Posted on 06/17/2002 1:35:37 PM PDT by shuckmaster
Abraham Lincoln should without a doubt be named America’s greatest war criminal. His war of invasion not only killed over 600,000 innocent Americans but it was obvious from his earlier speeches that he had previously advocated the prevalent constitutional right of democratic, state by state secession. Lincoln’s War also effectively overthrew the existing decentralized, limited federal government that had existed and governed well in the US since established by America’s founding fathers. Lincoln bastardized a respected federal government with limited powers into a dictatorial, uncontrollable Washington federal empire.
Because of Lincoln, the former American constitutional republic fell from a dream of liberty and limited government into the nightmare big government we have today without the earlier checks and balances of state sovereignty. After Lincoln, In foreign policy, the US forgot George Washington’s warning about neutrality and we became an aggressive military abroad until today we have troops defending the Washington Empire in over 144 nations around the world.
The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connections as possible. It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances, with any portion of the foreign world.—George Washington
Lincoln shares his war criminal actions with other well know tyrants that waged war on their own people. History shows us that politicians make war against their own citizens even more than against foreign nations. The reasons are often to establish and preserve their power base, as was the case in the Russian Revolution and the Mao Revolution. For others, like Hitler, it was misguided super patriotism and racism that brought death to tens of millions. Sadly, in the case of Abraham Lincoln’s war against the Confederacy and Southern civilians, it was all for money, company profits and government tariff revenues. A simple case of political pay back in return for the Northeastern manufacturing interests that supported the Republican Party and his campaign for the presidency.
Early in his career, Abraham Lincoln was an honorable statesman who let election year politics and the special interests supporting his presidential campaign corrupt a once great man. He knew what he was doing was wrong and unconstitutional but succumbed, as in the case of many modern day politicians, to the allure of money, power and ego.
Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right - a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit.
-- Abraham Lincoln January 12, 1848
This quote above shows Lincoln as a statesman 12 years before he plunged the United States into its most disastrous war. Suffering a death toll so high in death rates as a percentage of total population, his act of carnage ranks with the political genocides of Stalin, Lenin and Mao during their communist revolutions. A death toll so great that it dwarfs the American deaths in all of our many declared and undeclared wars before and since this American holocaust of death and destruction.
From the following quote you can see that later Lincoln radically adjusted his rhetoric to meet the needs and demands of his business establishment supporters and financial supporters.
No state, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union. Plainly, the central idea of secession, is the essence of anarchy. --Abraham Lincoln
Why the complete change in rhetoric and actions? Simple, to preserve high tariffs and corporate profits for the Northeastern business establishment. Lincoln who earlier in his career had obviously favored the right of peaceful secession, provoked a war that killed 600,000 Americans, as a pay back to the eastern manufacturing establishment that bankrolled his presidential campaign. These special interests would have suffered serious financial loss if a low tariff Confederate States of America were allowed to peacefully, democratically and constitutionally secede from the United States in lawful state constitutional conventions of secession which were identical to the ratification conventions when they had joined the Union. Thus the real reasons for the death and destruction of Lincoln’s War were covered up and hidden by historians who continue, even today, to deny the truth and hide the ultimate costs of Lincoln’s American holocaust.
While Lincoln’s death toll is small in comparison to total deaths by Mao, Lenin, Stalin and Hitler, there are many similarities between these men. In the Russian Civil War, from 1917 - 1922 around 9 million died under Lenin and we must add another 20 million under Stalin from 1929 to 1939. The Mao communist regime in China killed 44 to 70 million Chinese from 1949 – 1975.
Still the US constitutional republic, as established by our founding fathers, was in effect destroyed by Lincoln’s unconstitutional war just as surely as Mao and Lenin over threw the existing Chinese and Russian governments.
The multitude of Lincoln apologists would say that this is just another Confederate argument certainly not accepted by most historians. I might counter that the opinions and books of these "so called" establishment historians who live off my tax dollars through government funding at liberal controlled universities and think tanks are prejudiced towards Lincoln and Washington DC. They are no different from the official government historians in China, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Their job is to lie to the American people and cover up a true and honest account of our history in order to support the government and political system in power.
