COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Thursday, October 01, 2015

Lincoln was a liar whose devious use of words enabled him to set up a fascist state. He oversaw the slaughter of three quarters of a million Americans and the permanent maiming of a million and a half more. He decimated the Southern economy, its culture and society, its agriculture, all in the name of the greater good. He suspended habeas corpus, imprisoned his opponents, shut down the press and oversaw the installation of martial law. He was the first great subverter of the U.S. Constitution.

Back to the Future: The Legacy of Abraham Lincoln

A president of the United States would never operate outside the law, ignore the U.S. Constitution and the courts, shut down the presses, imprison his domestic adversaries or turn his guns on his own people. Well, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president did of all of that and, curiously, has been turned into a national hero for his troubles. Lincoln ignored his closest advisors and the temper of the times to engage in the bloodiest war in American history, a war that could easily have been avoided. Single handedly Lincoln terrorized the entire nation. So let us take notice. What happened once could happen again.
The real Lincoln
More than 16,000 books have been written about Lincoln, just about all of them worshipful. He liberated the slaves. He was assassinated. He was a martyr to the cause of social justice, an exalted human being and one of the greatest leaders the world has known. He emerges Christ like in his suffering and in his legacy.
abe_DVIn The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda and an Unnecessary War, Thomas DiLorenzo takes a different tack. According to DiLorenzo, Lincoln was an easy to believe liar whose devious use of words enabled him to set up a fascist state while claiming to do the opposite. He oversaw the slaughter of three quarters of a million Americans and the permanent maiming of a million and a half more. He decimated the Southern economy, its culture and society, its agriculture, all in the name of the greater good. He suspended habeas corpus, imprisoned his opponents, shut down the press and oversaw the installation of martial law. He was the first but not the last of the great subverters of the U.S. Constitution. He was Vladimir Lenin and Genghis Kahn all wrapped up in one.
In a similar vein, Edmund Wilson1 equates Lincoln with the German monarch Otto von Bismarck. In the 1860s, Bismarck engineered a series of wars that unified the German states under a strong central government just as Lincoln was in the process of achieving the same goal by the same means. Edgar Lee Masters compares Lincoln to Robespierre,2 a man of lofty ideals who presided over the Reign of Terror, the bloodiest period in French history, marked by mass executions of “enemies of the revolution.” Tens of thousands were summarily executed.
Such claims undoubtedly will be greeted with dismay and disbelief by many Americans. How and why could we have been so hoodwinked? Are historians on the side of the truth or the propaganda machine that seeks to conceal the facts about a period in history that has done more to change this country than any other? What is being hidden?
To understand Lincoln, to make an honest appraisal of his character and his place in American history and his relevance to our current era, one needs to come to grips with the war he initiated and oversaw. What was the Civil War3all about? Was it about slavery?4 Was it about nullification and secession? Was it about collecting taxes? Or was it about something else?
Most Americans believe that the Civil War was fought over slavery and that emancipating the slaves was its primary purpose. Yet Lincoln was a racist. Perhaps his clearest statement on the subject was made in his debate with Senator Stephen Douglas in 1858, in Ottawa, Illinois.
I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality; and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary.5
Lincoln supported the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, according to which runaway slaves were to be captured and returned to their owners. Slaves were property and slaves owners had the right to claim their property. Owning slaves was a right guaranteed by the Constitution. “I acknowledge them [the slave owner’s rights], not grudgingly but fully and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives.”6 According to Lincoln, freed blacks should be sent back to where they came from: Africa, Haiti, Central America. Eliminating every last black person from American soil would be a “glorious consummation.”7
Racism in the North
The notion that slaves as property was a protected right was in keeping with the mentality of the times. The Fugitive Slave Act was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court and the supreme courts of every northern state. As late as 1860 none of the four parties fielding presidential candidates favored abolition of Southern slavery. Lincoln, himself, was clear on the matter, “My paramount object in this struggle [the Civil War] is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery.”8
Abolitionists were a vocal minority.9 The majority were content to not intervene. On January 22, 1861, the New York Times announced that it was opposed to the abolition of slavery. Blacks should be taught to read and write and save money, making slavery “a very tolerable institution.”10 In a similar vein, the New York Herald speaks of “the good treatment and happy, contented lot of the slaves.”11
Blacks in the North were discriminated against just as they were to be once liberated in the South. As Alexis de Tocqueville observes, “the prejudice of race appears to be stronger in the states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists …”12 Lincoln opposed black immigration into his state and supported the laws that denied blacks citizenship.
Assuming, though it is not the case, that the North was virulently opposed to slavery, was war the only road to abolition? Slavery was common practice around the world up to the nineteenth century, when gradually it was eliminated by peaceful means. The first significant abolitionist movement began in England in 1774. Slavery was eliminated in country after country, often by manumission (slave owners allowed their slaves to purchase their freedom) or compensated emancipation. By 1840 all the slaves in the British Empire had been freed. Between 1813 and 1854 slavery was eliminated from Latin America, Central America, and French and Danish colonies. Not a shot was fired.
In the United States, as well, support was building for peaceful emancipation as the costs for holding on to, capturing, and maintaining slaves constituted more and more of an economic hardship. In 1849 ten percent of participants in a Kentucky political convention supported gradual emancipation in their state. Slavery was on its way out in Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri and much of Virginia. Although less than one-fourth of Southern adults owned slaves, Lincoln made total war on the entire Southern population, civilian as well as military.
Nullification and Secession
Although nullification and secession were contentious issues, they were part of the national dialogue on government at the time of the Civil War and were in the repertoire of solutions in both the North and the South. In 1798, President John Adams signed into law the Alien and Sedition Acts. Henceforth, if you were to “write, print, utter, or publish … any false, scandalous and malicious writing” against the government you risked being fined and imprisoned. Twenty Republican (Jefferson’s party not Lincoln’s) newspaper editors were arrested. Some were imprisoned. Representative Matthew Lyon of Vermont was imprisoned for referring to President Adams’ “unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and self avarice.”
The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798, penned anonymously by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, argued on behalf of the state legislatures that the Alien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional and therefore null and void. The Kentucky Resolution of 1799 added that when the states determine that a law is unconstitutional, nullification by the states is the proper remedy.
Several New England states objected to the Embargo Act of 1807, which restricted foreign trade. The Massachusetts legislature passed a resolution stating that the embargo “is, in the opinion of the legislature, in many respects, unjust, oppressive and unconstitutional, and not legally binding on the citizens of this state.”
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 resulted in renewed interest in nullification as a remedy for unwanted federal legislation. Nearly every northern state passed some type of personal liberty law whose purpose was to nullify this onerous federal law.
In 1803 Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison (James Madison, then Secretary of State under Jefferson) established the principle of judicial review. Marshall determined that the Judiciary Act of 1789, upon which Marbury based his claim against Madison, was unconstitutional thereby positioning the Supreme Court not the state legislatures to determine what was and what wasn’t the law of the land. This extraordinary power was assumed, not assigned by the Constitution in any direct way and places nine, unelected men and women, tenured for life, at the pinnacle of governmental power. Needless to say, states have argued that such a prerogative is, itself, unconstitutional. So far, the Supreme Court has prevailed.
Secession was an even more widely held prerogative. Most of the country believed the South had the right to secede. Secession was under consideration in various parts of the country, and was popular in the North as well as South. There were secessionist movements in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland.
There were those Northerners who wanted to join the Southern Confederacy, those who wished to form their own “Central Confederacy,” and those who wanted to allow the South to go in peace rather than use military force against them. “I have no idea,” said U.S. Senator James Alfred Pearce of Maryland, “ that the Union can be maintained or restored by force. Nor do I believe in the value of a Union which can only be kept together by dint of military force.”13
Both Henry J. Raymond, editor of the New York Times and Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune favored peaceful secession. Said Greeley, “We hope never to live in a republic whereof one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets.”14
In an earlier period, Thomas Jefferson’s election to the Presidency in 1800 sent a shock wave through the Federalist party. Massachusetts Senator Timothy Pickering called on the New England states to secede from the Union rather than serve under Jefferson. Senator James Hillhouse agreed. “The Eastern States must and will form a separate government.”15 For twelve years the New Englanders campaigned for secession. Said Thomas Jefferson in response, “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.’”16
Thus neither nullification nor secession were as extreme in the period preceding the Civil War as they might seem to us from the perspective of the 21st century. These were options repeatedly considered by statesmen from both North and South when the federal government seemed to be exceeding reasonable limits. That the South should have chosen these options in 1860 is certainly not surprising. There was ample precedent. Much of the North was content to let the South go its separate way. Lincoln, himself, in an earlier phase of his political career, supported secession as an option available to a people without recourse.
On January 12, 1848 Lincoln, then representing Illinois in the House of Representatives, delivered a speech concerning the constitutionality or lack thereof of the war with Mexico. In 1836, the state of Texas declared its independence from Mexico and for nine years existed as a separate entity. In 1845, Texas became the 28th state. Mexico believed that Texas had no right to go its separate way and join the United States. War resulted. Did Texas have the right to secede or not? Says Lincoln,
