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Berzerker
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topeka, kansas,USA
May 1999
time: 23:17
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Found this over at Newsmax:
The Mythical Lincoln
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
Every February 12 Americans think they are celebrating Lincoln’s birthday. But what they are really celebrating is the birth of the Leviathan state that Lincoln, more than anyone else, is responsible for bringing about. No wonder federal politicos have made his birth date a national holiday, engraved his face is on Mount Rushmore, built a Venus-like statue of him in Washington, D.C., and put his mugshot on the five dollar bill.
More than 130 years of government propaganda has hidden this fact from the American people by creating a Mythical Lincoln that never existed. Take, for instance, the fact that everyone supposedly knows – that Lincoln was an abolitionist. This would be a surprise to the preeminent Lincoln scholar, Pulitzer prize-winning Lincoln biographer David Donald, who in his 1961 book, Lincoln Reconsidered, wrote that "Lincoln was not an abolitionist." And he wasn’t. He was glad to accept on behalf of the Republican Party any votes from abolitionists, but real abolitionists despised him. William Lloyd Garrison, the most prominent of all abolitionists, concluded that Lincoln "had not a drop of anti-slavery blood in his veins."
Garrison knew Lincoln well. He knew that Lincoln stated over and over again for his entire adult life that he did not believe in social or political equality of the races, he opposed inter-racial marriage, supported the Illinois constitution’s prohibition of immigration of blacks into the state, once defended in court a slaveowner seeking to retrieve his runaway slaves but never defended a runaway, and that he was a lifelong advocate of colonization – of sending every last black person in the U.S. to Africa, Haiti, or central America – anywhere but in the U.S.
Garrison and other abolitionists were also keenly aware that the January 1863 Emancipation Proclamation freed no one since it specifically exempted all the areas that at the time were occupied by federal armies. That is, all areas where slaves could actually have been freed.
Historians have portrayed the Mythical Lincoln as a man who brooded for decades over how he could someday free the slaves. Nothing could be more absurd. According to Roy Basler, the editor of Lincoln’s Collected Works, Lincoln never even mentioned slavery in a speech until 1854, and even then, says Basler, he was not sincere.
When Lincoln first entered state politics in 1832 he announced that he was doing so for three reasons: To help enact the Whig Party agenda of protectionist tariffs, corporate welfare subsidies for railroad and canal-building corporations ("internal improvements"), and a government monopolization of the nation’s money supply. "My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance," he declared: "I am in favor of a national bank . . . the internal improvements system, and a high protective tariff." He was a devoted mercantilist, and remained so for his entire political life. He was single-mindedly devoted to Henry Clay and his political agenda (mentioned above), which Clay called "The American System."
Lincoln once announced that his career ambition was not to free the slaves but to become "the DeWitt Clinton of Illinois." DeWitt Clinton was the governor of New York in the early nineteenth century who is credited with having introduced the spoils system to America and supervising the building of the Erie Canal (which became defunct in a mere ten years because of the invention of the railroad).
Lincoln is also portrayed as a champion of the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence, especially the statement that "all men are created equal." Political scientist Harry Jaffa has written an entire book along this theme. But this is hard to square with his statement during the Lincoln-Douglas debates that "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, Lincoln did not believe that any two men were ever created equal.
Moreover, Lincoln destroyed the most important principle of the Declaration – the principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Southerners no longer consented to being governed by Washington, D.C. in 1860, and Lincoln put an end to that idea by having his armies slaughter 300,000 of them, including one out of every four white males between 20 and 40. Standardizing for today’s population, that would be the equivalent of around 3 million American deaths, or roughly 60 times the number of Americans who died in Vietnam.
As H.L. Mencken said of the Gettysburg Address, in which Lincoln absurdly claimed that Northern soldiers were fighting for the cause of self determination ("that government of the people . . . should not perish . . .": "It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. The Confederates went into the battle free; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision of the rest of the country."
