Since the Civil War thread is on its 23rd page I start this thread to begin discussion regarding revisionist history about Lincoln.

I suggest that Lincoln was NOT an admirable figure!

I suggest that the MONSTEROUS Federal Government we have today is DIRECTLY attributable to Lincoln and his Pro-Federalist friends.

I ask this simple question: How can you FORCE a "Union"?

The Confederacy tried to legally withdraw from the "Union" as they were entitled to do.

The hierarchy of Authority went from GOD to the Citizen to the State and it was the State that VOLUNTEERED into the "Union" and it was the State that could legitimately VOLUNTEER out of the "Union".
The vast majority of state Constitutions had verbage in them that listed the procedures necessary to withdraw from the Federal "Union".

I will post a few writings illustrating my position and I look forward to the discussion.

Lincoln’s Spectacular Lie
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo41.html

The cornerstone of the Lincoln Legend is a spectacular lie. As eloquently stated by former syndicated columnist James J. Kilpatrick in his 1957 book, The Sovereign States: "The delusion that sovereignty is vested in the whole people of the United States is one of the strangest misconceptions of our public life" (p. 15). Lincoln espoused this fable in order to make the preposterous argument that no such thing as state sovereignty ever existed; the states were never at any time free and independent of the federal government; they did not in fact create the federal government by ratifying the Constitution; and that, therefore, no group of citizens could ever secede from the federal government.

As Emory University philosopher Donald Livingston has said, this is not only a lie, but a spectacular lie. It is still widely believed, however, thanks in part to the efforts of such propagandists as Harry Jaffa and his fellow Lincoln cultists at the Claremont Institute, the Declaration Foundation, and other state-worshipping propaganda mills.

Lincoln claimed that the federal government was really created by the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution, despite the fact that the former document does not have the legal authority that the Constitution has. But the Declaration itself is an expression of state sovereignty, a fact which contradicts Lincoln’s whole thesis. The concluding paragraph declares to the world that the colonists were seceding from the British Empire as citizens of the free and independent American states, not as the people as a whole. "These colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown . . . and that as Free and Independent States, they have full power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do."

When the Revolution ended the King of England entered into a peace treaty not with "the United States" or "the people as a whole" but with the individual states. (In my May 2002 Independent Institute debate with Harry Jaffa he made quite the buffoon of himself by angrily denying this plain historical fact). Article 1 of the Treaty with Great Britain states:

His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, vis, New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia to be free, sovereign and independent States; that he treats with them as such, and for himself, his heirs and successors, Relinquishes all claims to the Government, proprietary and territorial rights of The same, and every part thereof.
When the sovereign states created a federal government as their agent with the Articles of Confederation they made a point of maintaining their independent status. As defined in Article 1, Section II: "Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled."

It is important to note that certain powers were delegated to the federal government but not abandoned. Sovereignty always rested in the citizens of the free and independent states.

Although the state delegations that adopted the Articles hoped that the Union created by them would be perpetual, they seceded from the Articles after just six years and dropped the phrase "perpetual Union" from the new Constitution.

Apologists for centralized governmental power dishonestly dwell on the preamble of the Constitution which reads, "We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union . . ." They do this in order to argue that the government formed by the Constitution was created by "the whole people" and not the sovereign states. But the reason why the states were not listed individually in the Preamble is that when it was written it was not known which states would ratify the Constitution. Thus, it was left as a generalized "We the People . . ." It is nothing more than a semantic artifact.

No less a figure than James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, explained in Federalist 39 that the Constitution was to be ratified by the people "not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong" (emphasis added). He also stated that the federal government gets all of its authority from the sovereign states and not the "whole people." The "whole people" who resided in the states stretching from Maine to Georgia at the time had nothing at all to do with the ratification of the Constitution. It was ratified by state political conventions (not state legislatures). Madison continued on to say that each state ratifying the Constitution "is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act."

Virginia, New York and Rhode Island specifically reserved the right to withdraw from the Union if it ever became "destructive of our liberties." (This is another plain historical fact that the delusional Jaffa angrily denied during my debate with him). Here’s what the Virginia delegation to the Constitutional Convention put in writing:
We the delegates of the people of Virginia . . . Do, in the name and behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the people of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression, and that every power not granted thereby remains with them at their will . . .

New York and Rhode Island made almost identical statements as conditions of ratifying the Constitution.