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 the 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 territory as they inhabit.17
Is this not exactly what the South did a little more than a decade later, “make their own of so much territory as they inhabit?”
Dollars and cents
If there was no mass movement insisting on the immediate liberation of the slaves, if Lincoln himself was indifferent on the matter, if nullification and secession were part of the national dialogue, what was the non-negotiable, incendiary issue that truly separated North from South.
In simplest terms the North was industrial and the South was agrarian. Northern manufacturers wanted to institute protective tariffs against cheap British imports. The South was opposed.
In 1828, the U.S. Congress passed what came to be known in the South as “The Tariff of Abominations.” Not only did this law increase duties on British imports to almost 50%. In addition it increased taxes on raw materials, like cotton and tobacco. Opposition to the tariff had been impassioned and unyielding.
On November 24, 1832, the South Carolina legislature passed an Ordinance of Nullification, which declared the Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 null and void within the state borders of South Carolina. The state threatened to secede from the Union if the tariff wasn’t withdrawn. Ultimately a compromise was reached.
The South was heavily dependent on British imports, much more so than the manufacturing North and hence would bear an excessive financial burden as a consequence of the high tariff. John C. Calhoun of South Carolina believed that these tariffs were unconstitutional and further that the states by virtue of their individual sovereignty had the right to render such laws inapplicable or null and void. A state has the right to reject a federal law.
The Constitution gave Congress the right to impose tariffs, “but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform through the United States.” Calhoun argued that the burden of these taxes was unequally distributed, in that they favored manufacturing over agriculture and commerce. Hence the tariffs were unconstitutional. And further, the monies collected from these tariffs were expended in the North for the construction of roadways, railways and canals to the benefit of Northern business interests while the South bore 80-90% of the financial burden and got none of the benefit.
The bank failures of 1857 and Lincoln’s election in 1860 brought the tariff issue to fore once again. The result was the Morrill Tariff of 1861, which raised the duty on imports by approximately 70%, 1832 redux. Not waiting for the final vote on the new tariff, on December 20, 1860, by a vote of 169-0, the South Carolina legislature enacted an “ordinance” that “the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of ‘The United States of America,’ is hereby dissolved.” In the ensuing months ten southern states would join them in the Confederate States of America. In his first inaugural Lincoln had made it clear that he would collect taxes, one way or another.18
That trade was the key issue leading to secession was apparent to many. On this the North and South agreed. The editors of the Boston Transcript declared, “… It does not require extraordinary sagacity to perceive that trade is perhaps the controlling motive operating to prevent the return of the seceding States to the Union.”19 According to the Vicksburg Daily Whig, “The North has been aggrandized, in a most astonishing degree, at the expense of the South … taxing us at every step—and depleting us as extensively as possible without actually destroying us.”20
At stake is not just an economic system but a political system and a form of government. The United States of America is just that, say the Southern states, separate states, individual political entities that have come together for mutual benefit, without forsaking their individuality and autonomy. Not so say the Northerners who are centralists in favor of a strong central government in which individual states must submit to national prerogatives, even if they seem unjust or even perhaps unconstitutional. You have forsaken your independence once you signed the Constitution.
Was war the only answer?
Before the war began there was little support in the North for making war on the South. Some Northern states were relieved to be separated from the South and the peculiar institution of slavery. Even abolitionists did not want to resort to war. There was a widely held belief that slavery could not be sustained much longer and that separating North from South would make it harder for the South to hold onto their slaves. Slaves had but to make their way to the North to win freedom. The Fugitive Slaves Act would have lost its meaning. To a man, Lincoln’s cabinet members were opposed to the provisioning of Fort Sumter, located in South Carolina, and now part of the Confederacy, an act guaranteed to instigate war. Said Secretary of State William H. Seward, “I would not initiate a war to regain a useless and unnecessary position on the soil of the seceding States.”21
Lincoln obviously was of a different mindset. There would be no separation. There would be no goodwill. There would be no negotiations. Jefferson Davis had sent emissaries to Washington to offer to pay for any Federal properties on Southern soil (including Fort Sumter) and to agree to pay the Southern portion of the national debt. Lincoln refused to even acknowledge the existence of these emissaries. In the absence of total submission, Lincoln wanted war.
Was it simply a case of losing revenue? Was it about the “Union” as was so often declared by Lincoln himself or was there something else at stake?
In 1838, when Lincoln was twenty-nine, he delivered a speech before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield entitled, The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions. The theme is the heroics of great men in history. Lincoln’s point of departure is the American Revolution. He speaks of those who “sought celebrity and fame and distinction” and succeeded in their quest. “This field of glory is harvested,” he says. “But new reapers will arise, and they,too will seek a field.” When “men of ambition and talents … spring up amongst us … they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion as others have so done before them.”
The truly great amongst us disdain a beaten path, says Lincoln. “Towering genius … thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves or enslaving freemen.”22 Notice the nihilism. Lincoln will just as soon enslave freemen—i.e., you or I dear reader—as free the slaves. It makes no difference which, provided there is a straight, short path to unlimited power.
As Wilson points out, Lincoln “has projected himself into the role against which he is warning” his audience. In other words, Abraham Lincoln, the humble rail-splitter from the log cabin in Kentucky, sees himself as a “towering genius” who seeks a field over which he can spread his wings and soar. The field he speaks of is a field of conflict where the enemy resides. Less than two years later he continues with the same theme. “If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not entirely unworthy of its Almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world besides, and I standing up boldly alone and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors.”23
Here is Lincoln stripped of false humility, hagiography and mythification. Here is the Lincoln of unbridled, almost demonic, ambition. He will stand alone hurling thunderbolts at the mythic enemy. All of this is an elaborate imagined construction that seeks its fulfillment where it will find it. John Hay, Lincoln’s secretary while he was in the White House, observed, it was “absurd to call him a modest man … It was his intellectual arrogance and unconscious assumption of superiority that men like Chase and Sumner could never forgive.”24
How is this towering ambition to be reconciled with “the raw realities of Lincoln’s origins—the sordidness of his childhood environment, the boorishness of his first beginnings?”25 Perhaps the one explains the other. Observes Edgar Lee Masters:
One conspicuous thing to be noted about Lincoln is that he was profoundly ashamed of the poverty of his youth, and of the sordid surroundings in which he grew up; and much of the ambitious striving of his life was motivated by a fierce desire to rise above the life into which he was born.26
Born again Hamilton
One is reminded of Alexander Hamilton, referred to by John Adams as “the most restless, impatient, artful, indefatigable and unprincipled intriguer in the United States, if not in the world.”27 Lincoln was a great admirer of Hamilton. Both believed in a strong centralized government, a national bank, high tariffs, a marriage of business and government and the use of the military to enforce government policy. Like Lincoln, Hamilton spent his adult life living down his sordid past by acquiring power and social connections.
Hamilton was a bastard child of uncertain lineage. He was born on the island of Nevis in the British West Indies, one of two illegitimate sons, abandoned by his stepfather to the lowest rung of a highly stratified society. His mother had been sent to prison on charges of adultery by her first husband, who referred to her as “a whore.” Lincoln’s mother was an illegitimate child. Lincoln’s grandmother was indicted for “unbecoming conduct.”28
Who was Abraham Lincoln? He was Alexander Hamilton in sheep’s clothing. Had Hamilton been in Lincoln’s shoes he would have conducted the war with equal brutality. Hamilton lost his life in a duel for insulting Aaron Burr. In 1842, Lincoln found himself in a similar situation with a man named James Shield whom he ridiculed in print. Like Hamilton who defended loyalists who had usurped the land of patriots who had gone off to fight the war, Lincoln would defend the railroad against those who were injured or had their rights infringed upon. Hamilton spoke for six hours at the Constitutional Convention in support of establishing the United States as a monarchy. Lincoln served out his presidency as an absolute monarch.
One can argue that this unnecessary, unwanted, viciously brutal war was the field of distinction that Lincoln, “the towering genius,” had been patiently waiting for, the moment to live down and escape forever his shameful childhood and the rage instilled in him by his father’s savage beatings.
Lincoln the tyrant
Once Lincoln had succeeded in luring the South into firing the first shot at Fort Sumter there was full-scale war, war that inspired opposition as well as allegiance. Lincoln had no tolerance for dissent and responded ruthlessly.
On May 25, 1861, in the second month of the Civil War, Union troops arrested John Merryman, a Maryland state legislator. He was indicted for treason and confined at Baltimore’s Fort McHenry, charged with seeking to hinder U.S. troop movements from Baltimore to Washington, which was threatened by Confederate forces. Merryman’s attorney sought a writ of habeas corpus to enable a federal judge to weigh the charges. In response, Lincoln immediately suspended that right. Habeas corpus remained in suspension for the duration of Lincoln’s reign.
Frank Key Howard (1826—1872), the grandson of Francis Scott Key who, at the time of the War of 1812, wrote the words to the “Star Spangled,” was arrested just after midnight on September 13, 1861. As editor of the Baltimore Exchange, a Baltimore newspaper sympathetic to the Southern cause, he had been critical of Lincoln’s suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. He had criticized Lincoln for declaring martial law in Baltimore and imprisoning without charge, George William Brown the mayor of Baltimore, sitting U.S. Congressman Henry May, all the police commissioners of Baltimore, and the entire city council, all of which, were it not so dire, almost seems comical. Referring to the arrest of “dislolyal” members of the Maryland legislature, the Saturday Review of London observed, “It was as perfect an act of despotism as can be conceived. It was a coup d’ état in every essential feature.”29
