Today is Abraham Lincoln's birthday

[beachbum81]

Happy birthday to one of the most important historical figures in American history.

 

[laughinReaper]

Happy B-day to a dead President who is on my money. Make it rain...

 

[Sunshine]

"The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history...the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination – that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. 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." - H. L. Mencken

Note on the Gettysburg Address

Like most everything else Mencken, It was brilliantly put but totally wrong. Most of the southern populace voted to stay in. It was the aristocracy that took them out in the conventions.

The southern leadership was determined to set the US for the same fate as Poland 80 years before.

When I had the opportunity to learn a lot about history I wasn't too keen on it, and having to put the daily meat and potatoes on the table in later years, has precluded it. I wish I knew more about the Civil War (The War of Northern Aggression - there was nothing civil about it). I know a little from the perspective if where I am. After the war, the slaves my great grandfather owned did not leave, they stayed on and are buried in a cemetery next to our old family cemetery. My grandfather knew them as a child and he was anal about that cemetery being kept up. I want to put a monument there so it won't be forgotten when those of us who remembered my grandfather are gone. Southern plantations are on a lot of 'trip tics' but they pretend there were no slaves and they sure don't show you the slave cemetery, if they even know where it is now. I can assure you there was one for every plantation.

History tells us that KY was "neutral". That is a bit of a misnomer. Politically, maybe, but personally Kentucky was divided. Families were divided. There is a book: Jack Hinson's One-Man War by Tom McKinney. This book tells of Jack Hinson who left his home to become a sniper. He gave his house to his slaves when he left. Union soldiers came and burned it down and the slaves were then homeless. That, and other acts like it is what tipped the balance in the southern part of KY toward the Confederate side. The union didn't care about those people. Not a single one of them. Of you read the work of W.E.B. DuBois, himself a black man, you will read of how many slaves starved and froze to death after they were 'freed.' They didn't know how to take care of themselves. An the winters took a toll on their numbers. When they arrived in the 'north' the government had no idea what to do with them so they sent them back to the plantations. That particular black author states in his writing that more years of slaver would have been preferable to what actually happened. Of course it is the SAME government we have now, going to war with countries with no plan for the people there, and in reality, now just like then, they really don't give a shit. They rush in, burn things down, and leave. Just like they did then. Lincoln is no great hero to the blacks I am friends with.

And I think when one recognizes that only the southern slaves were freed, it is abundantly clear that the war was not about 'slavery.' If it had been about slavery, then Lincoln would have freed ALL the slaves, and not just the southern slaves.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Really? How long would we last as a nation if every group large and small decided it wants out, and we just let 'em go? All these nutjob militia groups saying they won't pay taxes and are not subject to the same laws as the rest of us, you're okay with that? Awhile back people made jokes about Rick Perry saying Texas might secede from the Union; he wasn't being serious, but what if he was? What if California says fuck you, we're going to print our own currency and setup our own independent gov't, you okay with that? You want anarchy? Letting every group do their own thing is an excellent way to get anarchy.

You say the Union soldiers fought against self-determination; wonder if the slaves at the time would agree. What about their right to self-determination?

What if California wants to secede from the Union? I live in Ohio. Who am I to tell them they can't? So the scenario is California seceding into its own independent government, and somehow that translates to me wanting anarchy? I don't think you know what anarchy is.

I'm sure those slaves would agree, since the Union wasn't fighting to free the slaves. Or maybe they wouldn't. I'm guessing they weren't exactly kept in the loop about what was going on.

Oh, I suspect most of those slaves knew what was going on. Miilions of 'em went north during the war and many of 'em fought on the union side during the war. When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, that made it a war of freedom for them. And Lincoln wanted it that way.

Didn't say anything about you wanting anarchy, dude. But if you're going to allow a state, city, county, or some religious group or militia outfit decide they want to secede from the union and not follow our laws any more, that sounds like anarchy to me.

If Lincoln wanted it that way then why didn't he "emancipate" the slaves in the five border states, or in areas of the Confederacy that were under the control of the Union army like New Orleans? The truth is that Lincoln simply used the Emancipation Proclamation as a tool to try to hurt the Confederacy. He even gave them the chance to rejoin the Union and he'd leave slavery alone. Certainly many slaves fought for the Union, but many also fought for the Confederacy.

You implied that I wanted "anarchy," or at least your strained definition of anarchy.

