Plus, Bushes political failings led to Obama. Bush gets an F from me in “End of Term Socialist Inclinations of the Population”

The next four years will be a litany of, “Bush left it this way. We’re just trying to fix his mistakes.” Have you ever heard the two letters joke?

But those poor people don’t get the Democrats elected, so screw ‘em.

Costly in hundreds of thousands of lives though it was, the Civil War brought freedom to the slaves and removed the 3/5ths codification. And while the war clearly didn’t bring about a color-blind America, it certainly was a self-evidently necessary step in providing the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to all Americans.

But Goldberg researched many many things about Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and other presidents I didn’t know.

It’s a must read.

I graduated college a couple years ago and I’ve always wondered how my public primary and secondary schooling tinted the way I see the world. For example, if you had asked me eight years ago who the five greatest presidents of all time were, I would likely have answered Reagan (I have conservative parents,) Lincoln, Washington, FDR, and JFK. My brief exploration into the presidents has me seriously questioning Lincoln, enraged at FDR, and confused about how JFK got on my list in the first place.

Any other common pub school myths we can shatter in this thread?

Anyway, this always necessitates a long, complicated and necessarily informed conversation and there’s never time for that here.

So, to act as if “the south” seceded is not really correct. A very large number of southerners were against secession and the whole idea of the Confederacy. Also realize that most states had large swaths of their populace still supporting the union. Many states had vicious internal wars between unionists and Confederates in the south, too. Texas, Tenn., N. Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri…. many of these states had large areas that Confederate authorities could never control because the southerners that lived there stood against the Confederacy.

As to your point on what Lincoln “provoked”… it is equally true to say South Carolina provoked the war because it fired first. Provoked the war by attempting to forcibly take a federal facility. Provoked the war by not letting the fort re-supply.

… provoked the war over slavery.

But, then, we can also say that the Constitution provoked the war itself by basically codifying slavery as a pseudo right!

We can have a good faith argument about the Constitutional dimensions of the seven Lower South states’ decision to secede in Dec – Feb 1862. Resolving that really isn’t necessary to this discussion.

The Confederate States demanded that the US vacate its facilities in the Confederacy and offered to pay for the forts, custom house, armories, etc. The US refused to vacate certain forts, Ft. Sumter among them. When the US attempted to re-supply Ft. Sumter, the PACS fired on the fort and the supplying fleet.

Lincoln deliberately and provocatively took this action. Many Southerners thought the Southern response was foolish if not fatal, firebrands like Robert Toombs among them. Nevertheless, Lincoln clearly had the measure of them and successfully povoked them to do something foolishly fatal.

After the Ft. Sumter matter, Lincoln asked the governors of the states remaining in the union to provide the US with 75,000 troops from state militia to “suppress the rebellion.” The Governors of the Upper South, slave owning states, refused to provide troops to invade their Southern brothers and sisters. And The War began.

Lincoln provoked the Ft. Sumter incident by attempting to reinforce the fort. Lincoln provoked secession of the Upper South states by demanding that they supply troops for an invasion of the Lower South.

There are two sides to the story, but winners get to write history.

I would have to agree with the basic concept that we began to differently interpret the Constitution and the meaning of the Republic by the Civil War.

I would disagree that it is because of Lincoln. In fact, I’d say it was well underway long before Lincoln’s 1850s political career. In fact it started during Andrew Jackson’s presidency.

And, I wouldn’t get all teary eyed over the supposed “lost” Constitutionalism of the South, either. It was the south, remember, that created the gag rule and effectively silenced debate for the whole rest of the country on the issue of slavery. It was the south that was angling to sue the Dred Scott decision to force slavery on the entirety of the country and not just the south, too.

Further, we must remember that the Republican Party was not Lincoln’s. He became its head, but was never its controller. The GOP was made up of the Whig ideal on expanding federal projects and authority. Lincoln had less to do with that than he did the slavery question and the war.

We cannot lay entirely on Lincoln the expansion that his party was endeavoring to promulgate. It was an expansion that was in the works for decades before Lincoln. After all, Lincoln was not a national party figure in the manner of having been one to guide the party to its planks and ideals. He was a relative outsider for much of the time as far as the national party is concerned. His influence was chiefly in the subject of slavery.

What I am saying is that it is far too simple minded to imagine that the efforts of hundreds of GOP officials that were powerful in the party before Lincoln meant a thing to the national party is ALL Lincoln’s fault.

It is also idiotic to say Lincoln was “the cause of the civil war.” Only the historically illiterate could say that. The south had seceded before Lincoln even got to DC. The south fired FIRST. And, on top of all that, hundreds of thousands in the north had war fever that was unquenchable. Public opinion alone in the north would have forced Lincoln’s hand to war! Then we add the singular fact that SLAVERY WAS THE CAUSE of the civil war, quite despite the empty claims of neo-confederates everywhere.

If slavery was not the cause then WHY does nearly EVERY ordinance of secession and every statement of intent from the southern states claim slavery as the most important issue?

So, to sum up, the change in interpretation of the role of the federal government and Constitutionalism was well under way before Lincoln came anywhere near the White House and papalee’s beloved south was just as guilty at it!!!

However, what are your thoughts on papalee’s charges?

How significantly did the interpretation of the Constitution change during Lincoln’s presidency?

Dilorenzo’s books are worth little more than the kindling from which one can make of them.

What we need as Americans are history books which tell us the very unpleasant truth about this very unpleasant man and lets us know that there were no winners in his war. The first thing which should go is the term “Civil War.” England had a civil war and so did Spain, but if words mean anything at all we did not. And all Americans need to be told this until it really sinks into our heads. And our hearts as well!

He did not save the Union. A case can be made that he destroyed it and put it beyond all saving. Our view of the Constitution is completely different from that of Americans before Lincoln. The country then was one in which the states were sovereign and the national government was delegated certain powers, very limited powers with it being understood that the greatest defense against tyranny was the fact that a state could secede.

The war against the South has never ceased and will not. No real Southerner can have a complete loyalty to the national government because he knows that the federal government does not regard nor threat him and his state as a complete equal in terms of citizenship.

Republicans need to realize that politics and history are much like that Zen river. You can never step in the same river twice. We no longer belive in the same things which the pre-1860s Republicans did. In fact we are much closer to the believes of those Southerners who resisted the tyranny of the central government while the the Democrat party took over Republican tactics. Look at Wilson, Roosevelt and Obama.

I know this will come as a shock to those who have never read Lincoln, but it is time.

Brad Smith
www.law.capital.edu
www.campaignfreedom.org