Lincoln

[Horatius]

I don't think anyone here is suggesting that the war itself was fought over slavery. The war was fought over the preservation of the union and that is clear. However, the reason for the secession of the southern states in the first place was state's rights and the predominant state's rights issue was in fact slavery.

Make no mistake, slavery as an economic and cultural system was the root cause of the Civil War. It was the primary cause because it was so fundamentally different than the culture of the North. States Rights was and is just a codeword for the right to keep human beings as slaves or at least a servile group that knows its place. It is unfortunate that such a slave culture was allowed to develop here. I doubt even the Romans were more dependent on their slaves for survival than the American south. What is more unfortunate is there was no educated or respected strata of American slaves, they were simply beasts of burden. Freed and flocking to the northern cities for cheap labor and separate and unequal educational opportunities and confined to ghettos. I am not THAT old (51) but I remember when there were concrete barriers placed so that black neighborhoods had to use only main streets to exit or enter their neighborhoods, being seen driving or walking in a white area would mean instant harassment from the police.Some Alderman wanted to build walls with barbed wire between them ! The great uprisings in the 60's http://www.sharingwitness.org/DetRiots67-12_5Av2.jpg http://prorev.com/MMHST.jpg were a direct legacy of this slave culture. Things are SO much better now that it is easy to forget just how bad they were just 40 years ago. It is really hard for me to be sympathetic or nostalgic for the culture that caused so much turmoil for our country. For whatever reason Lincoln did the right thing.

Edited March 22, 2008 by Horatius

[Moonlapse]

The criticism of Lincoln is not a criticism of abolition. It's an observation that slavery could have been abolished without the staggering amount of causalities, without creating the intense animosity that has lasted to this day, and without permanently distorting our constitutional government. I don't think its simply coincidence that the only Western country that abolished slavery with an all out civil war is the one with the longest lasting and most polarized racial problems. The KKK was established in the aftermath of civil war. It's simply being pointed out that there was possibly a way to accomplish abolition without the long term collateral damage. Our current reality including the 60's is what it is because of slavery and the Civil War.

[Adelais Valerius]

I could never understand why Licnoln it's viewed as a great US statesman, afterall he was one of the culprits for starting the Civil War, the bloodiest US war ever.

His ferm position may arouse applaud, but a more diplomatic person could have calmed things over and prevent the useless bloodshed.

 

Lincoln knew that he had to keep the States together, that there couldn't be a separated America. If he hadn't challenged the confederacy, then the united states would have imploded on itself. Or, one can imagine what would happen if other countries decided to get into the fray of things and take sides with the union or the confederacy....what a fiasco!!

[M. Porcius Cato]

The criticism of Lincoln is not a criticism of abolition. It's an observation that slavery could have been abolished without the staggering amount of causalities, without creating the intense animosity that has lasted to this day, and without permanently distorting our constitutional government.

 

Let's suppose that your observation is correct. How does this observation lead to a criticism of Lincoln? It wasn't Lincoln who fired on Fort Sumter. Had the South been ruled by reason and had not resorted to initiating an armed rebellion, your list of ills could have been avoided.

[Kosmo]

The South prefered seccesion and war to accepting Lincoln as President. While this does not speak directly about Lincoln's qualities shows evidently how divisive he was.

Can be seen a president that brings this reaction of a sizabale part of the citizens as a great statsman?

[Horatius]

As Lincoln said there was no way the republic could endure the way it was. I see no way the south would have altered their society peacefully, ever. As others have pointed out they were the ones that seceded and started the war precisely to avoid any change. Not far from my house is the grave site of William Sherman the purported father of Total War and the man that 'made Georgia howl ' . He understood like no other that to win the Civil War southern society had to be destroyed completely. Maybe if Lincoln would have lived Reconstruction wouldn't have been such a dismal failure but probably not.

[M. Porcius Cato]

The South prefered seccesion and war to accepting Lincoln as President. While this does not speak directly about Lincoln's qualities shows evidently how divisive he was.

Can be seen a president that brings this reaction of a sizabale part of the citizens as a great statsman?

 

While a statesman can be divisive without being great, I don't see how a statesman could be great without being divisive. Can you name any statesmen who undertook momentous domestic reforms who was not divisive? Moreover, under what scenario would a system of oppression be opposed by the oppressors themselves? Whether Lafayette, Lincoln, Alexander II, Yeltsin, or Mandela, agents for freedom typically encounter violent opposition from the privileged parasites they seek to overthrow.

[Moonlapse]

The criticism of Lincoln is not a criticism of abolition. It's an observation that slavery could have been abolished without the staggering amount of causalities, without creating the intense animosity that has lasted to this day, and without permanently distorting our constitutional government.

 

Let's suppose that your observation is correct. How does this observation lead to a criticism of Lincoln? It wasn't Lincoln who fired on Fort Sumter. Had the South been ruled by reason and had not resorted to initiating an armed rebellion, your list of ills could have been avoided.

That's obvious.