 

[Dragon]

Lincoln, to start with, had no authority to free slaves in Union states. He might have done so in Union-held Confederate territory, though.

I know of no black Confederate soldiers. Where did you get that?

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Lincoln, to start with, had no authority to free slaves in Union states. He might have done so in Union-held Confederate territory, though.

I know of no black Confederate soldiers. Where did you get that?

Lincoln had no authority to do many of the things that he did.

Confederacy approves black soldiers — History.com This Day in History — 3/13/1865

There's plenty of information if you Google it.

 

[Jos]

Today is also the anniversary of the death of captain Cook in the Sandwich Islands
James Cook - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Dragon]

Lincoln had no authority to do many of the things that he did.

Sure he did. There's Constitutional authority, and then there's he-can-get-away-with-it authority. He had neither kind of authority to free slaves in Maryland, Kentucky, or D.C. The Constitution grants the president no such power, and if he'd tried to do it there would have been hell to pay.

Thanks for the link re black Confederate soldiers. I did a search for the topic as you suggested, and here is what I found:

The Myth Of Black Confederate Soldiers - Ta-Nehisi Coates - Entertainment - The Atlantic

Whenever someone finds out I'm reading about the Civil War (off blog, I mean) they feel obliged to inform me that black people fought for the Confederacy. From what I can tell, this is basically false. It's true, in the early stages of the War, some regiments made up of free blacks tried to form, but they were promptly refused.

The Native Guard in Louisiana mustered, but basically ended up serving on the side of the Union. And then at the very end of the War, Lee, in desperate straits, consented to raising a black regiment. But they never fought either. Moreover, there are scattered reports of black slaves doing things like fighting in defense of their master, but certainly nothing approaching the USCT.

And also this:

Did blacks fight in combat for the Confederacy? « The Civil War Gazette

In short, if one sticks solely to the historical record for primary evidence of the black soldier picking up arms and fighting for the South, one can only conclude that the support for such a claim is scanty at best – merely anecdoctal – and entirely unsubstantiated at worst. Instead of the widely claimed and purported number of 30,000 fighting black soldiers for the Confederacy, an honest look at the historical record leads one to the conclusion that as little as under a hundred to as many as several hundred blacks may have actually engaged in combat for the South during the Civil War by actually carrying and discharging a weapon. How to interpret that evidence – or lack thereof – is left to the professional and armchair historians to debate.

It is widely accepted by historians that perhaps as many as 200,000 blacks served in the Union Army. That is a sizable number when one realizes that only 750,000 to 900,000 men even fought for the South during the entire Civil War.

So while the matter was debated among Confederate leaders in the last, desperate time of the war, it doesn't look like the idea ever amounted to much, if anything.

 

[JScott]

Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter Trailer - YouTube

 

[JWBooth]

"The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history...the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination – that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. 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." - H. L. Mencken

Note on the Gettysburg Address

Like most everything else Mencken, It was brilliantly put but totally wrong. Most of the southern populace voted to stay in. It was the aristocracy that took them out in the conventions.

The southern leadership was determined to set the US for the same fate as Poland 80 years before.

In those states where it was put to an election, the voters overwhelmingly voted to go out.

 

[JWBooth]

 

[Sunshine]

"The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history...the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination – that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. 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." - H. L. Mencken

Note on the Gettysburg Address

Really? How long would we last as a nation if every group large and small decided it wants out, and we just let 'em go? All these nutjob militia groups saying they won't pay taxes and are not subject to the same laws as the rest of us, you're okay with that? Awhile back people made jokes about Rick Perry saying Texas might secede from the Union; he wasn't being serious, but what if he was? What if California says fuck you, we're going to print our own currency and setup our own independent gov't, you okay with that? You want anarchy? Letting every group do their own thing is an excellent way to get anarchy.

You say the Union soldiers fought against self-determination; wonder if the slaves at the time would agree. What about their right to self-determination?

You should read a little W.E.B Dubois, a black writer. He wrote of how many who 'went north' froze and starved to death. "The north" didn't know what to do with them, so they sent them back to the plantations. DuBois wrote that more years of slavery would have been preferable.

Tell yourself whatever makes you feel warm and fuzzy about that war. That doesn't mean you are correct.

 

[The Gadfly]

Lincoln had no authority to do many of the things that he did.

Sure he did. There's Constitutional authority, and then there's he-can-get-away-with-it authority. He had neither kind of authority to free slaves in Maryland, Kentucky, or D.C. The Constitution grants the president no such power, and if he'd tried to do it there would have been hell to pay.

