Lincoln’s 'Second American Revolution'

James McPherson and other prominent historians sometimes speak of Abraham Lincoln’s "Second American Revolution" (the title of one of McPherson’s books). They are correct to portray Lincoln as a revolutionary, but the reasons they give for this are incomplete or inaccurate. He led a revolution all right, but it was an anti-American revolution against virtually all the founding principles of this country. It was a revolution against: free-market capitalism (Lincoln was a devoted mercantilist); the principles of the Declaration of Independence; the Constitution; the system of states’ rights and federalism that was created by the founders; and the prohibitions against waging war on civilians embodied in the international law of the time as well as the canons of Western Christian civilization.

One of the most absurd Lincoln myths is that he was devoted to the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Harry Jaffa and his followers have perpetuated this myth for decades based on their own stylized interpretations of a few lines of Lincoln’s speeches. In reality, however, Lincoln’s words and actions thoroughly and completely repudiated every one of the main principles of the Declaration.

The Jaffaites usually dwell only on the "all men are created equal" line of the Declaration and ignore the rest of it. Not only is this selective reading of the Declaration intellectually dishonest; it is wrong. Lincoln denounced racial equality over and over again throughout his entire adult life. He did not believe that all men are created equal. In his August 21, 1858 debate with Stephen Douglas he said "I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races" and that "I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary."

"Anything that argues me into his idea of perfect social and political equality with the Negro," he said in the same speech, "is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a horse chestnut to be a chestnut horse."

"Free them and make them politically and socially our equals?" he continued. "My own feelings will not admit of this . . . . We cannot, then make them equals."

In his book, Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream, Ebony magazine editor Lerone Bennett, Jr. writes that "On at least fourteen occasions between 1854 and 1860 Lincoln said unambiguously that he believed the Negro race was inferior to the White race. In Galesburg, he referred to ‘the inferior races.’ Who were ‘the inferior races’? African Americans, he said, Mexicans, who he called mongrels . . ."

For his entire adult life Lincoln advocated deporting all the black people in America to Africa, Central America, or Haiti ("colonization") and was a member of the American Colonization Society. "There is a moral fitness in the idea of returning to Africa her children," he said in his 1852 eulogy to Henry Clay. Ten years later, in his December 1, 1862 message to Congress, he said, "I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I strongly favor colonization." He held these views until the day he died. As Joe Sobran has remarked, Lincoln’s position was that black people could be "equal" all right, but not here in the U.S.

Lincoln supported the Illinois constitution, which prohibited the emigration of black people into the state; he supported the Illinois Black Codes, which deprived free blacks of any semblance of citizenship or economic freedom; in his First Inaugural he supported a proposed constitutional amendment that would have prohibited the federal government from interfering with slavery; and he was a staunch supporter of the Fugitive Slave Act which coerced the Northern states to round up runaway slaves and return them to slavery. He did denounce slavery in principle, as did most political, military, and business leaders of the era. But as historian Robert Johannsen explained in Lincoln, the South, and Slavery, his position was opposition to slavery in principle, toleration of it in practice, and a vigorous hostility to the abolition movement. The notion that Lincoln was a champion of equality is an Orwellian absurdity.

A most important principle of the Declaration is the idea that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. In 1861 nearly every opinion maker in the country, North and South, held this as a cherished belief and, as such, thought that using military force to coerce any state to remain in the Union would be an act of tyranny and a repudiation of the Declaration of Independence. As the Bangor Daily Union wrote on November 13, 1860, the Union "depends for its continuance on the free consent and will of the sovereign people of each state, and when that consent and will is withdrawn on either part, their Union is gone." A state coerced into the Union is "a subject province" and may never be "a co-equal member of the American Union."

The New York Journal of Commerce editorialized on January 12, 1861, that opposing secession changes the nature of government "from a voluntary one, in which the people are sovereigns, to a despotism where one part of the people are slaves" to the federal government. This was the view of the majority of Northern newspapers at the time according to Howard Cecil Perkins, editor of the two-volume book, Northern Editorials on Secession.