Another Lincoln myth was that he "saved the Constitution." But this claim is an outrage considering that Lincoln acted like a dictator for the duration of his administration and showed nothing but bitter contempt for the Constitution. Even Lincoln’s idolaters, like historian Clinton Rossiter, author of the book, Constitutional Dictatorship, referred to him as a "great dictator" who had an "amazing disregard for the Constitution . . . that was considered by nobody as legal."
The Dictator Lincoln invaded the South without the consent of Congress, as called for in the Constitution; declared martial law; blockaded Southern ports without a declaration of war, as required by the Constitution; illegally suspended the writ of habeas corpus; imprisoned without trial thousands of Northern anti-war protesters, including hundreds of newspaper editors and owners; censored all newspaper and telegraph communication; nationalized the railroads; created three new states without the consent of the citizens of those states in order to artificially inflate the Republican Party’s electoral vote; ordered Federal troops to interfere with Northern elections to assure Republican Party victories; deported Ohio Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham for opposing his domestic policies (especially protectionist tariffs and income taxation) on the floor of the House of Representatives; confiscated private property, including firearms, in violation of the Second Amendment; and effectively gutted the Tenth and Ninth Amendments as well.
As Dean Sprague correctly pointed out in Freedom Under Lincoln, all of these dictatorial acts were bad enough, but their real, long-term effect was to "lay the groundwork" for such unprecedented acts of coercion as military conscription and income taxation.
Hundreds of books have been written about Lincoln the humanitarian, a soft and gentle man. But from the very beginning of his administration he intentionally waged a cruel and unbelievably bloody war on civilians as well as soldiers. As early as 1861, Federal soldiers looted, pillaged, raped and plundered their way through Virginia and other Southern states, completely burning to the ground the towns of Jackson and Meridian, Mississippi, Randolph, Tennessee, and others. Historian Jeffrey Rogers Hummel estimates that some 50,000 Southern civilians were killed during the war, and this number, even if it is exaggerated by a multiple of two, most likely includes thousands of slaves. In his March to the Sea, General William Tecumseh Sherman boasted of having destroyed $100 million in private property and that his "soldiers" carried home another $20 million worth.
In his memoirs Sherman wrote that when he met with Lincoln after his March to the Sea was completed, Lincoln was eager to hear the stories of how thousands of Southern civilians, mostly women, children, and old men, were plundered, sometimes murdered, and rendered homeless. Lincoln, according to Sherman, laughed almost uncontrollably at the stories. Even Sherman biographer Lee Kennett, who writes very favorably of the general, concluded that had the Confederates won the war, they would have been "justified in stringing up President Lincoln and the entire Union high command for violation of the laws of war, specifically for waging war against noncombatants."
Henry Clay’s American System had been vetoed as unconstitutional by virtually every president beginning with James Madison. But as soon as Lincoln took office, with the Southern Democrats absent from Congress, it was finally put into place, literally at gunpoint. In 1857 the average tariff rate was 15 percent, according to Frank Taussig’s classic, A Tariff History of the United States. The Morrill Tariff more than tripled that rate to 47 percent and it remained at that level for decades.
The National Currency Acts nationalized the banking system, finally, and lavish subsidies to railroad-building corporations generated the corruption and scandals of the Grant administrations, just as Southern statesmen had predicted for decades. Income taxation was introduced for the first time, along with an internal revenue bureaucracy that has never diminished in size. All of these policies put a great centralizing force into motion and were the genesis of the centralized, despotic state that Americans labor under today.
The biggest cost of the Lincoln’s war was the death of federalism and states’ rights, the value of which was expressed by John C. Calhoun several decades earlier when he said: "The great conservative principle of our system is in the people of the States, as parties to the Constitutional compact, and our opponents that it is in the supreme court . . . . Without a full practical recognition of the rights and sovereignty of the States, our union and liberty must perish." And they did.
February 12, 2002
Thomas J. DiLorenzo [send him mail] is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland. His latest book is The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (Forum/Random House, March 2002).
Copyright 2002 LewRockwell.com
http://www.leagueofthesouth.com http://www.southernparty2000.org
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David Floyd
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The bottom of a large bottle of beer
Jan 1970
time: 05:17
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That article is absolutely right. Lincoln is one of the worst presidents in American history, and I'd call John Wilkes Booth a hero who acted too late.
