Posted on 12/11/2002 3:15:37 AM PST by WhiskeyPapa
A minor scholar, an economist by the name of Thomas DiLorenzo, has been on an anti-Lincoln Jihad throughout the year 2002. His book, "The Real Lincoln," has led otherwise sound writers, like Paul Craig Roberts, to declare the Great Emancipator, "worse than [ the Cambodian mastermind of genocide] Pol Pot." Since Dr. Keyes and the Declaration Foundation take Lincoln to be a model of Declarationist Statesmanship, it behooves us to deal with the calumnies of Professor DiLorenzo, and we have done so throughout the year.
Today, I'd like to excerpt a section from our book, "America's Declaration Principles in Thought and Action," dealing with the charge made by DiLorenzo and many before him, mostly leftists, but also libertarians, that Lincoln showed himself a racist in the famous "Peoria Speech" of 1854. It is found in Chapter 8 of our book, which may be purchased online at www.declaration.net
As we read the Peoria speech today, one element jars our sensibilities: Lincoln does not take a stand for full political and social equality of the races. Some of the abolitionists of his day, especially the Quakers and other religious abolitionists, did. The 1854 laws of Maine set up in almost all respects what we would recognize today as equal civil rights, including jury duty and voting rights. But Maine was almost alone. Illinois' laws did not allow blacks to vote or serve on juries, and Illinois was typical of the free states.
In Peoria, Lincoln said this: "Let it not be said that I am contending for the establishment of political and social equality between the whites and blacks. I have already said the contrary." Was this statesmanlike too, or was it either weak or unwise, or even unjust?
We think Lincoln's position in the Peoria speech can be vindicated, and that it can be reconciled with his support for expanded civil rights towards the end of the Civil War, if two things are kept in mind. First, as Lincoln himself said in 1859, "In this country, public opinion is everything." Second, that the knowledge of the statesman is prudence, or practical wisdom, which consists in knowing how to move towards moral goals by practicable steps, not in "the immoderate pursuit of moral perfection" which, in political life, "will more often lead to misery and terror than to justice and happiness," as Thomas G. West puts it in his book on the founding.
To take the first point first, is it not self-evident that in a republic, where the citizens are governed by their consent, their opinion will be the court of last resort, the final arbiter of all disputes? That does not mean that those opinions will never change, or that it will not be the duty of a good man and especially of a statesman to mold them for the better. But a public man will ignore them at his peril. Lincoln turns this weapon back on Douglas in the Peoria speech, when he tells him that he will never be able to suppress the voice of the people crying out that slavery is unjust: "...the great mass of mankind...consider slavery a great moral wrong; and their feeling against it, is not evanescent, but eternal. It lies at the very foundation of their sense of justice; and it cannot be trifled with-It is a great and durable element of popular action, and I think, no statesman can safely disregard it."
Sir Francis Bacon wrote long ago that, "Nature, to be mastered, must be obeyed." The saying is equally true of the nature of the physical body and of the body politic. Public opinion, the soul of the political body, was ailing in the days after the Nebraska Bill, and Douglas was prescribing as medicine what Lincoln thought poison. That the patient should also take up a regimen of vigorous exercise after his recovery was not and should not have been the first thing on the doctor's list.
Lincoln never said that political equality between the races was wrong; the most complete expression of his early views on the matter came in the 1858 debates with Douglas, and he clothed them entirely in the language of feeling: "...[I said years ago[1] that] my own feelings would not admit a social and political equality between the black and white races, and that even if my own feelings would admit of it, I still knew that the public sentiment of the country would not, and that such a thing was an utter impossibility, or substantially that." And again, in the same debate, "I agree with Judge Douglas that he [the Negro] is not my equal in many respects, certainly not in color- perhaps not in intellectual and moral endowments; but in the right to eat the bread without the leave of any body else which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every other man."
It must be remembered that the young Lincoln had said in 1838 that our passions, our feelings, were to be the enemy of our freedom in the future, and that reason, "cold sober reason," would be the friend of the principles of the Declaration. Only one feeling, an almost religious reverence for the founding ideals, would buttress that reason. It should also be pointed out that Lincoln said that he knew only that the feelings of his fellow citizens would not admit of equality. He was certain that there was an inequality of "color." He did not say that he was certain of the infinitely more important inequality of "intellectual and moral endowments." These he said, might be unequal... "perhaps."
