Was Abe Lincoln a Dictator?

Merry Andrew wrote:

I just loooove revisionist history. Even when the facts are skewed and in error, it's so much fun!!!

Yeah, it's fun when people like you don't supply their source to back up what they say.

pachelbel wrote:

Is your horseshit your personal opinion? I must assume so, as you do not quote a source.

I don't have anything to prove--you are making extraordinary claims, and therefore, you have the burden of proof. You have proven nothing.

You don't have to prove anything? You don't have to back up your silly statements? Because you cannot.

Is that right? Well, I am, in fact, quoting heavily Mr. DiLorenzo's book "The Real Lincoln". He has documented all of his sources, and I have included them in my argument with the source and page number. All you have come up with is your opinion. So far you have proven nothing.

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Prior to Fort Sumter, there was widespread sentiment IN THE NORTH in favor of allowing the Southern states to peacefully secede. This sentiment was so pervasive in fact, that there were individual secession movements in what at the time were called the 'middle states' - New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. (William Wright, 'The Secession Movement in the Middle Atlantic States' (Rutherford, N.J.:Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1973).

Yes, many people agreed with the Virginian institution, Winfield Scott, in taking the attitude: "Go, wayward Sisters." However, what you wrote was: ". . . a large majority of Americans, North and South, believed in a right of secession as of 1861 . . ."--and you have not supported that contention, and your cited source in this example does not support that contention. Mr. Wright simply notes that there were people who thought that way, not that they were "a large majority."

Here's your majority:

The historian Howard Cecil Perkins compiled 495 editorials from Northern newspapers that were written from late 1860 to mid 1861 in an attempt to characterize public opinion in the North regarding the right of secession. (Source: H.C. Perkins, Northern Editorials on Secession (Gloucester, Mass: Peter Smith, 1964). Mr. Perkins goes on to say that he found that 'during the weeks following the 1860 election editors of ALL parties assumed that secession as a constitutional right was not in question, on the contrary, the southern claim to a right of peaceable withdrawal was countenanced out of reverence for the natural law principle of government by consent of the governed. (ibid, p. 10)

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Oh? The Articles of Confederation, which preceded the Constitution, reserved to each state 'its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled".

I guess you did not read sufficient history to learn that not only were the Articles of Confederation superceded by the Constitution, but that the exercise of writing and ratifying a constitution resulted from the general sense in the nation that the Articles had not provided the government necessary to form and operate an effective union.

That is your opinion. I see nothing cited. There is nothing in the Constitution that says that a state has to remain in the union. If you disagree, then find that section and post it.

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The states that created the Constitution and delegated certain powers to the federal gov't AS THEIR AGENT, while reserving the right to withdraw from that compact, as three states did explicitly.

But this history - the true history of the founding - always stood in the way of the grandiose plans of those who advocated centralized gov't power, with themselves in charge, of course, for such power could not be exercised to its fullest extent with such a limited and decentralized state. That, of course, was the way the founding fathers wanted it.

So the advocates of centralization beginning with Lincoln's fellow Whig D. Webster, did what virtually all centralized gov't powers were to do in the late 19th and 20th centuries: they rewrote history to suit their political purposes.

This notion - that the federal Union preceded the states - is not only a lie, but a 'spectacular lie', in the words of Emory University philosopher Daniel W. Livingston. It was this spectacular lie that Lincoln embraced as his main rationale for denying the right of secession to the Southern states.

As i've already pointed out, the State of South Carolina was in arms against the United States,


and as I have already pointed out, South Carolina (where my family history goes back to the early 1700's) had repeatedly attempted to secede peaceably. Lincoln had been advised by his top military commander, Winfield Scott and most of his cabinet to abandon Fort Sumter. The CSA would not tolerate a Federal fort within their borders. Lincoln promised over and over that he wasn't planning on reprovisioning Ft. Sumter. He lied. He sent a naval force to 'reprovision' the fort, accompanied by heavily armed battleships. Historian Bruce Catton explains how Lincoln maneuvered Jeff Davis into firing the first shot. (I have already posted on this thread about how this maneuver forced the first shot -please re-read).

and the maintenance of those land forces was a violation of the constitutional prohibition on that activity.

Says who? You? Source please?


Lincoln considered it an act of insurrection,

even though the states had and have the right to secede eh?

and responded to it on that basis. In each state which seceded, Federal officers were prevented from carrying out their duties, or actually seized, and Federal aresenals and customs houses were seized. On that basis, Lincoln acted. You can object if you wish, but i find it more than a little hilarious to have a Sassanach telling me what ought or ought not to be permitted under the terms of the constitution of the republic of which i am a native citizen,

Oh give it a break. You don't know my history, but here's a clue in for you: I am an ex-pat of the US, but my family has been in the South longer than yours. My ancestors fought in the Civil War and Revolutionary War. We have patriots documented for both wars. Don't preach to me. If you're basing your argument on the fact that you're a 'native son' you're a pretty sorry ass one. I never heard a real Southerner defend Lincoln. You're a rare specimen. Is Sherman your hero? I find it hilarious that you presume so much.

and which document i have studied in minute detail for almost fifty years. You are, by the way, offering nothing but an ill-informed opinion here, and propping it up disingenuously with references to passages of literature which you misrepresent or do not understand.

