Daynel wrote:Why not Lincoln?Shadowcat wrote:Lolwhat? Why dont we just listen to George Washington and only have 1 party, See he warned us about having two parties, And now look at where were at.Commander Error wrote:The states needs a) more than 2 mainstream parties and b) a party that is centrist or left of center to counterbalance their extreme right-wing whatnot they have now. Then we can talk.
I propose we invent a time machine and make Washington the immortal president of the United States.
...In his December 8, 1863, Message to Congress Lincoln declared that "democracy" could be restored to the conquered Southern states if ten percent of the population in those states could be found who were Unionists and could be used to govern the other 90 percent – with the "support" of Federal troops. "Use only trusted Union men," Lincoln proclaimed, and "exclude all others." Is this democracy?
..."If I do that, what would become of my revenue? I might as well shut up housekeeping at once!" ~ Lincoln, in response to the suggestion by the Virginian Commissioners to abandon the custom house of Fort Sumter.
..."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 [note: Lincoln's tariff in the Northern states was more than 3 times greater]. What, then, would become of my tariff?" ~ Lincoln to Colonel John B. Baldwin, deputized by the Virginian Commissioners to determine whether Lincoln would use force, April 4, 1861
... "Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose – and you allow him to make war at pleasure.... If, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you 'be silent; I see it, if you don't.' The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood." ~ Representative Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to his long-time law partner William H. Herndon, denouncing the trickery of President Polk in provoking the Mexican War of 1848.
..."You will take possession by military force, of the printing establishments of the New York World and Journal of Commerce... and prohibit any further publication thereof... you are therefore commanded forthwith to arrest and imprison in any fort or military prison in your command, the editors, proprietors and publishers of the aforesaid newspapers... and you will hold the persons so arrested in close custody until they can be brought to trial before a military commission." ~ Order from Lincoln to General John A. Dix, May 18, 1864, two examples among many of newspapers shut down on Lincoln's fiat in defiance of the First Amendment.
..."And I do further proclaim, declare, and make known that whenever, in any of the States of Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina, a number of persons, not less than one-tenth in number of the votes cast in such State at the Presidential election of the year A.D. 1860, each having taken oath [of loyalty to Lincoln and the Union] aforesaid, and not having since violated it, and being a qualified voter by the election law of the State existing immediately before the so-called act of secession, and excluding all others, shall reestablish a State government which shall be republican and in nowise contravening said oath, such shall be recognized as the true government of the State, and the State shall receive thereunder the benefits of the constitutional provision which declares that "the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government and shall protect each of them against invasion, and, on application of the legislature, or the EXECUTIVE (when the legislature can not be convened), against domestic violence." ~ Lincoln's Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, December 8 1863, demonstrating Lincoln's unusual definition of democracy. A republican-form of government is generally believed to mean self-government, rather than the imperial model of rule by conquerors and their native collaborators. The emphasis on the State executive -the military governors – is particularly notable, as the 10% Union Loyalists provided the basis of Lincoln's military dictatorship in the conquered States.
..."Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." ~ Declaration of Independence, 1776.
..." determined . . . to sever ourselves from the union we so much value rather than give up the rights of self-government . . . in which alone we see liberty, safety and happiness." ~ Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence.
..."If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union... let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." ~ Thomas Jefferson, first Inaugural Address, 1801.
..."If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation... to a continuance in union... I have no hesitation in saying, 'let us separate.'" ~ Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to W. Crawford, June 20, 1816
..."To coerce the States is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised.... Can any reasonable man be well disposed toward a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself – a government that can only exist by the sword?” ~ Alexander Hamilton, during the Constitutional Convention.
..."The Union, in any event, won't be dissolved. We don't want to dissolve it, and if you attempt it, we won't let you. With the purse and sword, the army and navy and treasury in our hands and at our command, you couldn't do it.... We do not want to dissolve the Union; you shall not." ~ Lincoln, in a campaign speech in Galena, Illinois, Aug. 1 1856.
"... when they [slaveowners] remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowledge them, not grudgingly but fully and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the claiming of their fugitives." ~ Lincoln, speaking in support of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
"...in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you... I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that '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.' " ..Abraham Lincoln, first Inaugural address
..."I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable." ~ Lincoln, speaking in regards to slavery and in support of a proposed Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution to explicitly guarantee slavery.
..."The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these territories. We want them for the homes of free white people." ~ Lincoln, on whether blacks – slave or free – should be allowed in the new territories in the west, October 16, 1854.
.,.."I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary." ~ Lincoln, Aug. 21, 1858.