The writ of habeas corpus was written into that part of the Constitution pertaining to the authority of the legislature. Lincoln knew full well that as President he had no legal authority to do what he did, and in case he forgot, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney reminded him, all to no avail. Lincoln was above the law and would remain in that precarious position until a bullet struck him down.
Arbitrary arrests continued unabated. There were thousands.30 The military was given broad authority in determining who should walk free and who shouldn’t. Discouraging voluntary enlistments, the mere appearance of disloyalty to the war cause could result in arrest. Prisoners were not told why they were being arrested. There were no investigations. There were no trials.
An Episcopal minister in Alexandria, Virginia was arrested for failing to include a prayer for the President in his church services, as required by the Lincoln administration. A New Orleans man was executed for taking down the American flag. Secretary of State William Seward set up a secret police and boasted to the British Ambassador that he could ring a bell and have anyone arrested from Ohio to New York and New England.
Lincoln succeeded in protecting himself and his cabinet and the military from criminal prosecution for his illegal conduct by orchestrating the “passage” of an “indemnity act” in 1863.31 Thus it is that the President of the United States had the power to break the law while disempowering those, i.e. American citizens everywhere, of the power to hold him accountable. The Constitution, due process, habeas corpus and other “rights” were “disappeared” by the “Great Emancipator.”
There was considerable opposition to Lincoln’s war in the press. Lincoln dealt with the opposition in a forthright manner. Dissenting newspapers were denied mail delivery, the only means of circulation at the time. Military force was used to shut down newspapers and imprison their editors.
The prison at Fort Lafayette was filled with newspaper editors from around the country who advocated for peace in defiance of Lincoln’s war policies. A mob of federal soldiers demolished the offices of the Democratic Standard, in Washington, D.C. A similar fate awaited the Bangor Democrat in Bangor, Maine.
These, of course, were the consequences for disobeying Lincoln in the North, relatively mild compared to what was experienced in the South, among the civilian population. There were summary arrests. Newspapers were suppressed. Land was condemned and confiscated. Railroads were taken over. Homes were commandeered. Banks were shut down. Men of the cloth were arrested. Church services were disallowed. Citizens refusing to take a loyalty oath were deported, in some cases executed.
Lincoln’s conduct of the war
But of course the Civil War is not about the niceties of civil liberties. It is about Lincoln’s savage war against his own people for which there are few if any precedents in history. Total U.S. dead in WWII: 405,399. Total U.S. dead in the Civil War: 750,000, almost twice as many. Based on percent of the population lost, the Civil War ranks as number one with 2.385% lost to WWII’s .037% lost. Obviously though not usually cast in such a light, the Civil War was the bloodiest, most costly war in human lives, in American history. Disease—dysentery, typhoid, malaria—took a heavy toll. The Union alone had 6,454,834 recorded cases of either disease or wounds throughout the war.
By the end of the eighteenth century, nations had reached a common understanding as to the proper conduct of war. In 1798, the Swiss jurist Emmerich de Vattel published his Law of Nations, which became a standard reference. The only just war was a war of defense. Attacking defenseless towns and cities, plundering and destroying civilian property, taking from the civilian population more than was necessary to feed an occupying army are all war crimes punishable by imprisonment or death. Occupying soldiers who destroyed property, farms, and livestock were regarded as “savage barbarians.”32 In 1863, Lincoln issued General Order No. 100 that, in essence, exempted U.S. military from honoring de Vattel’s Law of Nations. Had he been tried, Lincoln probably would have been hanged for his war crimes.
Unionist soldiers pillaged private property, confiscated crops and livestock, burning houses and public buildings as they went. Lincoln’s General George McClelland was troubled by what he saw and wrote Lincoln a letter of objection. Lincoln responded with the “Confiscation Act,” allegedly framed so as to allow the confiscation of slaves held in property. In essence, however, it gave official sanction to the very practices McClelland had been objecting to.
Civilians are the enemy
Civilians were held as hostage in retaliation against Confederate attacks. Sometimes these civilians were shot. Sometimes their houses or their entire towns were burned to the ground. Here is a quote from Union Colonel John Beatty. He is referring to residents of Paint Rock, Alabama.
Every time the telegraph wire was cut we would burn a house; every time a train was fired upon we would hang a man; and we would continued to do this until every house was burned and every man hanged between Decatur and Bridgeport.33
Frustrated by his inability to track down Confederate snipers who were shooting at his Mississippi River gunboats, Sherman took vengeance on the local population by burning down the entire town of Randolph, Tennessee. Such actions, based on International Law of the time, would make war criminals of Sherman and Lincoln, his Commander in Chief. In a letter to his wife, Sherman described his ultimate purpose as, “extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the people.”34Sherman’s wife responded with enthusiastic support, hoping “that all [Southerners] would be driven like the Swine into the sea. May we carry fire and sword into their states till not one habitation is left standing.”35 Sherman was diligent in fulfilling his wife’s wishes.
Sherman boasts that in Vicksburg, Mississippi farms were stripped bare and houses burned. The city was so heavily bombed that residents were reduced to living in caves and eating rats, dogs and mules. After Sherman’s decimation of Jackson, he boasted to General Grant, “The inhabitants are subjugated. They cry aloud for mercy. The land is devastated for 30 miles around.”36
Sherman made similar remarks after destroying Meridian, Mississippi, long since abandoned by Confederate soldiers. “For five days, ten thousand of our men worked hard and with a will, in that work of destruction, with axes, sledges, crowbars, clawbars, and with fire, and I have no hesitation in pronouncing the work well done. Meridian … no longer exists.”36 In September of 1864, Sherman’s army occupied Atlanta. The city was bombed day and night. Hardly a building remained untouched. Of the approximately 4,000 homes in Atlanta, 400 remained standing. O.M. Poe, Sherman’s chief engineer, expressed his dismay at the sight of the corpses of women and young children in the streets. Sherman responded that it was “a beautiful sight.”37 It would bring the war to a quicker end.
Here is a description by poet William Gilmore Simms of how things came to pass in Columbia, South Carolina.
Daily did long trains of fugitives line the roads, with wives and children, and horses and stock and cattle, seeking refuge from the pursuers … Half naked people cowered from the winter under bush-tents in the thickets, under the eaves of houses, under the railroad sheds, and in old cars left them along the route…. Habitation after habitation, village after village—one sending up its signal flames to the other, presaging for it the same fate—lighted the winter and midnight sky with crimson horrors.38
Says Masters, “Whole volumes would not contain the story of Northern atrocities and horrors.”39
Genghis Kahn, considered by many to be one of the most savage barbarians the world has seen, would undoubtedly greet such observations with a nod of approval. Here he is in his own words:
The greatest joy a man can know is to conquer his enemies and drive them before him. To ride their horses and take away their possessions. To see the faces of those who were dear to them bedewed with tears, and to clasp their wives and daughters in his arms.
The city of Kiev, in the mid-thirteenth century, with a population of about 80,000, was an important center of Russian life. Kievans had a civilized approach to governance and community living. They were industrious, and creative and literate. Genghis and his descendants decided that this early vision of what Russia might have become needed to be destroyed. When he and his horde were finished, nothing was left.
On December 6, 1240, Genghis’s grandson attacked Kiev. The city was looted and burned to the ground. Tens of thousands lost their lives. Bones littered the landscape for miles around. The religious, cultural, and political center of one of the most important and civilized of early cultures had been obliterated.
Perhaps there is a difference between what Genghis’s Horde achieved and the achievements of Lincoln’s army in the South. If there is, it is a subtle one. Maybe Lincoln didn’t invent total warfare but he was one of its earliest apostles in modern times. And bear in mind, Genghis was an uncultured nomad living on the Russian steppes, isolated from any source of culture or morality. Abraham Lincoln was a man of learning, a man of the bible, making his transgressions all the more egregious. And furthermore Lincoln was attacking his own people, the people he had sworn to serve and protect.
The Emancipation Proclamation
“But don’t forget the Emancipation Proclamation,” you persist. “Lincoln liberated the slaves.” Well, alright, let’s not forget it. Exactly what was its purpose and exactly what did it achieve? In the North and overseas it was seen as a political gimmick. There are a number of reasons. First of all Lincoln lacked the authority to do what he did. As he knew better than anyone, and oft repeated, owning slaves as property was a constitutionally guaranteed right that he had no power to interfere with. He made quite clear in his second inaugural address that his operations in the South had nothing to do with slavery.
What is most curious and most revealing about the Emancipation Proclamation is the fact that, to use the words of William Seward, Lincoln’s own Secretary of State, “We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.”40 Exactly what did Seward mean? Seward is referring to the fact that the “Emancipation” was selective in its application, not universal. Slaves living under the Confederacy, that part of the country at war with Lincoln, were “liberated,” in quotes because there was little or nothing that Lincoln could do to actually set those slaves free. However, those states or parts of states that were loyal to the Union or under Union control were exempt from “Emancipation.” Slave owners in those states were free to continue to enjoy the benefits of their human property. Bizarre. Why would Lincoln have done such a thing if he were truly concerned with the suffering of slaves?
It is a measure of Lincoln’s craftiness, callousness and cynicism that he was using the issue of slavery for purely political purposes. As observed in the London Spectator, at the time, “The principle [of the Proclamation] is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States.”41 Lincoln was up for re-election in 1864, he did not want to alienate allies by depriving them of a benefit. He was fighting an unpopular war. He was concerned that Great Britain might intervene on the side of the Confederacy. With his “Proclamation” he hoped to keep them at bay.
Lincoln was running out of able-bodied men. A draft was instituted in July of 1863. Lincoln had issued his “Proclamation” in January of the same year. On July 13, 1863 the second day of drawing draft numbers there was rioting in New York City. It is estimated that 120 were killed. The draft was temporarily suspended.