After Thomas Jefferson was elected president the New England Federalists plotted for over a decade to secede from the Union. Their efforts culminated in the Hartford Secession Convention of 1814, where they decided against secession. The movement was led by George Washington’s Secretary of War and Secretary of State, Massachusetts Senator Timothy Pickering. All during this time, no one questioned the right of any state to secede because this was the Revolutionary generation, and they revered the Jeffersonian dictum that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Senator Pickering announced that, because of this belief, secession was "the" principle of the American Revolution. The Declaration of Independence was, after all, a Declaration of Secession from the British Empire. Lincoln’s war destroyed this fundamental tenet of the Declaration.

There was also a vigorous secession movement in the "middle states" – Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New York – in the late 1850s, as described by William C. Wright in The Secession Movement in the Middle Atlantic States.

As H. L. Mencken sagely pointed out in an essay on Abraham Lincoln, it was the Confederates who were fighting for consent of the governed; they no longer consented to being governed by Washington, D.C., and Lincoln waged war to deprive them of that consent. And it is important to keep in mind that neither Lincoln nor the U.S. Congress ever said that they were launching and invasion of the Southern states for any reason having to do with Southern slavery. They did not launch an invasion because the slaves were deprived of consent. Lincoln declared his purpose in the war in his famous August 22, 1862 letter to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, which was published in the Tribune: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union."

Of course, Lincoln only "saved" the Union geographically; he destroyed the Union philosophically by destroying its voluntary nature. His version of "saving the Union" is analogous to the situation where a woman leaves her husband because he has been abusing her. The husband drags his wife back into the home, chains her to the bedpost, and threatens to shoot her and burn the house down with her in it if she leaves again. The Union has been restored! But what kind of Union is it? It is the kind of coercive Union that has existed in the U.S. since 1865.

The U.S. Congress also declared on July 22, 1861 that the purpose of the war was to destroy the secession movement (i.e., the voluntary Union) and nothing more:

Resolved: . . . That this war is not prosecuted upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those states, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and all laws made in pursuance thereof and to preserve the Union, with all the dignity, equality and rights of the several states unimpaired; and that as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease.

Thus, the official purpose of the war, as explained to the entire world by Lincoln and the U.S. Congress, was not to interfere with "the rights or established institutions" of the Southern states, i.e., slavery, but to "preserve the Union." This was a clever euphemism for "destroying once and for all the system of states’ rights and federalism designed by the founding fathers." And as will be seen shortly, Lincoln eviscerated constitutional liberties in the North, which permanently weakened the constitutional protections of liberty for all Americans.

The Constitution was created by the states, who routinely referred to themselves as "free and independent states." They created the federal government as their agent, and Virginia, Rhode Island and New York explicitly reserved the right to withdraw from the Union if it ever became destructive of their liberties. Virginia’s constitutional ratification convention stated that "the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression." The New York and Rhode Island delegations made almost identical statements.

The Tenth Amendment includes a right of secession, since it reserves all rights not granted to the federal government to the people, respectively, or to the States. This includes the right of secession.

Lincoln knew that the Confederates had constitutional history on their side and so, as a slick trial lawyer, he decided to rewrite history by claiming that the Union was older than the states, and that there was never any such thing as state sovereignty over the federal government. He claimed that the government was really created by the Declaration of Independence, which of course had no force of law like the Constitution did. The Declaration was a Declaration of Secession, period, which makes Lincoln’s claim even more bizarre. It is also a colossal absurdity: It is impossible for the union of two things to be older than either thing that it is a union of. This makes as much sense as saying that a marriage can be older than either spouse.

Lincoln’s rewriting of history also repudiated the constitutionalist thinking of James Madison and other founders, who held that "a more perfect Union" was created by the Constitution, not the Declaration. Lincoln "proved" his false history "correct" by force of arms, not by logic and debate. Generations of court historians have repeated this spectacular lie, so that it has become part of the Lincoln legend.

Harry Jaffa and his followers go even farther than Lincoln did in rewriting history. They relegate both the Constitution and the Declaration to the political speeches of one man, Lincoln. "Above the Constitution, even above the Declaration, as an expression of American principles, is the magnanimous figure of Lincoln," wrote Jaffa’s colleague Charles Kessler in National Review (July 6, 1979). Jaffa and his followers have somewhat of a Führer complex when it comes to Lincoln, which of course is patently un-American. Placing any one man above the Constitution is a repudiation of the whole idea of constitutional government.

