Today is Lincoln’s birthday
[NOTE: This is a slightly-edited version of a previous post.]
His actual birthday, that is.
When I was a child, Lincoln had a birthday all his own. Nowadays he’s lumped in with other presidents. And who knows where he’ll be in the future?
When I was a child, Lincoln also fascinated me more than any other president. One reason was a superficial one: he was just about the strangest-looking president ever (see this). Another was his eloquence, and a third was his sense of humor.
Which brings us to a series of Lincoln quotes. This first one seems especially apropos today:
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
More:
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
It’s not me who can’t keep a secret. It’s the people I tell that can’t.
I hope this prediction is correct:
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
And of course, one of the most famous:
If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
From today’s WSJ
Lincoln’s Struggle With the Constitution
https://archive.fo/sucfV
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it,” — Warren Buffett
Perhaps Abraham Lincoln wasn’t the first American politician to effectively profess “Ein Volk, ein Reich”, but he was the first one to kill over half a million people to advance this idea.
To General George McClellan: “If you are not going to use the Union army, I would like to borrow it for a while.”
Lincoln’s birthday was never a Federal holiday, it was only a public holiday in some states. It might even still be one in your state–New York, California, Missouri, Illinois, Connecticut, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio–and there’s nothing that stops any of us from observing it in any day we wish or taking the day off (if we still work).
There is no such Federal holiday as “Presidents’ Day”. Only one Federal holiday honors a US President, which is Washington’s Birthday, observed Feb 16 this year.
Lincoln excerpts from 1st inaugural address:
“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
“That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and >>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.<<"
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."
In addition:
“If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.”
I for one do not believe Lincoln was the great President he's made out to be – but the victors write the history; his actions led to the change from a collection of united States to United States – at gunpoint. It's interesting that Jefferson Davis was never tried for treason; those in power felt the Supreme Court might have judged the war illegal under the Constitution – "they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."
You know where you can put that LXE? It won’t make you comfortable though.
The uber “right” have their own special loathing for President Lincoln. Bless their hearts.
Tolstoy thought Lincoln the greatest figure known to history. How a Russian concluded that vexes me. Genius recognizing genius is all I can figure.
LXE makes a valid point, albeit crudely.
IMO Lincoln fought to create a strong central government from the pre-1861 rather loose con-federation of strong individual states like Robert E. Lee’s Virginia.Abe fought that war to prevent the southern states from leaving the Union and creating their own separate and distinct country. That terrible war killed and maimed more American men than ALL other American wars fought since 1776 combined. We forget (or ignore) that the pre-war South was predominantly agricultural, and despite the plantation mythology, most of those farms were single family farms, with one man doing the farming. Those were the men who were killed in 1861-65, leaving widows with children on a farm without a farmer for the “40 acres and a mule” farming.
There is a very great deal of factual history on the North vs. the South which has been swept under the rug even to this day. The victor writes the history, after all. We can indeed thank Lincoln for today’s massive D.C. machinery ruling over us. But the South has risen again !
Methinks the neo-confederates should be cheering on the states rights advocates in Minnesota, Illinois in their just and Holy war against ICE and the gestapo, eh, Cicero?
Because, Teddy, Wilson, FDR had very little to do with how progressives to the country to where it is today.
Just curious Cicero, did Calvin Coolidge loathe Lincoln like you and the uber right?
How did the arch villain Lincoln fund his massive Federal government without the Federal income tax? You think the creation of the IRS might have something to do with the ever growing cancerous Federal government?
Nah it’s Lincoln.
Today would have been my grandmother’s 104th birthday. The youngest of 12 children. My grandfather was 7th of 9. Who has families that big these days?
I’m old enough to remember getting both Lincoln and Washington’s birthday off of school.
@LXE
You know, I had to restrain myself from using offensive language in consideration of our host and in an attempt to exercise patience, resulting in me deleting the first draft of this comment.
Then I decided that no, go fuck your historically illiterate bullshit, some points of principle and truth are worth the heat, and tore up my second draft to tell you to do it. Because as much as my harsh language may offend the sensitivities and preferences of some unfairly like Huxley or our host, I owe history, the dead of the Civil War, and Lincoln even more than I owe them.