The “Proclamation” did not compensate the owners, did not outlaw slavery, and did not grant citizenship to the ex-slaves (called freedmen). But, “such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.” In other words, blacks who found their way to freedom could offer up their bodies to fight in Lincoln’s war.
One can only blush at Lincoln’s shameless hypocrisy. “And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence …” Did Lincoln really hope the blacks would peaceably escape into the night or wasn’t slave rebellion one of his principal motivations? “And I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.” What is this about? Exactly where were the liberated slaves to find a job? And is it Lincoln’s concern that the former slaves might be unreasonable in their wage demands?
Here is Lincoln’s two-facedness at its cloying worst.
And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.
Lincoln knows for sure that his “Proclamation” is not “warranted by the Constitution.” Protestations of “sincerity” are not a substitute for sincerity itself. And if “the gracious favor of Almighty God” were his true concern, he wouldn’t have begun the war in the first place and he certainly would not have left in servitude the very slaves within his reach that he could have liberated. The mantra for which Lincoln is best known, “With malice toward none, with charity for all,” was uttered as Lincoln’s army was cannibalizing the South, sparing neither man, woman nor child, nor horses, cattle, hogs, nor dogs, the ultimate expression of malice in the total absence of charity.
Lincoln’s legacy
What hath Lincoln wrought? What has he bequeathed to us, not in our imagination, but in reality?
Lincoln’s war unleashed the predator class that has been at large ever since. J. Pierpont Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller all got their start feeding at the government trough during the war. Charges of profiteering and corruption abounded as big government laid the foundation for a symbiotic relationship with big business. Government giveaways to private enterprise became a habit. You want to build a privately run railroad? Just ask the government. They will give you the land you need. As Masters comments, in a land gone insane, “where all the vilest passions were suddenly released, the rapacity of business reared its python head.”42
War takes money, lots of it, leading to an alliance of government and bankers that persists to this day. Hence the National Income Tax of 1861. If that is not enough you borrow. 40% of government spending went to servicing the national debt, which by the end of the war had grown to $2.8 billion.43 And if you still need more you simply print it. But that leads to counterfeiting and the creation of a secret service to track down the counterfeiters.
It has been argued that the war against the South was instigated and initiated not so much as to teach the South a lesson but as a means to transforming the American form of government and its economic system. Lincoln’s Republican party was the party of the “American System,” initially promulgated by House Speaker, Henry Clay (1777-1852), originally advocated by Alexander Hamilton.
The “American System” is the one we live under: 1) protective tariffs that serve to benefit American industry; 2) a national bank that is a boon to private capital; 3) government subsidies for “internal improvements” such as road building and canal building, that today have been expanded to include drilling for oil and the manufacture of bombers and spacecraft. In fact, Lincoln’s Republican party was mid-wife to what today is known as the military-industrial complex or corporate welfare. He oversaw the merging of government and private business interests, the establishing of a powerful, centralized, militarized state with ambitions of empire.
But not all sectors of the economy did as well as the big industrialists. Workers’ wages fell by one third. Strikes resulted. Lincoln introduced the policy of using federal troops to break the strikes.
Suppression of civil rights: Then and now
Lincoln’s suppression of civil rights set the precedent for the “Patriot Act” and subsequent legislation that abrogates the freedoms we thought were guaranteed by our Constitution. His routing out of disloyal government employees might have been the inspiration for Joseph McCarthy’s witch-hunt in the 1950s.
Currently, in dealing with civil dissent, the United States government is invoking what it calls “the U.S. domestic common law of war” (see Hedges vs. Obama), which has its basis in the martial law established by Lincoln during the Civil War. Civil dissent that is potentially harmful to the war effort (the United States is chronically at war) results in the dissenter’s being categorized as “unprivileged belligerent.” What this means is that a journalist who is critical of government war policy can be shot and killed and if captured will be treated with less kindness than an enemy combatant.
This approach to civil dissent was first articulated by William Whiting, Lincoln’s Solicitor of the Department of War. Whiting wrote a guidebook for Union commanders entitled, War Powers of the President, derived from authoritarian principles of martial law in Prussia. Whiting’s guidebook defines acts of hostility to the United States as “acts which may tend to impede or embarrass the United States in such military proceedings as the commander-in-chief may see fit to institute.” If anyone engages in such acts “or there is reasonable cause to believe he intends to engage” in such acts, that person is subject to detention without trial.
When government misbehaves with abandon the consequences are felt throughout society. Lincoln’s ruthlessness created a contagion of moral decay. “The demoralizing effect of the civil war,” wrote Edward Bates, Lincoln’s first Attorney General, “is plainly visible in every department of life. The abuse of official powers and the thirst for dishonest gain are now so common that they cease to shock.”44 Likewise, Wilson speaks of “the degradation of public life that followed the Civil War.”45 Masters comments on the “deterioration in the quality of men who have filled the state and Federal offices since the war.”46
Lincoln introduced big government—government that has grown exponentially bigger in the intervening years—into our lives. Government has become a behemoth. We live in the darkness of its shadow whether we know it or not. Says Masters, “America has been afraid ever since the war.”47
Lincoln was the first to play by the rules of total warfare. Women, children, unarmed civilians are all the enemy. They must be crushed, their dwellings, livestock and crops destroyed. They must be starved so that the invading army might prevail.
Alexander H. Stephens was Vice-President of the Confederacy. From his prison cell he wrote out his thoughts on the war and its consequences. Depend upon it, he warns, “there is no difference between Consolidation and Empire; no difference between Centralism and Imperialism. The consummation of either must necessarily end in the overthrow of Liberty and the establishment of Despotism.”48
The cause we [the South] fought for, says Stephens, “was the cause of civil liberty, and not the cause of human slavery.” (Wilson, 435) As Hummel observes, speaking of post-Civil War political life, “Henceforth there would be no major victories of Liberty over Power.”49 Wilson, himself, considers that perhaps, “the cause of the South is the cause of us all.”50
Though he knew his bible, Lincoln was not a religious man. As the war progressed and its horrors consumed the population, sanctifying war in terms of a religious crusade created useful propaganda. In his first inaugural address he invokes the, “Almighty Ruler of Nations.” He speaks of “Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land.” In the Emancipation Proclamation he invokes, “the gracious favor of Almighty God.” As Masters points out,51 Lincoln is the first president to introduce the “cant and hypocrisy of Christianity into American politics,” to which “the American ear lends itself so willingly, in the unctuous self-dramatization of self-righteousness.”52
The war itself becomes imbued with religious mysticism recalling the animus behind the Crusades or our latter day jihads. In the midst of the slaughter, Lincoln calls for a national fast day (March 30, 1863), “to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.”53 On the 6th of August, following the battle of Gettysburg, Lincoln declares a national day of thanksgiving, a day of “praise and prayer,” an opportunity “to render homage to the Divine Majesty for the wonderful things he has done in the nation’s behalf.” (Masters, 430) As Masters comments, “the subjugation of the South had to be smeared over with religion.”54 Elsewhere he speaks of Lincoln’s “righteous sadism.”55
Presidential prerogatives
President Barack Obama is a great admirer of Abraham Lincoln. He delivered his first inaugural address (2007) from the steps of the Old Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, the site of Abraham Lincoln’s famous “house divided” speech. Lincoln comes up for mention several times.
Each and every time, a new generation has risen up and done what’s needed to be done. Today we are called once more—and it is time for our generation to answer that call. For that is our unyielding faith—that in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it. That’s what Abraham Lincoln understood. He had his doubts. He had his defeats. He had his setbacks. But through his will and his words, he moved a nation and helped free a people.
Obama speaks of being “called once more.” For war abroad? War at home? Does Obama plan on moving a nation? From where to where?
Like Lincoln, President Obama has a gift for words. Like Lincoln, he is a crafty politician and an accomplished dissimulator. He conceals his true intentions behind high-flown rhetoric. He says one thing and does another. Does he share Lincoln’s predilection for lawlessness and tyranny? Let us hope not.
In his first inaugural address, Lincoln declared, “we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.” Of course in a matter of months he will do the very lawless thing he said he would never do, invade “any State or Territory, no matter what pretext.”
In a June 3, 2008, St. Paul speech, President Obama boasted that “generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when .,. the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal,” which means putting a hold on adding CO2 into the atmosphere. By March 22, 2012 he was bragging that his administration had “added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth,” which means doing exactly the opposite.
In his 2013 State of the Union address President Obama challenged Congress “to do more to combat climate change,” and then declared, “But if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will.” Obama does take bold action but not of the kind promised. Again, he does just the opposite. Once more he is boasting about his despoliation of the planet. “Over the past three years, I’ve directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states.” Perhaps the President doesn’t understand that saving the planet entails taking COout of the atmosphere, not adding it.
There is a curious string of events that occurred in June of this year, all of them violent, all of them in the South. There was a string of similar black church fires. Starting in Knoxville, Tenn., on June 21 and moving to Macon, Ga., and Gibson County, in Tennessee, on June 23; Charlotte, N.C., on June 24; Elyria, Ohio, on June 25; Tallahassee, Fla. and Warrenville, S.C., on June 26; Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church, a prominent African-American church in Greeneville, S.C., on June 30. On the evening of June 17, a mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina led to nine deaths. Predictably this has led to the demonizing of the South. There was a campaign to remove the Confederate flag from state buildings. Are these random events or is there some hidden design?