The third major set of principles in the Declaration is contained in the "Train of Abuses" where Jefferson condemned the tyrannical King George, III. As I document in The Real Lincoln, every single one of these abuses was as bad or worse during the Lincoln administration. King George "dissolved Representative Houses"; Lincoln and his party governed the occupied South as a military dictatorship during the war and Reconstruction. King George "has made Judges dependent on his Will alone" and was guilty of "depriving us in many cases, of the right of Trial by jury"; Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus and had his military imprison tens of thousands of Northern political opponents. King George "has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures." The Party of Lincoln did this during Reconstruction. King George was condemned "for cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world." Lincoln put into place a naval blockade of the Southern states.

King George declared Americans "out of his Protection" and was "waging war against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coast, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies, of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny." Every single one of these things was the policy of the Lincoln administration.

As a master politician Lincoln was clever enough to pay lip service to the Declaration of Independence, but his words and, more importantly, his actions, thoroughly and completely repudiated every single principle of the Declaration. This was indeed revolutionary.

The U.S. Constitution does not allow for a dictator, but generations of historians have described Lincoln as such. In his book, Constitutional Dictatorship, Clinton Rossiter wrote that "Dictatorship played a decisive role in the North’s successful effort to maintain the Union by force of arms . . . one man was the government of the United States . . . Lincoln was a great dictator . . . and a true democrat."

"Lincoln’s amazing disregard for the Constitution," Rossiter wrote, "was considered by nobody as legal." "Never had the power of a dictator fallen into safer and nobler hands," James Ford Rhodes wrote in his History of the United States. And James G. Randall wrote in Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln that "If Lincoln was a dictator, it must be admitted that he was a benevolent dictator." Why it "must be" was not explained.

The reasons why all these distinguished (and pro-Lincoln) scholars have labeled him a dictator can be found in the above-mentioned books, along with Freedom Under Lincoln by Dean Sprague, Fate of Liberty by Mark Neely, Jr., and Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men by Jeffrey Hummel, to name just a few references.

These books detail how Lincoln launched a military invasion without the consent of Congress and blockaded Southern ports without first declaring war. He unilaterally suspended the writ of habeas corpus for the duration of his administration and had his military arrest tens of thousands of Northern political opponents. A secret police force under the direction of the secretary of state carried this out.

The chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Roger B. Taney, ruled Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus to be unconstitutional (only Congress has such power), but he was ignored by Lincoln as the mass arrests of political dissenters continued. As described by Dean Sprague in Freedom Under Lincoln (p. 161): "The laws were silent, indictments were not found, testimony was not taken, judges did not sit, juries were not impaneled, convictions were not obtained and sentences were not pronounced. The Anglo-Saxon concept of due process, perhaps the greatest political triumph of the ages and the best guardian of freedom, was abandoned." Thousands of political prisoners languished in Fort Lafayette in New York harbor, which came to be known as "The American Bastille."

Dozens of Northern newspapers were shut down and their editors and owners were imprisoned if they opposed the Lincoln administration. On May 18, 1864 Lincoln sent the following order to General John Dix: "You will take possession by military force, of the printing establishments of the New York World and Journal of Commerce . . . and prohibit any further publication thereof . . . you are therefore commanded forthwith to arrest and imprison . . . the editors, proprietors and publishers of the aforesaid newspapers."

All telegraph communication was censored, the railroads were nationalized, and federal troops were ordered to interfere with Northern elections to ensure Republican victories. Lincoln won New York state by 7000 votes "with the help of federal bayonets," wrote Pulitzer Prize–winning Lincoln biographer David Donald in Lincoln Reconsidered. Several dozen members of the Maryland legislature were thrown into military prison along with the mayor of Baltimore and Congressman Henry May of Maryland so that they could not meet to discuss secession.

The most outspoken member of the Democratic Party opposition, Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham, was deported after 67 armed federal soldiers broke into his Dayton, Ohio home and arrested him. He had been vehemently protesting the suspension of habeas corpus and other constitutional infringements on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Lincoln apparently could not tolerate such talk. The Ohio Democratic Party made Vallandigham its gubernatorial nominee even though he had fled to Canada.

