Lincoln and the Moral Imagination.

[Picaro]

Lincoln showed what would happen when compromise dies...

Lincoln showed that corrupt sociopathic military dictators are prone to getting assassinated.

 

[Picaro]

Bismark showed his military prowess by defeating Napoleon the third...After that he wrote his own ticket...

Bismark also brought socialism to Germany before Hitler came on the scene.

He brought modern social safety net policies to a federation of disparate states, in attempts to promote a nationalist cohesion among them; Max Weber was also a key intellectual who helped that along. He and others brought along the idea of 'German race and culture' propaganda; a little too successful when this drive later played into the rise of Nazi propaganda. Not his fault, though, and a sense of nationalism is necessary to a country's survival and ability to govern themselves. Of course the first thing commies do is go after that nationalism and any morality at all, as you Democrats currently do, as part of destroying a country from within. I doubt you and the rest are going to be happy with the outcomes of your hatred for the U.S.; we saw how it worked out in the Russian Revolution, the rise of Mao, and in smaller places, like current Venezuela, where your heroes are in charge now.

 

[TheParser]

I am delighted to share this with interested parties:

"To say that Bismarck was a direct precursor of Hitler is evidently untrue; but it is not untrue, I think, to say that those aspects of the German character which made it possible for Bismarck to rule for just on thirty years were those same aspects which made it too easy for a Hitler to take power and keep it."


Source: Edward Crankshaw, Bismarck (New York: The Viking Press, 1981).

 

[Scamp]

Lincoln showed what would happen when compromise dies...

Lincoln showed that corrupt sociopathic military dictators are prone to getting assassinated.

You left out War Criminal.

 

[there4eyeM]

No Lincoln, no America.

 

[Scamp]

No Lincoln, no America.

Well after Lincoln's war, we had the USA, but no Lincoln.

 

[there4eyeM]

The war fought over illegal attempts to secede from the Perpetual Union was unfortunate, but not of Lincoln's making (just in case some objective viewer happens by this thread).
This poster refuses to repeat the tiresome exchanges already seen so many times on USMB.

 

[Scamp]

The war fought over illegal attempts to secede from the Perpetual Union was unfortunate, but not of Lincoln's making (just in case some objective viewer happens by this thread).
This poster refuses to repeat the tiresome exchanges already seen so many times on USMB.

Wrong. Secession of States was legal at the time. Nothing in the Constitution prohibited secession. As a matter of fact our country was born of secession. And the 10th Amendment says this..."The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
It was Lincoln's war which was Illegal.

 

[whitehall]

The B.S. pop history about the "north and the south" is meant for the eighth grade mentality. Lincoln kept the Union together by subordinating States rights to Federal power.

 

[Scamp]

We all lost when Imperial Subjugation won the war over States Rights.

 

[Inmar]

In September 1862, Otto von Bismarck, the new prime minister of Prussia, went to the Prussian Chamber of Deputies to confront the Budget Committee. His face still sunburned from a trip to the south of France, he urged the lawmakers not to waste time in political debate while Germany remained ununited. “It is not to Prussia’s liberalism that Germany looks,” he said, “but to its power. . . . It is not by means of speeches and majority resolutions that the great issues of the day will be decided—that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849—but by Eisen und Blut” (iron and blood).

Across the Atlantic, Abraham Lincoln reached a similar conclusion—or so Edmund Wilson argued in his 1962 book Patriotic Gore. In Wilson’s reading, Lincoln, too, had used “iron and blood” to achieve his goals: both he and Bismarck had “established a strong central government over hitherto loosely coordinated peoples. Lincoln kept the Union together by subordinating the South to the North; Bismarck imposed on the German states the cohesive hegemony of Prussia.” Other scholars have made the same argument more recently.

Was Wilson right to find a similarity of method and purpose in the two greatest statesmen of their age?

Lincoln and the Moral Imagination

In September 1862, Otto von Bismarck, the new prime minister of Prussia, went to the Prussian Chamber of Deputies to confront the Budget Committee. His face still sunburned from a trip to the south of France, he urged the lawmakers not to waste time in political debate while Germany remained ununited. “It is not to Prussia’s liberalism that Germany looks,” he said, “but to its power. . . . It is not by means of speeches and majority resolutions that the great issues of the day will be decided—that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849—but by Eisen und Blut” (iron and blood).

Across the Atlantic, Abraham Lincoln reached a similar conclusion—or so Edmund Wilson argued in his 1962 book Patriotic Gore. In Wilson’s reading, Lincoln, too, had used “iron and blood” to achieve his goals: both he and Bismarck had “established a strong central government over hitherto loosely coordinated peoples. Lincoln kept the Union together by subordinating the South to the North; Bismarck imposed on the German states the cohesive hegemony of Prussia.” Other scholars have made the same argument more recently.