Many causes, including prominently the religious conviction that all men are brothers, conspired to change public opinion in the United States towards the end of the Civil War. The Emancipation Proclamation, by altering the legal status of slaves and by encouraging them to flee their masters and seek refuge in the Union armies, had some effect. But the greatest source of the change was probably the testimony given in blood by the black soldiers who had served the Union. The number enlisted was reported by the President to Congress in January of 1864 to be over 100,000,[2] and Lincoln and many others thought that without their services, the war could not have been won. To a complaining Northern politician, James C. Conkling, who objected to fighting to "free negroes," Lincoln penned these memorable words: "...[when peace comes] it will then have been proved that, among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost. And then, there will be some black men who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation; while, I fear, there will be some white ones, unable to forget that, with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, they have strove to hinder it."
When a man will not fight to preserve his people and his principles, we call him a slave; when a slave does fight, we see in him a man. In antiquity, slaves who risked their lives to save their masters were often manumitted. They had proved their manhood. Lincoln wrote Conkling in the same letter, "If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive--even the promise of freedom. And the promise being made, must be kept."
It cannot, alas, be said that the promise was perfectly kept. It would take a century more after the abolition of slavery for a new exercise of Declaration statesmanship to establish political equality without regard to race in this country. But the start was made in the time of Lincoln's stewardship.
Let us be blunt; if Lincoln had taken the full position of equal social and political rights, he would not have been electable to any statewide office in Illinois, neither in 1854, when he was a candidate for U.S. Senate and nearly won the nomination, nor in 1858, when he and Douglas had their memorable debates. He would not have become president in 1860, nor would any member of his party who took such a stand. He accomplished the good that he could, always insisting on the fundamental principle that in the fullness of time would yield such results. To achieve this good, he had to rekindle a reverence for the Declaration. Let us look briefly at how he did that in the Peoria speech.
Word, words, words. "Mere words" men say, and yet it is by the power of words that we take common counsel and learn to govern ourselves. We are free because we are made in the image of the all-wise God, and we have a bit of His light in our minds, and by that bit we strive to live according to His laws, the "laws of nature, and of nature's God." Of Divine things, St. Paul writes, "But how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear of him without a preacher?"
Lincoln preached in Peoria. He preached the political religion he had declared must be preached years ago in Springfield. Douglas and the doctrine of popular sovereignty were "giving up the OLD faith... " Human equality and popular sovereignty were "as opposite as God and mammon..." Three times he calls the proposition that all men are created equal, the "ancient faith." Of the Nebraska Bill he says, "It hath no relish of salvation in it." He calls the Founders, "our revolutionary fathers," and "the fathers of the republic," stirring memories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He compares slavery to the fateful disobedience of Adam. He says: "Our republican robe is soiled, and trailed in the dust. Let us re-purify it. Let us turn and wash it white, in the spirit, if not the blood, of the Revolution."
Lincoln was like a great preacher in more than his scriptural language and his vision that America was founded on the Declaration as a kind of covenant or original creed, the "ancient faith." He endeavored to emulate the charity of great preaching, too, as when he admitted that "the Southern people" were "just what we would be in their situation," and when he said that "I surely will not blame them..." He stressed that Thomas Jefferson, the 'father Abraham' of the American covenant was "a Virginian by birth...a slaveholder..." He opened his speech by announcing that he did not "propose to question the patriotism, or to assail the motives of any man, or class of men...He. added that he wished "to be no less than national in all the positions" he would take. When he had suggested that "...a gradual emancipation might be adopted..." He immediately added, "but for their tardiness in this I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the south." Thus, to political faith, he added political charity.
The climax of the speech actually occurs about three-fourths in; after that point Lincoln anticipates some of the points he expects Douglas to make in his final hour's response. The paragraph begins with "Our republican robe is soiled..." It ends with these words of salvation and hope, which we quote in full:
Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it. Let north and south--let all Americans--let all lovers of liberty everywhere--join in the great and good work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have so saved it, as to make and keep it, forever worthy of the saving. We shall have so saved it, that the succeeding millions of free happy people, the world over, shall rise up, and call us blessed, to the latest generations.
In the Lyceum speech, Lincoln had concluded by urging the statesmen of his day to take the materials supplied by reason and mold them into intelligence, morality, and reverence for the law. "Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its basis; and as truly as has been said of the only greater institution, 'the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." At Peoria, he took his own advice, and became such a statesman.