The phrase "united States" is always in the plural in the Constitution, signifying not one consolidated government but that the independent and sovereign states were united in forming the federal government as their agent with only narrowly defined, delegated powers.

The president is not elected by "the whole people" according to the Constitution but by an electoral college that consists of appointees from each state, chosen by the state legislatures.

Nor may any new state be formed "within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as Congress." (Lincoln clearly ignored this when he orchestrated the secession of Western Virginia from Virginia). Amending the Constitution still requires ratification by three-fourths of the states, not the "whole people."

Thus, all three of these founding documents – the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution – declare the states to be free and independent. Sovereignty lies in the citizens of the free and independent states, not the people as a whole. The founders feared mass democracy and sought to strictly limit its domain. It is patently absurd to argue that the government they created was meant to be a mass democracy of "the whole people."

Lincoln’s theory of the non-existence of state sovereignty never came to be accepted by the strength of the argument, for the argument has no strength and no factual basis. Instead, he waged the bloodiest war in world history up to that point to "prove" himself right.

The myth serves the purpose of making sure that the American people can never regain true sovereignty over their government. It should not be surprising to anyone that the modern-day neoconservative propagandists who perpetuate this myth are all advocates of an even more activist, centralized state (in pursuit of "national greatness," they say). Their latest crusade involves invoking the sainted Lincoln, time and again, to urge President Bush to invade and occupy much of the Middle East. They are advocates of national power, an imperial worldwide empire, and unlimited democracy. They are the enemies of limited, constitutional government although they cynically invoke the founding fathers in much of their propaganda. These are people whose entire careers are based on the perpetuation of a spectacular lie, which is why they become so apoplectic whenever anyone threatens to expose the real Lincoln to the American public.

Thomas J. DiLorenzo is the author of the 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.

Politically Correct History
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo37.html

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.

Thomas J. DiLorenzo is the author of the 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.

Blah...blah...blah...
We're still one country and slavery has ended hasn't it?


Okay then....


SGtar15

The Unknown Lincoln
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo26.html

In a recent article on LewRockwell.com ("Fake Lincoln Quotes", July 10) I discussed how much of what Americans think they know about Abraham Lincoln is false, thanks to all the fake Lincoln quotes that fill the literature. But it gets worse: On top of that, much of what is true about Lincoln is virtually unknown to the American public, thanks to generations of Court Historians who have hidden the facts from the public. Most Americans "know" a Fantasy Lincoln but are almost completely ignorant of the Real Lincoln.

Many of these well-documented facts are discussed in a fascinating book entitled The Lincoln No One Knows by the late Webb Garrison, who was an associate dean at Emory University and the president of McKendree College in Lebanon, Illinois.

The subtitle of the book is "38 Mysteries of One of America’s Most Admired Presidents." Each chapter title is in the form of a question, such as: "Why is He Still Seen as a Hayseed Lawyer Who Barely Made a Living?"; "What Induced a Foe of Slavery to Serve as a Counsel for a Slaveholder?"; "What Persuaded a Veteran Attorney to Order Suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus?"; and "How did a Tenderhearted Man Direct Wholesale Slaughter for Month After Month?"

As I argue in The Real Lincoln, these questions are not "mysteries" at all if one comes to understand the real, as opposed to the mythical Lincoln. Let’s consider just a few of these well-documented "mysteries." (And well-documented they are: In his preface Garrison thanks the "dean" of "Civil War" historians, James McPherson, and Thomas Schwartz, curator of the Lincoln Collection at the Illinois State Historical Society, for their fact checking assistance. They read the manuscript with "scrupulous care," says Garrison).

Lincoln has long been portrayed as a folksy, hayseed country lawyer. But the truth is, he was the highest-paid trial lawyer in Illinois whose clients included the Illinois Central Railroad, which at the time was the biggest corporation in the world. He "was one of the most skillful and highly paid attorneys of the region" who was "ready support either side of any case.... Lincoln’s earnings placed him among the wealthy elite." He was essentially a lobbyist for the Northern plutocracy and its anti-populist, mercantilist policies.

Lincoln has also been portrayed as a champion of personal liberty and a defender of the Constitution. He frequently promised to uphold the law and the Constitution. But the "Lincoln No One Knows" suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus, the only personal liberty law in the Constitution, and ordered the military to arrest tens of thousands of Northern citizens for merely voicing opposition to his administration. This number included hundreds of Northern newspaper editors and owners who criticized the Lincoln administration. None of these individuals was ever served a warrant and some spent four years in military prison without any due process. A member of Congress, Clement L. Vallandhigham of Ohio, was deported because of his outspoken opposition to the Lincoln administration.