In addition, as reported by John Whitehead we are in the middle a covert, multi-agency, multi-state, eight-week (July 15 through September 15) military training exercise—code named “Jade Helm 15”—taking place across seven states in the American Southwest.56
Ostensibly this exercise will be an opportunity to “test and practice unconventional warfare including, but not limited to, guerrilla warfare, subversion, sabotage, intelligence activities, and unconventional assisted recovery.” Such a pretense is, on the face of it, laughable. The U.S. military has been engaged in “subversion, sabotage,” etc. for decades. If they don’t know how to do it by now, there is little hope they ever will. A more likely explanation is that the military has plans to infiltrate and occupy the U. S. of A. itself.
During an interview on July 21, retired US Army General Wesley Clark called for the internment of persons deemed “disloyal” to the United States government. Lincoln redux? It appears that there are indeed FEMA run internment camps awaiting our arrival, 800 of them, fully staffed and ready to roll.
And in case you are not aware of it, the United States has been living in a state of emergency since 1933. In 1917, Congress gave President Woodrow Wilson tempo­rary powers to immediately enact laws regulating trade, economy, and other policies as they pertained to enemies of America. On March 5, 1933, FDR convened a special session of Congress in which he introduced a bill amending the War Powers Act to remove the clause excluding American citizens from being bound by its effects.
For nearly the past eight decades we have been living in a country in which the Constitution is in a state of suspension and the legislative function is in the hands of the president—a condition specifically proscribed by the Constitution. That is, any president at any time can declare a state of emergency and accrue to himself any and all powers he so chooses.
Consider this quote from the Senate Report, 93rd Congress, November 19, 1973, Special Committee on the Termination of the National Emergency, United States Senate:
Since March 9, 1933, the United States has been in a state of declared national emergency…. Under the powers delegated by these statutes, the President may: seize property; organize and control the means of production; seize commodities; assign military forces abroad; institute martial law; seize and control all transportation and communication; regulate the operation of private enterprise; restrict travel; and, in a plethora of particular ways, control the lives of all American citizens.
Executive Orders
During his twelve-year tenure, FDR issued 3,766 executive orders. Tru­man issued 893 as president. In his brief tenure in office JFK issued 213. Here are some examples that may or may not be currently in the Federal Register.
10995: Right to seize all communications media in the United States
10997: Right to seize all electric power, fuels, and minerals, both public and private
10999: Right to seize all means of transportation, including personal vehicles of any kind and total control of highways, seaports and waterways
11000: Right to seize any and all American people and divide up families in order to create workforces to be transferred to any place the government sees fit
11001: Right to seize all health, education, and welfare
Here are some of President Obama’s contributions:
Executive Order 13684
Establishment of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing
Signed: December 18, 2014
Federal Register page and date: 79 FR 76865, December 23, 2014
The task force’s mission is to “identify best practices and otherwise make recommendations to the President on how policing practices can promote effective crime reduction while building public trust.”
One can reasonably wonder why the President of the United States should concern himself with local policing practices. One can also wonder if his real concerns are “crime reduction” and “building public trust.”
An even more ominous expression of presidential power is the following:
Executive Order 13688
Federal Support for Local Law Enforcement Equipment Acquisition
Signed: January 16, 2015
Federal Register page and date: 80 FR 3451, January 22, 2015
Here the concern is “to better coordinate Federal support for the acquisition of certain Federal equipment by State, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies.” We know for sure we are in trouble when the President uses such phraseology as “certain Federal equipment.” It would be less chilling to hear the President be a little more explicit and mention the use of armored personnel carriers, assault rifles, submachine guns, flashbang grenades, grenade launchers, sniper rifles, Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams, intelligence agency-style information gathering aimed at the public and political activists, and a more aggressive style of law enforcement. One could argue that local police are being transformed into a local army, potentially under the command of the grand coordinator or Commander in Chief. This is one step away from martial law.
Scary stuff! We have come full circle. Lincoln would approve. And yet this is our current reality. Perhaps we should face it. Masters, writing over eighty years ago, speaks of the “refusal of the truth which is written all over the American character.”57 Maybe American character has evolved some since then. Maybe, based on the urgency of the times, we are willing to take an unflinching look at reality.
Our current predicament
We are living in perilous times. Our economy is out of control. Violence is everywhere. We are in a state of perpetual warfare. The excess of carbon in our atmosphere has produced an irreversible change in our climate that could ultimately—in the not so distant future—render our planet uninhabitable. Can we count on our government leaders to do the right thing? We will only have an accurate answer to that question when we enter into the reality hidden by generations of dissimulation.
We have grown up with the myth of American exceptionalism. Other governments might be mean-spirited and corrupt. Not ours. Our leaders adhere to the loftiest ideals, which is what empowers us to invade foreign countries in the name of the common good. This myth of infallibility goes all the way back to our Puritan founders. They established a theocracy. And they—the leaders, the select—were the chosen. God spoke through them. To disagree or contradict these chosen was to risk exile, flogging, hanging. The word was God and they had the word. This religious mystification has become an integral part of our social ethos. We believe those in power, regardless of the evidence that contradicts what we are told. And we pay a price and so does the world at large.
From what I have read it appears that Abraham Lincoln was a bloody tyrant whose legacy haunts us still. His conduct in office is the reality behind the myth. If Lincoln did what he did and got away with it, might not others do the same?
The real Lincoln is a fine example of what is behind the myth of “American Exceptionalism” and why the myth exists in the first place. The goal is political quietism, unquestioning submission to government policies, a blind worship of governmental power. The myth has done its job quite well. Americans bow before power, never question or challenge their government, live in blissful ignorance of the perils they face. The bliss, however, is running out. The price of ignorance is growing apace.
The spirit that animated the reign of our 16th President is alive and well in the year 2015. Executive power seems to know no limits. The common good lacks a voice. We like to believe that we are safe in this country while our government wages war in our name around the world. Yet the rulers who believe that a little collateral damage here and there (i.e., loss of human life) is a necessary adjunct to spreading democracy will probably not be troubled by a little collateral damage at home if they fear their master plan is being interfered with. They have only to invoke the name of Abraham Lincoln to gain our acquiescence.
  1. Edmund Wilson, Patriotic Gore, xvi. []
  2. Edgar Lee Masters, Lincoln The Man, 428. []
  3. The term “Civil War” is misleading. There was no struggle as to who would control national government as took place in England (1642-1651). The South did not resort to arms except in self-defense. This was a war of aggression by the North, a war of separation by the South. The issue of taxation was the driven force behind both conflicts. The South wanted to go its separate way. Southern leaders believed they had the legal right to do so. The North invaded the South. The South did not invade the North. []
  4. Northerners abhor slavery yet revere slaveholders like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and George Washington. []
  5. Thomas J. DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln, 11. []
  6. DiLorenzo, 12. []
  7. DiLorenzio, 18. []
  8. DiLorenzo, 35. []
  9. Abolitionists constituted about two percent of the adult population. []
  10. DiLofrenzo, 31. []
  11. DiLofenzo, 31. []
  12. DiLorenzo, 25. []
  13. DiLorenzo, 102. []
  14. DiLorenzo, 106. []
  15. DiLorenzo, 94. []
  16. DiLorenzo, 87. []
  17. Masters, 99. []
  18. Using the U.S. Army “to collect the duties and imposts” was not a new idea. In September of 1794, President George Washington, along with Alexander Hamilton, headed an army of 13,000 to collect taxes from whiskey men in western Pennsylvania who felt the tax on distilled whiskey was an unreasonable burden to have to bear. Whiskey was their primary source of income. They refused to pay the tax. This series of events came to be known as the “Whiskey Rebellion” and set a precedent for a President using the army against the citizenry to collect taxes. []
  19. DiLorenzo, 128. []
  20. DiLorenzo, 127. []
  21. Masters, 392. []
  22. Wilson, 107. []
  23. Wilson, 108. []
  24. Wilson, 119. []
  25. Wilson, 117. []
  26. Masters, 11. []
  27. Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, 566. []
  28. Masters, 12. []
  29. Masters, 422. []
  30. It has been estimated that there were more than 13,000 political prisoners in Lincoln’s military prisons. []
  31. In a similar vein, on August 2, 2002, the administration of George W. Bush enacted the American Service-Members’ Protection Act (ASPA), nicknamed The Hague Invasion Act.The aim of the ASPA is,” “to protect United States military personnel and other elected and appointed officials of the United States government against criminal prosecution by an international criminal court to which the United States is not party.” In furtherance of that goal, the ASPA empowers the U.S. president to use “all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court.” In other words, the U.S. will invade The Hague in the Netherlands, where the International Criminal Court sits, and physically reclaim any American prisoner, no doubt reassuring news for potential detainees like Dick Cheney and George W., himself. []
  32. DiLorenzo, 175. []
  33. DiLorenzo, 178. []
  34. DiLorenzo, 182. []
  35. DiLorenzo, 183. []
  36. DiLorenzo, 185. [] []
  37. DiLorenzo, 186. []
  38. Masters, 458. []
  39. Masters, 440. []
  40. DiLorenzo, 36. []
  41. DiLorenzo, 36-37. []
  42. Masters, 412. []
  43. Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men, 331. []
  44. Hummel, 314. []
  45. Wilson, 628. []
  46. Masters, 488. []
  47. Masters, 496. []
  48. Wilson, 425. []
  49. Hummel, 359. []
  50. Wilson, 434. []
  51. Masters, 156. []
  52. Masters, 245. []
  53. Masters, 429. []
  54. Masters, 480. []
  55. Masters, 430. []
  56. John Whitehead, “Jade Helm 15,” Information Clearing House, July 7, 2015. []
  57. Masters, 479. []
Arthur D. Robbins is the author of Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained: The True Meaning of Democracy, referred to by Ralph Nader as “An eye-opening, earth-shaking book… a fresh, torrential shower of revealing insights and vibrant lessons…” Read other articles by Arthur.