So far, Mr. Mouth, you have propped yours up by assuming that because you are a 'native son' you naturally know the history better than I do. Quote some sources. And yes, you DO have to prove what you say. Otherwise it is nothing but gibberish.

A spectacular lie is the one which asserts that Lincoln proceeded from an assumption that the Union preceeded the states. Once they were in arms, in insurrection, he had more than sufficient constitutional authority to act as he did, without appealing the an argument which he did not make, and which becomes a strawman when you attribute it to him.

Listen up: Lincoln manuvered the South into firing the first shot.
And I quote: 'Lincoln had been plainly warned by his military that a ship taking provisions to Ft. Sumter would be fired on. Now he was sending the ship, with advance notice to the men who had the guns. He was sending war ships and soldiers as well...if there was going to be a war it would begin over a boat load of salt pork and crackers....not for nothing did Captain Fox remark afterward that it seemed very important to Lincoln that South Carolina 'should stand before the civilized world as having fired upon bread'. SOURCE: Bruce Catton, 'The Coming Fury' (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961, p. 297).

Now, I've even quoted the page number. YOU refute it. With sources, please. Lincoln delibrately started the war.

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Commenting on the Gettysburg Address 57 years later, H.L. Mencken said:

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 gov't 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. The Confederates went into battle free; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision of the rest of the country -and for nearly twenty years that veto was so efficient they they enjoyed scarcely more liberty, in the political sense, than so many convicts in the penitentiary'.

H. L. Mencken, an ascerbic wit who is fun to quote, also hated blacks and Jews, and had no qualms about stating as much publicly. He was also a native son of Baltimore, a hot-bed of secession in the war which broke out not twenty years before his birth. As an American, well-informed on these topics, i do not intend to let my opinion be swayed by a sarcastic journalist of known racist proclivities.

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The Southern states tried repeatedly to secede peacefully. They were not allowed to.

This is a statement from authority on your part, and without substantiation.

See above.

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Shelby Foote, author of The Civil War, wrote that 'Lincoln had maneuvered the Confederates into the position of having either to back down on their threats or else to fire the first shot of the war.' Quite a few Northern newspapers recognized that Lincoln wanted a war and that he had maneuvered the South into firing the first shot. On April 16, 1861, the Buffalo Daily Courier editorialized that 'the affair at Fort Sumter has been planned as a means by which the war feeling at the North should be intensified". The New York Evening Day Book wrote on April 17, 1861, that the event at Ft. Sumter was a 'cunningly devised scheme' to 'arose, and if possible, exasperate the northern people against the South.' The Providence Daily Post says, in 1861, 'for three weeks the administration newspapers have been assuring us that Ft. Sumter would be abandoned, but Mr. Lincoln saw an opportunity to inaugurate civil war without appearing in the character of an aggressor,' and so he did just that. The Jersey City American Standard, April 12, 1861, 'there is a madness and ruthlessness' in Lincoln's behavior 'which is astounding....this unarmed vessel....is a mere decoy to draw the first fire from the people of the South, which act by the pre-determination of the gov't is to be the pretext for letting loose the horrors of war.'

Mr. Foote, whose excellent three volume history i have read and enjoyed, along with his several other works of narrative and of fiction centered in the civil war era, is also a Southerner. I cannot at all agree with an opinion which seeks to vilify Lincoln for a situation existent before he took office. You little know the sentiment of South Carolinians if you think you can sustain a claim that they acted reluctantly and had to be chivvied into taking military action. They were in arms before Lincoln was in office.

I know a lot about the sentiment of South Carolinians as my father was born there, as were my grandparents, gr.grandparents, and so on. I have lived there as well.
You can continue to read fiction. I prefer truth and facts which I have substantiated. You do not substantiate anything except your opinion.

That newspaper editors deplored the actions of Lincoln and attributed to him sinister motives is hardly to be wondered at. I'd find it far more incredible to think that no one dissented from and criticized the policies of any administration.

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BS. More to follow on that one.

If you think you can demonstrate that what i have said is bullshit, help yourself. Once again, you are making extraordinary claims, and you have the burden of proof. So far, all you have proven is that you are willing to make extravagent claims based on scant evidence, and the distortion of what others write.

pachelbel wrote:

Merry Andrew wrote:

I just loooove revisionist history. Even when the facts are skewed and in error, it's so much fun!!!

Yeah, it's fun when people like you don't supply their source to back up what they say.

What'd I say that needs attribution or a reference?

Maybe I could post a notarized deposition from someone who knows me well, attesting to the fact that I love revision history. Hay, Setanta, you know my on-line characteristics pretty well. Do I love puncturing balloons or what?