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David Floyd
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The bottom of a large bottle of beer
Jan 1970
time: 05:17
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True Dino, but that doesn't change the fact that Lincoln needed to be eliminated.
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David Floyd
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The bottom of a large bottle of beer
Jan 1970
time: 05:17
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Consider it annexation of territory then. |
That doesn't make it any more Constitutional - and besides, it was not a willing annexation by the South, so even if you use that argument it won't work on that basis. 
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Do we judge by thoughts or deeds? Lincoln, whether he believed himself or not, managed to bring about the greatest change to the United States since the revolution. Where would we be without abolition? |
I suppose the ends justify the means then.
So it was OK for the US to pretty much wipe out the Indians, because hell, where would the world be without the US to help them in the world wars, eh? 
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You people who are so protective of the south also forget one thing - if popular soverignty was really the case, and if the southern states were really upholding the liberty of its people, than why did the majority of people in the south (the slaves ) not have the ability to vote? After all, they're people too, why not have them vote? Oh that's right, the south has an ugly side to it as well that extends before and LONG after the civil war and reconstruction ended. |
They were not citizens, and were not recognized as such by either the United States or Confederate Constitutions.
They were slaves, and while that is wrong, they did not have the right to vote in federal elections because of the US Constitution, and the individual states had the power to grant them voting rights within that state only - NONE of which did at the time.
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orange
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It doesn't matter what your name is!
Feb 2000
time: 00:17
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quote:
Originally posted by David Floyd
That doesn't make it any more Constitutional - and besides, it was not a willing annexation by the South, so even if you use that argument it won't work on that basis. |
I'm not saying it was constitutional or not, I'm saying you lost - get over it.
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I suppose the ends justify the means then. |
In some cases, it does.
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So it was OK for the US to pretty much wipe out the Indians, because hell, where would the world be without the US to help them in the world wars, eh? |
Not the same thing
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They were not citizens, and were not recognized as such by either the United States or Confederate Constitutions.
They were slaves, and while that is wrong, they did not have the right to vote in federal elections because of the US Constitution, and the individual states had the power to grant them voting rights within that state only - NONE of which did at the time. |
One could argue that slavery was just as unconstitutional as the north ignoring the 'popular soverignty' of the south 
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orange
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It doesn't matter what your name is!
Feb 2000
time: 00:17
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quote:
Originally posted by David Floyd
So you don't dispute the fact that the North's war effort and related things were unconstitutional, then? |
did you read it? I said....
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I'm not saying it was constitutional or not, I'm saying you lost - get over it. |
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Yeah? Name one. Because that philosophy is, IMO, morally reprehensible. |
If you kill one person to save 100 lives
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Sure it is. It's another case of the end justifying the means, right? |
No, it's different than a part of the nation seceeding than tribes being assimilated into the nation. I'm not saying it was right, I'm just saying there are two different scenarios and you can't compare them as the same.
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No one couldn't. Slavery was a State Right under the 10th Amendment |
Look, lets not make this another 10 page State's rights issue. Because your logic on that will always seem flawed to me. You can't specify where soverignty begins and ends, you say it's ok at the state level but not at the local level, and certianly not at the federal level. Well that logic doesn't jive in life.
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Well, I certainly wouldn't object to Texas seceding  |
Good, then we can invade your asses again 
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David Floyd
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The bottom of a large bottle of beer
Jan 1970
time: 05:17
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If you kill one person to save 100 lives |
So if you know for a fact that 100 people will die, unless you kill a random person on the street who's done nothing to you, killing that person is OK?
What if that person is you? Does someone have the right to take your life, without asking you first?
I say no, under no circumstances.
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No, it's different than a part of the nation seceeding than tribes being assimilated into the nation. I'm not saying it was right, I'm just saying there are two different scenarios and you can't compare them as the same. |
Of course they're different, but you can make an "end justifies the means" argument for each one.
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Look, lets not make this another 10 page State's rights issue. Because your logic on that will always seem flawed to me. You can't specify where soverignty begins and ends, you say it's ok at the state level but not at the local level, and certianly not at the federal level. Well that logic doesn't jive in life. |
Lookit. Local rights, or whatever, aren't even relevant, because those are set out in State Constitution.