The border states were systematically disarmed, and two "confiscation acts" were written into law in which any U.S. citizen could have all of his private property confiscated by the government for such "crimes" as "falsely exalting the motives of the traitors"; "overstating the success of our adversaries"; and "inflaming party spirit among ourselves." Informers who turned in their neighbors could keep 50 percent of their neighbors’ property; the other half when to the U.S. treasury.

For decades, leftist historians have been praising Lincoln’s evisceration of the Constitution precisely because it established a precedent for the kind of executive branch usurpation of constitutional liberties that the founders gravely warned against. In Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln James G. Randall painstakingly details all of these attacks on constitutional liberty, and more, but then praises Lincoln for it by writing that "great social purposes " can be promoted by "abandoning constitutional barriers." One must look at the Constitution, says Randall, as "a vehicle of life" and a "matter of growth, development, and interpretation." He denigrated the founders by saying that we should not tolerate "excessive reliance upon the political wisdom of a bygone generation."

More recently, George P. Fletcher praises "Lincoln’s casual attitude toward formal constitutional institutions" because it has aided the cause of generations of leftists who have transformed the purpose of American government from the defense of individual liberty to "nationalism, egalitarianism, and democracy."

This – and Lincoln’s actions with regard to the Constitution – was a repudiation of the wisdom of the founding fathers, specifically of George Washington. In his Farewell Address Washington noted that if the Constitution is to be altered "let it be corrected by an amendment in the way in which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed."

Lincoln’s "change by usurpation," paved the way for so many other usurpations of constitutional liberty by the executive and judicial branches that today the Constitution is almost a dead letter altogether. Dean Sprague noted the significance of Lincoln’s "usurpations" by commenting that at the outbreak of the war "the federal government was not a real source of power." But once it demonstrated that it could abolish the opposition press and mass arrest any and all opponents of the ruling party "without any recourse to law," this established that the executive "had real power." Such an exhibition laid the groundwork for such unprecedented coercive measures as military conscription (which was loudly denounced in the North as "slavery") and income taxation.

On April 24, 1863, Lincoln issued General Order No. 100, known as the Lieber Code, which reiterated the accepted conventions of international law that existed at the time and which prohibited the intentional targeting of civilians in wartime. Those who did so were considered to be war criminals and should be prosecuted as such.

But from the very beginning, the Lincoln administration ignored its own Code as its armies pillaged, plundered, raped, and burned their way through the Southern states. In 1862 the entire town of Randolph, Tennessee, was burned to the ground by General Sherman even though there were no enemy combatants there. In 1863 Sherman burned Jackson and Meridian, Mississippi to the ground, again after the Confederate army had left. In a letter to General Grant, Sherman boasted that "for five days, ten thousand of our men worked hard and with a will, in that work of destruction, with axes, sledges, crowbars, clawbars, and with fire, and I have no hesitation in pronouncing the work well done. Meridian . . . no longer exists."

Ninety percent of the buildings in Atlanta were destroyed despite the fact that there were no Confederate soldiers there, either. After the bombardment of Atlanta, an act that was prohibited by international law, Sherman evicted the remaining 2000 residents just as winter was arriving.

General Sheridan burned the entire Shenandoah Valley and his army stole or destroyed virtually all the private property there in the fall of 1864. Dozens of towns in Georgia and South Carolina were incinerated during "Sherman’s march," during which Sherman claimed in his memoirs that his soldiers destroyed $100 million in private property and stole another $20 million worth.

The pillaging and plundering of private property and the murder and rape of civilians was so widespread that even the pro-Sherman biographer Lee Kennett wrote in Marching through Georgia (page 286) that "had the Confederates somehow won . . . they would have found themselves justified . . . in stringing up President Lincoln and the entire Union high command for violation of the laws of war, specifically for waging war against noncombatants."

When Lincoln first ran for public office in Illinois in 1832 he announced that "My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance. I am in favor of a national bank . . . in favor of the internal improvements system and a high protective tariff." Lincoln was the political "son" of Alexander Hamilton, who first championed these mercantilist policies.

