In 1862, Abraham Lincoln invited a couple of dozen affluent black freedmen to meet with him so he could tell them they ought to leave the country.
They were unenthusiastic.
In recent decades, historians have typically alleged that Lincoln then grew in racial sensitivity and dropped his long-nurtured plan to persuade black ex-slaves to move to colonies in warmer climes, whether Liberia, Hispaniola, or Central America.
An article in the NYT by historian Sebastian Page documents that this is just statue-polishing by historians. Despite a lack of enthusiasm among his political allies, Lincoln continued to work on his plans for facilitating self-deportation of ex-slaves up through his death in April 1865. For example, the same morning he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863, Lincoln signed a contract establishing a colony for 5,000 American ex-slaves in Haiti.
Of course, today, the idea of helping African-Americans move to a black ruled state like Haiti or Liberia sounds utterly inhumane.
Yet, Zionism has worked out reasonably well for Mormons in Utah and for European Jews in the Middle East, so why was it racist of Lincoln to think that African-Americans could do a decent job of ruling themselves too?
Indeed, isn't our assumption that they couldn't kind of racist of us?
How was Lincoln supposed to know 150 years ago that Haiti would today be a byword for bad government? We think of black-colonized Liberia as a failed state where the natives massacred their African-American elite on the beach in 1980, but how was Lincoln supposed to know that "Can't we all get along?" wouldn't work among blacks in Liberia?
They were unenthusiastic.
In recent decades, historians have typically alleged that Lincoln then grew in racial sensitivity and dropped his long-nurtured plan to persuade black ex-slaves to move to colonies in warmer climes, whether Liberia, Hispaniola, or Central America.
An article in the NYT by historian Sebastian Page documents that this is just statue-polishing by historians. Despite a lack of enthusiasm among his political allies, Lincoln continued to work on his plans for facilitating self-deportation of ex-slaves up through his death in April 1865. For example, the same morning he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863, Lincoln signed a contract establishing a colony for 5,000 American ex-slaves in Haiti.
Of course, today, the idea of helping African-Americans move to a black ruled state like Haiti or Liberia sounds utterly inhumane.
Yet, Zionism has worked out reasonably well for Mormons in Utah and for European Jews in the Middle East, so why was it racist of Lincoln to think that African-Americans could do a decent job of ruling themselves too?
Indeed, isn't our assumption that they couldn't kind of racist of us?
How was Lincoln supposed to know 150 years ago that Haiti would today be a byword for bad government? We think of black-colonized Liberia as a failed state where the natives massacred their African-American elite on the beach in 1980, but how was Lincoln supposed to know that "Can't we all get along?" wouldn't work among blacks in Liberia?
A group of freed slaves resettled to Trinidad.
ReplyDeleteI guess this means Lincoln's positive legacies are just the slaughter of 700,000 Americans and the burning of cities to the ground. He'll always have that.
ReplyDeleteHey, didn´t Liberia do fairly well until it hit the wall in 1980. 133 years ain´t too shabby.
ReplyDeleteAnd if Lincoln had had his way, African-American domination in Liberia would have been on even firmer ground, no?
Tell this to Spielberg, Steve.
ReplyDeleteHaiti was a basket case from the start. Liberia was an economically poor but politically stable democratic republic for something like 130 years.
ReplyDelete"Haiti was a basket case from the start"
ReplyDeleteBut when it was a Colony, it was "La perle des Antilles"[The Pearl of the Caribean]. France most precious colonial possession.
The 1804 Haiti Massacre, is when Haiti doomed itself for the rest of it's existence, I don't think I have to explain it on a HBD blog.
Jeffery, you guys were the ones that thought it was a good idea to secede in the first place.
ReplyDelete"isn't our assumption that they couldn't kind of racist of us?"
ReplyDeleteIt's not really an assumption if it's based on the empirical evidence, is it?
Jeffery:"I guess this means Lincoln's positive legacies are just the slaughter of 700,000 Americans and the burning of cities to the ground. He'll always have that."
ReplyDeleteI think that Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, etc, deserve the credit on that one.After all, they were the ones who attempted to secede in order to preserve a system (slavery) that involved the systematic violation of every imaginable human right.
