Jefferson Davis' speech to the Mississippi Democratic Convention, 1859

[Mac-7]

And neither was Lincoln and the majority of Northerners concerned with freeing them from slavery; they were concerned with keeping blacks out the northern states and new territories, which is why over 90% of blacks preferred staying in the evul rayciss South until the early 1900's.

I dont know what Lincolns preference was regarding negro’s

certainly he was wiser than the confederates and knew that slavery could not continue to exist in America

 

[DudleySmith]

I dont know what Lincolns preference was regarding negro’s

certainly he was wiser than the confederates and knew that slavery could not continue to exist in America

It was on its way out all over in the Founders' era; it was the cotton gin and northern and European demand that saved it from extinction, i.e. northern and English money. Lincoln's plan was to keep them in South and working on the plantations, he set their pay at $3 a month, and those he couldn't put to work on the government plantations he dumped into 'contraband camps' to keep them from fleeing north, and almost a million of them died from starvation and disease. Lincoln was a big advocate of strengthening the Black Codes of Illinois and Indiana in the mid-1850's, and he ran on a white nationalist ticket that kept blacks out of the new territories, slave or free. Otherwise he would have lost his own state along with most of the midwest states, and in fact he barely survived the following mid-terms due to many of his former voters fearing he was swinging too much toward the radicals in his Party and making the war about slavery and not railroads, Homestead Acts, and tariffs.

The Congressional Record for the first 3-4 years of the Civil War tell the whole story of what their priorities were, not grand speeches over slavery and 'dis-union'; it was all about forcing the South to pay higher prices and taxes to support giant subsidies for northern bankers and industries and railroads. The irony is the South would have fared a lot better if Lincoln hadn't been killed, since he wanted the southern economy back up and running asap; his war was purely an economic one. He stayed in power by stationing a private army of some 75,000 troops in the border states to control the elections there.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

The conscious defamation of America’s greatest President, Abraham Lincoln, and the denial that the root cause of the Civil War and secession was slavery, is a sign of the degeneration of U.S. political and historical thought. Today’s mad partisanship and lack of “common sense” and “common ground” in defending once cherished democratic & republican ideals, leads to out-of-context attacks on Lincoln … from both right and left.

The main attacks come from reviving “Old South” slanders of Lincoln and repeating “economic” arguments that were almost universally accepted by historians in the century of Jim Crow apartheid. But today Lincoln is also often smeared using ahistorical arguments stolen from childish “anti-racist” liberals.

Mac-7 is correct when he writes of Lincoln (almost defensively) that “certainly he was wiser than the confederates and knew that slavery could not continue to exist in America.”

My eight earlier comments, starting with Jefferson Davis' speech to the Mississippi Democratic Convention, 1859 show why the Confederate rebellion had to be crushed, and the “irrepressible conflict” between “slavery” and “free labor” had to be fought and won. They also acknowledge the reality of overwhelming Northern and Western white racism in those days.

 

[DudleySmith]

lol yet another series of babbling posts by people who try to pretend they're 'anti-slavery n Stuff', some 155 years after they would have been forced to prove it instead of posturing on the innnertz. Hey, there is still a whole lot of slavery out there for you Heroes to go liberate n stuff, yet none of you appear at all enthusiastic about doing anything about it, so spare us your fake attempts at moral authority; this a history thread not a soapbox for hypocrites. The Civil War was over money and power, and Lincoln was a railroad lawyer. Get over it.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

I think Lincoln was a leader and President too farsighted, too wise, too damn good at his job … than this hateful, abominable and divided country in 1860 deserved.

Lincoln was our blessing, and we were his curse. Yet he was utterly a part of this nation, having absorbed our best ideals and recognized our fatal and then irresolvable contradictions.

Rather than bring up old arguments to refute old revisionist histories, I’ll refer those who have not seen it to the 2013 movie “Lincoln” starring Daniel Day Lewis, which tried and I think succeeded admirably in portraying the mature Lincoln in the final down-and-dirty struggle to pass the 13th Amendment, a struggle that nearly failed even after the South was defeated.