Thanks for the link re black Confederate soldiers. I did a search for the topic as you suggested, and here is what I found:

The Myth Of Black Confederate Soldiers - Ta-Nehisi Coates - Entertainment - The Atlantic

Whenever someone finds out I'm reading about the Civil War (off blog, I mean) they feel obliged to inform me that black people fought for the Confederacy. From what I can tell, this is basically false. It's true, in the early stages of the War, some regiments made up of free blacks tried to form, but they were promptly refused.

The Native Guard in Louisiana mustered, but basically ended up serving on the side of the Union. And then at the very end of the War, Lee, in desperate straits, consented to raising a black regiment. But they never fought either. Moreover, there are scattered reports of black slaves doing things like fighting in defense of their master, but certainly nothing approaching the USCT.

And also this:

Did blacks fight in combat for the Confederacy? « The Civil War Gazette

In short, if one sticks solely to the historical record for primary evidence of the black soldier picking up arms and fighting for the South, one can only conclude that the support for such a claim is scanty at best – merely anecdoctal – and entirely unsubstantiated at worst. Instead of the widely claimed and purported number of 30,000 fighting black soldiers for the Confederacy, an honest look at the historical record leads one to the conclusion that as little as under a hundred to as many as several hundred blacks may have actually engaged in combat for the South during the Civil War by actually carrying and discharging a weapon. How to interpret that evidence – or lack thereof – is left to the professional and armchair historians to debate.

It is widely accepted by historians that perhaps as many as 200,000 blacks served in the Union Army. That is a sizable number when one realizes that only 750,000 to 900,000 men even fought for the South during the entire Civil War.

So while the matter was debated among Confederate leaders in the last, desperate time of the war, it doesn't look like the idea ever amounted to much, if anything.

Really? Then instead of looking at modern revisionist sources, perhaps you should look at accounts from the time. Attention is specifically invited to the following, from Frederick Douglass (hardly a pro-Confederate source) October, 1861: "There are at present in the Confederate Army, Colored men, doing duty not only as cooks, laborers, and teamsters, but as real soldiers, with muskets on their shoulders and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down loyal troops, and do all that soldiers may do, to destroy the government of the United States and advance that of the traitors and rebels. There were such men at Manassas, and they are probably there yet". Mr. Douglass was at the time resident in Washington City, and if he did not personally witness that engagement, and observe the armed Black Confederates present, he had ample opportunity to speak with those who did.

Further, there are NUMEROUS accounts contained in the Official Records, War of the Rebellion (the U.S. War Department's own official history of the conflict as compiled from Union and Confederate dispatches, after action reports, etc.), of Union officers reporting engagements with Confederate troops which included large numbers of Black Confederate soldiers. Quoting in part from one, by LTC Parkhurst, 9th Michigan Infantry: "The Georgia and Texas troops were accompanied by a force of some 300-600 Negroes...these were seedy in appearance but no more so then the rest of the rebels....they were fully armed and equipped, and participated in the several engagements with my troops during the course of the battle...". There are other similar accounts in the Official Records, which I note is considered a reliable PRIMARY HISTORICAL SOURCE by professional historians. The Official Records run to several library shelves of volumes, but are available in any good research library, often in a computer-searchable CD format. I suggest you peruse same; what you find therein may surprise you.

In any event, do not expect me, as a proud Southerner, to celebrate Mr. Lincoln's birthday. The man was a dictator, a tyrant, a usurper, a constitutional criminal and a bloodthirsty butcher; a man who condoned and ordered war crimes repugnant to the conscience of any professional soldier, then or now. This is a man who, along with Edwin Stanton, howled with laughter and slapped his knee in joy on reading Sherman's reports of his atrocities against Southern civilians, Black and White alike. If I do go to hell for anything I've done, I will make it my personal mission to hunt down his vile, filthy soul, and kick the same from one end of hades to the other. I'll forgive that monster, when the Irish forgive Cromwell, and the Jews forgive Hitler; he was as nasty and despicable as either!

 

[Dragon]

Really? Then instead of looking at modern revisionist sources

I dispute that they are "revisionist," particularly since they are upholding the standard historical narrative, which is the antithesis of "revisionism." In fact, it's those who are asserting that blacks did serve in significant numbers in the Confederate army that are the revisionists. Which does not automatically mean they're wrong, but it sure looks like they are.