37 comments:

  1. Just about everything we learned about history is a lie. In every way the myth about Lincoln is the greatest lie.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lincoln was elected, and the South immediately declared war, and attacked.

    The South got its ass kicked.

    End of Story.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The story never ended. The ramifications have increased.

    NOTE: Do not link your comments to Wio. All of them will be removed later and if your comments are linked to his, I cannot isolate them when I spam him out.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The story of Slavery in the United States ended. :)

      Delete
  4. Another very big month for auto sales - looking like about 17.7 Million units.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. GM is saying that U.S. Sales for Sept. could hit 18.3 Million units.

      Delete
  5. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, I know. And Ash thinks himself 'intellectual' because he mouths leftist memes.....

      Just testing to see if I can get him to disagree with Deuce, which he never does.....

      That stuff about Lincoln and the Civil War is the craziest stuff I have ever read in my life.

      My wife agrees, and she has spent a lifetime reading about Lincoln.

      Delete
  6. I could answer every one of Deuce's 'points' in the previous thread, but why bother.

    Quirk has it right. There is not going to be a settlement. Each side has issues that are so 'non-negotiable' as to make it forever impossible.

    If the West Bank were to become a state, it would just become another missile launching platform against the Israeli....and the most certainly do have legitimate security concerns.

    We all know that both Hamas and the PA are pledged to the extermination of the Jews.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Israelis, not Israeli, which sounds like the blessedly departed rat.....

      and 'they' most certainly do have....

      Just got up, no coffee yet.

      Delete
  7. This sounds like a good book on the Civil War -

    http://www.amazon.com/Battle-Cry-Freedom-Oxford-History/dp/019516895X?tag=thwe0f5-20

    "Battle Cry of Freedom" - think I will get it for my wife and see what she thinks.....if she gives 'thumbs up' then I can recommend it....

    ReplyDelete
  8. Somehow this ditty came rolling into my mind on reading the last two threads -




    They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore

    Kinky Friedman

    Well, a redneck nerd in a bowling shirt was a-guzzlin' Lone Star beer
    Talking religion and-uh politics for all the world to hear.
    "They oughta send you back to Russia, boy, or New York City one
    You just want to doodle a Christian girl and you killed God's only son."
    I said, "Has it occurred to you, you nerd, that that's not very nice,
    We Jews believe it was Santa Claus that killed Jesus Christ."
    "You know, you don't look Jewish," he said, "near as I could figger
    I had you lamped for a slightly anemic, well-dressed country nigger."