I am no fan of the Saint Lincoln school of worship and idolatry. I have a lot that I can criticize him for such as deporting Vallandingham or concentrating state power as the war went on. But those are different from this.
Your claim is offensive horseshit on multiple levels and deserves to be classified as blood libel.
Let me count the ways.
Firstly: Lincoln didn’t start the war. That credit is owed in earnest to the South Carolina fire eaters and their secessionist government, who unilaterally declared secession because they lost an election, began large scale theft of federal property and often even private property of people from other states, and fired on Federal forces more than once. The first time or so was ignored by both outgoing and incoming Presidents for the sake of peace before they decided to fire on Fort Sumter itself as a result of Beauregard refusing the terms of the pro-Southern, moderately pro-slavery but Unionist commandant to turn over the fort in a short time if he was not either told not to do so by Federal authorities or resulted. But waiting even a few hours was too much for Beauregard, Davis, and so on.
So they decided that people had to die so they could secede in order to protect their chattel slave system and the political influence of a client system of planter aristocrats.
Again, I note: this was NOT while Lincoln was President. It happened under the Presidency of his Southern slave owning moderate predecessor Buchanan, who also agreed South Carolina went too far.
This is important because it underlines a few important things. Firstly: South Carolina’s leaders had declared war on the Union, not the other way around. They escalated a diplomatic crisis over Federal property and secession that at least theoretically could have been ended through peace into a war. Secondly: the war was forced upon Lincoln as soon as he was elected. Thirdly: Even those that opposed using violence to preserve the Union in its ow right like Buchanan agreed this was an egregious crime against the peace and American interests (even before the other stuff I am going to mention) and that the Union had to seek redress. Fourthly, That each and every state to secede and declare confederation with South Carolina knew the aforementioned and willingly signed up for this war as co conspirators to the original crime.
Secondly: Far from the “Ein Volk Ein Reich” bullshit, Lincoln proved to be far more respectful of state’s rights – especially at the very initial onset – than many Confederates. In particular in spite of Kentucky being his native state and believing it would be of absolutely vital strategic and political importance and being dismayed by the Kentucky government’s declaration of neutrality, he respected it and refused advice from many in government to occupy or even recruit from it as he tried to manage diplomacy.
Ironically the Confederates did the job for him by authorizing an ill fated and abortive invasion to try and overthrow the government and forcibly integrate Kentucky into the Confederacy, unsurprisingly prompting the state government to rescind its neutrality and call to arms on behalf of the Union. Indeed this was consistent throughout the Union with the possible exception of Missouri, which was complicated and owed a lot more to the personal clashes of Unionist general Lyon with the local separatist leadership than to Lincoln.
As such, primary fault for all the death, violence, terror and half a million or so dead and even more wounded lies with the Confederate leadership. As does the ultimate ruin of the slave system they sought to preserve, the unfortunate tarnishing of states rights with their insincere posturing of it, and much else. They steadfastly refused all compromises and ignored multiple chances to either prevent the war from breaking out or to end it early. They ignored the God Given Chance that was the FedGov ignoring the firing on the unarmed merchant ship Star of the West by South Carolina artillery. They ignored Commandant Anderson’s last minute attempt to compromise by promising to evacuate if he was not told to stay or resupplied in a short time. They gutted state’s rights in their constitution in the name of unlimited transit and expansion of chattel slavery. They shot themselves in the foot by declaring war on neutral Kentucky. They responded to Transappalachian Virginia’s hillbillies – who had little connection to the slaveocratic dominated tidewater and lowland and had been underappreciated for decades – creating a convention to vote on seceding from the secession by sending in the military to forcibly crush it. They were party to calculated tribal genocide on the West by harrying and killing pro-Union Amerindian tribes leaving Indian Territory for Kansas over the winter of 1861-2. Most of them civilians. “Alex” Stephens abandoned his lifelong friendship with Lincoln to support the secession and ultimately would shelve his attempts to ban abuse of slaves over the opposition of the rest of the confederate government.
I can understand a fair bit of their perspective, certainly better than most. I can even sympathize with it to some degree given the memories of the Haitian Genocide among the fire eaters, and how less unhinged and monstrous people than they like Lee and Stephens were divided between their love of America and other ties with their loyalty to their states. But understanding also means understanding what is wrong.