Recently we finally dedicated a national holiday to the ending of slavery, as a perhaps unfortunately named “Juneteenth National Independence Day” holiday. The Jubilee/Juneteenth holiday has African-American roots, and taps into a deep black cultural experience of slavery, emancipation, and a final century of apartheid oppression. Obviously nobody should want this new holiday to be celebrated as merely a Liberal / African-American “Independence Day” counterposed to a patriotic flag-waving “White American” July 4th Independence Day … but will we succeed completely in that effort?

Let nobody, least of all those of us who understand the vagaries of history and the unknowability of the future, malign the man who accepted responsibility for finally cutting the Gordian knot of slavery in North America.

Lincoln International Trailer #1 (2012) - Steven Spielberg Movie HD

 

[DudleySmith]

lol Lincoln was just another sociopath who murdered masses of people illegally for money.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

You are just another sociopath who would tear down the Lincoln Monument, and replace it with one to … who?

Jefferson Davis? Robert E. Lee? Donald Trump?

 

[DudleySmith]

You are just another sociopath who would tear down the Lincoln Monument, and replace it with one to … who?

Jefferson Davis? Robert E. Lee? Donald Trump?

You're just a silly troll trying to give yourself some moral authority or other, which you don't have, and on top of that Trump lives in your head. You're no Social Justice Warrior, just another phony peddling narratives, not historical facts. What are trying to compensate for, exactly? Ran over a puppy? Spend lots of money on dope and making those homocidal gangsters and cartel vermin rich?

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

You don’t know the first thing about me. I knew you would respond hysterically to my question about whether you favored removing the great Lincoln Memorial from our nation’s Capitol in Washington D.C. You still haven’t answered my question about WHO you think we should build a new Memorial to …

Again I recommend to folks who have little time to research serious history books to at least watch the film Lincoln, starring Daniel Day Lewis. Many fine historians advised in the making of this moving (and generally accurate) reconstruction of Lincoln’s successful “Last Struggle” to pass the 13th Amendment, which may well have cost him his life. Here is the short trailer:

 

[DudleySmith]

Nobody is 'hysterical' here except you; you think history is some sort of morality play or something, and anybody who laughs at your pompous pretenses is 'rayciss n stuff'. It is actually you commies who are the racists, so your silly gimmicks don't really sell well except to others here who like you are just here to pose and propagandize the school children.


"And here is what bothers me so much about modern "scholarship." At what point did history become ethics? Why should we subvert the elusive search for facts to moralist concerns? So what if they are on or off the hook? If you want to be a preacher, go preach. If you want to save the world, go into politics. If you want to invent a world free of evil, take prozac. It was said in Ecclesiastes and it still is true today, people suck. They did then, all ofthem. They do now, all of us. History is the history of self-interested, competing, aggressive, selfish, murderous humans. At what point did it become a morality play? "-Dave WIlliams, George mason Univ.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

The reason YOU are hysterical is because you cannot tolerate the thought that our nation (indeed the whole world) rightfully highly esteems Abraham Lincoln. Yours is a bitter old man’s nihilistic view of the world. You hide your nihilism behind religion, behind the words of an old ex-Hippy turned Conservative “God Seeking” English professor … but you might as well go around proclaiming that “God is Dead.”

If you want to argue “Ecclesiastics” (or Frederick Nietzche) you should post in the “Religion & Ethics” or “Philosophy” forums. But we are here discussing real human beings, real history, the Civil War, and the politics and place of Lincoln.

I defend Lincoln not as a “Saint” but as a practical politician and statesman, who came to well understand the unavoidable, but truly tragic choices set before the nation in his own time. I have no problem defending him as a highly “moral” leader, especially in comparison to the rash and narrow-minded leaders of the Confederate “Slavocracy,” or typical narrow-minded self-seeking Northern and Western politicians.

Idiotic contemporary criticisms of Lincoln (from both right and left) must not go unanswered if our nation is to hold together and stay true to its highest values. In the same way I have long defended the American Revolution, and criticized the original revisionist historical perspectives of the “1619 Project” of the New York Times.

