POLITICALLY CORRECT HISTORY - LINCOLN MYTH DEBUNKED

LewRockwell.com ^ | January 23, 2003 | Thomas J. DiLorenzo, PHD

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Politically Correct History by Thomas J. DiLorenzo The political left in America has apparently decided that American history must be rewritten so that it can be used in the political campaign for reparations for slavery. Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., of Chicago inserted language in a Department of Interior appropriations bill for 2000 that instructed the National Park Service to propagandize about slavery as the sole cause of the war at all Civil War park sites. The Marxist historian Eric Foner has joined forces with Jackson and will assist the National Park Service in its efforts at rewriting history so that it better serves the political agenda of the far left. Congressman Jackson has candidly described this whole effort as "a down payment on reparations." (Foner ought to be quite familiar with the "art" of rewriting politically-correct history. He was the chairman of the committee at Columbia University that awarded the "prestigious" Bancroft Prize in history to Emory University’s Michael A. Bellesiles, author of the anti-Second Amendment book, "Arming America," that turned out to be fraudulent. Bellesiles was forced to resign from Emory and his publisher has ceased publishing the book.) In order to accommodate the political agenda of the far left, the National Park Service will be required in effect to teach visitors to the national parks that Abraham Lincoln was a liar. Neither Lincoln nor the US Congress at the time ever said that slavery was a cause – let alone the sole cause – of their invasion of the Southern states in 1861. Both Lincoln and the Congress made it perfectly clear to the whole world that they would do all they could to protect Southern slavery as long as the secession movement could be defeated. On March 2, 1861, the U.S. Senate passed a proposed Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution (which passed the House of Representatives on February 28) that would have prohibited the federal government from ever interfering with slavery in the Southern states. (See U.S. House of Representatives, 106th Congress, 2nd Session, The Constitution of the United States of America: Unratified Amendments, Document No. 106-214, presented by Congressman Henry Hyde (Washington, D.C. U.S. Government Printing Office, January 31, 2000). The proposed amendment read as follows: ARTICLE THIRTEEN No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State. Two days later, in his First Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln promised to support the amendment even though he believed that the Constitution already prohibited the federal government from interfering with Southern slavery. As he stated: I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution . . . has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose, not to speak of particular amendments, so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable (emphasis added). This of course was consistent with one of the opening statements of the First Inaugural, where Lincoln quoted himself as saying: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." That’s what Lincoln said his invasion of the Southern states was not about. In an August 22, 1862, letter to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley he explained to the world what the war was about: 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, many Americans at the time, North and South, believed that a military invasion of the Southern states would destroy the union by destroying its voluntary nature. To Lincoln, "saving the Union" meant destroying the secession movement and with it the Jeffersonian political tradition of states’ rights as a check on the tyrannical proclivities of the central government. His war might have "saved" the union geographically, but it destroyed it philosophically as the country became a consolidated empire as opposed to a constitutional republic of sovereign states. On July 22, 1861, the US Congress issued a "Joint Resolution on the War" that echoed Lincoln’s reasons for the invasion of the Southern states: Resolved: . . . That this war is not being 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. By "the established institutions of those states" the Congress was referring to slavery. As with Lincoln, destroying the secession movement took precedence over doing anything about slavery. On March 2, 1861 – the same day the "first Thirteenth Amendment" passed the U.S. Senate – another constitutional amendment was proposed that would have outlawed secession (See H. Newcomb Morse, "The Foundations and Meaning of Secession," Stetson Law Review, vol. 15, 1986, pp. 419–36). This is very telling, for it proves that Congress believed that secession was in fact constitutional under the Tenth Amendment. It would not have proposed an amendment outlawing secession if the Constitution already prohibited it. Nor would the Republican Party, which enjoyed a political monopoly after the war, have insisted that the Southern states rewrite their state constitutions to outlaw secession as a condition of being readmitted to the Union. If secession was really unconstitutional there would have been no need to do so. These facts will never be presented by the National Park Service or by the Lincoln cultists at the Claremont Institute, the Declaration Foundation, and elsewhere. This latter group consists of people who have spent their careers spreading lies about Lincoln and his war in order to support the political agenda of the Republican Party. They are not about to let the truth stand in their way and are hard at work producing "educational" materials that are filled with false but politically correct history. For a very different discussion of Lincoln and his legacy that is based on fact rather than fantasy, attend the LewRockwell.com "Lincoln Reconsidered" conference at the John Marshall Hotel in Richmond, Virginia on March 22. January 23, 2003 Thomas J. DiLorenzo [send him mail] is the author of the LRC #1 bestseller, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (Forum/Random House, 2002) and professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland. Copyright © 2003 LewRockwell.com Thomas DiLorenzo Archives Really Learn About the Real Lincoln Now there is a study guide and video to accompany Professor DiLorenzo's great work, for homeschoolers and indeed anyone interested in real American history. http://www.fvp.info/reallincolnlr/

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[Non-Sequitur]

The Lincoln lovers are like the left, in that no matter how much truth you show them, they close their eyes, plug their ears, and keep on chanting the mantra "The civil war WAS about slavery, Lincoln was GOD!"

