Posted on 08/13/2003 6:57:47 AM PDT by bedolido
Headquarters, District of Texas
Galveston, Texas, June 19, 1865General Orders, No. 3.
The people are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property, between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them, becomes that between employer and hired labor. -- The Freedmen are advised to remain at their present homes, and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts; and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere. By order of Major General Granger(Signed,) F. W. Emery, Maj. & A.A.G.
As reported in The Galveston Daily News, June 21, 1865.
False. The expansion argument in the American territories was settled in 1861 when the south voluntarily reliquished their claims to those lands. Had this truly been Lincoln's "bedrock" position as you so frequently claim, he had already attained it without lifting a finger due to secession. Yet Lincoln was obviously not content with that and instead pursued war anyway. He pursued it because it was necessary for him to collect the revenues. Without it his tariff scheme, the same scheme that a few weeks earlier he had called the most important issue facing Congress, wouldn't work.
It was just as Lincoln told his friend Hawkins Taylor when the latter visited Springfield in December 1860 - the tariff, more than any other issue, was what got him into the White House and it was an issue that he would remain firm on.
"He fully agreed with me that to the Tariff Whig element of Penn was he most indebted (and he will not betray it). Towards Penn he feels most greatful and particularly &c towards Cameron who did not send a Packed delegation to Chicago as some others did" - Hawkins Taylor, record of his meeting with Lincoln, December 21, 1860 (emphasis contained in the original)
I would not argue with that at all. I would venture that today we are more polarized generally politically and socially and culturally. Kinda scary isn't it? If reasonable men bound by duty and honour etc found fit to fight a war then, how are we to interpret today where we are obviously more fragmented. All we need are some key issues to come to a boil. We lack the geographic division largely although the conservative (as in the old fashioned status quo or reversion mindset) is still more Southern than elsewhere. Simple musing. I'm putting my money on gun rights and abortion as powder keg issues one day. We must teach our children to be vigilant.
So what do you want, LBJ's the GREAT SOCIETY? It was in-fact reconstruction. Where were they to go? Look at Iraq now and picture Texas in June of 1865.
You impose such a double standard that your credibility to anyone who understands the history makes you a total fool. You insist that Lincon be Hubert Humphery or he is evil while you worship a slaver like Davis. That is revisionist nonsense and rustbucket, you are guilty.
So what kind of wages was Jeff Davis proposing to give to blacks under his iron fist? Was there a demand for white cotton pickers at his plantation?
You, like rustbucket, impose a standard on Lincoln that none of your Confederate heroes could possibly reach, or would even want to. They stood for the opposite.
Lincoln was pragmatic and saw that neither blacks nor whites would adjust either socially or economically to emancipation. 150 years of American history have shown that he was more than correct in that assessment, but he was not alone. Other leaders dating all the way back to Madison also favored Colonization as the preferred method to end slavery while avoiding racial division. Was Madison a bad guy too?
Lincolns advocating separation of the races via colonization was surely not politically correct by current standards (unless you are a Skin-Head or a Black Panther) but where exactly does that leave him in relation to all the bronze icons in Richmond that you worship so deeply who fought to protect slavery?
My, my. Touchy aren't we. I simply pointed out that you had not posted the entire pronouncement. Let me understand your logic here. You posted the partial pronouncement; I posted the full pronouncement. Yet I am the revisionist?
LOL on the Hubert Humphrey / Abraham Lincoln connection. What an insult to Lincoln, and one I wouldn't have thought of.
I hope you don't mind if I poke a few more holes in your worldview. FYI, the Federal Provost Marshal in Galveston in June 1865 threw a bunch of the slaves in jail so that he could keep them for work he wanted done. Reported in the Galveston paper.
Doesn't quite fit your view of history? My apologies.
He was .... Liberia is proof of his intentions to repatriate the blacks after the Civil War.
ROFLMAO!!!
Walt
And four days before it he called on General Butler's advice for carrying out colonization.
There's no credible proof that Lincoln and Butler met in this time frame. Lincoln did nothing to support colonization after 1/1/63. After black soldiers were enlisted, he began to seek equal rights for them.
Walt
That would be treason, wouldn't it?
Walt
"I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I strongly favor colonization. And yet I wish to say there is an objection urged against free colored persons remaining in the country, which is largely imaginary, if not sometimes malicious.
"It is insisted that their presence would injure, and displace white labor and white laborers. If there ever could be a proper time for mere catch arguments, that time surely is not now. In times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and in eternity. Is it true, then, that colored people can displace any more white labor, by being free, than by remaining slaves? If they stay in their old places, they jostle no white laborers; if they leave their old places, they leave them open to white laborers. Logically, there is neither more nor less of it. Emancipation, even without deportation, would probably enhance the wages of white labor, and, very surely, would not reduce them. Thus, the customary amount of labor would still have to be performed; the freed people would surely not do more than their old proportion of it, and very probably, for a time, would do less, leaving an increased part to white laborers, bringing their labor into greater demand, and, consequently, enhancing the wages of it. With deportation, even to a limited extent, enhanced wages to white labor is mathematically certain. Labor is like any other commodity in the market---increase the demand for it, and you increase the price of it. Reduce the supply of black labor, by colonizing the black laborer out of the country, and, by precisely so much, you increase the demand for, and wages of, white labor.
"But it is dreaded that the freed people will swarm forth, and cover the whole land? Are they not already in the land? Will liberation make them any more numerous? Equally distributed among the whites of the whole country, and there would be but one colored to seven whites. Could the one, in any way, greatly disturb the seven? There are many communities now, having more than one free colored person, to seven whites; and this, without any apparent consciousness of evil from it. The District of Columbia, and the States of Maryland and Delaware, are all in this condition. The District has more than one free colored to six whites; and yet, in its frequent petitions to Congress, I believe it has never presented the presence of free colored persons as one of its grievances. But why should emancipation south, send the free people north? People, of any color, seldom run, unless there be something to run from. Heretofore colored people, to some extent, have fled north from bondage; and now, perhaps, from both bondage and destitution. But if gradual emancipation and deportation be adopted, they will have neither to flee from. Their old masters will give them wages at least until new laborers can be procured; and the freed men, in turn, will gladly give their labor for the wages, till new homes can be found for them, in congenial climes,and with people of their own blood and race. This proposition can be trusted on the mutual interests involved. And, in any event, cannot the north decide for itself, whether to receive them."
Taken in context, rather than out of context, the quote is actually an arguement against
forced deportation rather that in favor of it as you claim.
Liberia was founded in 1817 by the American Colonization Society. It Lincoln was responsible then that's pretty slick work for an 8 year old.
President Lincoln's special address to the Congress on 12/01/62 was pretty much the last arrow in his quiver on colonization. After that, there seems to be no mention of colonization by him anywhere again. Early in 1863, he switched over to directing that more black troops be enlisted, and suggesting that they be given the vote. As someone over on the moderated ACW newsgroup suggested, urging colonization is the dog that didn't bark. Lincoln makes no public statement about it all after 12/01/62.
Walt
That's a shame, isn't it?
Walt
Precisely why I can't figure out why would-be conservatives continually attack Southerners.
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