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[1]In fact, it was in the Peoria speech. The text there runs, "whether this [feeling against equality] accords with justice and sound judgement, is not the sole question, if indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, can not be safely disregarded. We can not, then, make them equals."
[2] By the end of the war, over 200,000 blacks had served in the Union armed forces, and 37,000 had died serving their country.
Dr. Richard Ferrier President
An aritcle that starts off with a name calling insult is not worthy of continuing (look at the first sentence). The author is bent on an agenda; that's not scholarly IMO.
Tariffs may be a restriction on absolute liberty, but there are many such restrictions of greater significance. In the great course of human history, protectionist trade duties don't amount to a major abuse, particularly when they can easily be adjusted or reduced through constitutional and democratic means.
Try as I might, I can't convince myself that slavery is a matter of moral indifference and protectionism the great beast of iniquity. I also find it hard to believe that unionists would go to war for tariffs and secessionists simply free their slaves peacefully and voluntarily after going to war to keep them.
Perhaps mandatory reeducation sessions at the Mises Institute locked in a cell with only DiLorenzo's Lincoln, the Confederate Catechism and Mises Big Book to keep me company will convince me of the error of my ways. Perhaps it will also teach me how to throw around pompous rhetorical labels to obscure the weaknesses in arguments, or how to ignore the fact that each of us ducks as many arguments as we answer or how to maintain a fanatical confidence that I have the truth and that no one's responses can ever call my beliefs into question or even cast them in a new light. I am sure that the glorious thoughts of Mises, Rockwell and Rothbard, combined with enough sleep deprivation will convince me of the radiant truth.
It is in itself a matter of political policy, but inherent to ANY political issue of taxation is the problem of excessive and unfair rates, which are among the quickest routes to tyranny in existence. If you do not recall, the events of 1776 were brought about largely on the issue of fair taxation. That is because tax policy, though a normal and every day thing in government, can become tyranny by the simple act of overextending its burdens and collection rates.
Tariffs may be a restriction on absolute liberty, but there are many such restrictions of greater significance.
Potentially, though a tariff policy has the potential to completely gut and destroy one country's economy or build up that of another. History is replete with examples of both, suggesting that you are severely underestimating the power and dangers inherent to taxation.
In the great course of human history, protectionist trade duties don't amount to a major abuse
A good number of economic historians would staunchly disagree with you. I think Frederic Bastiat said it best: "If goods don t cross borders, armies will."
particularly when they can easily be adjusted or reduced through constitutional and democratic means.
Parliament theoretically could have used democratic means to adjust or even remove the colonial taxes that the Americans were up in arms over. Doesn't mean they have to do it though!
Try as I might, I can't convince myself that slavery is a matter of moral indifference
Then don't try to convince yourself that. You also will find that nobody expects you to convince yourself that.
and protectionism the great beast of iniquity.
Protectionism's problems are inherent. They do not arise from some silly comparative relativism to slavery. My contention is and always has been that protectionism's problems are inherent to protectionism, and that tax abuse is a problem unto itself. You on the other hand keep attempting to view it through the lens of slavery and slavery alone. As a matter of fact, you seem to have some irrational persuasion toward viewing many things through slavery when they are brought up by others as issues per se. Why is that?
I also find it hard to believe that unionists would go to war for tariffs
The difficulty you are having with such a belief is not rational as history is replete with examples of nations going to war on motives heavily guided by economics. No suggestion has been made that tariffs alone drove The Lincoln to invade, but the evidence does show they weighed heavily as an issue.
and secessionists simply free their slaves peacefully and voluntarily after going to war to keep them.
There is certainly a question as to when emancipation would occur, but worldwide historical trends make it highly unlikely that slavery in the south, and especially in a geographically restricted confederacy, would have extended significantly longer than elsewhere in the world.
Perhaps mandatory reeducation sessions at the Mises Institute locked in a cell with only DiLorenzo's Lincoln, the Confederate Catechism and Mises Big Book to keep me company will convince me of the error of my ways.
Nah. Unlike the Claremont Institute, our guys tend not to operate on the motive of stomping out any organized opposition to their dogma of The Lincoln. I'm perfectly content that there are people out there who could think favorably upon the real person of Abraham Lincoln even though I do not do so myself. I do take issue though with people who diefy his existence into an infallable idol and then procede to wage war upon those who publicly call their heresy.