Others seem to think it was about slavery, too

As the last and crowning act of insult and outrage upon the people of the South, the citizens of the Northern States, by overwhelming majorities, on the 6th day of November last, elected Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin, President and Vice President of the United States. Whilst it may be admitted that the mere election of any man to the Presidency, is not, per se, a sufficient cause for a dissolution of the Union; yet, when the issues upon, and circumstances under which he was elected, are properly appreciated and understood, the question arises whether a due regard to the interest, honor, and safety of their citizens, in view of this and all the other antecedent wrongs and outrages, do not render it the imperative duty of the Southern States to resume the powers they have delegated to the Federal Government, and interpose their sovereignty for the protection of their citizens.

What, then are the circumstances under which, and the issues upon which he was elected? His own declarations, and the current history of the times, but too plainly indicate he was elected by a Northern sectional vote, against the most solemn warnings and protestations of the whole South. He stands forth as the representative of the fanaticism of the North, which, for the last quarter of a century, has been making war upon the South, her property, her civilization, her institutions, and her interests; as the representative of that party which overrides all Constitutional barriers, ignores the obligations of official oaths, and acknowledges allegiance to a higher law than the Constitution, striking down the sovereignty and equality of the States, and resting its claims to popular favor upon the one dogma, the Equality of the Races, white and black." -- Letter of S.F. Hale, Commissioner of Alabama to the State of Kentucky, to Gov. Magoffin of Kentucky

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery, the greatest material interest of the world. --Mississppi Declaration of the Causes of Secession

SIR: In obedience to your instructions I repaired to the seat of government of the State of Louisiana to confer with the Governor of that State and with the legislative department on the grave and important state of our political relations with the Federal Government, and the duty of the slave-holding States in the matter of their rights and honor, so menacingly involved in matters connected with the institution of African slavery. --Report from John Winston, Alabama's Secession Commissioner to Louisiana

This was the ground taken, gentlemen, not only by Mississippi, but by other slaveholding States, in view of the then threatened purpose, of a party founded upon the idea of unrelenting and eternal hostility to the institution of slavery, to take possession of the power of the Government and use it to our destruction. It cannot, therefore, be pretended that the Northern people did not have ample warning of the disastrous and fatal consequences that would follow the success of that party in the election, and impartial history will emblazon it to future generations, that it was their folly, their recklessness and their ambition, not ours, which shattered into pieces this great confederated Government, and destroyed this great temple of constitutional liberty which their ancestors and ours erected, in the hope that their descendants might together worship beneath its roof as long as time should last. -- Speech of Fulton Anderson to the Virginia Convention

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. -- Texas Declaration of the causes of secession

What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North-was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. -- Speech of Henry Benning to the Virginia Convention

Gentlemen, I see before me men who have observed all the records of human life, and many, perhaps, who have been chief actors in many of its gravest scenes, and I ask such men if in all their lore of human society they can offer an example like this? South Carolina has 300,000 whites, and 400,000 slaves. These 300,000 whites depend for their whole system of civilization on these 400,000 slaves. Twenty millions of people, with one of the strongest Governments on the face of the earth, decree the extermination of these 400,000 slaves, and then ask, is honor, is interest, is liberty, is right, is justice, is life, worth the struggle?

Gentlemen, I have thus very rapidly endeavored to group before you the causes which have produced the action of the people of South Carolina. -- Speech of John Preston to the Virginia Convention

This new union with Lincoln Black Republicans and free negroes, without slavery, or, slavery under our old constitutional bond of union, without Lincoln Black Republicans, or free negroes either, to molest us.

