Jefferson vs Lincoln

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
261

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]DrSkeptix wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:
So now we have talks, serious talks, in our antebellum history by of course, the South on many occasions, and by New England on at least one. What’s left, just the Middle Atlantic states? (The few western states at that time had just joined the Union and reasonably would not be discussing secession)

So why the insistence that it was a topic that didn’t come up very often?[/quote]

Because the frequency with which erroneous opinion arises is not phenomenon restricted to the Internet?[/quote]

Touche, Monsieur Skeptix. Le docteur, guerissez vous-meme.[/quote]

Bien sur.

There is one cure for everything: salt water. Sweat, tears and the sea.

262

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote]Headhunter wrote:

Acting in your self-interest is bad? If they didn’t act in their self-interest, who would?
[/quote]

So “limited government” isn’t a good or principled thing in and of itself? Big government or small, as long as the South’s self-interest was promoted - the preservation of slavery, America’s first experiment in the rudiments of socialism - who cares? Self-interest above all, whether we expand the state or shrink it, which was the Slave Power’s aim?

Your uninformed opinions have moved from the incoherent to the vile.
[/quote]

You work with a flawed definition of self-interest. Self-interest is in reference to a ‘self’. What is a ‘self’? If you and I have a particular defintion of self, then each must act to preserve/enhance one’s self.

Southerners believed that owning slaves was in their self-interest. This was not true, of course, but it was not for the Union to bomb them into believing otherwise. Like all thugs (such as you), the Union believed that violence was a rational argument. It was not. The initiation of violence is simply stupid (especially when you are goaded into it).

In summary, your Union was preserved at gunpoint. That had to doom it. When a Union is forced, this takes logic and reason out of the equation. That society eventually dissolves into ruin and slaughter. People then turn to rule by force. That’s what your’re really advocating – the rule of the brute.

“Blood, whips and guns — or dollars. Take your choice. There is NO other. And your time is running out.” — Ayn Rand

You chose.

263

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote]Dustin wrote:

By whom, you? I have the book sitting on the shelf at home. Give me an example of him not using primary sources in “good faith” and I can look it up tonight.[/quote]

Sure thing. DiLorenzo cites Lincoln’s “quote” as an indictment:

[i]Lincoln even mocked the Jeffersonian dictum enshrined in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal. He admitted that it had become “a genuine coin in the political currency of our generation,” but added, "I am sorry to say that I have never seen two men of whom it is true.

But I must admit I never saw the Siamese Twins, and therefore will not dogmatically say that no man ever saw a proof of this sage aphorism". So, with the possible exception of Siamese Twins, the idea of equality, according to Lincoln, was a sheer absurdity.

This is in stark contrast to the seductive words of the Gettysburg Address, eleven years later, in which he purported to rededicate the nation to the notion that all men are created equal.[/i]

Here is the actual quote:

[i][There are] a few, but an increasing number of men, who, for the sake of perpetuating slavery, are beginning to assail and to ridicule the white man’s charter of freedom, the declaration “that all men are created equal.”

So far as I have learned, the first American, of any note, to do or attempt this, was the late John C. Calhoun; and if I mistake not, it soon after found its way into some of the messages of the Governors of South Carolina.

We, however, look for, and are not much shocked by, political eccentricities and heresies in South Carolina. But, only last year, I saw with astonishment, what purported to be a letter of a very distinguished and influential clergyman of Virginia, copied, with apparent approbation, into a St. Louis newspaper, containing the following, to me, very extraordinary language:

[u]I am fully aware that there is a text in some Bibles that is not in mine. Professional abolitionists have made more use of it, than of any passage in the Bible. It came, however, as I trace it, from Saint Voltaire, and was baptized by Thomas Jefferson, and since almost universally regarded as canonical authority ‘All men are born equal and free.’

This is a genuine coin in the political currency of our generation. I am sorry to say that I have never seen two men of whom it is true. But I must admit I never saw the Siamese Twins, and therefore will not dogmatically say that no man ever saw a proof of this sage aphorism.[/u]

This sounds strangely in republican America. The like was not heard in the fresher days of the Republic.[/i]

So, the quote DiLorenzo attributes to Lincoln as an indictment is actually Lincoln quoting a Virginia clergyman and then criticizing the clergyman’s quote.

Michael Moore couldn’t be prouder of such dishonest editing.

So, a discredited hack is a discredited hack.

[/quote]

Is there a website you pulled these two quotes from as I doubt you own DiLorenzo’s book? Do you have a page number perhaps? I don’t mind looking this up in the book, but I’d rather not have to go page by page.