Lincoln signed into law the first military conscription law which, at the time, was considered to be unconstitutional by the chief justice of the US Supreme Court, Roger B. Taney. Taney issued a private opinion, but the issue was never brought to the Supreme Court during Lincoln’s time. The New York Evening Press denounced the conscription law as "slavery, accursed slavery," and there were violent draft riots in Ohio, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Indiana, New Jersey, and Wisconsin. Lincoln’s own son Robert remained at Harvard until 1864, when newspapers began making a stink about his lack of military service. Lincoln then placed him in a safe and secure place as an "official escort to notables" (including his father) on General Grant’s staff. His military "service" only lasted three months, however.

What led Lincoln to "countermand early efforts to free some slaves," Garrison asks. He refers here to the efforts early in the war by Union Generals John Fremont and David Hunter to issue orders to emancipate slaves in Missouri and Georgia, respectively, that were owned by secessionists (loyal Unionists could keep their slaves). Lincoln rescinded both orders. As Garrison wrote, "During a ten-month period, repeated efforts at emancipation were thwarted by Lincoln."

Garrison labels this behavior a mystery, but it is not so mysterious if one takes Lincoln’s word when he said that his "paramount objective" was to destroy the secession movement, not to do anything about slavery.

The "railsplitting," hayseed lawyer was in fact a master politician. This is why a supposed political "novice" got the upper hand over Congress, as Garrison explains in one chapter. Lincoln the master politician launched an invasion without consent of Congress, blockaded Southern ports, suspended Habeas Corpus, and essentially declared himself dictator. "It was almost as though the nation’s lawmaking body didn’t exist," writes Garrison.

And "how did a tenderhearted man direct wholesale slaughter for month after month?" Garrison notes how Lincoln was a master micromanager of the war effort. He paid numerous visits to the headquarters of various regiments, repeatedly reviewed troops, directly made many military appointments himself, rather than leaving it to his generals, and paid special attention to weapons. He developed "an enthusiasm for testing weapons of every kind and size" to be used to bombard both Confederate soldiers and Southern civilians. He even "considered the use of body armor and may have tried it on himself."

Lincoln mythology includes tales of how many times he supposedly wept over the news of acquaintances being killed in the war, and in his 1860 campaign biography he claimed to have been emotionally devastated over having shot a turkey as a child. But as hundreds of thousands of men were killed in the war, and hundreds of thousands more maimed for life, no one around Lincoln "reported anything approaching a public display of emotion" upon learning of such massive battlefield deaths, writes Garrison.

Informed of how the federal army had pillaged, plundered, burned, and raped its way through the defenseless Shenandoah Valley in 1864, Lincoln only conveyed "the thanks of a nation" to General Philip Sheridan, the chief plunderer, and added his personal gratitude.

Hundreds of thousands of Northerners favored a peaceful resolution but were conscripted into Lincoln’s army. When their deaths were brought up, Lincoln claimed that they were "endeavoring to purchase with their blood and their lives the future happiness and prosperity of the country."

Lincoln is also hailed as a champion – if not savior – of American democracy. But his notion of democracy was quite odd. In his December 8, 1863, Message to Congress he declared that "democracy" could be restored to the conquered Southern states if ten percent of the population 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."

Perhaps more importantly, Lincoln’s stated purpose in the war was to destroy the principle of the Declaration of Independence that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Southerners no longer consented to being governed by Washington, DC, so Lincoln waged total war against them for four long years. Of course, he didn’t put it this way but instead sugarcoated his objective with language about "saving the Union." At the time many Americans – including dozens of Northern newspaper editors – considered the act of compelling a state to remain in the Union at gunpoint to be destructive of the voluntary union of the states. And they were right.

It is a testament to the effectiveness of 140 years of government propaganda that a 308 page book filled with true facts about Lincoln could be entitled "The Lincoln No One Knows." It is not a matter of a poorly-performing government education system but quite the opposite: The government schools have performed superbly in indoctrinating generations of American school children with a pack of lies, myths, omissions, and falsehoods about Lincoln and his war of conquest. As Richard Bensel wrote in Yankee Leviathan, any study of the American state should begin in 1865. The power of any state ultimately rests upon a series of government-sponsored myths, and there is none more prominent than the Lincoln Myth.