You can’t answer my simple question — it drives you crazy — because your unfounded attacks on Lincoln preach hatred of our nation’s best.

Of course all nations have national myths, which must evolve (or change radically) over time. But we are not talking here about a Stalin, or Hitler or Mao. You attack Lincoln indiscriminately: He was once “a lawyer for railroad companies.” Imagine that! Do you want to return to a time before there was a 13th and 14th Amendment? Before there were railroads and telegraphs? Here is YOU “preaching” your own “Christian gospel”:

“I have no problems with Xians 'forcing their beliefs' on baby killers, pedophiles, homicidal sociopaths, thieves, and 'social darwinists', i.e. Democrats and their fellow travelers on the right, none at all. I like the original intent of our establishment clause, keeping the federal government from interfering in any way whatsoever with Christians and their evangelical social agendas … the fed and the individual states should be providing funds to support their many activities and functions.”

Well, you are entitled to preach your silly “Christian nationalist” ideology. After all, it is still “a free country” — in part because of men like Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson … and Thomas Paine too.

I know our nation is beset with problems. But it is better to do what little we can for political sanity and “common sense,” and enjoy our own lives while we still can, than to preach like a grumpy old misanthrope about the next world.

 

[DudleySmith]

The reason YOU are hysterical is because you cannot tolerate the thought that our nation (indeed the whole world) rightfully highly esteems Abraham Lincoln. Yours is a bitter old man’s nihilistic view of the world. You hide your nihilism behind religion, behind the words of an old ex-Hippy turned Conservative “God Seeking” English professor … but you might as well go around proclaiming that “God is Dead.”

If you want to argue “Ecclesiastics” (or Frederick Nietzche) you should post in the “Religion & Ethics” or “Philosophy” forums. But we are here discussing real human beings, real history, the Civil War, and the politics and place of Lincoln.

I defend Lincoln not as a “Saint” but as a practical politician and statesman, who came to well understand the unavoidable, but truly tragic choices set before the nation in his own time. I have no problem defending him as a highly “moral” leader, especially in comparison to the rash and narrow-minded leaders of the Confederate “Slavocracy,” or typical narrow-minded self-seeking Northern and Western politicians.

Idiotic contemporary criticisms of Lincoln (from both right and left) must not go unanswered if our nation is to hold together and stay true to its highest values. In the same way I have long defended the American Revolution, and criticized the original revisionist historical perspectives of the “1619 Project” of the New York Times.

You can’t answer my simple question — it drives you crazy — because your unfounded attacks on Lincoln preach hatred of our nation’s best.

Of course all nations have national myths, which must evolve (or change radically) over time. But we are not talking here about a Stalin, or Hitler or Mao. You attack Lincoln indiscriminately: He was once “a lawyer for railroad companies.” Imagine that! Do you want to return to a time before there was a 13th and 14th Amendment? Before there were railroads and telegraphs? Here is YOU “preaching” your own “Christian gospel”:

“I have no problems with Xians 'forcing their beliefs' on baby killers, pedophiles, homicidal sociopaths, thieves, and 'social darwinists', i.e. Democrats and their fellow travelers on the right, none at all. I like the original intent of our establishment clause, keeping the federal government from interfering in any way whatsoever with Christians and their evangelical social agendas … the fed and the individual states should be providing funds to support their many activities and functions.”

Well, you are entitled to preach your silly “Christian nationalist” ideology. After all, it is still “a free country” — in part because of men like Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson … and Thomas Paine too.

I know our nation is beset with problems. But it is better to do what little we can for political sanity and “common sense,” and enjoy our own lives while we still can, than to preach like a grumpy old misanthrope about the next world.

lol sure thing, buddy. It's obvious you're a raving loon.

 

[Mac-7]

What

Jeff Davis sure knew alot of words.

I think people had longer attention spans back then

 

[Mac-7]

He led a rebellion against his country.