Mercantilism was the economic and political system that prevailed in Europe in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries under which special privileges were granted by kings and parliaments to a merchant elite in return for the political and economic support of that elite. It is the system that Adam Smith railed against in his magnum opus, The Wealth of Nations. Many of the pilgrims who came to America fled this corrupt system. King George’s attempt to impose this system on the American colonists, with all its state-sponsored monopolies and high taxes, led to the American Revolution.

There was always a group of ambitious politicians in America who wanted to bring this corrupt system across the Atlantic because, as corrupt and impoverishing as it was, it was a convenient tool for the accumulation of political power. First there was Hamilton and the Federalists, then Henry Clay and the Whigs, and then Lincoln and the Republicans. They all championed high protectionist tariffs that would plunder consumers for the benefit of manufacturers, corporate welfare for railroad and road-building corporations, and a central bank that could print money that was not redeemable in gold or silver that could finance all these adventures. They had almost no success at all until the entire agenda was imposed on the nation at gunpoint during Lincoln’s war.

Senator John Sherman, the chairman of the U.S Senate Finance Committee during the Lincoln administration and the brother of General William Tecumseh Sherman, announced the reason why the Republican Party chose Lincoln as its presidential nominee:

Those who elected Mr. Lincoln expect him...to secure to free labor its just right to the territories of the United States; to protect…by wise revenue laws, the labor of our people; to secure the public lands to actual settlers...; to develop the internal resources of the country by opening new means of communications between the Atlantic and Pacific.

David Donald interprets this statement "from the politician’s idiom" in Lincoln Reconsidered to mean: "Lincoln and the Republicans intended to enact a high protective tariff that mothered monopoly, to pass a homestead law that invited speculators to loot the public domain, and to subsidize a transcontinental railroad that afforded infinite opportunities for jobbery."

The Federalist/Whig/Republican policy of mercantilism was finally put into place during the first eighteen months of the Lincoln administration. The average tariff rate was tripled, and would remain that high or higher for decades after the war. The building of the government-subsidized transcontinental railroad (in California) was commenced even though a desperate war was being waged. The National Currency Acts and the Legal Tender Act finally created a central bank that could issue currency (greenbacks) that was not immediately redeemable in gold or silver. An income tax was adopted for the first time ever, as was military conscription, pervasive excise taxation, and the internal revenue bureaucracy was created. It was the triumph of American mercantilism and the beginning of the end of laissez faire capitalism in America.

Lincoln also repudiated the means by which slavery was ended in every other country on earth during the first 55 years of the nineteenth century: peacefully, through compensated emancipation. The U.S. was the only country in the entire world during that time where war was associated with emancipation. The British and Spanish empires, and the French and Danish colonies all chose the peaceful route to emancipation, which occurred in Argentina, Columbia, Chile, all of Central America, Mexico, Bolivia, Uruguay, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, and elsewhere prior to Lincoln’s war. Brazil ended slavery peacefully after the war. Ninety-four percent of all the slaves that were brought to the Western Hemisphere were brought to these countries; about 6 percent ended up in the United States. The former group was emancipated peacefully. Lincoln never utilized his legendary political skills to do what the rest of the world did with regard to slavery, and end it peacefully.

This is bound to be one reason why the great nineteenth century natural rights theorist, the Massachusetts abolitionist Lysander Spooner, wrote in 1870 that

All these cries of having "abolished slavery," of having "saved the country," of having "preserved the union," of establishing a "government of consent," and of "maintaining the national honor" are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats – so transparent that they ought to deceive no one.

Perhaps they ought not to deceive, but generations of court historians have seen to it that they have.

So if nobody had been killed at Pearl Harbor then it would have been OK? No Second World War for the United States?

Your analogy is again false. Pearl Harbor was not in the middle of Japanese territory, nor was it attacked to remove enemy forces from that territory. It was attacked for little other reason that to cripple the American fleet.

Sumter on the other hand was only attacked to force the evacuation of the fort. When the yankees were finally willing to evacuate, Beauregard went out of his way to facilitate their peaceful withdrawal from the fort and secure passage up north. The two situations are simply not comparable.