..."I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I favor colonization." ~ Lincoln, in a message to Congress, December 1, 1862, supporting deportation of blacks from America.
..."It had got to be midsummer, 1862. Things had gone on from bad to worse, until I felt that we had reached the end of our rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing; that we had about played our last card, and must change our tactics, or lose the game. I now determined upon the adoption of the emancipation policy; and without consultation with, or the knowledge of, the Cabinet, I prepared the original draft of the proclamation, and, after much anxious thought, called a Cabinet meeting upon the subject. This was the last of July or the first part of the month of August, 1862. [The exact date was July 22, 1862.]" ~ Lincoln, to the artist F.B. Carpenter, Feb. 6 1864.
..."The original proclamation has no... legal justification, except as a military measure." ~ Lincoln, in a letter to Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase.
..."My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and 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." ~ Letter to Horace Greeley, Editor of the New York Tribune, August 22 1862
..."You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it should fail, and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result." ~ Lincoln to Gustavus Fox, in a letter dated May 1, 1865, expressing satisfaction that he had been able to provoke the South to fire upon Fort Sumter.
..."He told me that the very first thing placed in his hands after his inauguration was a letter from Major Anderson announcing the impossibility of defending or relieving Sumter.... He himself conceived the idea, and proposed sending supplies, without an attempt to reinforce, giving notice of the fact to Governor Pickens of S.C. The plan succeeded. They attacked Sumter – it fell, and thus, did more service than it otherwise could." ~ Senator Orville H. Browning, Lincoln's close friend for twenty years
..."Mr. Lincoln saw an opportunity to inaugurate civil war without appearing in the character of an aggressor." ~ Providence Daily Post, April 13 1861
..."We are to have civil war, if at all, because Abraham Lincoln loves a [the Republican] party better than he loves his country.... [He] clings to his party creed, and allows the nation to drift into the whirlpool of destruction." ~ The Providence Daily Post, April 13 1861
..."If this result follows – and follow civil war it must – the memory of Abraham Lincoln and his infatuated advisors will only be preserved with that of other destroyers to the scorned and execrated.... And if the historian who preserves the record of his fatal administration needs any motto descriptive of the president who destroyed the institutions which he swore to protect, it will probably be some such as this: Here is the record of one who feared more to have it said that he deserted his party than that he ruined the country, who had a greater solicitude for his consistency as a partisan than for his wisdom as a Statesman or his courage and virtue as a patriot, and who destroyed by his weakness the fairest experiment of man in self-government that the world ever witnessed." ~ The American Standard, New Jersey, April 12, 1861, the very day the South moved to reclaim Fort Sumter.
..."The affair at Fort Sumter, it seems to us, has been planned as a means by which the war feeling at the North should be intensified, and the administration thus receive popular support for its policy.... If the armament which lay outside the harbor, while the fort was being battered to pieces [the US ship The Harriet Lane, and seven other reinforcement ships], had been designed for the relief of Major Anderson, it certainly would have made a show of fulfilling its mission. But it seems plain to us that no such design was had. The administration, virtually, to use a homely illustration, stood at Sumter like a boy with a chip on his shoulder, daring his antagonist to knock it off. The Carolinians have knocked off the chip. War is inaugurated, and the design of the administration accomplished." ~ The Buffalo Daily Courier, April 16, 1861.
..."We have no doubt, and all the circumstances prove, that it was a cunningly devised scheme, contrived with all due attention to scenic display and intended to arouse, and, if possible, exasperate the northern people against the South.... We venture to say a more gigantic conspiracy against the principles of human liberty and freedom has never been concocted. Who but a fiend could have thought of sacrificing the gallant Major Anderson and his little band in order to carry out a political game? Yet there he was compelled to stand for thirty-six hours amid a torrent of fire and shell, while the fleet sent to assist him, coolly looked at his flag of distress and moved not to his assistance! Why did they not? Perhaps the archives in Washington will yet tell the tale of this strange proceeding.... Pause then, and consider before you endorse these mad men who are now, under pretense of preserving the Union, doing the very thing that must forever divide it. ~ The New York Evening Day-Book, April 17, 1861.
Lincoln's Secretary of State William Seward, referring to the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation freed no slaves still held in the North, nor in areas of the South occupied by the Northern armies, said: "We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free. "
Foreign editorials against him:
"Democracy broke down, not when the Union ceased to be agreeable to all its constituent States, but when it was upheld, like any other Empire, by force of arms." ~ The London Times.
"With what pretence of fairness, it is said, can you Americans object to the secession of the Southern States when your nation was founded on secession from the British Empire?" ~ Cornhill Magazine (London) 1861.