If we take the former, then submission to negro equality is our fate. if the latter, then secession is inevitable --- -- Address of William L. Harris of Mississippi

But I trust I may not be intrusive if I refer for a moment to the circumstances which prompted South Carolina in the act of her own immediate secession, in which some have charged a want of courtesy and respect for her Southern sister States. She had not been disturbed by discord or conflict in the recent canvass for president or vice-president of the United States. She had waited for the result in the calm apprehension that the Black Republican party would succeed. She had, within a year, invited her sister Southern States to a conference with her on our mutual impending danger. Her legislature was called in extra session to cast her vote for president and vice-president, through electors, of the United States and before they adjourned the telegraphic wires conveyed the intelligence that Lincoln was elected by a sectional vote, whose platform was that of the Black Republican party and whose policy was to be the abolition of slavery upon this continent and the elevation of our own slaves to equality with ourselves and our children, and coupled with all this was the act that, from our friends in our sister Southern States, we were urged in the most earnest terms to secede at once, and prepared as we were, with not a dissenting voice in the State, South Carolina struck the blow and we are now satisfied that none have struck too soon, for when we are now threatened with the sword and the bayonet by a Democratic administration for the exercise of this high and inalienable right, what might we meet under the dominion of such a party and such a president as Lincoln and his minions. -- Speech of John McQueen, the Secession Commissioner from South Carolina to Texas

History affords no example of a people who changed their government for more just or substantial reasons. Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery, and of the free institutions of the founders of the Federal Union, bequeathed to their posterity. -- Address of George Williamson, Commissioner from Louisiana to the Texas Secession Convention

[Ditto]

Neither Lincoln nor the US Congress at the time ever said that slavery was a cause – let alone the sole cause – of their invasion of the Southern states in 1861.

Very true. But every southern state that seceded made it abundantly clear that they were doing it to protect slavery.

BTW. DiLorenzo is a twisted propagandist.

[WhiskeyPapa]

What about "his" amendment?

It was political manuevering to frame the secession crisis in a way The Lincoln saw as favorable to his own cause.

Lincoln's letter to Greeley lays out what his cause was pretty plainly.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

Fair, as opposed to truthful...eh walt?

Get back on the porch.

Walt

[GOPcapitalist]

It's that "etc" that is so damning of what DiLorenzo writes.

Not in the least. That "etc." is The Lincoln's rhetorical justification for doing whatever it takes to win - a fact that actually bolster's DiLorenzo's thesis of Abe Lincoln as a skilled political opportunist.

[GOPcapitalist]

Lincoln's letter to Greeley lays out what his cause was pretty plainly.

Yeah. Doing what it takes to win.

[WhiskeyPapa]

The Militia act was 1795, not 1792.

The act dates from 1792. It was modified in 1795 to take out the provision that a federal judge had to sign off on there being insurrection or rebellion.

The act requires that U.S. law operate in all the states.

It is therefore a bar to unilateral state secession.

You don't know the history.

Walt

[GOPcapitalist]

The act dates from 1792. It was modified in 1795 to take out the provision that a federal judge had to sign off on there being insurrection or rebellion.

Uh, Walt. I think you got the wrong person in that response. Just letting you know.

[WhiskeyPapa]

Lincoln's letter to Greeley lays out what his cause was pretty plainly.

Yeah. Doing what it takes to win.

It's always, "mean ol' Lincoln kicked our butts", isn't it?

The rebels were like the Japanese in 1941-45. Any chance they had to win was proportional to U.S. resolve to win. Both were utterly crushed. In the case of the rebels, they couldn't even comprehend what they were getting into.

Walt

[GOPcapitalist]

The act requires that U.S. law operate in all the states. It is therefore a bar to unilateral state secession.

...but for the record, that assertion is a logical non-sequitur. It does not necessarily follow from a law requiring operation in all states that secession is barred. If one holds that a seceded state is no longer a state, then U.S. law may continue to operate in all states in absence of its operation in that seceded state.

[GOPcapitalist]

It's always, "mean ol' Lincoln kicked our butts", isn't it?

Don't try and change the subject, Walt. You asserted that the Greeley letter outlines The Lincoln's position "pretty plainly." I responded by noting that the position he outlines in that letter to Greeley is that he will do what it takes to win. That position is consistent with DiLorenzo's thesis, which characterized The Lincoln as a skilled political opportunist.

[WhiskeyPapa]

That position is consistent with DiLorenzo's thesis, which characterized The Lincoln as a skilled political opportunist.

Not according to David Donald.

"But there were limits to what Lincoln would do to secure a second term.

He did not even consider canceling or postponing the election. Even had that been constitutionally possible, "the election was a necessity." "We can not have free government without elections," he explained; "and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us." He did not postpone the September draft call, even though Republican politicians from all across the North entreated him to do so. Because Indiana failed to permit its soldiers to vote in the field, he was entirely willing to furlough Sherman's regiments so that they could go home and vote in the October state elections -but he made a point of telling Sherman, "They need not remain for the Presidential election, but may return to you at once."