Attention is specifically invited to the following, from Frederick Douglass (hardly a pro-Confederate source)

Well, no, he was hardly a pro-Confederate source, but by the same token, he was also hardly a source with access to Confederate Army records. Nor was he himself serving in the war, which might have put him in combat against black Confederate soldiers if there had been any. In short -- what reason do we have to believe that he knew what he was talking about here? I don't find your reasoning compelling, especially since the assertion that black soldiers served in the Confederate army as early as Manassas is quite incredible. That's an extraordinary claim, and requires extraordinary proof, and a statement by Mr. Douglass does not qualify, particularly since he was surely saying this in the context of advocating for black service in the U.S. Army, which the Union permitted only fairly late in the war.

As for the alleged original records that show this happening, please provide references, and links if such are available.

In any event, do not expect me, as a proud Southerner, to celebrate Mr. Lincoln's birthday.

Fine. But frankly, considering the cause of the secession, you might reflect on the fact that this dictator, tyrant, or whatever was conjured from the sins of the South, without which he would have had only a small fraction of the power that he exercised. When a nation is divided and a civil war begun for the ignoble purpose of keeping people in chains and bondage, those responsible are in no good moral position to complain.

 

[The Gadfly]

Really? Then instead of looking at modern revisionist sources

I dispute that they are "revisionist," particularly since they are upholding the standard historical narrative, which is the antithesis of "revisionism." In fact, it's those who are asserting that blacks did serve in significant numbers in the Confederate army that are the revisionists. Which does not automatically mean they're wrong, but it sure looks like they are.

Attention is specifically invited to the following, from Frederick Douglass (hardly a pro-Confederate source)

Well, no, he was hardly a pro-Confederate source, but by the same token, he was also hardly a source with access to Confederate Army records. Nor was he himself serving in the war, which might have put him in combat against black Confederate soldiers if there had been any. In short -- what reason do we have to believe that he knew what he was talking about here? I don't find your reasoning compelling, especially since the assertion that black soldiers served in the Confederate army as early as Manassas is quite incredible. That's an extraordinary claim, and requires extraordinary proof, and a statement by Mr. Douglass does not qualify, particularly since he was surely saying this in the context of advocating for black service in the U.S. Army, which the Union permitted only fairly late in the war.

As for the alleged original records that show this happening, please provide references, and links if such are available.

In any event, do not expect me, as a proud Southerner, to celebrate Mr. Lincoln's birthday.

Fine. But frankly, considering the cause of the secession, you might reflect on the fact that this dictator, tyrant, or whatever was conjured from the sins of the South, without which he would have had only a small fraction of the power that he exercised. When a nation is divided and a civil war begun for the ignoble purpose of keeping people in chains and bondage, those responsible are in no good moral position to complain.

Dragon,
In case you are unfamiliar with the first battle of Manassas (a/k/a Bull Run), a considerable number of the citizenry (including a number of members of congress) of Washington took the relatively short carriage ride from the capital to watch their heroes in blue put the scruffy rebels in their place.Things did not work out as they expected; after some initial success, the Union forces were routed and soon the road back to Washington City was clogged with a mixture of fleeing civilians and fleeing Bluebellies alike (I have always thought it was a great pity, that the Confederate cavalry was not sent in hot pursuit of this craven rabble, as the war might have been ended then and there). In any event the spectating assemblage of Northern gentry had ample opportunity to see for themselves the composition of the Confederate force, which most certainly DID include Black Confederate troops. Regardless of the dictates of the Confederate government, Confederate commanders in the field were a good bit more sanguine about the matter of enlisting Black soldiers; and if regulations forbade doing this formally, they had no compunctions about informally enlisting any man who would fight, regardless of color. I do not have a copy of the Official Records handy (as I noted, it is a rather voluminous compendium, but I can find you some citations from UNION reports therein which confirm what I have stated. This will take some time, but I will be happy to post them here later for your benefit; as I said, you might learn something. I'm pretty sure I can fairly readily find the citation for the report of LTC Parkhurst, which I quoted earlier.