Was Wilson right to find a similarity of method and purpose in the two greatest statesmen of their age?

Lincoln and the Moral Imagination

Lincoln was a racist. The us civil war was out-of-redistribution of land between slave owners, but not for the freedom of the black population. The southern States won first, but then the Northern States called the black population into the army. About Bismarck, we say that he was advised never to fight against Russia. He was a wise man, but the Germans did not listen to him.

 

[Picaro]

I am delighted to share this with interested parties:

"To say that Bismarck was a direct precursor of Hitler is evidently untrue; but it is not untrue, I think, to say that those aspects of the German character which made it possible for Bismarck to rule for just on thirty years were those same aspects which made it too easy for a Hitler to take power and keep it."


Source: Edward Crankshaw, Bismarck (New York: The Viking Press, 1981).

I would say the Versailles Treaty limiting the German Army to 100,000 armed men was the biggest single factor. Such a small number mad it impossible for the Army to play much of a role in shutting down the private armies formed during the Wiemar Republic. I will add that the Communists formed the first ones, and the right wingers formed in response to the Communists Not all of the right wingers were backed by the industrialists, certainly not the Nazis; the Nazis formed early bonds with the Junkers, via Goering's patronage. They were too left wing for the tastes of many industrialists, until Hitler felt strong enough to depose and murder the Strasserites in a response to the Nazi elections defeats in 1932 and switch his Party overnight to a 'right wing' political front.

Pretty much all sides scapegoated Jews, commies included. Himmler and Goebbels were both 'left wingers' for most of the Party's history. See the National Bolshevism article over at Wiki for an intro to the ins and outs of all that; I don't know where my link is and don't feel like hunting for it now.

 

[Picaro]

The war fought over illegal attempts to secede from the Perpetual Union was unfortunate, but not of Lincoln's making (just in case some objective viewer happens by this thread).
This poster refuses to repeat the tiresome exchanges already seen so many times on USMB.

Rubbish. Republican victories led directly to the introduction of The Homestead Act, followed by the horrendous Tariff Act, and in turn led directly to the secession. The Acts also split the Democratic Party, hence Buchanan's alleged ' worst President' status, an erroneous myth but a persistent one. Only one state had seceded over the bills, Buchanan provoked several more over reinforcing Sumter, and Lincoln, seeing the results of that, enthusiastically and deliberately did the same thing, provoking the rest to secede and starting the war via blockade. It was entirely all about money, protectionism, and vast subsidies for railroad speculators and massive corporate welfare programs, which is why it so cognitively dissonant for 'progressives' and alleged 'left wingers' to be such idiotic fans of the crook and his agenda.Lincoln's only major complaint was the South's schedule of tariffs was far lower than his, and threatened his cronies' subsidies and monopolies, and Yankee ports would lose their privileged trade positions and abilities to over-charge the South for shipping and financial loot, and of course far lower revenues for Lincoln's own big plans for canals and the like, all of which would only benefit his own state and the Midwest, his base.

Lincoln's great 'plan' for the 'freed' slaves was to keep them on the plantations and not allow them to leave without written permission for their owners; those that managed to flee to 'freedom' whenever the Union Army came through looting and murdering people was to force 'freed' slaves into 'property camps', where some 700,000 of them died, from starvation or the diseases due to malnutrition, whichever came first.

 

[TheParser]

I have always wondered whether another president (with a different personality) could have prevented secession without resorting to a four-year war that took the lives of hundreds of thousands of young men's lives.

The Civil War/ War Between The States and the disastrous Reconstruction period have left scars that still affect our nation today.

I respectfully disagree with the popular idea that President Lincoln was one of our greatest presidents.

 

[Scamp]

But Lincoln is considered a hero. The "great emancipator". He "freed the slaves".
How did the truth about Lincoln get so buried, and the fallacies rise to the top?

 

[Picaro]

Most of the Lincoln Myth distortions were because of the Todd family and their iron control of editorial rights over any books and articles written using their archives, and the cover up by Lincoln's secretaries who later became his 'court historians with vested interests in white washing his real legacy, and of course the major beneficiaries of his corporate welfare schemes and subsidies had their interests in selling the myth, too. the main reason modern hypocrites keep up the myth is merely to bash the South for voting Republican, which is ludicrous idiocy, trying to claim they're 'anti-slavery n stuff' when they had zero to do with freeing anybody from anything yet thinking they get some sort of moral high ground by babbling the rubbish, then claiming 'racissism' when smarter and better educated people point out they're full of shit.

For any in the Peanut Gallery who want toi see for themselves just how big an issue really slavery was in 1860 and after, all they need to do is go to archive.org or google ebooks and check out the collections of old newspapers from the era, northern and southern, You aren't going to find slavery to be a front page issue in the vast majority of them; most abolitionists were white nationalists,like Lincoln, and were opposed to letting any black people at all into the new territories and states, and of those who supported war against the South, few did so because of 'fightin slavery' and 'freein da balck man'.