    No, they ain't makin' Jews like Jesus anymore,
    They don't turn the other cheek the way they done before.
    He started in to shoutin' and a-spittin' on the floor,
    "Lord, they ain't makin' Jews like Jesus anymore."

    He says, "I ain't a racist but Aristitle Onassis is one Greek we don't need
    And them niggers, Jews and Sigma Nus, all they ever do is breed.
    And wops 'n micks 'n slopes 'n spics 'n spooks are on my list
    And there's one little hebe from the heart of Texas -- is there anyone I missed ?"

    Well, I hits him with everything I had right square between the eyes.
    I says, "I'm gonna gitcha, you son of a bitch ya, for spoutin' that pack of lies.
    If there's one thing I can't abide, it's an ethnocentric racist;
    Now you take back that thing you said 'bout Aristitle Onassis."

    No, they ain't makin' Jews like Jesus anymore,
    We don't turn the other cheek the way we done before.
    You could hear that honky holler as he hit that hardwood floor
    "Lord, they sho' ain't makin' Jews like Jesus anymore!"
    All right!

    No, they ain't makin' Jews like Jesus anymore,
    We don't turn the other cheek the way they done before.
    You hear that honky holler as he hit that hardwood floor
    Lord, they ain't makin' Jews like Jesus anymore.

    Everybody!
    They ain't makin' Jews like Jesus anymore,
    They ain't makin' carpenters who know what nails are for.
    Well, the whole damn place was singin' as I strolled right out the door
    "Lord, they ain't makin' Jews like Jesus anymore!"

    No, we ain't makin' Jews like Jesus anymore,
    We don't turn the other cheek the way they done before.
    Well, the whole damn place was singin' as I strolled right out the door
    "Lord, they ain't makin' Jews like Jesus anymore!"

    ReplyDelete
  9. Bidness calls.....


    Later


    Cheers !

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ah, but first, one last - even Ozone Al is thinking of jumping in the race -

      CNN: BIDEN TO SKIP FIRST DEBATE...
      CLINTON CAMP 'BEGINS TO FEAR'...
      POLL: HILLARY DOUBLE-DIGIT DROP...
      HEARTBERN: SANDERS NEARLY MATCHES $$...
      GORE WON'T RULE OUT RUNNING... .................Drudge


      Talk about an aging clown car straight from the rest home.......


      jeez !!


      bwabwahahaha

      Criminal Clinton, Drinkin' Joe, Ozone Al, and Bernie "Venezuela" Sanders in debate.....

      haHaHa !

      Delete
  10. yet another multiple shooting at a US college. USA! USA! USA!

    Guns for everyone!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

      Delete
    2. YA! It'd be like the shoot-out at the OK Corral.

      Delete
    3. The shooter, nerd, is reported to have been asking the victims their religious affiliation being pulling the trigger.

      Undoubtedly a radical Mormon, or radical Amish of some type........

      The campus was a 'gun free zone'.

      Delete
    4. before pulling the trigger

      If someone with a gun asks you your religious affiliation, Ash, tell them you are a moslem......just always lookin' out for you, young feller....

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    5. I'm betting the shooter wasn't Jewish, and, at times like these, I'm glad, and give a silent shout out, that we have lots of well trained Police around willing to take a chance with their own lives to put the guy down.

      Delete
    6. One of the moslems the Marines took down on that train in Europe was from Roseberg, Oregon....

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    7. Nice place, I've been through there.....

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    8. It's up on Drudge now:

      SCHOOL SHOOTER 'ASKED STUDENTS THEIR RELIGION'................Drudge


      Hmmmm, a Lutheran, naw, a Catholic, naw, a Jew, naw, a Mennonite, naw......

      Would you hazard a quess, Ash, as to the shooter's religious affiliation ?

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    9. I know very little about the circumstances involved at this point. Was it a terrorist attack? ISIS or another kid unhinged? Lots of possibilities.

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    10. Maybe, he was asking so he, like you and your butt buddy WiO, could take out some "moslems"?

      Delete
  11. Law enforcement officials have identified Chris Harper Mercer as the person responsible for the mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, according to CBS and NBC.

    He was armed with four weapons -- three handguns and one assault weapon, according to NBC News' Pete Williams. He was not a student at the school, authorities said. They are still working to figure out his connection to UCC, Williams said, and have uncovered "documents that expressed the philosophy of hate."

    Unconfirmed social media accounts show that Mercer was based in Torrance, California. His purported MySpace account contains photos of the Irish Republican Army, a revolutionary group that has historically been rooted in acts of violence.

    Police shot the 26-year-old man to death on Thursday morning after he entered an English classroom and opened fire, them moved to Snyder Hall, killing 10 and wounding as many as seven more.

    An unidentified law enforcement official told CNN that three pistols and a rifle were recovered at the scene, and appear to have belonged to the gunman. It's unclear if the guns were obtained legally.

    Authorities speculate Mercer may have revealed his plans the night before on 4chan, an anonymous message board, where a post ominously warned, "Don’t go to school tomorrow if you are in the northwest." The message signed off, "so long space robots."

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  12. He supposedly described himself on a dating website as a "conservative republican."

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  13. .

    Obama confident in Secret Service despite latest incident-White House

    President Barack Obama has not lost confidence in leadership of the U.S. Secret Service despite an investigation that revealed 45 employees accessed the personal information of a lawmaker investigating a string of security lapses, the White House said on Thursday.

    Obama has confidence that appropriate steps will be taken to hold employees responsible for their actions, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters.


    .

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  14. .

    Hillary Clinton to Propose Scrapping Health Law’s ‘Cadillac Tax’

    Hillary Rodham Clinton will in the coming days speak out against the so-called Cadillac tax on certain health care plans, a move that is part of a series of reforms she’s suggesting for the Affordable Care Act, according to a union official briefed on her plans.

    Hillary won't be the last one to push this. Saw it coming from day one. It was obvious from the fact they put it off to 2018 implementation, a couple years after Obama was out of office.

    The 'Cadilac Tax' was supposed to be one of the largest contributors to paying for Obamacare. No way the Dems would go for this since it affects union members. The 'Doc-Fix', another big contributor has already gone down in flames.

    Anyone who accepts the original cost estimate for any proposed legislation is a naif.

    .



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  15. .

    During his speech at the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did something unusual: He stood in complete silence for 44 seconds.

    That silence was designed, Netanyahu inferred, to show how much of the world had been responded with "utter" and "deafening" silence when while "Iran pledged to murder" Israeli citizens. During those 44 seconds, the Israeli prime minister glared at the audience.

    To supporters of Israel and many others, it was a remarkably powerful moment, showing how the world was ignoring the risks posed by a nuclear deal with Iran. To critics of the sometimes divisive Netanyahu, it was laughable.

    Online, a variety of mocking versions of the speech have begun to circulate. One YouTube user uploaded a video of the silence, with the interlude filled with "The Sound of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkel.


    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/10/01/netanyahus-44-second-silence-at-the-u-n-is-being-mocked-with-musical-interludes/

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  16. .

    Under Chandeliers, Afghans Sell U.S. Air Bases as Taliban Gains

    (Bloomberg) -- At a five-star hotel in Dubai, nearly 200 people in suits and military uniforms flipped through color- coded maps outlining the perks available if they bought space in soon-to-be-vacated U.S. air bases in Afghanistan.


    Atta Mohammad Noor, the acting governor of Balkh province in northern Afghanistan, showed the crowd a promotional video set to upbeat folk music with polished images of natural resources and infrastructure. Slides promised “good security” and a “smooth environment” if investors put money in the Mazar- e-Sharif air base.

    At the same time, just 100 miles from the garrison in the video, Afghan forces were fighting fierce street battles to retake Kunduz city from the Taliban. If it falls, Mazar-e-Sharif and other provincial capitals nearby are obvious next targets.

    The events on Wednesday revealed the contrast between on- ground realities in Afghanistan and the sales pitch to bolster one of Asia’s poorest countries. Both show the difficulties the U.S. is having in ending its longest war after spending more than $700 billion and losing more than 2,200 soldiers since 2001.

    The assault on Kunduz underscores doubts that the Afghan military, hindered by heavy combat losses and desertions, is ready to stand on its own. Failure to hold the city would jeopardize President Barack Obama’s plan to withdraw almost all American troops by the end of next year.

    Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who has seen peace talks with the Taliban make little progress, said on Thursday night that Afghan forces had gained full control of Kunduz following a counter-offensive.



    Making a buck any way you can.