As for Confederate records/muster rolls, as noted above, these are both notoriously incomplete (many were lost or destroyed) and sometimes falsified. Case in point, Confederate pension application records; what one often finds in researching these is considerable evidence that at the time these were compiled (often in the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth), the word "soldier" was often crossed out on the records of Black applicants, and the word""cook", "musician", or "laborer" substituted; this probably relates to the racial climate of the time, which was rather poisonous among most Southern officialdom. What we do know from existing photographs of the reunions of Confederate veterans, is that in many of them one can see a number of Black veterans proudly posing with their White counterparts, among which they were accepted as fellow veterans; Black Confederates usually DID NOT serve in segregated units, but as part of regular Confederate units, which also sometimes numbered Jews, Hispanics, Native Americans, and assorted foreign nationals among their ranks. The Confederate forces were pretty diverse; you might want to search info on the "Cherokee Braves" under General Stand Watie (himself Native American), or the 1st Louisiana Special Service Battalion ("Louisiana Tigers")-these last were largely recruited from the New Orleans waterfront, prior to occupation, and many of them would definitely be considered "Non-White", then or now.

It's worth noting, I think, that just as racism tended to affect the "standard historical narrative", today, in a rather perverse way, it tends to work against the correction of that injustice to the legacy of Black and other "Non-White" Confederate soldiers. The number of Black Confederates who actually served as combatants will always be disputed; estimates range from a few thousand, to as many as 60,000. A reasonable guess would be on the order of 20,000-30,000, with perhaps twice that number serving as cooks, musicians, laborers, teamsters, stretcher bearers and nurses. I see no political axe to grind here; these men served, faced the same hardships and dangers as anyone else; and those who fought bravely (as many stories attest) whatever their motives, deserve better than to simply be forgotten, or be used as a political football by anyone, for any reason. They were and are, Confederate Veterans, and thus American Veterans by act of congress, and THIS American Veteran salutes and honors them.

 

[Dragon]

In case you are unfamiliar with the first battle of Manassas

I'm quite familiar with it, but thanks.

In any event the spectating assemblage of Northern gentry had ample opportunity to see for themselves the composition of the Confederate force, which most certainly DID include Black Confederate troops.

Statements by some of these eyewitnesses, please.

Regardless of the dictates of the Confederate government, Confederate commanders in the field were a good bit more sanguine about the matter of enlisting Black soldiers; and if regulations forbade doing this formally, they had no compunctions about informally enlisting any man who would fight, regardless of color.

Logical enough. Statements from some of the Confederate officers in the field, or soldiers familiar with the practice, please. I'll note in passing that the South did not face truly desperate manpower shortages early in the war.

I do not have a copy of the Official Records handy (as I noted, it is a rather voluminous compendium, but I can find you some citations from UNION reports therein which confirm what I have stated. This will take some time

No problem, I can be patient. I'll be happy to look at the evidence.

 

[Mr. H.]

Most everyone assumes Lincoln is dead, but you should see it on a Saturday night.

 

[The Gadfly]

Dragon,
As promised, I recommend to your attention the following reports (union army) to be found in the federal Official Records:
Series I, Vol. XVI Part I, Pg. 805 (LTC Parkhurst report quoted earlier.

Series I Vol. XV PartI, pp157-158
Series I Vol. XLIX Part II Pg. 253
SeriesI, Vol. XIV Pg. 24 (COL Crist, early 1862-before any "manpower shortage", although, in truth, the Confederate forces were short of desirable manpower from the beginning; attrition only made the problem more acute from 1863 onward.)

See also letter from 85th Indiana volunteer Infantry to Indianapolis Daily Evening Gazette 5 March, 1863 reads in part "...during the fight the battery in charge of the 85th IVI was attacked by two rebel Negro regiments..." (Bold mine) noteworthy because it is one of only a few accounts of Black Confederates fighting as large units rather than attached to White units.

There are also quite a few references in the personal correspondence of Union soldiers mentioning encounters with Black Confederate troops, especially as scouts and/or sharpshooters.

As noted the official policy of the Confederate government was not to enlist Blacks. Company and regimental commanders often got around this by listing these men on official muster rolls as "musician" or "cook". A perusal of some of those muster rolls would suggest that (if the muster rolls are to be held accurate), some Confederate regiments had almost as many "bandsmen" and "cooks" as they had infantry privates! Strange, to say the least; I suppose you can believe that is the whole truth, if it suits you, in spite of eyewitnesses from the other side; but most professional historians do not. Some of these men were free men, some were slaves; some went off to war with their master as valets or bodyguards, and became something more, picking up arms and fighting as soldiers. Some were sufficiently highly thought of by their White comrades that the latter saw fit to bury them with full Confederate military honors at a time (early twentieth century) when it was neither popular nor politically expedient to do so.