "Davis" could be rated zero and we could set our preferences to accept only posts with a minimum rating of 1.

[Non-Sequitur]

No, what I should have added was "...and after Davis completely ignored the advise of his secretary of state when he warned that firing on the fort would mean the death of the confederacy."

[willide]

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

Walt "

your a sorry piece a plunder..

I guess your bluebelly wonders of the Union 3rd Colorado that kilt ever man woman an child (infants too) of a pieceful village on Nov 30 1864 dont count?

They was flying a white Flag AND a US Flag and the yankees still kilt them all. 150 in all. 100 of those was women and children.

Here's what one a the yankees that went over the place the next day said:

"In going over the battle ground the next day, I did not see a body of a man, woman, or child but was scalped; and in many cases their bodies were mutilated in the most horrible manner. I heard one man say that he had cut a woman's private parts out, and had them for exhibition on a stick; I heard another man say that he had cut off the fingers of an Indian to get the rings off the hand."

-- Lt. James Cannon, affidavit of January 16, 1865

Theres aplenty more where that came from.

Theres somethin sick about you son.. sick. You got a obsession with all this. Theres something you aint tellin us. Ive been round long enough to know.

[Aurelius]

Nevertheless, Lincoln still provoked it.

[Non-Sequitur]

i>The point is that the government didn't have any time to establish itself before it was under attack.

Sorry, billbears, but that argument is weak, even for you. "Didn't have any time to establish itself," you say? We're not talking about a National Parks Department here; we are talking about one of the three branches of government. They had time to establish a cabinet, something not mandated by the constitution, but they didn't have time to establish a supreme court that was? They had time to pass legislation extending enlistment’s, establishing tariffs, suspending habeas corpus, nationalizing business, but didn't have time to establish a supreme court to make sure their actions were legal? "If the south had been allowed to leave peacefully...", you claim. Well, the south did leave peacefully, without any action on the part of the North for over a month after Lincoln was inaugurated, and over a month and a half after Davis. And what was the confederate priority? You maintain that they wanted peace, but their first action was to fund a general staff and an army 6 times the size of the United States Army, yet they didn't have time to establish a judiciary to help oversee the freedoms they claimed they needed the army to protect? Face it, bill, the last thing Jefferson wanted was a judiciary that might get in his way. And had the south won the war there is nothing, nothing at all, to show that he might have changed his mind. You say Lincoln broke the law? Lincoln was a rank amateur compared to Red Jeff Davis.

[Non-Sequitur]

Yeah, an additional 200 or so men in Sumter put the whole confederacy at risk. Lincoln could have put 20,000 men in Sumter and he still couldn't have threatened Charleston or the confederacy. Davis fired because he wanted a war, he needed a war worse than you claim Lincoln did. Without a war he would never get Virginia and North Carolina off the fence. And without them he would be stuck with a weak and truncated confederacy without a hope of getting out from the shadow of the United States. He wanted the other slave-holding states bad enough that he was willing to bet the entire future of the confederacy on the war. He bet and he lost. Lincoln didn't kill the confederacy, Jefferson Davis did.

[4CJ]

Give 'em hell, sir ;o)

[Aurelius]

"Davis fired because he wanted a war, he needed a war worse than you claim Lincoln did."

Absolute and total BS. Davis had sent peace commissioners, authorized by th Confederate Congress, to negotiate in Washington for the Confederacy to pay for Federal installations on Southern soil and to compensate the North for the Southern portion of the National debt. Very generous of them considering how the Northern states had bled them dry for years with the tariff. Putting that aside, Davis may or may not have been impetous, I don't think that he was. But he could not have been so impetouous as to have wanted war with the North immediately. And anyone who thinks he could have isn't playing with a full deck.

[Aurelius]

impetuous

[Non-Sequitur]

Absolute and total BS.

Well, I'll defer to you as an expert in BS. But as far as Davis is concerned, the evidence doesn't support your claim. The confederate 'peace commissioners', as you call them, were there to negotiate something that they had already appropriated? One would think that the time negotiate a sales price would be before you seize it. The commission was there to negotiate recognition of their act of rebellion, something that Lincoln wasn't inclined to do.

Very generous of them considering how the Northern states had bled them dry for years with the tariff.

Here are the tariff totals for the year prior to the outbreak of the war:

New York - $35,155,452.75
Boston - $5,133,414.55
Philadelphia - $2,262,349.57
New Orleans - $2,120,058.76
Charleston - $299,399.43
Mobile - $118,027.99
Galveston - $92,417.72
Savannah - $89,157.18
Norfolk - $70,897.73
Richmond - $47,763.63
Wilmington, NC - $33,104.67
Pensacola - $3,577.60

You will see that Philadelphia alone collected almost as much in tariff revenue as the nine largest southern ports combined. Tariff revenue from the three largest northern ports accounted for 95% of all revenue collected. So don't try that same old sothron song-and-dance about 'tariff bleeding us dry.' It won't work.

[Non-Sequitur]

...Davis may or may not have been impetous, I don't think that he was.

Then you would be in disagreement with Robert Toombs, secretary of state:

"Firing on that fort will inagurate a civil war greater than any the world has yet seen...At this time it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend in the North...You will wantonly srike a hornet's nest which extends from mountains to ocean, and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it put us in the wrong; it is fatal."