The difference between State and Federal power, though, is CLEARLY defined in the 10th Amendment. The States can do ANYTHING not expressly prohibited them.
However, since the federal government has no such amendment granting it a blanket power of being able to do everything not prohibited, it must be that the federal government can only do what is expressly GRANTED in Article 1 Section 8, and a coupla other places in the Constitution.
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orange
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It doesn't matter what your name is!
Feb 2000
time: 00:17
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quote:
Originally posted by David Floyd
So if you know for a fact that 100 people will die, unless you kill a random person on the street who's done nothing to you, killing that person is OK?
What if that person is you? Does someone have the right to take your life, without asking you first?
I say no, under no circumstances. |
Again, different scenario different issue.
If a guy has on a bomb and is about to walk into a school, and you've got the shot - you take the shot. Is it murder - maybe so...but you've just saved many many lives.
There would be no issue where you would have prior knowledge that some random person's existance would be the downfall of many...so unless you want to bring time travel into this debate, I don't see how it's relevant.
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Of course they're different, but you can make an "end justifies the means" argument for each one. |
Not with one broad brush you can't.
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Lookit. Local rights, or whatever, aren't even relevant, because those are set out in State Constitution. |
They're relevant on principle. If you can say that Federal government has no right to tell states what to do, than I ask you what right do states have to tell local government what to do, or local government to tell individuals what they can and can't do. Where does it end DF? Your logic gives states way to much power, and it just won't work in a nation like ours. We can't have 50 different voices arguing about certain issues and each one having a different opinion. Sometimes you've gotta have an overlying authority to listen to them all and make the right choice. That's what representative democracy is all about. Sorry states don't always get their way, that's just how it works...but we're better off because of it. Maybe that's another ends justifying means argument, but I don't care, because once again this is something I support. The Constituion was written when the biggest states were New York and North Carolina, and when the nation was the eastern seaboard and nothing more, so have some flexibility when it comes to these issues.
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The difference between State and Federal power, though, is CLEARLY defined in the 10th Amendment. The States can do ANYTHING not expressly prohibited them. |
See above
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However, since the federal government has no such amendment granting it a blanket power of being able to do everything not prohibited, it must be that the federal government can only do what is expressly GRANTED in Article 1 Section 8, and a coupla other places in the Constitution. |
Oh boy, back to the Constitution again...
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David Floyd
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The bottom of a large bottle of beer
Jan 1970
time: 05:17
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quote:
Again, different scenario different issue.
If a guy has on a bomb and is about to walk into a school, and you've got the shot - you take the shot. Is it murder - maybe so...but you've just saved many many lives.
There would be no issue where you would have prior knowledge that some random person's existance would be the downfall of many...so unless you want to bring time travel into this debate, I don't see how it's relevant. |
That's not a proper ends justifies the means argument.
An "end justifies the means" argument would be saying that you are going to do something bad in order to effect something good.
Killing someone about to walk into a school and bomb it is not bad by any sense of the word.
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Not with one broad brush you can't.
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The argument is pretty much the same.
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They're relevant on principle. If you can say that Federal government has no right to tell states what to do, than I ask you what right do states have to tell local government what to do, or local government to tell individuals what they can and can't do. Where does it end DF? Your logic gives states way to much power, and it just won't work in a nation like ours. We can't have 50 different voices arguing about certain issues and each one having a different opinion. Sometimes you've gotta have an overlying authority to listen to them all and make the right choice. That's what representative democracy is all about. Sorry states don't always get their way, that's just how it works...but we're better off because of it. Maybe that's another ends justifying means argument, but I don't care, because once again this is something I support. The Constituion was written when the biggest states were New York and North Carolina, and when the nation was the eastern seaboard and nothing more, so have some flexibility when it comes to these issues. |
You don't like how the Constitution is written? Fine, there's a method to change it.
See above.
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Oh boy, back to the Constitution again... |
Yep, and it's only the most important document in American government.
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17-02-2002 11:16
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