The south had a legal right to leave the union

 

[DudleySmith]

The south had a legal right to leave the union

Granting the Federal government the right to use military force against a state was proposed and then specifically rejected at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, under advice from Madison. As pointed out earlier the northern states also thought it was well, as it was their most common threat when they didn't get what they wanted until well into the 1830's. This would include John Quincey Adams, who wanted to switch sides to the English in the War of 1812; earlier he wanted to secede because Thomas Jefferson got elected President.

 

[Asclepias]

The south had a legal right to leave the union

Overruled. Next??

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

The south had a legal right to leave the union

Not according to Lincoln and the Americans who elected him twice. Don’t you see how moot and absurd your making this bare assertion is today? The war itself resolved all ambiguity on this score.

Slave owners and the slave-owning ruling class of the South actually had “a legal right” to slavery back then. This much is obvious. Lincoln and the Southern-dominated Supreme Court BOTH recognized this “legal right,” even though Lincoln — like earlier most of the Founding Fathers — understood clearly that this “peculiar institution” violated fundamental human values and natural law principles of the Declaration of Indepencence.

The genius of the lawyerly Lincoln is that when the long feared “irrespessable conflict” finally broke out in bloody rebellion, he had already molded a party prepared to “legally” and “constitutionally” confront the rebels and defeat them, to “save the Union” just as Andrew Jackson had threatened to do back in the early 1830s.

In the course of the bloody Civil War it became clear even to racist Unionists in the North and West that there was a great need to emancipate rebel slaves and enroll black soldiers. Lincoln came to understand his responsibility to use this historic necessity (he saw it as “God’s will”) to extend the American Revolution by once and for all abolishing slavery, which is exactly what he fought for in his last struggle to “legally” end slavery with the 13th Amendment.

 

[Mac-7]

Overruled. Next??

Defeated in battle

but the south still had a legal right to secede

 

[Mac-7]

Not according to Lincoln and the Americans who elected him twice. Don’t you see how moot and absurd your making this bare assertion is today? The war itself resolved all ambiguity on this score.

Slave owners and the slave-owning ruling class of the South actually had “a legal right” to slavery back then. This much is obvious. Lincoln and the Southern-dominated Supreme Court BOTH recognized this “legal right,” even though Lincoln — like earlier most of the Founding Fathers — understood clearly that this “peculiar institution” violated fundamental human values and natural law principles of the Declaration of Indepencence.

The genius of the lawyerly Lincoln is that when the long feared “irrespessable conflict” finally broke out in bloody rebellion, he had already molded a party prepared to “legally” and “constitutionally” confront the rebels and defeat them, to “save the Union” just as Andrew Jackson had threatened to do back in the early 1830s.

In the course of the bloody Civil War it became clear even to racist Unionists in the North and West that there was a great need to emancipate rebel slaves and enroll black soldiers. Lincoln came to understand his responsibility to use this historic necessity (he saw it as “God’s will”) to extend the American Revolution by once and for all abolishing slavery, which is exactly what he fought for in his last struggle to “legally” end slavery with the 13th Amendment.

The North won the war and made the rules

in reality the south joined the union as free states and had a right to leave if it wanted too

As the descendant of Confederate soldiers I honor their bravery in battle

I’m proud of them

but I also understand that slavery was bad for America and a united America was better for world history

However libs who call the confederates traitors or compare them to nazi’s can kiss my ass

 

[DudleySmith]

The North won the war and made the rules

in reality the south joined the union as free states and had a right to leave if it wanted too

As the descendant of Confederate soldiers I honor their bravery in battle

I’m proud of them

but I also understand that slavery was bad for America and a united America was better for world history

However libs who call the confederates traitors or compare them to nazi’s can kiss my ass

They only bring it up all the time because their Cadre tell them to, since they think they can spin it to bash southern Republicans with. None of these commie vermin would be caught dead fighting to free anybody in real life, and they wouldn't have done so if they had been around in 1861 either. Northerners didn't want blacks period, which is why over 90% of blacks remained in the South until 1910 or so; blacks were better off in the South than in the North, same as they were under slavery better off than most northern blacks and working class whites for that matter.