[quote]No one is “making shit up”.

Uh yeah, they are. Start on page one of this thread. We have had such wacky inventions that Lincoln started the war to make sure and keep the federal tax revenue stream from the South in place and that Lincoln had the power to make slavery illegal throughout the United States all by himself at the stroke of a pen but he chose not because he hates Black people.[/quote]

“But what am I to do in the meantime with those men at Montgomery [meaning the Confederate constitutional convention]? Am I to let them go on… [a]nd open Charleston, etc., as ports of entry, with their ten-percent tariff. What, then, would become of my tariff?”

I think quotes from Lincoln such as the above are what lead certain people to claim this. Lincoln was quoted numerous times regarding taxation and letting the South secede.

Besides, even putting that argument aside, there are several individuals posting here that have provided solid arguments to yours. Hardly “wacky inventions”.

[quote]You are arguing semantics now, which is the typical route you take in debate. Have fun with that.

Sure thing, Dustin. Get some new material.[/quote]

No need to get “new material” when you are so easy to predict.

264

HH, your effort is like arguing with a man who has physically beaten his wife into submission after she’d said she was leaving him, and is proud of himself for “preserving the marriage.”

The chance would be quite small that the man proud of his violence, who had been so indignant and angry that his wife wished to leave him, would actually comprehend statements analogous to yours and see his violence as having been wrong. To his brutal and self-righteous mind, any criticism of his actions would be babble from a person who just doesn’t get it.

265

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
HH, your effort is like arguing with a man who has physically beaten his wife into submission after she’d said she was leaving him, and is proud of himself for “preserving the marriage.”

The chance would be quite small that the man proud of his violence, who had been so indignant and angry that his wife wished to leave him, would actually comprehend statements analogous to yours and see his violence as having been wrong. To his brutal and self-righteous mind, any criticism of his actions would be babble from a person who just doesn’t get it.[/quote]

I used that analogy before. Of course, it got demagogued.

My basic premise of life is that all relationships between human beings should be voluntary on all sides. It seems to me that Lincoln used this premise as an excuse to start a war and to create a government that was ‘centralizing’, gathering power to itself. Only a powerful central government would have enough power to smash a small coalition of states.

The South was wrong to have slavery. They didn’t know that yet or it was so essential to their economy that they were unwilling to give it up. That is not enough justification for 600,000 deaths and marauding marches on women and children.

266

[quote]Headhunter wrote:

I used that analogy before. Of course, it got demagogued.[/quote]

Bill Roberts, drama queen, aside, what in 1860 was the Southern states’ political equivalent of suffering the woes of a beaten wife?

The Slave Power lost an election to a man and a party that said it intended to legislate slavery away in the new territories.

I continue to wait for an answer to this fundamental question - what misery did the “beaten wife” of the South suffer that warranted them leaving their cruel abuser?

And, of course, the analogy to marriage is flatly dumb - if there is an analogy at all, the best (if imperfect) in one of contract among multiple parties.

267

I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this yet, and until they give me a search thread option I’m not sifting through 10 pages.

Lincoln’s side job

268

[quote]Headhunter wrote:

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
HH, your effort is like arguing with a man who has physically beaten his wife into submission after she’d said she was leaving him, and is proud of himself for “preserving the marriage.”

The chance would be quite small that the man proud of his violence, who had been so indignant and angry that his wife wished to leave him, would actually comprehend statements analogous to yours and see his violence as having been wrong. To his brutal and self-righteous mind, any criticism of his actions would be babble from a person who just doesn’t get it.[/quote]

I used that analogy before. Of course, it got demagogued.

My basic premise of life is that all relationships between human beings should be voluntary on all sides. It seems to me that Lincoln used this premise as an excuse to start a war and to create a government that was ‘centralizing’, gathering power to itself. Only a powerful central government would have enough power to smash a small coalition of states.

The South was wrong to have slavery. They didn’t know that yet or it was so essential to their economy that they were unwilling to give it up. That is not enough justification for 600,000 deaths and marauding marches on women and children.
[/quote]

Well, there’s a little difference in that my analogy is that of likely futility of arguing with a person who considers bloody use of force to compel states to return to the Union to be a highly righteous thing, to likely futility of arguing with a man who considers his bloody use of force to “preserve” his marriage to be a highly righteous thing.

If nothing else, though I think there is more to it than that, deciding that the violence was in fact a rather awful solution to the other party wishing to leave would result in a re-self-examination, or re-evaluation of personal values and placings of pride, that the person does not wish to do and will not do.