Thomas J. DiLorenzo is the author of the 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.

And BTW   a weak Federal .gov= a short lived Union.


Sgatr15

Well, I'm with you on most of this but I'll have to finish reading it later.

Lincoln was a politician, plain and simple. And if there really is a heaven and hell, my bet is that old Abe is enjoying the warmer climates. Slavery was NOT an issue in the war between the states until it was played much like "The Race Card" is played today by the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. The importation of slaves had already been abolished over 50 years prior to the war and Lincoln didn't even mention the subject until almost 2 years into the war when the union was losing.

I presume ETH will be along soon to back me up and RAF will be along soon to call me a troll and threaten to ban me again. In the meantime, I'm gonna go look for the AGNTSA picture.

Loser of wars are often bitter.  Lincolns tried hard to welcome the south back into the fold did he not?


That was before he was killed of course.


Sgatr15

Sounds like you have a pretty good myth going on there.  Keep up that revisionist history.

I can't believe people still can't get over this stuff.

Quoted: Blah...blah...blah... We're still one country and slavery has ended hasn't it? Okay then.... SGtar15

Gosh, you read those so fast.........

Good info, I wonder if his book is at the local lefty book store.

Whatever.

Quoted: Whatever.

Another rapid reader.

Quoted: His policy of sending the slaves back to Africa is just one more of those things conviently forgotten in history. Tj

What many people don't realize is Lincoln was anti-black.  Most of the anti-slavery sentiment in the US at that time wasn't due to human rights considerations, but anti-black prejudice.  Lincoln thought the equal rights abolitionists were insane.  He wanted to end slavery because he didn't want any of the new Western states brought in as slave states ala Missouri.  He knew that if the new states came in under a 50/50 compromise, one slave and one free, then America would become a colored nation like Brazil.  He wanted the West settled by white homesteaders, not plantation owners.  He only embraced emancipation as a political expediency when the war started going badly and he started losing support.

Or how he ignored the Constitution…  

In the Constitution, is says that no state shall be made from another state (not sure on the wording). However, he allowed West Virginia, carved out of Virginia, to enter the Union as a state, even thought he claimed Virginia was still a state of the United States, but was just in revolt.

Quoted: ...yada, yada, yada...

The Civil War is over.
(please post again when YOUR term(s) as U. S. President is over)

Your post begs the question, "What do you think Lincoln should have done?"

I expect the answer is "Let the wealthy land and slave owners in the south pull the  south out of the union so they could keep their slaves."

Perhaps I missed it. Were referendums held in the south so all citizens could express their opinion on leaving the union or was the decision made by a few politicians and would-be aristocrats?

So on the one hand we have bunch of wealthy slave owners wanting to keep their slaves at all cost and on the other a man who wanted to preserve the union and ultimately free the slaves.

And you favor the wealthy slave owners?

If you do, shame on you.

Quoted: The Civil War is over. (please post again when YOUR term(s) as U. S. President is over)

WEBSTERS defines "Discussion": ......consideration of a question in open and usually informal debate.

Rewriting History, American Style
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo13.html

In his book, Lincoln Reconsidered, Pulitzer prize-winning Lincoln biographer David Donald remarked that, after Lincoln’s death and "reincarnation" as a secular political saint, politicians of all stripes began attaching themselves to his legacy. Men who were his bitterest political enemies during his lifetime all of a sudden claimed to have been his closest friends and associates. The Communist Party U.S.A. adorned its New York City headquarters, writes Donald, with huge portraits of Lincoln and held annual Lincoln-Lenin Day parades.

No one, of course, has taken the worshipping of Abraham Lincoln to greater extremes than the Republican Party and some of its affiliated foundations and think tanks. The Republican Party has long sought to give its political agenda moral authority by reminding us all that it is, after all, "The Party of Lincoln." That is certainly true but, unfortunately, the Republican Party and some of its associated think tanks have apparently found it necessary to do what they once accused the Soviet Union of doing: rewriting history in order to enhance its prestige and power.

Take, for instance, a Washington, DC, outfit known as the "Declaration Foundation" that is purportedly devoted to the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence. It does so by lionizing Lincoln (as though he still needs more lionizing) and constantly reminding Republican politicians to do this or that because "Lincoln would have done it." One of its slogans is the Lincolnian phrase, "Liberty and Union Forever" (emphasis added).