I am reminded of this one video game essay talking about the downright demonically evil villain Micah Bell of Red Dead Redemption II, where the narrator says something along the lines of “He is a hypocrite on all other principles because he’s not a hypocrite about this one principle.” That is in essence a good summary of the ‘men’ like Davis and Beauregard who sacrificed all – the lives of thousands, their protestations to states rights, to the law, to complaining about tariffs – on the altar of the slave system. Who often hung in for years and the deaths of thousands, making things steadily worse for all and ironically ultimately thwarting Lincoln and the Union moderates’ attempts to avoid addressing slavery directly, and ultimately continuing long after they had any prospect of actually winning, to defend their “peculiar institution” of the whip and the bondsman.
So spare me the trite and hypocritical Godwin’s Law. It is a confession of how little you understand or care about the relevant matter.
— Abraham LIncoln
The last time, it took 50 years. The remaining hate and anger between the sections was a real, live issue into early 20C, and it was really only the death of that generation that ended it.
As for a strong central government, the USA had two options: centralize and culturally become more unified, or break up. The world had changed by the 1860s, advancing technology was shrinking it even then. If the Confederacy had succeeded in seceding, they too would have faced that exact same choice: centralize or break up.
(Realitically, if they had broken up, some of the southern States would likely have ended up back in the Union eventually, some might have been pulled into de facto orbit around Spain or Britain, but the fire-eater vision of a united Confederacy from the Ohio to the tip of South America was fantasy.)
— Turtler
I’m not sure if Davis should be considered a true fire eater, but Beauregard absolutely yes. I also think that waiting a few hours was intolerable to the fire-eaters precisely because they were afraid peace would break out.
There were conciliatory elements in South Carolina who wanted to reach a deal to leave the Union peacefully, or otherwise make some kind of deal to stay in on different terms. I think the fire-eaters were afraid of just that, that a deal would be struck, emotions would cool and the opportunity for their visions would be lost.
So they struck while the iron was hot, and set a continent on fire.
@CICERO
Not really. LXE is full of it, up to ignoring who started the war and who continued it by refusing any compromises. And I say this as someone who can rant a lot about Lincoln’s many failings and my issues with the cult of him.
This is a common misconception, but it utterly collapses upon closer examination. Especially on the timeline.
Now let’s address the elephant in the room, pun intended. Lincoln was indeed in favor of a significantly stronger Federal Government than what existed at the time or was the norm in American political discourse at the time. He also held a number of proto-Prog beliefs and even more rhetoric, including a fairly typical if mild form of quasi-scientific racism and some tendency to do business baiting. Over the course of the war he would go even beyond that in pursuing national conscription, censorship, and a host of other measures on the grounds of war and the threat of the Union coming apart. He also was willing to embrace corruption in order to grease palms and buy votes. He was no saint, nor should he be worshipped.
BUT he did not fight the war to “create a strong central government.” He did not fight the war to even abolish slavery. He fought the war BECAUSE IT WAS FOISTED UPON HIM AND THE UNITED STATES DURING THE TIME OF HIS PREDECESSOR, SOUTHERN SLAVEHOLDING MODERATE PRESIDENT JAMES BUCHANAN, BY SOUTH CAROLINA’S SECESSIONIST GOVERNMENT AND ITS LATER CO-CONSPIRATORS IN OTHER STATES. Up until Fort Sumter the Union had openly professed it would defend its rights to federal property in South Carolina and oppose secession but would do so legally and peacefully. In practice it even compromised on federal property by allowing the people on the ground to abandon areas that were deemed indefensible. It ignored acts of violence against citizens of other US States and Federal Property. It ignored Secessionist Artillery firing on the unarmed Star of the West trade ship without provocation. It ignored Commandant Anderson conducting unauthorized negotiations with his Southern kin to try and gain a peaceful solution.
What it could neither ignore nor tolerate was Beauregard and co throwing aside all peaceful compromise offers, opening fire on Fort Sumter and capturing Federal troops and the flag in a blatant act of war as well as an egregious crime for one “independent nation” to commit against “another”. And ironically that wouldn’t even be the worst of it by the time Lincoln called for volunteers.