Some can evaluate the past and although they would rather that the past of their country in every detail had been for the most noble reasons possible and with no wrongdoing of any sort, accept when there is clear reason to do so that that has not always been the case while still admiring their country and having overall a very positive view of what it stands for.

Others IMO can respond with nothing but denial, anger, and/or attacks if anyone even suggests that evidence does not support the purported noble cause as being the principal one or suggests that there was wrongdoing of the Federal Government.

Particularly when “educated” to view the acts in question as being the epitome of nobility and greatness. The cognitive shock just can’t be handled in many instances. As a personal guess of what is going on.

269

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote]Headhunter wrote:

I used that analogy before. Of course, it got demagogued.[/quote]

Bill Roberts, drama queen, aside, what in 1860 was the Southern states’ political equivalent of suffering the woes of a beaten wife?

The Slave Power lost an election to a man and a party that said it intended to legislate slavery away in the new territories.

I continue to wait for an answer to this fundamental question - what misery did the “beaten wife” of the South suffer that warranted them leaving their cruel abuser?

And, of course, the analogy to marriage is flatly dumb - if there is an analogy at all, the best (if imperfect) in one of contract among multiple parties.[/quote]

Even if I was to agree that the South had no Constitutional right to secede, you could never convince me that the slaughter of 600,000 men and the destruction of the South was justified or moral.

You can argue legalities all day and maybe you would be correct, but there is absolutely no way that you could argue that the calamity known as the Civil War was justified to maintain the Union.

272

[quote]pushharder wrote:

You can argue legalities all day and maybe you would be correct, but there is absolutely no way that you could argue that the calamity known as the Civil War was justified to maintain the Union.[/quote]

This is the conclusion at which I can’t help but find myself.[/quote]

I’m game for the hypothetical. If the Union doesn’t enforce the law with threat of force or force, then even as there is no right to secede (or any other justification), the “mad project of disunion” would essentially have no consequences. Am I understanding you correctly?

Alternatively, if there was no right to secede (or otherwise any other justification), would action would have been justified to remedy this on behalf of the Union? Any?

274

[quote]pushharder wrote:

Rephrase that for me, TB. I’m not quite sure what you’re asking.[/quote]

Sure. An enormous, costly war with a death toll of 600,000 wasn’t justified in response to secession, even if the South had no right to leave the Union.

So, what action - if any - would have been justified in response to the Southern states’ unjustified leaving of the Union?

275

[quote]pushharder wrote:
On a side note, it can be interesting, stimulating “fun” to play the “what if” game.

What if the South had won the war?

What if the North had not militarily contested secession?

Etc.[/quote]

What if you accepted that you’ve applied a double-standard to virtually every condemnation of the North and of Lincoln that you’ve spewed forth?

Let’s see: Sherman condoned murder and rape (a falsehood) and was horrible for confiscating/starving Southern belligerents. But it’s ok if Southerners extort and starve thier fellow Southerners. (Actually, you’ve denied that this ever happened, despite being presented with historical evidence showing that it did.)

Lincoln was evil for stretching the boundaries of the Constitution to end slavery and save the Union, but it’s okay for the South to do so by seceding to preserve slavery.

It was ok for the South to seize federal property but it’s not ok for the Union to try to regain it.

It’s perfectly alright (invoking the revolutionary spirit of our Founding Fathers) for the South to essentially commit treason by inciting/encouraging attacks against the state, but it’s a war crime (despite there being no legal/official document outlining what a war crime was then, thus making a war crime technically non-existent at the time) for Lincoln to suspend the writ of habeas corpus to prevent said treason and maintain what the Founding Fathers fought for in the first place.

What if, indeed.

277

[quote]pushharder wrote:

My first suggestion would be Talk. Diplomacy. Now obviously I can suggest this with the benefit of hindsight.[/quote]

What exactly was there to talk about? The Slave Power walked out of the Democratic Convention of 1860 because they could not accept a “popular sovereignthy” (states’ rights) candidate for president.

So, if they wouldn’t accept a “popular sovereignty” candidate, they wouldn’t accept Lincoln.

So, what would there be to talk about? The only way the South would “stay” in the Union is on a promise to give them what they wanted. Is that what they should have talked about?

279

[quote]pushharder wrote:

Why can’t you relax and enjoy the intellectual exercise we’re getting here? In this particular instance we’re not playing a game that can be won or lost. There will never be an end to the fourth quarter and no trophies will be awarded.[/quote]

Cut it out Push. I’m finding myself agreeing with you far too much.