The Declaration Foundation does some good work, judging by its Web site, but its very name is somewhat Orwellian. Consider the one principle of the Declaration of Independence that Thomas Jefferson is most noted for, the idea that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that whenever governments become destructive of liberty it is the duty of citizens to abolish that government and replace it with a new one.

The Declaration, after all, was a Declaration of Secession from England. The American Revolution was a war of secession, just as the War for Southern Independence was. Massachusetts Senator Timothy Pickering, who served as George Washington’s adjutant general, Secretary of War, and Secretary of State, once said that secession was "the" principle of the American Revolution – the very right that the revolutionaries fought for. The Declaration Foundation, on the other hand, preaches exactly the opposite with its "Union Forever" philosophy.

Lincoln’s political triumph was, if anything, a repudiation of the Jeffersonian philosophy of government and a victory for his political adversaries, the Hamiltonians, who by 1861 had morphed into the Republican Party. Like all the founding fathers Jefferson wanted the Union to thrive, but he also agreed with his colleague Timothy Pickering that secession was a fundamental right. In his First Inaugural Address he declared, "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." He was championing the right of free speech here, but also the right of secession.

In a letter to James Madison in 1816 Jefferson reiterated his support of the right of secession by saying, "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."

Alexis de Tocqueville, whom everyone regards as a brilliant observer and chronicler of the American system of government, wrote in Democracy in Americathat "The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the States; and in uniting together they have not forfeited their nationality . . . . If one of the states chooses to withdraw from the compact . . . the Federal Government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly either by force or right." (Tocqueville could never have imagined that barely thirty years later an American president would commit the barbaric act of having his armies murder 300,000 fellow citizens and destroy their economy to deny them the right of secession).

Even Abraham Lincoln voiced support for the right of secession when it served his political purposes. He enthusiastically embraced (and orchestrated) the secession of western Virginia (a slave state) when it joined the Union. And on January 12, 1848, he announced that "any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. . . . Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit." Don’t look for this quote, though, in any of the materials produced by the Declaration Foundation.

As of 1860 most Northerners and Southerners believed in the Jeffersonian right of secession as enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. In Northern Editorials on SecessionHoward Cecil Perkins surveyed about 1,000 Northern newspapers and found that the majority of them agreed basically with what the Bangor Daily Union wrote on November 13, 1860: "The Union depends for its continuance on the free consent and will of the sovereign people of each state, and when that consent and will is withdrawn on either part, their Union is gone." A state that is coerced to remain in the Union becomes a "subject province" and can never be "a co-equal member of the American Union."

New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, a prominent Republican, editorialized on December 17, 1860, that if tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then "we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861." On February 5, 1861, Greeley continued on that "The Great Principle embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration is . . . that governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed." Therefore, if he Southern states want to secede, "they have a clear right to do so." At this time, Northerners knew that if there was to be a war it was not a war "to free the slaves," but to deny Southerners the right of secession. In an 1862 letter to Horace Greeley Lincoln himself declared that his "paramount objective" in the war was to destroy the right of secession or, as he rephrased it, to "save the Union," and that if he could do that without freeing a single slave he would gladly do so.

The Declaration Foundation, the Claremont Institute, and other self-proclaimed beacons of the Lincolnian philosophy, preach exactly the opposite. They perpetuate the preposterous myth that there was never any such thing as a right of secession – in a country that was formed by a war of secession. In doing so they rewrite history to legitimize the highly centralized welfare/warfare state that Lincoln, more than anyone else, helped bring about in America. The Declaration Foundation, in other words, repudiates the principles of the Declaration of Independence while trying to convince the public that it is actually championing them.

The second most notable principle of the Declaration is the notion that "all men are created equal." The Declaration Foundation and the Claremont Institute portray Lincoln as an almost Christ-like figure because of his supposed embrace of this principle, but this is hard to square with many of Lincoln’s own lifelong beliefs and clear, unambiguous statements. In his 1858 Ottawa, Illinois debate with Stephen Douglas, for example, he stated that "I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races . . . . I . . . am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary."

Lincoln went on to declare that he had never been in favor "of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people." He literally mocked the Jeffersonian dictum that "all men are created equal" by claiming that, with the possible exception of Siamese twins, "I am sorry to say that I have never seen two men of whom it is true."