History shows us that a fair and honest discussion of Lincoln’s wartime actions will not be possible as long as the Washington political establishment remains in power. Since Lincoln, the Washington Empire has reigned supreme and omnipotent and for this reason, establishment historians have never honestly debated the Lincoln war crimes.
Consider this. Was a fair and honest account of Lenin or Stalin written and published during the Soviet Communist regime? Of course not. Could a less than worshipful history of Hitler’s Third Reich have been published until after 1945? No! Even today, with only nominal communist control of China, an honest appraisal of Mao’s revolution and crimes against the Chinese people still is not possible. It is no different today in the United States than it is in Red China or was in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Just as Lenin’s statue could not be toppled in Red Square until after the fall of the Soviet Communist government, or the truth about Hitler couldn’t be told until after defeat of Nazi Germany, it is the same here in the United States.
It is my hope that someday, in the not too distant future, a true account of the war crimes of Lincoln will be discussed, debated and even acknowledged. The Lincoln Memorial should be remodeled to show the horrors of "Lincoln the War Criminal" with the opportunity for all to visit Washington and learn how war crimes, genocide and holocaust are not just crimes that foreign politicians commit. Government and political tyranny can and has happened here just like in Germany, China and the Soviet Union and that through education and honest history, it will never happen here again.
In the future, may we have the opportunity to learn about the Nazi holocaust at the United States National Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and then have the chance to visit the Lincoln War Crimes and American Holocaust Museum a few blocks away. One will state for all the world that NEVER AGAIN will a tyrant or government be allowed to target, exterminate and destroy an ethnic, racial or religious minority. The other will pledge NEVER AGAIN in America will we allow a president or government to make unconstitutional war against Sovereign states or their citizens and then cover up the truth up for over 145 years.
We should start today with an honest appraisal of what Lincoln really did to Dixie, how our black and white innocent noncombatants suffered under his total war policy against civilians. Finally we should address the cost in lives, lost liberty and federal taxes the citizens of the US have had to endure because our limited constitutional republic was destroyed.
Abraham Lincoln was a great man, a smart politician and he could have been an excellent president, had he considered the short-term costs of his high tariff and the long time price every American had to pay for his war of invasion. It is time to stop worshipping Lincoln and educate the public about the war crimes he committed against the citizens of the Southern States so this WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN! --Ron Holland.
The very definition of tiresome is the constant flow of crap from the left-coast (especially your contributions to our Congress).
In 1863 Lincoln stated that "I felt differently", and 8 month later wrote "I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful." A measure that is Constitutional is already "lawful" - there is no need for it to "become" lawful. Lincoln hoped for future (ex post facto) legislation to legalize his actions (meaning that they were currently illegal).
Put you have nothing to base that on other than your own hopes and opinions. For all you know it could have been much worse. Had the south won they would have been faced with a large, hostile United States on their border, mulling revenge. Given that threat and with a nation to build then Davis, or his successor, are just as likely to have carried on his policies of ignoring the constitution, jailing dissidents, nationalizing industries and so forth. Southern victory could have lead to a repressive North and a continuation of, or an even more, repressive south.
Oh please, drop the drama.
My humanity is in fine shape thanks and sympathizes with all of the Civil war dead, not just southerners, unlike your 'humanity' which appears to see only one side as worthy of sympathy or respect.
If modern day Jews are still lamenting the holocaust and complaining about Hitler in another eighty years (2082) your defense of the endless diatribes against Abe Lincoln and the finger-pointing at governments gone for almost 140 years from the folks who comprise the anti-Lincoln, pro-south Civil War fanatics may carry some weight. Right now it just looks like a bunch of pointless and unproductive complaining about a war finished and a president dead over 137 years with little real purpose except to pick at a grievience you chose to adopt from your ancestors and make part of your identity.
As I doubt Jewish decendents of Holocaust survivors will get a lot of real sympathy for ranting about Hitler in 2083, the anti-north, anti-Lincoln rants are just about as welcome. Enough already. People suffered and a nation was torn asunder but that was then, this is now and as we cannot change the past, we cannot fel any better about it by rehashing it every day and getting angry and hostile about matters settled and done and people dead and moulding in their graves for well over a hundred years. Nothing changes and no one is served except to harbor and nurture a pointless anger and contempt.