Had the Lane not fired the shot, been sunk in the storm, or never left New York the war would have started on the 12th because the Davis government had already issued orders.

But history did not happen that way and the Harriet Lane fired the first shot. If nothing else, that action confirms the very root of the problem with the yankee presence there - to impede free access into confederate ports. That being their motive and reason, the people of Charleston cannot be blamed for acting to remove them.

It's in the nature of things that a surrender or evacuation under the flag of truce will be "peaceful." Surely respect for the flag of truce on this occasion is no great credit to Confederate troops, and surely what matters is not that this evacuation under the flag of truce was pacific, but that force had been initiated to achieve that result.

From the unionist point of view, there was no difference between what sparked the war and county or city officials attacking the state militia. Even from an enlightened pro-Southern point of view, Davis's actions were foolhardy and counterproductive.

In school, I used to have more sympathy with the Confederacy than with the Union. I also found the "Lincoln cult" objectionable, and adolescents have a weakness for anything labelled "rebel." But in time, I've increasingly come to see the secessionist firebrands and Confederate political leaders as arrogant, foolish and criminally irresponsible. Their attitude and that of many of their defenders is indefensible -- "Yesterday we were part of the US with US courthouses, customs houses, post offices and forts. We swore allegiance to the United States, made our contribution to the country and drew benefits from our citizenship and allegiance. Today we are independent and sovereign and the few remaining federal troops or officials on our soil are trespassers, interlopers or invaders. We must drive them off if they don't leave. A handful of troops are dangerous invaders. Seventy or eighty years of common allegiance count for nothing. Tomorrow, we will have our own federation with its own flag, government and aspirations to power. And we will be subject to the demands of that new government as we were to the old federal or state government. If not tomorrow, then the day after, our former countrymen will be our enemies." I can understand why people might have felt this way in 1860, but it's not defensible today. Real oppression might justify such rapid and radical contortions, but there was no real federal oppression of the slave states in 1860. There was no greater oppression of slave states by free states than of free states by slave states.

Confederate behavior and the theory of absolute sovereignty behind it is a recipe for a banana republic. It's not a way of getting government and politics out of people's lives. Such frequent and unprepared changes of allegiance and claims of absolute sovereignty push politics into the forefront of human lives. Keeping to Constitutional procedures to effect changes, even to the point of dissolving the union, would have been a far better course than reckless, unilateral action.

If Southern elites had the patience to pursue a political, legal, constitutional process of dissolution, deaccession or devolution, it's possible and likely they would have eventually gotten their own way, if only by making pests of themselves. When the secession crisis began, most Northerners were probably inclined to let them go. But by pushing a radical agenda of absolute sovereignty and non-negotiable demands, by vilifying their fellow or former countrymen, they provoked a powerful reaction that doomed their rebellion.

Ah, but it does. The confederates sailed out to the fort in the middle of the bombardment to negotiate the hoisting of that flag of truce and to pledge a safe and peaceful withdrawal for Anderson's men. They could have simply said "get out" but instead they arranged for passage to the harbor entrance where Northern warships were waiting. but that force had been initiated to achieve that result.

After negotiations have failed and when the other side has already used it, force is not in itself a bad thing.

In school, I used to have more sympathy with the Confederacy than with the Union. I also found the "Lincoln cult" objectionable, and adolescents have a weakness for anything labelled "rebel."

Good for you. I had the opposite experience, having been taught that the south was an evil immoral empire and that The Lincoln came down from the morally pure north to free the slaves from their bondage. I was taught that the north was entirely abolitionist when in fact they were less than 10% of the population. I was even led to picture, at a very young age, an "underground railroad" consisting of a giant tunnel lined with train tracks going from Atlanta to New York City and worked by the "morally pure" abolitionist people of the north. In time I discovered this to be a noble myth perpetrated on the nation for political reasons.

We must drive them off if they don't leave.

What business did they have there in the first place? None, other than obstruction. The south went out of its way to facilitate the peaceful departure of those troops. The Lincoln resisted knowing full well it would lead to conflict.

A handful of troops are dangerous invaders.