 

I never put the blame on Lincoln. We've already identified most of the South's mistakes and wrong doings, but aggressive maneuvering and mistakes on both sides ultimately led to violent civil war. There is no doubt the South was wrong on slavery and that they initiated violence. However, slavery would ultimately fail regardless of all other factors, as it has in every other Western country. If the issue here is simply abolition, it would have happened with or without civil war. But there's also the matter of constitutionally legal secession, regardless of whether the reason for doing so is right or wrong. State membership in the Union was designed to be voluntary. Period. The North's prevention of constitutionally legal secession ultimately makes both sides complicit in the overall conflict. Slavery was going to end, regardless of the war. That leaves the issue of the war itself and its governmental and social consequences, which are nearly permanent, unlike slavery.

 

My original point is that criticism of Lincoln is Constitutional and social, and is separate from the issue of slavery. Somehow there is an embedded belief that criticizing Lincoln automatically puts you on the bad side of the issue of race. A sort of reductio ad Lincoln.

[Sequens]

My original point is that criticism of Lincoln is Constitutional and social, and is separate from the issue of slavery. Somehow there is an embedded belief that criticizing Lincoln automatically puts you on the bad side of the issue of race. A sort of reductio ad Lincoln.

 

I am a Lincoln fan, if I may call it that. My favorite president except one.

 

But I do not object to criticisim of law or policies or the man himself & I see your point that criticism can lead others to object outside the scope of that criticisim. It is probably due to the sensitive nature of the period & subject.

 

I do not see how he has any prime responsibilty for the Civil War itself though. The decades leading up to it are full of actions all accross the country by numberless people setting up the conflict. Hostilities were already occurring in the Kansas and Missouri territories. My impression was that it was an inevitable clash. The cause was slavery, a right and wrong issue, that was believed by many to supercede other factors.

[Moonlapse]

I do not see how he has any prime responsibilty for the Civil War itself though. The decades leading up to it are full of actions all accross the country by numberless people setting up the conflict. Hostilities were already occurring in the Kansas and Missouri territories. My impression was that it was an inevitable clash. The cause was slavery, a right and wrong issue, that was believed by many to supercede other factors.

I don't think he has any prime responsibility either, but he shares at least some responsibility along with the parties on both sides that ultimately escalated the conflict to civil war during the previous decade or so. The Civil War exchanged slavery for death, poverty, intense hatred, and oppression which still exist to a certain extent almost a century and a half later. There are a myriad of possible sequences of events that could have ended slavery without war and all of the unintended consequences, but that won't make for a very fruitful discussion. I just wish slavery had ended without sacrificing Constitutional integrity, or that abolition had been a part of the Constitution to begin with.

 

Anyways, I'm getting deeper into the conversation than I intended. There is rarely ever an absolute right and wrong side to every conflict, despite the consensus. History is more complex than that. I'm out.

[Ludovicus]

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

 

I think it's time in this discussion to refer to the above founding document of the USA, The Declaration of Independence. The existence of slavery was a glaring contradiction to the original statement that created the nation. Its continued existence before the Civil War undercut the values Americans proclaimed to themselves and to the world on July 4, 1776. It was this fatal flaw that Lincoln understood.

 

Latin American countries, save Brazil, made sure that slavery ended with independence. The world does learn from history. Thank God.

Edited March 23, 2008 by Ludovicus

[M. Porcius Cato]

In defense of the drafters of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson originally included a passionate assault on slavery and the slave trade in the list of grievances against the king. Nor was this Jefferson's opinion alone. Paine, Adams, Franklin and many other Founders were violently opposed to slavery and wished to find a practicable way to abolish it.

[Sequens]

In defense of the drafters of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson originally included a passionate assault on slavery and the slave trade in the list of grievances against the king. Nor was this Jefferson's opinion alone. Paine, Adams, Franklin and many other Founders were violently opposed to slavery and wished to find a practicable way to abolish it.

 

It seemed to me that slavery was not directly confronted at the time, for fear that the southern colonies would not join the fledgling country and revolution. There prime purpose was to gain indepence, but to do it they had confederated themselves with states with anachronistic practices. Advance of time, current world opinion, and politics made it a ever growing problem. Only in scattered hold-out places was slavery still legal.

 

Lincoln's election seemed to be the signal for the south to succeed. I do not know if it was anything Lincoln did, like present a new law. Certainly he was not considering freeing the slaves at that time. So it looks like they broke away because their candidate lost. But then they attacked Fort Sumter. The Fort was garrisoned by Federal troops. I do not know if negotiations had started over division of propertys and material, but my sense is that there had not been enough time to proceed with detailled talks. The Southern Forces forced the issue. It was their's now.

[Kosmo]

The Declaration of Independance was not a binding law and the Constitution did not spoke about slavery.

 

Did the North had the right to change the South thru laws or military action? To establish what is moral and right for others? This is more then the central govermant imposing itself on some local goverments, it was the public opinion in North using the federal goverment on South.

In ethnic conflicts is fairly common that the majority bashes the minority using democratic means.

 

Yeltsin and Mandela were unsuccesfull statesman that are famous more for what they did before taking power. Yeltsin's tanks firing at the Russian Duma (parliament) are not a good evidence of democracy, but not even that drunk did not provoked a large scale civil war if we except bloody First Cecenian War.

[Sequens]

Kosmo, it might be helpful to state something more clearly.

 

The Confederacy started the war. They demanded the surrender of a Federal installation and began the hostilities by attacking and capturing it by force.

 

Some things are no brainers. Slavery is bad. If you disagree sell yourself to someone as a slave and send me the money.