THAT is what Lincoln fought the war against. Not the South’s quest to secede and create an independent country in and of itself, though had the situation continued on it is POSSIBLE he might have. But Slaveocrat War Hawks in control of said states waging war on the Federal Government and adjacent nations in egregious violation of the Constitution and the accepted laws of nations at the time. If South Carolina was a subject state in a Federal Union, what South Carolina’s leadership did was simply treason, theft, and violence on a grand scale fully justifying war. If on the other hand South Carolina was an independent nation in confederal union with the US and deciding to exit it, that’s all well and good…. until you start realizing that what South Carolina’s leadership did would amount to large scale theft, violence, and other crimes of aggression against both the Federal Government and its former sister states.
So no matter which prong of the Morton’s Fork you go down, South Carolina’s leadership and war hawks started the war and committed crimes so egregious even the Buchanan Administration (which unlike Lincoln actually DID oppose fighting to preserve the Union in its own right and believed that violence could not be justified to prevent secession by itself) believed a line had to be drawn and force used. That they did so because they were chimping out over losing a free and fair election and to try and preserve the slave system compounds the nature of those crimes, but does not fundamentally change their nature, or that of each and every state government that did it.
Which raises the question: who started the war? And who caused it to continue?
The answer is quite simple. The Confederacy. The worst I can put to Lincoln on that point is that he refused to table the Crittenden Compromises which in effect would have enshrined slavery as a permanent part of the Constitution, but even then that was in light of Lincoln’s own opposition to it (and that of much of the states) but also that it would in effect override the rights of a host of other states and require Federal power (oh the irony) to impose on most of the country. But it was the Confederate leadership – often loudly and counterproductively blaring about slavery to the horror of any neutrals – that started the war, widened the war through means like the invasion of Kentucky and much of the Western territories, and fought on through the bloodbaths long after they had any realistic hope of peace that deserves primary blame for it. I can complain plenty about Union atrocities or abuses against the constitution, even by Lincoln himself like the deportation of Vallandingham, as well as that of the post war occupation and reconstruction. All are worth talking about in their own time.
But none of them can or should detract from the fundamental point. A confederation of criminals hijacked multiple state governments and levied war against their sister states and citizens in an unprovoked war of aggression, and continued to fight to the bitter end, with great damage.
I have no idea where you get this idea. That the South was overwhelmingly agricultural is mentioned almost every time this subject is brought up.
This is true as far as it goes, and even among slaveholding households the majority of slaves were held by smallholders who topped out at 10 and usually held far less. But politically and economically the weight was held by the great planters. And in any case the smallholders either went along with secession or were dragged along.
Or didn’t and revolted, as we saw in many cases like the Free State of Jones and a host of other anti-slavery or anti-secession outcrops in the Confederacy, subject to great violence and repression by the state.
Which is why I mention that Great Is the Sin of An Unjust War, and for that war primary blame must go the secessionist leadership. This was noted by the likes of Sam Watkins who pointed out the conscription exemption for large planters and the whole “Rich Man’s war Poor Man’s Fight.”
Honestly starting with the fact that seeing it as a “North vs South” issue is honestly at least as misleading. You saw massive civil wars even within the separatist states as the secessionists and anti-secessionists killed one another in extreme violence and the Union was able to levy loyal troops from every state except South Carolina. Conversely you also had a few Confederate Northerners and even more sympathizers. Which is why I do think it is a mistake to view it too sharply as a sectional divide rather than an ideological one.
Oh for the love of God, this reference has always been flawed but it is particularly so here. The defeated wrote plenty of history or pseudo-history, as even a cursory look at Davis’s memoirs show. And while those were often truthful or as truthful as could be, quite a few others were blatantly false.
Uhuh, sure. Let’s completely ignore others like Jackson, or what happened after. Or that Lincoln would not have had half the reason to centralize power to even the moderate degree he did had the war not gone on as bitterly and longly as it did. Or how the Confederate leadership were happy to centralize up to a point on behalf of making sure no pesky State’s Rights would impede with the apparently God Given right to transport slaves and establish slavery wherever one chose.
After a great struggle, yes. And in part from grappling with the effects and lingering damage caused by the radical Dem fire eaters that started and waged the civil war.
I have no problem with your language regarding the malignant asshole LXE, Turtler.
PS – The South fought the Civil War to preserve slavery. Perhaps not all the soldiers but certainly all the leaders.