When they are firing on ships attempting free access to a harbor that is not theirs, then yes. They are.

Seventy or eighty years of common allegiance count for nothing. Tomorrow, we will have our own federation with its own flag, government and aspirations to power. And we will be subject to the demands of that new government as we were to the old federal or state government. If not tomorrow, then the day after, our former countrymen will be our enemies."

Nonsense. The speeches of southern leaders such as Davis express a desire of peaceful separation and even mutual friendship with the north so long as they be left alone. They did not seek to make war and conquest on New York and Massachussetts. They wanted New York and Massachussetts to leave them alone.

Keeping to Constitutional procedures to effect changes, even to the point of dissolving the union, would have been a far better course than reckless, unilateral action.

Perhaps it would have, but you neglect one indisputable fact. The yankees would have none of it. They obstructed constitutional attempts to save the union for months and expressed nothing but uncompromised coercion as a means of solving the dispute. They showed contempt for the constitutional processes of the courts, a contempt later verified when The Lincoln completely ignored the Merryman decision on the grounds that he simply did not like it. They left the south with no other option than to act unilaterally, and that is what the south did.

Not in the least. The South sought constitutional approaches to the dispute throughout one of the most lively sessions of congress. There were even proposals to constitutionally split the nation into four. But the yankee radicals would have none of it in any form whatsoever. To the Sumner crowd it was either their way or no way, a fact conceded by even yankee stalwarts like Charles Francis Adams and William Seward. The south soon learned this to be the case with the yankees and acted in the only viable alternative - unilaterally.

Your version of history of the secession crisis is terribly skewed if not backwards. Yes, there were southern fireeaters who pushed hard to secession, but even they made their case out of expressions of frustration with the Sumner crowd. In late 1860 and early 1861 there were also some moderate republican and democrat northerners who wanted compromise and pushed for it heavily in Congress. They saw obstruction at every turn and found it near impossible to do anything. Amazingly when they voiced their concerns about that obstruction to congress they placed the blame not on the southerners but the northern radicals affiliated with Charles Sumner. Seward called Sumner a "damned fool" for his actions. Adams blasted his faction in a famous and widely printed speech before the chamber. His son Henry said that Sumner was so stubborn and set against compromise that God Almighty could not move him. And the roll call votes reflect it, with Sumner's faction voting in unison against every single proposal save one, the last minute Corwin amendment.

Not really. There were things I like about the man, there are things I dislike. Why do you feel you must defend the man at every turn?

Lincoln does not need me to defend him. My comment was made as a sarcastic retort to claims that Lincoln issued orders from Springfield in response to events that had not yet taken place and which could not be anticipated by anyone. You juggle the timeline to support your argument. You are entitled to you own opinions but you are not entitled to your own facts.

I have read and am familiar with the L-D debates. You are somewhat incorrect about you statement of what Lincoln's motives were. His "Platform" was Free Soil -- i.e. stop the expansion of slavery to the West. That platform precipitated events far beyond his control and forced his Presidency to focus on one overriding objective --- preserving the Union --- which was quite simply his sworn Constitutional duty. Lincoln confessed often that he had little control over events but that the events had controlled him. He was a very talented and intelligent politician, statesman and communicator, but he was neither a God nor a Satin. He was a good man and a compassionate man who did his best under horrendous conditions, and IMHO, he did the best that any man could have done in those tragic times.

I normally don't get religious or spiritual over history, but I often think that those years were God's punishment on this nation for the sin of slavery. Our sin was worse than others because unlike them, we knew, both North and South, that slavery was wrong and an abonimation before the Lord, yet we allowed it to continue.

They could have simply said "get out" but instead they arranged for passage to the harbor entrance where Northern warships were waiting.

"Get out?" How? They either had to intern the men or provide transport. There's no credit to using force and then respecting a flag of truce, though it was more than U.S. Black troops got when they tried to surrender to Confederates.

I was even led to picture, at a very young age, an "underground railroad" consisting of a giant tunnel lined with train tracks going from Atlanta to New York City and worked by the "morally pure" abolitionist people of the north.

Then you were quite naive. I hope you overcome your current delusions as well.

What business did they have there in the first place?