"The struggle of today is on the one side for empire and on the other for independence." ~ Wigan Examiner (UK) May, 1861.
"The Southerners are admired for everything but their slavery and that their independence may be speedily acknowledged by France and England is, we are convinced, the strong desire of the vast majority, not only in England but throughout Europe." ~ Liverpool Daily Post, 11 March 1862.
...“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races [the crowd applauds] – that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people, and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the black and white races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”... Abraham Lincoln
...When Maryland voiced its support for the Confederacy and appeared itself ready to secede, Lincoln arrested 31 Maryland legislators, the mayor of Baltimore (the nation’s 3rd largest city at the time), and a US Congressman from Maryland, as well as numerous editors and publishers.
In addition to imprisoning two US Congressmen, Lincoln also wrote out an arrest warrant for the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Roger Taney, after Taney wrote the opinion in Ex Parte Merryman (1861) rebuking Lincoln’s illegitimate suspension of habeas corpus
...Charles * in a London periodical in December 1861, "Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this as of many other evils....The quarrel between the North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel".
The South paid an undue proportion of federal revenues derived from tariffs, and these were expended by the federal government more in the North than the South: in 1840, the South paid 84% of the tariffs, rising to 87% in 1860. They paid 83% of the $13 million federal fishing bounties paid to New England fishermen, and also paid $35 million to Northern shipping interests which had a monopoly on shipping from Southern ports. The South, in effect, was paying tribute to the North. The address of Texas Congressman Reagan on 15 January 1861 summarizes this discontent: "You are not content with the vast millions of tribute we pay you annually under the operation of our revenue law, our navigation laws, your fishing bounties, and by making your people our manufacturers, our merchants, our shippers. You are not satisfied with the vast tribute we pay you to build up your great cities, your railroads, your canals. You are not satisfied with the millions of tribute we have been paying you on account of the balance of exchange which you hold against us. You are not satisfied that we of the South are almost reduced to the condition of overseers of northern capitalists. You are not satisfied with all this; but you must wage a relentless crusade against our rights and institutions."
The London Times of 7 Nov 1861: "The contest is really for empire on the side of the North and for independence on that of the South....".
...The Republican platform of 1860 called for higher tariffs; that was implemented by the new Congress in the Morill tariff of March 1861, signed by President Buchanan before Lincoln took the oath of office. It imposed the highest tariffs in US history, with over a 50% duty on iron products and 25% on clothing; rates averaged 47%. The nascent Confederacy followed with a low tariff, essentially creating a free-trade zone in the South. Prior to this "war of the tariffs", most Northern newspapers had called for peace through conciliation, but many now cried for war. The Philadelphia Press on 18 March 1861 demanded a blockade of Southern ports, because, if not, "a series of customs houses will be required on the vast inland border from the Atlantic to West Texas. Worse still, with no protective tariff, European goods will under-price Northern goods in Southern markets. Cotton for Northern mills will be charged an export tax. This will cripple the clothing industries and make British mills prosper. Finally, the great inland waterways, the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Ohio Rivers, will be subject to Southern tolls."
Earlier, in December 1860, before any secession, the Chicago Daily Times foretold the disaster that Southern free ports would bring to Northern commerce: "In one single blow our foreign commerce must be reduced to less than one-half what it now is. Our coastwise trade would pass into other hands. One-half of our shipping would lie idle at our wharves. We should lose our trade with the South, with all of its immense profits. Our manufactories would be in utter ruins. Let the South adopt the free-trade system, or that of a tariff for revenue, and these results would likely follow."
...Karl Marx wrote in 1861: "The war between the North and the South is a tariff war. The war is, further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery, and in fact turns on the Northern lust for sovereignty."
“Such separation [of whites and blacks] if effected at all must be effected by colonization: … Let us be brought to believe that it is morally right, and at the same time favorable to, or at least not against, our interests to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be.”….Lincoln, in debate with Douglas.
...In 1847 Lincoln took a case on behalf of a slave owner named Robert Matson, claiming return of fugitive slaves. Matson was from Kentucky and brought slaves to Coles County, Illinois, for part of the year. Jane Bryant escaped with her four children from the Coles County plantation and found refuge with local abolitionists. They were soon after found and jailed as fugitive slaves. Lincoln represented Matson in his efforts to re-enslave Bryant and her children. He predicated his argument upon Illinois law that allowed ownership in slaves to be maintained if they were brought into the state in transit. The Illinois circuit court was unconvinced, and the disgruntled tyrant returned to Kentucky in default on his attorney fees. The Bryants left to make a new start in Liberia.