Like blacks that still complain about slavery, the anti-Lincoln, pro-confederate south rants are tiresome and have little relevance to todays American citizens, so don't expect a lot of sympathy for you definition of 'humanity'. From the serfs and peasants of europe that immigrated to America to the black slaves of brought here against their will, we all have a distant past that could be hurtful if we chose to dwell on it and make it our hobby. We do not. Life goes on, improves, changes and the past dies.
Looking back at your history is one thing, making past arguments and even a civil war the focus of the rest of your life is pointless, tedious and probably unhealthy.
for a FREE dixie,sw
How many countries can you name, that have actual armed troops defending the US?
In the article, he is including Military and DOD personnel that are not considered troops. These lesion personnel and Embassy security personnel are not "defenders of the empire" as he states.
I would really like to see this topic banned. It has been cussed, discussed, hashed and rehashed until there's simply nothing left to say.
It's just such utter B.S. For awhile it was amusing to see just how cretinous a cretin can be, but with the climate we have now, where our nation is threatened, it has no place here, IMO.
The rebels got their *sses whooped, and destroyed their whole land for two generations.
What a WONDERFUL legacy.
BTW, we're taking down your stupid raggedy-*ss flag all over Texas now. Seems we finally figured out we're in the United States of America now.
Yes, slavery as the foundation of their "way of life."
Maybe you forgot that the VAST MAJORITY of those that took up arms for the cause of Southern Independence did not own any slaves/and were too poor to do so...
That ended up being a HUGE problem for the rebel government, and toward the end of the war the increasing desertion rate was attributed not a little to the notion that they were fighting a "rich man's war, poor man's fight."
Initially, though, the rebel demagogues were able to appeal to the nonslaveholders (a.k.a. "cannon fodder") by labeling the Republican party the "Black Republicans" and inciting fear and loathing by claiming that if they stayed in the Union, "black bucks" were coming to take their daughters to wife.
In other words, Democrats then were doing just as Democrats have always done: Lying and misrepresenting reality, believing their audience was too stupid to figure it out.
Unfortunately, they were right that time.
Before the Civil War, the rhetoric was all about "the Union" and "the Confederation of states," but we emerged, despite the horrific toll in lives and treasure, as a single, unified nation, and that is the way we see ourselves today.
Growing up in Alabama, I was taught IN SCHOOL the revisionist history that you believe is valid.
It wasn't until I became an adult and began to think for myself that I discovered that everything I knew was wrong.
The first thing that put me wise was a reading of the various secession declarations and other documentary history of the time. There wasn't one, single, bloomin' word in there anywhere about "tarriffs" or whatever. It was unabashedly about the slave question and the imperative they felt concerning preserving African slavery.
Then I dug a bit deeper, and soon after came to the conclusion that since I was an American, and truly believe in freedom and equality for all, this silly oligarchy called "the Confederacy" was not to my liking at all, and I abandoned it wholeheartedly.
Perhaps you might actually find some patriotic bone in your body, and realize that everything you know is wrong.
Really, it's a very cleansing experience.
Well, let's see: He did declare that any Negro caught in the uniform of the United States should be killed on the spot. And he took great satisfaction in massacres of this kind, such as at Ft. Pillow.
Oh, but that's quibbling, isn't it? I mean, other than the fact that he detested blacks as lower than the lowest animal, he was such a fine fellow...
I really feel for them. I was just as they are once, because I was taught the same sort of tripe they believe, while I was in public school in Alabama. Honestly, at that time (the late 60s-early 70s) history teachers actually taught some of this mythology as history. So these guys may just be misguided.
Honestly, anyone who criticizes McPherson on the basis of "hack" is just brain-dead. Battle Cry of Freedom is simply chock-full of historical fact, as well as a variety of historical opinion, all extensively and EXHAUSTIVELY documented. That book packs more punch in a single volume than many a multi-volume set on the war.
It's a treasure and a must-read for any serious student of U.S. history.
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