On the topic of emancipation Lincoln said, "Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this . . . . We cannot, then make them equals."

It doesn’t get any clearer than that. Lincoln unequivocally denounced the principle of the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal, especially when it comes to men of the white and black races. Ever the slick politician, he rhetorically defended the "natural rights" of all people, but blacks could never enjoy such rights if they were denied all the rights that Lincoln would deny them. In his 1852 eulogy to Henry Clay Lincoln stated that he agreed with Clay that slavery was regrettable, but ending it would produce "a greater evil, even to the cause of human liberty itself." Don’t look for this line, either, in any of the Declaration Foundation’s publications.

Lincoln’s career-long goal, which he clung to until the day he died, was colonization – to send every last black person in the U.S. to Africa, Central America, Haiti – anywhere but the U.S. This, said Lincoln, would be a "glorious consummation." They could be "equal" all right, but not here. This led America’s most prominent abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, to denounce Lincoln as "the President of African Colonization" and to declare that he "had not a drop of anti-slavery blood in his veins." Again, don’t look for this in any Declaration Foundation or Claremont Institute publications.

Although the Declaration Foundation and the Claremont Institute are "conservative" organizations, they join hands with prominent hard-core leftists in distorting the real meaning of the Declaration of Independence. In Lincoln at Gettysburg the far-left journalist Garry Wills celebrates this "open air sleight of hand" and Lincoln’s use of military force to "remake America" in a way that made egalitarianism, rather than liberty, the prevailing political philosophy.

Left-of-Center Columbia University law professor George P. Fletcher concurs with Wills in Our Secret Constitution, where he praises Lincoln for "reinventing the United States" government from one whose main goal was the defense of liberty to "nationalism, egalitarianism, and democracy."

Over the past century nationalism has been the chief source of the wars that have killed millions of civilians; egalitarianism has helped create socialist and welfare states that have destroyed economy after economy; and unbridled democracy has decimated liberty. The Republican and Democratic parties have championed all of these things over the past century, and they use what Joseph Sobran has called the "Fantasy Lincoln" to help prop up their corrupt regimes.

Thomas J. DiLorenzo is the author of "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.

Ill wait for the movie.

Quoted: Quoted: The Civil War is over. (please post again when YOUR term(s) as U. S. President is over) WEBSTERS defines "Discussion": ......consideration of a question in open and usually informal debate.

BS ! Debate what ? Debate your already formed opinion (informally, of course) ?

Revisionist history is fun though, isn't it.

Quoted: Your post begs the question, "What do you think Lincoln should have done?" I expect the answer is "Let the wealthy land and slave owners in the south pull the  south out of the union so they could keep their slaves." Perhaps I missed it. Were referendums held in the south so all citizens could express their opinion on leaving the union or was the decision made by a few politicians and would-be aristocrats? So on the one hand we have bunch of wealthy slave owners wanting to keep their slaves at all cost and on the other a man who wanted to preserve the union and ultimately free the slaves. And you favor the wealthy slave owners? If you do, shame on you.

There's a bigger picture here than "And you favor the wealthy slave owners? If you do, shame on you."

It was the Confederates GOD GIVEN RIGHT to leave the "Union". And the COnfederate States tried to do so in a calm, legal manner.

Slavery was already on the way out in the South.

As for "wealthy slave owners"......there were STILL "wealthy slave owners" in the North during the Civil War.
Lincoln "freed the slaves" in the South but left slavery as a legal entity in the North. THERE'S a politician for you!

I suggest you read Dilorenzo's writings that I have posted here before you want to argue some more.

The Real Lincoln by DiLorenzo...very informative

Looks like we have a cut&paste warrior on our hands.

Quoted: Quoted: Your post begs the question, "What do you think Lincoln should have done?" I expect the answer is "Let the wealthy land and slave owners in the south pull the  south out of the union so they could keep their slaves." Perhaps I missed it. Were referendums held in the south so all citizens could express their opinion on leaving the union or was the decision made by a few politicians and would-be aristocrats? So on the one hand we have bunch of wealthy slave owners wanting to keep their slaves at all cost and on the other a man who wanted to preserve the union and ultimately free the slaves. And you favor the wealthy slave owners? If you do, shame on you. There's a bigger picture here than "And you favor the wealthy slave owners? If you do, shame on you." It was the Confederates GOD GIVEN RIGHT to leave the "Union". And the COnfederate States tried to do so in a calm, legal manner. Slavery was already on the way out in the South. As for "wealthy slave owners"......there were STILL "wealthy slave owners" in the North during the Civil War. Lincoln "freed the slaves" in the South but left slavery as a legal entity in the North. THERE'S a politician for you! I suggest you read Dilorenzo's writings that I have posted here before you want to argue some more.