...In 1851 the Santee Sioux Indians in Minnesota sold twenty-four million acres of land to the federal government for $1.4 million. By August of 1862 thousands of white settlers continued to pour into the Indian lands even though none of the money had been paid to the Santee Sioux. There was a crop failure that year, and the Indians were starving. The Lincoln administration refused to pay them the money they were owed and the starving Sioux revolted.
A short "war" ensued, with Lincoln putting one of his favorite generals, General John Pope, in charge of federal forces in Minnesota. Pope announced that "It is my purpose to utterly exterminate the Sioux . . . . They are to be treated as maniacs or wild beasts, and by no means as people with whom treaties or compromise can be made." (Similar statements were being made at the time by General William Tecumseh Sherman, who said that to all Southern secessionists, "why, death is mercy").
The Santee Sioux were overwhelmed by the federal army by October of 1862, at which time General Pope held hundreds of Indian men, women, and children who were considered to be prisoners of war. The men were herded into forts where military "trials" were held, each of which lasted about ten minutes according to David A. Nichols in Lincoln and the Indians. They were all found guilty of murder and sentenced to death even though the lack of hard evidence was manifest and they were not given any semblance of a proper defense. Most were condemned to death by virtue of the fact that they were merely present during a battle, during a declared (by the Indians) war.
Minnesota political authorities wanted the federal army to immediately execute all 303 of the condemned men. Lincoln, however, was concerned that such a mass execution of so many men who had so obviously been railroaded would be looked upon in a bad light by the European powers who, at the time, were threatening to support the Confederate cause in the War for Southern Independence. His compromise was to pare the list of condemned down to 39, with a promise to the Minnesota political establishment that the federal army would eventually kill or remove every Indian from the state. Lincoln also offered Minnesota $2 million in federal funds.
On December 26, 1862, Abraham Lincoln ordered the execution of these men, the largest mass execution in American history.
...Lincoln used his status as one of the top political insiders within the railroad industry to engage in lucrative real estate investments. On one of his trips in a private rail car accompanied by an entourage of Illinois Central executives Lincoln decided to go to Council Bluffs, Iowa, where he had some real estate investments. Shortly before his trip to Council Bluffs he had purchased several town lots from his fellow railroad attorney, Norman B. Judd, who had acquired them from the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad. Council Bluffs at this time was a frontier town, containing about fifteen hundred people. To this day, this land in Council Bluffs, Iowa is known as "Lincoln’s Hill."
Why invest in real estate in Council Bluffs, Iowa? Lincoln knew that there was a very high likelihood that 1) the federal government would eventually subsidize a transcontinental railroad; and 2) the starting point for that railroad could well be in the vicinity of Council Bluffs. If so, the value of his real estate holdings would increase enormously.
Indeed, the 1860 Republican Party Platform contained a sixteenth plank that read: "That a railroad to the Pacific Ocean is imperatively demanded by the interests of the whole country; the Federal Government ought to render immediate and efficient aid in its construction . . ." As the party’s nominee, Lincoln pledged his wholehearted support of this plank.
When he became president legislation was immediately proposed, in a special legislative session called by Lincoln in July of 1861, to create the taxpayer-subsidized Union Pacific Railroad. The bill was passed in 1862 and it gave the president the power to appoint all the directors and commissioners and, more importantly, "to fix the point of commencement" of the Union Pacific Railroad. He fixed the eastern terminus of the Union Pacific Railroad at Council Bluffs, Iowa.
In addition to his own gains from this legislation one hundred fifty-eight prominent Northern bankers, industrialists, and railroad barons who had supported Lincoln’s political career were appointed as "commissioners." Dee Brown wrote in “Hear that Lonesome Whistle Blow: The Epic Story of the Transcontinental Railroads“, when Lincoln signed the bill creating the Union Pacific he "assured the fortunes of a dynasty of American families . . . Brewsters, Bushnells, Olcotts, Harkers, Harrisons, Trowbridges, Langworthys, Reids, Ogdens, Bradfords, Noyeses, Brooks, Cornells, and dozens of others . . ."
Lysander Spooner, a lifelong abolitionist and arguably the most eloquent proponent of the eradication of slavery, had this to say about the Civil War:
"The principle upon which the war was waged by the North was simply this: That men may rightfully be compelled to submit to and support a government that they do not want; and that resistance on their part makes them traitors and criminals.
No principle that is possible to be named can be more self-evidently false than this, or more self-evidently fatal to all political freedom. Yet it triumphed in the field and is now assumed to be established. If it really be established, the number of slaves, instead of having been diminished by the war, has been greatly increased; for a man thus subjected to a government that he does not want is a slave."