They were representatives of the elected government. What "business" to US troops have in Guantanamo? What "business" did the British have in Hong Kong? Respecting agreements and property rights and working peacefully would have won Southern leaders much more respect in the North and elsewhere.

The speeches of southern leaders such as Davis express a desire of peaceful separation and even mutual friendship with the north so long as they be left alone.

It was separation on their terms that they wanted. Their actions spoke louder than words. Confiscation of property, repudiation of debts, firing on federal installations: these were not the path of "peaceful separation and even mutual friendship."

They did not seek to make war and conquest on New York and Massachusetts.

No, but they wanted Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland and what they could grab. The actions of the smaller Gulf State Confederacy in sending commissioners to foment rebellion in the Upper South and Border States should not be ignored. "Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace."

The yankees would have none of it.

Just who are these "yankees"? You admit that Seward and others were for compromise. I would also point out the role of Southern representatives in defeating the Crittenden Compromise. Moreover, not all "compromise" plans would be recognized as true compromises by all those concerned. Davis's motion that any compromise would have to have support of a majority of both parties of the compromise committee doomed the Committee of 13 to failure.

Your version of history leaves out the passionate secessionist and Southern nationalist sentiment that fueled the rebellion. Your hero Wigfall, was he working towards compromise? Did Keitt or Rhett or Yancey seek compromise on anything but their own terms? Of course they'd blame the abolitionists. They blamed them for everything. They needed someone to blame. They were political actors fully vested with power and supporters and were responsible for their own actions.

Your assertion that most Northerners weren't abolitionists belies your view of the conflict. If Sumner and other abolitionists were such a minority, how did they come to hold so much power over the political process? Surely Northerners and Southerners devoted to Union and peace could have outvoted this faction. And those of us who have spend so much time abusing Lincoln for his lack of committment to abolitionism should surely have some praise for those who would not compromise with slavery.

"Get out?" How? They either had to intern the men or provide transport.

Or make them use their own transports.

Then you were quite naive.

No, only a product of a propagandized version of history offered to 10 year olds along side government school agendas of environmentalism and diversitopian rantings.

I hope you overcome your current delusions as well.

Your comment would be better reserved for a mirror.

They were representatives of the elected government.

Not of any elected government in the southern states. They were not representatives of local government, state government, or the southern congressional and senate delegations, all of whom, along with the people, wanted them gone.

What "business" to US troops have in Guantanamo?

It was a territorial agreement that Cuba has offered. The comparison is not valid.

What "business" did the British have in Hong Kong?

Winning it as a territorial possession separate from China then agreeing with China on a lease of the remainder of the colony.

Respecting agreements and property rights and working peacefully would have won Southern leaders much more respect in the North and elsewhere.

It is hard to respect the presence of a military presence in the middle of a harbor when that presence is being used to block your own ships from entering that harbor.

It was separation on their terms that they wanted.

And their terms were southern control of the south. What's so horrible about that?

Their actions spoke louder than words.

No more so than The Lincoln's. Confiscation of property

Since when did the property of the United States as a whole prior to the war become the exclusive property of the North? Did not the South pay for it and even permit its use to the government as well? A fair and practical division would give each half the property within their boundaries. But The Lincoln wanted property in his own region plus that in the southern region.

My reference to constitutional action was to action to dissolve the union or "unadmit" states in Congress. That Southern extremists didn't take this course was a mistake. As was accepting the dubious theories of unilateral secession and absolute state sovereignty.

In reference to the compromise measures in Congress in 1860, Republicans were willing to guarantee the continued existence of slavery where it existed, but not to allow the expansion of slavery. They had campaigned on this platform and had won. It reflected the sentiment of those who had elected them, and they were no more apt to surrender this than Southerners were willing to support an end to slavery where it was legal in 1860. Within these limits compromise was not impossible. Southern "compromise" demands which expanded slavery to the territories and required return of slaves from free territories were not likely to win support and may not have been seriously meant.

Today we can sympathize with those who worked for compromise. One can surely be critical of radical abolitionists or uncompromising free soilers, but it's hard for me to have very much sympathy for aggressive, blustering slaveowners seeking protection of their "rights" at the expense of other's freedoms.

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