Though it was clear that the election was going to be a very close one, Lincoln did not try to increase the Republican electoral vote by rushing the admission of new states like Colorado and Nebraska, both of which would surely have voted for his reelection. On October 31, in accordance with an act of Congress, he did proclaim Nevada a state, but he showed little interest in the legislation admitting the new state. Despite the suspicion of both Democrats and Radicals, he made no effort to force the readmission of Louisiana, Tennessee, and other Southern states, partially reconstructed but still under military control, so that they could cast their electoral votes for him. He reminded a delegation from Tennessee that it was the Congress, not the Chief Executive, that had the power to decide whether a state's electoral votes were to be counted and announced firmly, “Except it be to give protection against violence, I decline to interfere in any way with the presidential election.”

"Lincoln", pp. 539-40 by David H. Donald

Lincoln was a skilled politician but he did hold to certain principles.

Walt

[4CJ]

The congressmen remaining after the departure of the several seceded states met in Washington for a secret convention in February 1861. Now obviously, if the Constitution prohibited secession (or Militia Act etc.), there would have been no need for those congresscritters to meet and craft an ex post facto amendment prohibiting secession.

Mr. Guthrie proposed the following:

"The Union of the States under the Constitution is indissoluble, and no State can secede from the Union, or nullify an act of Congress, or absolve its citizens from their paramount obligation of obedience to the Constitution and laws of the United States."

Mr. Field offered:

"The Union of the States, under the Constitution, is indissoluble."

And this:

"No State shall withdraw from the Union without the consent of all the States, given in a Convention of the States, convened in pursuance of an act passed by two-thirds of each House of Congress."

Mr. Goodrich proposed:

"And no State can secede from the Union, or nullify an act of Congress, or absolve its citizens from their paramount obligations of obedience to the Constitution and laws of the United States."

Lucius E. Chittenden, Report of the debates and proceedings in the secret session of the conference convention, for proposing amendments to the Constitution of the United States, held at Washington, D.C., in February, A.D. 1861, New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1864, pp. 396-398.

There is much more in the book, it's several hundred pages.

[WhiskeyPapa]

Mr. Field offered:

"The Union of the States, under the Constitution, is indissoluble."

Which is pretty much what James Madison said in 1787.

Walt

[Ditto]

The Lincoln's little pro-slavery amendment would have had the effect of artificially extending the institution well beyond its likely life by making it near impossible to repeal at a future date.

You are full of horse hockey. You are implying that amendment said that states couldn't end slavery in their borders if they wanted, and that is not true! With a 3/4 majority necessary for an amendment to the US Constitution, no reasonable person in 1860 ever expected slavery to be ended on a national level via amendment. It was a mathematical impossibility then and even with 50 states today, no constitutional amendment can pass if 15 states oppose it. But reasonable people then could expect it to end in the south on a state-by-state basis just as it had in the North. All Lincoln and the Republicans sought was to isolate slavery in the 15 states that then had it. Isolated, it would have become far less profitable and likely become a major economic drain as slave populations expanded faster than white population and slave values dropped as supply outstripped demand. With expansion, the selling of human flesh could have remained profitable indefinitely which is way the south was willing to go to war over expansion.

[WhiskeyPapa]

There is much more in the book, it's several hundred pages.

Quote the book on how tariffs figured in to all of this.

Walt

[GOPcapitalist]

You are full of horse hockey. You are implying that amendment said that states couldn't end slavery in their borders if they wanted

Not in the least and I defy you to show otherwise. The amendment stated that slavery could not be ended the way it was ended - by amendment.

With a 3/4 majority necessary for an amendment to the US Constitution, no reasonable person in 1860 ever expected slavery to be ended on a national level via amendment.

No, but it was certainly a future possibility as slavery declined economically and more states abandoned it. Eventually there would have been enough states to abolish it, but The Lincoln's amendment would have prohibited that.

[WhiskeyPapa]

The act requires that U.S. law operate in all the states. It is therefore a bar to unilateral state secession.

...but for the record, that assertion is a logical non-sequitur. It does not necessarily follow from a law requiring operation in all states that secession is barred. If one holds that a seceded state is no longer a state, then U.S. law may continue to operate in all states in absence of its operation in that seceded state.

I'm reminded of the scene in "1984" where Richard Burton's character asks John Heard's character if he has received his latest version of Newspeak.

Walt

[GOPcapitalist]

Don't try to change the subject again, Walt. The Lincoln's reelection activities are not the issue here. The Greeley letter is, and in that letter Lincoln states a position that he will behave politically to achieve his desired end. That position bolster's DiLorenzo's thesis that The Lincoln was a skilled political opportunist.

[GOPcapitalist]

I'm reminded of the scene in "1984" where Richard Burton's character asks John Heard's character if he has received his latest version of Newspeak.

As you should be. You've been practicing a tortured form of politically motivated linguistic gymnastics on this thread since you arrived here.