I suggest you reread Dilorenzo then rethink the entire subject.

Did you record your conversation with God? The one in which he discussed the US constitution. Now that would be worth money!

Which of the northern states had not passed laws outlawing slavery?

Had the souther states set up a timetable for eliminating slavery? How did you determine it was on its way out?

I'll ask again, was the average southerner consulted on the war or did the wealthy landowners, slave holders and politicians make the decision for them?

Quoted: Blah...blah...blah... We're still one country and slavery has ended hasn't it? Okay then.... SGtar15

+1

Don't you idiots have a life? God must love backward looking fools. He seems to have made so many of them


But why the hell do they have to take up so much band width on the AR15 web site?


Those who use the intelligence that they were blessed with to reprise idiotic arguments that haven't been relevant since 1865, are an insult to God's grace.

The lie was that all men were created equal.  Its contemporaneous counterpart was that slavery was OK and that they were 3/5 of a free man.  It was irrational and schizophrenic to try and hold these two thoughts in your head at the same time.  I read DiLorenzo's book and was initially swayed by his story but it all needs to be understood in the largest possible picture.  Lincoln wasn't without fault but the preservation of the Union was the larger issue IMO.

I was taught the same as jeepster,  and the war didnt start about slavery. There are gonna be fists flying on this thread, im outta here.

Quoted: I ask this simple question: How can you FORCE a "Union"? The Confederacy tried to legally withdraw from the "Union" as they were entitled to do. .

You know, it was 150 years ago. Move on already. Allowing the Confederacy to leave would have destroyed the country, and we certainly would not have a USA anywhere close to what we have today, if at all, had we allowed it to occur. I would not want to live in some balkanized version of the USA where parts were allowed to join and leave at whim. We are one country, as we should be.Stop thinking provincially.

maybe its just me but it sure seems like he wants to DISCUSS, in a calm rational way the subject of abraham lincoln and all yall are stepping on his dick about it

Are you a part of that white supremacists group that gave our site an unfavorable review a while back? Stating we have a wealth of knowledge but that we aren't uplifted like the white supremacists are?  

Please stop spreading your bullshit under the guise of "getting the history right." How many of these authors of truth exposed books knew Lincoln? Like Lumpy said, I doubt you're here to talk about guns and are more than likely a troll starting shit.

Lincoln’s goal was to keep the country together...preserve the Union.  Period.  I do not have time and most likely will not read all the obscure speculation in the copy and pasted web sites.  BUT our ability to hold off foreign aggressors and the strength to develop into the country we are today is because of the fight to hold the nation together.  The Civil War...War Between the States...what ever was a very important time to settle the issue in history.  We have a representative democracy allows us to use a VOTE to impact the government.

Lincoln bashing for not allowing the South to leave is a narrow view of the country in 1850 (compromise...) in which a war was going to break out because the country was going to be held together at all cost.  

I will not even start with the “Radical Republicans of the time”…

My $0.02

Quoted: Quoted: Your post begs the question, "What do you think Lincoln should have done?" I expect the answer is "Let the wealthy land and slave owners in the south pull the  south out of the union so they could keep their slaves." Perhaps I missed it. Were referendums held in the south so all citizens could express their opinion on leaving the union or was the decision made by a few politicians and would-be aristocrats? So on the one hand we have bunch of wealthy slave owners wanting to keep their slaves at all cost and on the other a man who wanted to preserve the union and ultimately free the slaves. And you favor the wealthy slave owners? If you do, shame on you. There's a bigger picture here than "And you favor the wealthy slave owners? If you do, shame on you." It was the Confederates GOD GIVEN RIGHT to leave the "Union". And the COnfederate States tried to do so in a calm, legal manner. Slavery was already on the way out in the South. As for "wealthy slave owners"......there were STILL "wealthy slave owners" in the North during the Civil War. Lincoln "freed the slaves" in the South but left slavery as a legal entity in the North. THERE'S a politician for you! I suggest you read Dilorenzo's writings that I have posted here before you want to argue some more.