Perhaps it will also teach me how to throw around pompous rhetorical labels to obscure the weaknesses in arguments
It seems that the Claremont camp has already left you quite skilled at the art of obscuring weak arguments. Why else would you throw out the diversionary red herring of slavery for comparison whenever you are called on comments about another issue as it exists per se?
or how to ignore the fact that each of us ducks as many arguments as we answer
That is often the nature of the game. Some duck excessively though by throwing out their preselected red herring of slavery to obscure another issue on which they are being pressured.
or how to maintain a fanatical confidence that I have the truth and that no one's responses can ever call my beliefs into question or even cast them in a new light.
Now that sounds like a textbook description of Walt if I ever heard one.
Lincoln had a war forced on him when the confederates fired on Sumter and followed it by declaring war. The fact that most of the fighting was in the southern states in rebellion can be blamed on Jefferson Davis.
Is that why he invaded the South?
Hmmmm...I think you are a little confused.
January 4 Alabama militia sieze the U.S. arsenal at Mt. Vernon, AL. Alabama has not yet seceded.
January 5 Alabama militia sieze Ft. Morgan and Ft. Gaines in Mobile Bay.
January 7 Florida militia sieze the Federal fort at St. Augustine. Florida has not yet seceded.
January 8 Florida militia attempting to sieze Ft. Barrancas are driven off by Federal troops.
January 9 South Carolina militia fire on US merchant vessel Star of the West, preventing reinforcement and resupply of Ft. Sumter garrison.
Mississippi secedes.
January 10 Louisiana militia sieze all Federal forts and arsenals in the state. Louisiana has not yet seceded.
Florida (belatedly) secedes. Federal troops abandon Ft. Barrancas.
North Carolina militia capture Ft. Johnson and Ft. Caswell. North Carolina has not yet seceded.
January 11 Alabama (belatedly) secedes.
January 12 Florida militia demands the surrender of Federal troops in Ft. Pickens. The demand is refused.
Mississippi fortifies Vicksburg and closes the Mississippi River to all traffic. Mississippi is the only state on the river, at this point, which has seceded.
January 19 Georgia secedes.
January 21 Mississippi militia sieze Ft. Massachussetts and Ship Island.
January 25 Georgia militia sieze the federal arsenal at Augusta. North Carolina calls for a referendum on secession.
January 26 Georgia militia sieze Ft. Jackson and Oglethorpe Barracks.
Louisiana (belatedly) secedes.
January 31 The U.S. Mint in New Orleans is siezed by Louisiana militia.
February 1 Texas submits an article of secession to popular referendum for February 23.
February 4 Delegates from the six seceded states meet in Montgomery to form the Confederate States of America.
February 9 Tennessee rejects secession in popular referendum by a large margin.
February 16 Texas militia sieze the federal arsenal at San Antonio. Texas has not yet seceded.
February 18 Texas militia besiege Federal army headquarters for Texas in San Antonio and force the surrender of over 3,000 troops. Texas has -still- not seceded.
Jefferson Davis inaugurated as President of the Confederacy.
February 21 The Confederate Provisional Congress orders Mississippi to end the blockade at Vicksburg.
March 20 Harbor authorities in Mobile sieze the U.S. merchant supply ship Isabella, loaded with supplies for Ft. Pickens, Florida.
April 3 Confederate batteries in Charleston harbor fire on US schooner Rhoda H. Shannon.
April 4 Virginia's State Convention rejects secession 2 to 1.
April 12 Confederate troops open fire on Ft. Sumter; Federal troops reinforcing Ft. Pickens, FL from sea are fired upon by more Confederate troops. The Civil War 'officially' begins.
April 15 Lincoln calls for 75,000 militiamen to serve for three months to put down the insurrection in the South.
April 16 Isham Harris, governor of Tennessee, requests military alliance with the Confederacy. Tennessee has NOT seceded and is making treaty or confederation with another power, violating the Constitution.
April 17 Virginia secedes.
Sounds to me like President Lincoln was arranging to reoccupy a lot of federal property occupied by thieves and thugs.
You can snatch a purse. That doesn't make it yours.
Walt
What atrocities?
This is where you slink off and don't answer.