 

[Scamp]

Most of the Lincoln Myth distortions were because of the Todd family and their iron control of editorial rights over any books and articles written using their archives, and the cover up by Lincoln's secretaries who later became his 'court historians with vested interests in white washing his real legacy, and of course the major beneficiaries of his corporate welfare schemes and subsidies had their interests in selling the myth, too. the main reason modern hypocrites keep up the myth is merely to bash the South for voting Republican, which is ludicrous idiocy, trying to claim they're 'anti-slavery n stuff' when they had zero to do with freeing anybody from anything yet thinking they get some sort of moral high ground by babbling the rubbish, then claiming 'racissism' when smarter and better educated people point out they're full of shit.

For any in the Peanut Gallery who want toi see for themselves just how big an issue really slavery was in 1860 and after, all they need to do is go to archive.org or google ebooks and check out the collections of old newspapers from the era, northern and southern, You aren't going to find slavery to be a front page issue in the vast majority of them; most abolitionists were white nationalists,like Lincoln, and were opposed to letting any black people at all into the new territories and states, and of those who supported war against the South, few did so because of 'fightin slavery' and 'freein da balck man'.

It's amazing that some people are clueless about Lincoln and also the real history of slavery in the US. Lincoln married into a prominent slave owning family. And there was slavery in the North from the beginning colonial days all the way until after the Civil War was over. I guess Northern schools don't teach true history. It really shows ignorance when someone blames slavery on the South or the Confederacy.

 

[MPS777]

Slavery in the Southern Press and Declarations of Secession

From:
The Union Is Dissolved!, 1860 | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
“A Spotlight on a Primary Source by The Charleston Mercury
The election of Abraham Lincoln as the sixteenth president of the United States in November 1860 led to the eventual secession of eleven slave-holding states and the formation of the Confederacy. Convinced that the federal government would initiate judicial and legal action against slavery, South Carolina became the first state to secede. Printed in Charleston, South Carolina, on December 20, 1860, this broadside announces South Carolina’s repeal of the Constitution of the United States and the state’s secession from the Union. "The Union Is Dissolved!" it declares. The Constitution of the new Confederacy would sanction the unrestricted right to hold slaves.”

From:
The Civil War of the United States: The Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln, January 1, 1863
“A special edition of the Louisville Daily Courier was detailed and direct in its message to non-slaveholders. The abolition of slavery would raise African Americans to "the level of the white race," and the poorest whites would be closest to the former slaves in both social and physical distance. . . .Then the article moved to the final and most emotionally-charged question of all. Would the non-slaveholders of the South be content to "AMALGAMATE TOGETHER THE TWO RACES IN VIOLATION OF GOD'S WILL." The conclusion was inevitable the article argued; non-slaveholders had much at stake in the maintenance of slavery and everything to lose by its abolition. African-American slavery was the only thing that stood between poor whites and the bottom of southern society where they would be forced to compete with and live among black people.”

From:
Rally on the High Ground: The National Park Service Symposium on the Civil War (Slavery and the Coming of the Civil War: A Matter for Interpretation)
“The Fugitive Slave Law was the immediate cause of the Civil War according to a number of southern states. Georgia seceded less than a month after South Carolina. Its governor, Joseph Brown, explained why Georgia seceded. He said that Lincoln was "a mere instrument of the great triumphant party [the Republican party], the principles of which are deadly hostile," not to states rights, not to tariffs, not to internal taxes, but "deadly hostile to the institution of slavery." One Georgia editorial confirmed what most white Georgians and most white southerners believed: "Negro slavery is the South and the South is Negro slavery." This is what they meant when they talked about the southern way of life. Editorial opinion in the Augusta Daily Constitution agreed: "our ideal is a pro-slavery republic," it said. When Alabama seceded, it sent Robert Hardy Smith to the provisional Confederate States Congress. In that body, Representative Smith set out the reasons why his state was leaving the United States. "The question of Negro slavery," he made clear, "has been the apple of discord in the government of the United States since its foundation." On this point, I agree completely with Representative Smith. Slavery was indeed the central divisive issue over which the Union had been broken, and I quote him again: "we have dissolved the late Union chiefly because of the Negro quarrel."
“The Kentucky Statesman, a newspaper in Lexington, warned its readers about the dangers of allowing any split between slave owners and non-slave holders. The newspaper contended that this was "the great lever by which the abolitionists hope to extirpate slavery in the states. Southerners must be careful not to fall victim to the propaganda that sought to raise suspicions that the non-slave holders would not stand for slavery." In reality, the newspaper argued, "the strongest pro-slavery men in this state are those who do not own one dollar in slave profit." The editors encouraged those who doubted this to "travel to the mountainous regions of the state," where one would find "thousands of as true southern men as tread the soil of cotton states with comparatively few slave owners among them." Significantly, pro-slavery men were equated with true southern men, for slavery was the essence of southern society. The newspaper contended that slave owners and non-slave owners alike "believe slavery to be right and socially beneficial." "The interest felt by non-slaveholders of the South in this question is not prompted by dollars and cents," the newspaper said, "but by a loyalty to the southern way of life."