Today would have been my grandmother’s 104th birthday. The youngest of 12 children. My grandfather was 7th of 9. Who has families that big these days?
==
I believe the total fertility rate ca. 1925 was 2.8 children per woman per lifetime in this country. The standard deviation around the mean may have been larger at that time than later.
==
My great-grandparents, median vintage 1870, grew up in families which averaged > 6 children per household and built families with a mean of 3 per household. Moving from farm employment to town employment was part of that.
Thanks as always, Turtler.
Without idolizing him, nonetheless think about whether any contemporary politician can speak and write as Lincoln did.
Thanks again Turtler.
— FOAF
Without the slavery issue, I think there would still have been an internal crisis of some sort about that time, but probably not a mass civil/secession war. The question of whether the USA was a single nation-state or a tight alliance of sovereign polities (a federation or a confederation, in modern parlance) was in dispute from 1789 to the 1860s, and I think it would have come to a head about then even without slavery.
(Even the Founders disagreed with each other on this point. If you look at the original texts from those days, it used to be common to refer to the United States in the plural, ‘the United States are’, it changed to ‘the United States is’ after the Civil War.)
But I think the crisis would probably have been resolved (however it was) peacefully at scale without slavery. I say ‘at scale’ because I think there might still have been local violence.
There were larger trends in play as well. I don’t believe it was a coincidence that Bismarck united Germany at roughly the same time, or that other parts of Western Christendom were centralizing and and unifying at larger scales, too.
Turtler: Re – Kentucky. Being of 2nd-hand Kentucky blood myself (all my direct male relatives back to 1700s were raised and buried there), you are aware that Kentucky is the only state with a star on both flags. Kentucky’s “that-war” history is very interesting. G-gdad was Union; g-gdad’s brother was Confederate. Family history is interesting as well.
The war was more about the global cotton market than slavery. Slavery became a “feel-good” issue later in the war. One could argue that northern factory workers were often treated as and worse than southern slaves but the victors write the history.
“One could argue …” that is called sophistry.
”The war was more about the global cotton market than slavery.”
No, it was all about slavery.
Much as the United States did in the Declaration of Independence when it seceded from Britain, South Carolina issued a Declaration when it seceded from the United States in 1860. Contrary to what Confederate apologists tell everyone today, it made no mention of taxes, tariffs, or any other issue. It was all about slavery.
Called the ”Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union” it laid out the primary reason behind South Carolina’s decision to secede from the US as “the increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the Institution of Slavery.”
It went on to state “A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.”
Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas issued similar documents. Support for the Confederacy was and is support for slavery.
As for an attempt to deal with secession with methods short of war, all of that went out the window when South Carolina fired on the federal troops at Fort Sumter.
“One could argue that northern factory workers were often treated as and worse than southern slaves”
However one could not argue that northern factory workers were forced to stay in their jobs against their will.
“you are aware that Kentucky is the only state with a star on both flags.”
The confederate flag, both the stars and bars and the more well-known confederate battle flag, had 13 stars though only 11 stated seceded. I believe the other “extra” star was for Missouri, though Maryland and Delaware were also northern slave states.
mkent: that’s the southern side. the north had the textile industry and couldn’t afford to have the cotton suppliers leave the union; england was a major competitor and could have caused financial panic in the north had the south succeeded. the northern industrialists didn’t care one way or another about slavery; many of their workers were not far removed from effective slave status anyway.
FOAF: work or starve may not be truly be “against their will” but it’s a strong incentive to put up with a lot to keep working. history of the tenements of the 1860s makes interesting reading
Flag. OK. I’d always heard KY was the 13th and central star on the ANV battle flag. Yes, MO was also included. My bad.
Would have made some interesting history had MD seceded.
If you can’t see the difference between even the worst backbreaking menial labor and slavery then I can’t help you DT.
Celebrate Presidents Day at the William Howard Taft Buffet!
Something about what it actually means to be enslaved or to be a slave seems foreign or incomprehensible (you expected that other in… word?) to DT.
Yeah, a strong union movement would have given the slaves better working conditions, higher wages, and the grievance process to resolve workplace injustice. But those were unnecessary in the antebellum agricultural paradise of Lost Cause Land, ain’t that so DT?