Walt
Your story does nothing to disprove my statements. I never suggested that there were no free black men and women down south. In fact at the time of the Civil war there were, I belive, about 133,000 free blacks living in what would become the confederate states, about 28% of all free blacks in the country. And I'm aware that some free blacks owned slaves themselves. But I'll stand by the accuracy of my statement. The fact remains that every southern state had laws on their books or clauses in their constitutions which prohibited a free black person from emigrating into their state. Every southern state had laws which limited the freedoms of free blacks to one extent or another.
Is that why he invaded the South?
"There is another precedent to consider, the case of Luther v. Borden, 48 U.S. 1 (1849) (USSC+) which dealt with occurrences during Dorr's Rebellion in RI in 1842. During that "Rebellion," there were two entities in RI that claimed to be the lawful state government.
In Luther v Borden, the court ruled that President has the power to decide [which] government of the state is in fact legitimate, and that the Courts have no authority to overrule the President's decision either during the crisis or after the fact. The court noted that:
" Undoubtedly, if the President in exercising this power, shall fall into error or invade the rights of the people of the State, it would be in the power of Congress to apply the proper remedy."
Now, clearly it is possible for a situation to exist where a state has no legitimate government - that is, an interregnum exists. During such a period there may be zero, one, two, or more than two entities claiming to be the legitimate government, but in fact none of them are legitimate.
Since the President has the power to decide which of two (or more) claimants is the legitimate government, the President must have the power to decide that *none* of the claimants is the legitimate government.
I submit that this is what Lincoln did in 1861. Having exercised his power to determine that no lawful government existed in the so-called seceded states, he then used the powers vested in him "as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States" to suppress the actual and armed rebellion.
Thus, Lincoln had the power to act without waiting for a request from a Governor or State Legislature. And Congress fully supported Lincoln in doing so."
-- from the ACW moderated newsgroup.
Walt
Let's have a more complete citation.
Washington.
April 25-- 1861.
My dear Sir:
The Maryland Legislature assembles to-morrow at Anapolis; and, not improbably, will take action to arm the people of that State against the United States-- The question has been submitted to, and considered by me, whether it would not be justifiable, upon the ground of necessary defence, for you, as Commander in Chief of the United States Army, to arrest, or disperse the members of that body-- I think it would not be justifiable; nor, efficient for the desired object. First, they have a clearly legal right to assemble; and, we can not know in advance, that their action will not be lawful, and peaceful. And if we wait until they shall have acted, their arrest, or dispersion, will not lessen the effect of their action--
Secondly, we can not permanently prevent their action-- If we arrest them, we can not long hold them as prisoners; and when liberated, they will immediately re-assemble, and take their action-- And, precisely the same if we simply disperse them. They will immediately re-assemble in some other place--
I therefore conclude that it is only left to the Commanding General to watch, and await their action, which, if it shall be to arm their people against the United States, he is to adopt the most prompt, and efficient means to counteract it, even, if necessary, to the bombardment of their cities -- and of course in the extreme necessity, the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus--"
That's puts a bit different light on things.
Now, Sandburg's biography of Lincoln relates an interview Lincoln had about this time with some Marylanders where he was told that if federal troops again tried to transverse Maryland, 75,000 men would oppose them. According to Sandburg, Lincoln told them there would be room for 75,000 graves in Maryland.
You neo-rebs throw up your hands, "Look at mean old Lincoln!"
He said he would see the government maintain by constitutional means, and that, he aimed to do.
Walt
That's a lot of power to give to one man. I wonder...who gets to make the determination that no lawful government exists in Washington?
The letter to General Scott you snipped specifically says that the legislature be allowed -to- meet. Who are you trying to fool? Did you blush when you saw the unedited letter?
Traitors need to be dealt with when they commit treason. Stop wailing and whining about it.
Walt
That's why the president can't even get the grass cut on the White House lawn. Congress has to fund it.
It may not be the best system, it's just the best one anyone has come up with.
You neo-rebs wail and whine about mean old Lincoln. He was supported in everything by the people and by the Congress.
Ponder on what Aleck Stephens said.
No matter --what-- Lincoln's policy was, he couldn't carry it out in the face of a hostile Congress. The south threw away their one trump card, and traded it for what, 250,000 dead and a ruined economy?
Walt
You obviously don't have a clue of the history.
The Maryland legislature declined to support secession in April. No arrests were made of legislators. The disloyal legislators (not the whole legislature as is alleged on some neo-reb websites) were not arrested until September.
Walt
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