Secession Declarations:
The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States | Civil War Trust
Georgia
“The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.”
Mississippi
“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.”
South Carolina
“The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.
The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.
The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.”
Texas
“Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?”
Virginia
“The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression; and the Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States.”

 

[Scamp]

It was the USA that made slavery legal. And slavery was supported by an act of Congress and a Supreme Court ruling just before the Civil War.

 

[Picaro]

Slavery in the Southern Press and Declarations of Secession

From:
The Union Is Dissolved!, 1860 | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
“A Spotlight on a Primary Source by The Charleston Mercury
The election of Abraham Lincoln as the sixteenth president of the United States in November 1860 led to the eventual secession of eleven slave-holding states and the formation of the Confederacy. Convinced that the federal government would initiate judicial and legal action against slavery, South Carolina became the first state to secede. Printed in Charleston, South Carolina, on December 20, 1860, this broadside announces South Carolina’s repeal of the Constitution of the United States and the state’s secession from the Union. "The Union Is Dissolved!" it declares. The Constitution of the new Confederacy would sanction the unrestricted right to hold slaves.”

From:
The Civil War of the United States: The Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln, January 1, 1863
“A special edition of the Louisville Daily Courier was detailed and direct in its message to non-slaveholders. The abolition of slavery would raise African Americans to "the level of the white race," and the poorest whites would be closest to the former slaves in both social and physical distance. . . .Then the article moved to the final and most emotionally-charged question of all. Would the non-slaveholders of the South be content to "AMALGAMATE TOGETHER THE TWO RACES IN VIOLATION OF GOD'S WILL." The conclusion was inevitable the article argued; non-slaveholders had much at stake in the maintenance of slavery and everything to lose by its abolition. African-American slavery was the only thing that stood between poor whites and the bottom of southern society where they would be forced to compete with and live among black people.”

From:
Rally on the High Ground: The National Park Service Symposium on the Civil War (Slavery and the Coming of the Civil War: A Matter for Interpretation)
“The Fugitive Slave Law was the immediate cause of the Civil War according to a number of southern states. Georgia seceded less than a month after South Carolina. Its governor, Joseph Brown, explained why Georgia seceded. He said that Lincoln was "a mere instrument of the great triumphant party [the Republican party], the principles of which are deadly hostile," not to states rights, not to tariffs, not to internal taxes, but "deadly hostile to the institution of slavery." One Georgia editorial confirmed what most white Georgians and most white southerners believed: "Negro slavery is the South and the South is Negro slavery." This is what they meant when they talked about the southern way of life. Editorial opinion in the Augusta Daily Constitution agreed: "our ideal is a pro-slavery republic," it said. When Alabama seceded, it sent Robert Hardy Smith to the provisional Confederate States Congress. In that body, Representative Smith set out the reasons why his state was leaving the United States. "The question of Negro slavery," he made clear, "has been the apple of discord in the government of the United States since its foundation." On this point, I agree completely with Representative Smith. Slavery was indeed the central divisive issue over which the Union had been broken, and I quote him again: "we have dissolved the late Union chiefly because of the Negro quarrel."
“The Kentucky Statesman, a newspaper in Lexington, warned its readers about the dangers of allowing any split between slave owners and non-slave holders. The newspaper contended that this was "the great lever by which the abolitionists hope to extirpate slavery in the states. Southerners must be careful not to fall victim to the propaganda that sought to raise suspicions that the non-slave holders would not stand for slavery." In reality, the newspaper argued, "the strongest pro-slavery men in this state are those who do not own one dollar in slave profit." The editors encouraged those who doubted this to "travel to the mountainous regions of the state," where one would find "thousands of as true southern men as tread the soil of cotton states with comparatively few slave owners among them." Significantly, pro-slavery men were equated with true southern men, for slavery was the essence of southern society. The newspaper contended that slave owners and non-slave owners alike "believe slavery to be right and socially beneficial." "The interest felt by non-slaveholders of the South in this question is not prompted by dollars and cents," the newspaper said, "but by a loyalty to the southern way of life."

Secession Declarations:
The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States | Civil War Trust
Georgia
“The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.”
Mississippi
“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.”
South Carolina
“The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.
The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.
The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.”
Texas
“Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?”
Virginia
“The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression; and the Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States.”

And what? Oh yeah, we forgot papers only published one story per year, so this proves it's all they ever talked about. lol