So you mean to tell me that this country would be better today if there the south left the union. When you go back and allow it to happen come back and post and tell me what it would be like today. Get busy .

I believe that the southern states had the perfect right to secede and form their own nation.  I also believe that Lincoln, realizing that two separate nations would be more easily destroyed by Europe (why do you think that England supported the Confederacy), invaded the CSA in order to preserve the Union.  The bottom line is the Union won, the Confederacy lost, and to the victor go the spoils.  Get over it; the people of the South have been treated far better than most conquered peoples have over the course of history.

another copy and paste

Quoted: Quoted: Your post begs the question, "What do you think Lincoln should have done?" I expect the answer is "Let the wealthy land and slave owners in the south pull the  south out of the union so they could keep their slaves." Perhaps I missed it. Were referendums held in the south so all citizens could express their opinion on leaving the union or was the decision made by a few politicians and would-be aristocrats? So on the one hand we have bunch of wealthy slave owners wanting to keep their slaves at all cost and on the other a man who wanted to preserve the union and ultimately free the slaves. And you favor the wealthy slave owners? If you do, shame on you. There's a bigger picture here than "And you favor the wealthy slave owners? If you do, shame on you." It was the Confederates GOD GIVEN RIGHT to leave the "Union". And the COnfederate States tried to do so in a calm, legal manner. Slavery was already on the way out in the South. As for "wealthy slave owners"......there were STILL "wealthy slave owners" in the North during the Civil War. Lincoln "freed the slaves" in the South but left slavery as a legal entity in the North. THERE'S a politician for you! I suggest you read Dilorenzo's writings that I have posted here before you want to argue some more.

Only a child could make this argument.

The South fought because the North invaded the South not because of slavery.

Lincoln invaded the South to keep the Union together not to stop slavery.

Did the South have a right to secede… Yes. Just because you can do something does not make that thing good, moral, or right.

Was Lincoln right to try and stop the South from seceding… Yes.

There is no indication slavery was on the way out in the South and every indication that it would have taken decades for slavery to end in the South.

To preach about the GOD GIVEN RIGHT of the South to secede takes an incredible amount of stupidity while ignoring the GOD GIVEN RIGHT OF ALL MEN TO BE FREE. The major sad fact of the Civil War is the North’s unwillingness to fight to free the slaves of the South but to fight for Union alone. To fight to oppose slavery WOULD HAVE BEEN the morally RIGHT thing to do.

Lincoln did the right, the necessary thing NO MATTER his motive.

Quoted: Whatever.

An eloquent response, revealing depth on thought and insightful historical analysis.

[golfclap][/golfclap]

Quoted: maybe its just me but it sure seems like he wants to DISCUSS, in a calm rational way the subject of abraham lincoln and all yall are stepping on his dick about it

Damn ! Pardon me ! I didn't know we couldn't "step on his dick" in GD !

Quoted: Quoted: maybe its just me but it sure seems like he wants to DISCUSS, in a calm rational way the subject of abraham lincoln and all yall are stepping on his dick about it Damn ! Pardon me ! I didn't know we couldn't "step on his dick" in GD !

by all means, continue.........................i have shitty judgement while sober anyway, but im working on it as we speak

whatever.  Most unionists just can't see past all the liberal bullshit they were taught in grade school.  The immortality of the union is nowhere expressed in the constitution.  It was a made up idea by Lincoln.

The reason we have such an overbearing powerful federal government today is because Lincoln destroyed the balance of power between the state and federal governments.  You read the constitution and tell me where it says the federal government has the power to prevent states that WILLINGLY joined of their own accord from leaving the union. Any power not expressly given to the federal government is RESERVED to the states or the people.  

Southern slavery was economically incompatible with the North.  The economics of free market and slavery can not exist side by side.  

Court rulings held "once a slave always a slave."  Slavery would be legal in the new states.  The Northern labor system, would be unable to compete surrounded by slave economies.

The war was about economics.  State's rights and the freedom of blacks were minor issues.

Something would have to change given the situation.

Quoted: arfcom...revising history, one post at a time! get over it, the south lost and lost badly. the war had everything to do with slavery and anyone that is an apologist or revisionist to that condition deserves zero respect.

::cough::bullshit::cough::

All I have to say is this guy really likes to hear himself talk!!!!!!!!!

I view with suspicion all "new" members who write lengthy posts like that. Or manage in 1 month to get like 1000 posts, +1 post whores!