No, actually Setanta and Asherman are doing that for me right now.

Do they do windows?

You Pachelbel, have the burden of proving extraordinary claims, i don't have to prove anything.

Well, ain't y'all special, though? If you make a statement it is considered specious unless you prove it.

I have made no statements that are extraordinary. Do you live in a cave? These are not spanking new ideas about Lincoln.

However, i have cited the Constitution, repeatedly,

yeah, yeah, but where in the Constitution does it specifically say that states cannot secede? I waiting.......


i have given the full text of Lincoln's 1862 proclamation suspending writs in cases of martial law,

Lincoln so nicely provided a reason for martial law, didn't he, by tricking Ft. Sumter into firing the first shot. Sounds a bit pre-emptive, sort of like our friend, the shrub.

i have provided a link to the site maintained by West Virginia on the history of that site.

You, however, have willfully distorted the truth, such as making the claim that a large majority of Americans in 1861 believed that the States had the right to secede,

Yes, enough Americans believed in the right to secession to go to war over it. The South repeatedly attempted to reason with Lincoln; he wanted war, and got it.

when the only source you provided simply noted that it was an opinion held in the North and the South, without any claims made about the extent to which the opinion was held--in short, your citation did not support your claim.

Did you find the part in the Constitution that says states cannot secede yet? No?

You may say you know a lot about South Carolina, but the evidence of what you post does not support that claim. For example, you have made claims about what the government wants us to learn in school. If you were truly familiar with the United States, you'd know that schools are controlled by local school boards, and that the States maintain boards of education or education departments which set curriculum guidelines, and that this is not a function of the Federal government.

I'm more familiar with school boards than I'd care to say. School boards get federal money, if they want it, in the form of grants for high risk kids, drug&alcohol counseling, etc. The grants come with strings attached, of course. And yes, I do know quite a lot about SC. My lineage goes back to the 1700's in SC. Et tu?

The Shrub's "no child left behind" program now forces school districts to meet some curriculum guidelines in order to assure that their students can pass standarized testing--and that can be an all-absorbing burden. But this program has only been in place for less than five years, and certainly does not apply to the time in the 1950s when i was in school. In fact, the evidence is very good that the States controlled curriculum without reference to any Federal "party line," in that many, many cases have made their way to the Supreme Court on the subject of the teaching of evolutionary theory. When i was a boy, and learning history in school in the South (although i learned far more and far more reliable history by reading at home), Lincoln was not mentioned, or he was mentioned with contempt if at all. The birthdays of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis were holidays, because of the prevailing sentiment of school authorities, but that of Abraham Lincoln was not, even though in the 1950s, his birthday was a Federal holiday. One Southern writer once commented that she had no problem buying birth control in pharmacies in the South in the 1960s, because it was prohibited without a prescription by Federal law, and that was enough for pharmacists to decide to sell it over the counter.

Textbooks do not tell truths in many cases. They do support myths, and one myth is about Lincoln. For instance, I never read a textbook while in high school that said what Lincoln felt about slavery. You want me to quote it again?

Any claims you make about your familiarity with South Carolina are made laughable not just by the historical ignorance you display, but by the evidence here that you don't understand anything about the educational systems in the United States, and the attitudes in the American South toward Lincoln, the civil war, and the dictates of the Federal government.

But you do! The history genius, of course. I went through the educational systems in the US. It is you who cannot get through your skull that textbooks run by a state supported (and fed supported) school system will uphold the American myths. When lies become apparent, you would rather hold to the myth.

Lincoln wanted a centralized government for obvious reasons: power. He got it, didn't he? That power is precisely what the Founding Fathers did not want; they wanted states to have powers that the feds could not affect. It was the last bastion to a check and balance system. Lincoln ripped it apart, under the guise of slavery. Kind of like The Shrub with his oil grab under the guise of protecting Americans from terrorism. BS.

You are making extraordinary claims--if you can't back them up with reliable evidence, you can't rant, shout and insult to your heart's content, it won't change the fact that people aren't going to buy your story without good evidence.

My name is not "Bub," and i have never claimed that the Constitution has prohibited States from seceding. You are the one making extraordinary claims, which you continue to fail to substantiate.

So, far you have advanced the Articles of Confederation, ignoring that these were replaced by the Constitution. Now, you attempt to introduce a statement about what States were entitled to do after the Declaration of Independence, and before the ratification of the Constitution.

You cannot escape that anything which preceded the Constitution ceased to be relevant at such time as the Constitution was ratified. I have already taken notice that the Constitution is silent on the matter of secession. In order to support you extraordinary claim, you will be obliged to demonstrate that the Constitution acknowledges the right of a State to secede. Appeals to the Delcaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation don't make the cut, because they preceded the Constitution.

You have failed utterly to substantiate your extraordinary claim. How sad for you.

It's impossible to talk with people who live in this kind of fantasy-world,... they've got their little story, and by golly they're stickin' to it!

That was one of the more incoherent and hysterical rants which i have read recently . . .