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  17. .

    THE DOUBLE STANDARD: BULLSHIT WE HAVE COME TO EXPECT

    U.S. judge dismisses Sept. 11 victims' case against Saudi Arabia

    NEW YORK, Sept 29 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Tuesday dismissed claims against Saudi Arabia by families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, who accused the country of providing material support to al Qaeda.

    U.S. District Judge George Daniels in Manhattan said Saudi Arabia had sovereign immunity from damage claims by families of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the attacks, and from insurers that covered losses suffered by building owners and businesses.

    "The allegations in the complaint alone do not provide this court with a basis to assert jurisdiction over defendants," Daniels wrote.

    The victims had sought to supplement their case with new allegations to avoid that result, including based on testimony they secured from Zacarias Moussaoui, a former al Qaeda operative imprisoned for his role in the attacks.

    Daniels said even if he allowed the plaintiffs to assert those new claims, doing so would be "futile, however, because the additional allegations do not strip defendants of sovereign immunity."


    And yet,

    But in 2013, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York revived the lawsuit, in light of a 2011 decision that allowed similar claims to proceed against Afghanistan.

    The definition of 'terrorist' is 'someone we don't like today but check back tomorrow'.


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  18. .

    And this should be interesting...

    Supreme Court Will Decide If Iran Has To Pay Victims Of Its Terrorism

    Iran appealed a previous ruling on the grounds that Congress acted unconstitutionally by telling the court how to rule.

    The U.S. Supreme Court said Thursday it will be the final arbiter in deciding whether Iran's central bank will have to pay $1.75 billion in frozen assets to victims and surviving family members of Iranian-linked terrorist attacks, reported NBC News.

    The original lawsuit was brought against Iran by more than 1,300 American victims of terrorist attacks, including the 1983 bombing at a Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 service members and was blamed on the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Air Force personnel.

    They won their case, but Iran refused to pay. In 2008, the victims learned of Iranian assets at the Citibank in New York and went back to court to have those assets frozen, according to CNN.

    They asked Congress to pass a law allowing them to seize the Iranian Bank Markazi's money, which Congress did in 2012, and in 2014, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Court ruled in their favor.

    But now the Iranians have appealed on the grounds that Congress unconstitutionally overstepped its power upon passing the 2012 law, claiming that lawmakers essentially directed the courts to rule against Iran, which violates the separation of powers and international treaties, according to USA Today.

    The justices agreed to hear the appeal from Iran's central bank despite the Department of Justice urging the Supreme Court not to take the case and let the lower court ruling stand in favor of the victims.


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  19. What Deuce has posted is a bunch of malarky. I'll just pick one paragraph where the subject matter is obscure enough that even people who know a bit about the civil war might not recognize how bogus it is:

    "By the end of the eighteenth century, nations had reached a common understanding as to the proper conduct of war. In 1798, the Swiss jurist Emmerich de Vattel published his Law of Nations, which became a standard reference. The only just war was a war of defense. Attacking defenseless towns and cities, plundering and destroying civilian property, taking from the civilian population more than was necessary to feed an occupying army are all war crimes punishable by imprisonment or death. Occupying soldiers who destroyed property, farms, and livestock were regarded as “savage barbarians.” In 1863, Lincoln issued General Order No. 100 that, in essence, exempted U.S. military from honoring de Vattel’s Law of Nations. Had he been tried, Lincoln probably would have been hanged for his war crimes."

    1. I am not aware that the United States, or any other nation for that matter, committed itself to following the rules laid out by Vattel. Lincoln's General Orders No. 100 didn't exempt the U.S. military from following de Vattel’s Law of Nations for the simple reason that the military was never committed to following Vattel in the first place.

    2. Vattel wrote more than 60 years before the Civil War. The Lieber code, commissioned by Lincoln and issued by him as General Orders No. 100, was intended reflect the understandings at that time, not 60 years earlier, but that doesn't mean that it was weaker. To justify his claim that General Orders 100 "exempted U.S. military from honoring de Vattel’s Law of Nations," Robbins would have to identify restrictions on military action that are present in Vattel but not in Lieber. He fails to do so.

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  20. 3. As far as I can tell, none of the rules that Robbins attributes to Vattel's Law of Nations actually appears in that work. Vattel covers war in Book III, which can be found at http://www.constitution.org/vattel/vattel_03.htm

    4. For example, Robbins attributes the view that "only just war was a war of defense" is false. In § 28, Vattel writes:
    "We may therefore distinctly point out, as objects of a lawful war, the three following: — 1. To recover what belongs, or is due to us. 2. To provide for our future safety by punishing the aggressor or offender. 3. To defend ourselves, or to protect ourselves from injury, by repelling unjust violence. The two first are the objects of an offensive, the third of a defensive war."

    The Civil War began with the Union acting defensively. While the attack on Fort Sumter was in progress, Confederate Secretary of War Walker appeared before a crowd in Mongomery, Alabama, predicting a Confederate victory in that battle. As described in a newspaper report, he continued as follows: "No man, he said, could tell where the war this day commenced would end, but he would prophesy that the [Confederate] flag which now flaunts the breeze here would float over the dome of the old Capitol at Washington before the first of May. Let them try Southern chivalry and test the extent of Southern resources, and it might float eventually over Faneuil Hall [in Boston] itself."

    The logic of war dictates that once a war starts, the parties have every reason to continue the war until a definite resolution is reached. War is horrible, but if there is one thing worse than fighting one war, it is fighting a war and ending it in a way that just sets the stage for another war. That is why the United States involvement in WWII started with Pearl Harbor but didn't end until Japan surrendered. Both Vattel and common sense justify this.

    5. As another example, Robbins quotes the phrase "savage barbarians" from Vattel, which indicates that he is referring to § 166 (which is the only place Vattel uses that phrase). That section reads:

    "If it is lawful to take away the property of an unjust enemy in order to weaken or punish him, (§§ 161, 162), the same motives justify us in destroying what we cannot conveniently carry away. Thus, we waste a country, and destroy the provisions and forage, that the enemy may not find a subsistence there: we sink his ships when we cannot take them or bring them off. All this tends to promote the main object of the war: but such measures are only to be pursued with moderation, and according to the exigency of the case. Those who tear up the vines and cut down the fruit-trees are looked upon as savage barbarians, unless when they do it with a view to punish the enemy for some gross violation of the law of nations. They desolate a country for many years to come, and beyond what their own safety requires. Such conduct is not dictated by prudence, but by hatred and fury."

    This passage is talking about destroying things that will take years to regrow, and in no way prohibits, "destroyed property, farms, and livestock."

    As for the idea that, "taking from the civilian population more than was necessary to feed an occupying army" is a war crime, what does Robbins imagine that "waste a country, and destroy the provisions and forage" means?

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  21. Concluding remarks:

    6. The Confederates weren't willing to comply with either Vattel or the Lieber code, both of which prohibit selling prisoners of war into slavery. From Vattel § 152:

    "Is it lawful to condemn prisoners of war to slavery? Yes, in cases which give a right to kill them, — when they have rendered themselves personally guilty of some crime deserving of death. The ancients used to sell their prisoners of war for slaves. They, indeed, thought they had a right to put them to death. In every circumstance, when I cannot innocently take away my prisoner's life, I have no right to make him a slave. If I spare his life, and condemn him to a state so contrary to the nature of man, I still continue with him the state of war. He lies under no obligation to me: for, what is life without freedom?"

    On May 1, 1863, the Confederate Congress passed a joint resolution which read in part:

    "All negroes and mulattoes who shall be engaged in war, or be taken in arms against the Confederate States, or shall give aid or comfort to the enemies of the Confederate States, shall, when captured in the Confederate States, be delivered to the authorities of the State or States in which they shall be captured, and dealt with according to the present or future laws of such State or States."

    This leaves the decision of what to do with black prisoners of war up to the states, but that doesn't absolve the Confederate Congress of responsibility. By turning prisoners of war over to the states, with no admonition that the states should treat them in a manner consistent with the rules of war, the Confederate Congress is approving the mistreatment of prisioners of war.

    7. Lincoln's decision to codify the rules of war and issue them as orders that his army was expected to obey was (as far as I know) unprecedented. The Confederates would be a more typical example of how people at war behave; they followed some of the conventions of warfare but broke others (at least if we accept Vattel's work as authoritative) as a matter of policy. This is one of many reasons that Lincoln is considered to be a great man.

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