RE: Settlement of American Blacks,
To Lincoln's mind, this was the liberal solution.If two races cannot live together in amity, then they must dwell apart.Each can then be master in his own house. Remember, the 19th century was the great epoch of the ethno-state (the unification of Italy, nationalist sentiment in the Balkans, Greek independence). Giving American Blacks their own nation should be seen in those terms.
Shipping all US Blacks to Africa was just one of those wacky ideas political leaders get from time to time. The plan had special appeal to midwestern Free Soil Whites who objected the idea of Blacks being able to move to Northern locations like the Great Lakes cities, so Lincoln used it as a tool to placate Whites who where becoming nervous about the post war status quo.
ReplyDeleteOne reason it would not have worked is that back then virtually 100% of Blacks were performing some sort of useful work, so the Whites they were working for would oppose the plan. Remember one of the 'infelicities' of the civil war was it removed over a million young white males from the post war work force. Additionally the wealth needed to create a colony from scratch was needed to rebuild the US south. So the Black resettlement plan might have been possible before the war, but became impracticable after it.
I believe you will see the same situation in the US today as it becomes apparent that resources available for various government schemes before the GWOT are no longer available afterward and those ideas, whatever their merit, become impracticable.
Liberia was an economically poor but politically stable democratic republic for something like 130 years.
ReplyDeleteWell that's kind of the point - for Lincoln this seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do, but today it is considered pure evil, so the need for re-writing history since we know Lincoln could not have been evil.
Great post. In the publicity blitz preceding the release of the Spielberg movie, I noted this revisionist idea popping up that Lincoln had warmly embraced the black race in the few years before his death. What this belief is based on, I don't know. Perhaps having long ago tarred the Founding Fathers as unforgivable racists it was felt necessary to redeem at least one significant figure from our history.
ReplyDeleteIn "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter," Lincoln's right-hand man and bodyguard is his black BFF, filling the role played in real life by Col. Ward Hill Lamon. If you're going to play havoc with history, might as well do it for laughs.
seriously, by Lincoln's time there were way too many slaves to deport...Ga and SC had stepped up imports probably in part to forestall this. But then they lived in fear of revolt.
ReplyDeleteWhen I become Dictator of America, I can't decide what to do first.
ReplyDelete1. Dynamite the Lincoln Memorial
2. Tear the stupid Communist poem off the Statue of Liberty
Gestures! When you're Dictator, it's all about gestures.
In 1978, I had a college professor who swore that Africa would be the continent of the future. He said that once de-colonization was completed, Africa would have control over its natural resources and, combined with a population that was harder-working and lower-paid than Asia, this would mean the 21st Century was going to belong to Africa.
ReplyDeleteI don't have any particular pleasure in writing this, but it is my observation that the stock of west African blacks who were enslaved and transported to the USA, 'can't get on' with anyone. No matter which ethnicity they happen to be neighbors with, they will turn on them with emnity over the course of time.
ReplyDeleteOnce they've driven out their rival ethny neighbors, they turn on themselves.
They remind me of ants in a box.
People would also find it racist if President Obama tried to convince all of the jews in America to move to Israel...
ReplyDeleteThere's no question Lincoln held racist views (certainly by today's standards). Clearly, he doubted the ability of blacks to govern themselves or even to participate as full citizens in a democratic society. However, he thought that, as human beings, they had the right to rise or fall on their own individual merits and not to be treated as chattels.
ReplyDeleteInterestly, both Lincoln and Southern secessionists
were grappling with the same basic issue, namely what to do with a slave population that comprised 40%of the overall population in the South. Lincoln favored deportation. The South wanted to expand slavery into the West to create a release valve. The Republican philosophy of confining slavery to the states where it currently existed meant that the South would be forever stuck with a black population that would only continue to grow and eventually overwhelm the whites.
Attn: Steve-O; The Search for the Great White Defendant(tm) MLXXXVIII has been concluded. This one with a twist, the white boys get off scott free, the do-gooder Bruva gets a felony conviction!
ReplyDeleteI think that Lincoln should be thanked for initiating such wonderfully instructive social experiments.
ReplyDeleteWould that the natives rose up here.
Two observations:
ReplyDelete1) Expelling all the black people from America would have been enormously immoral and unjust.
2) American whites would have been enormously better off if it had somehow happened.
Just sayin'.
The essential argument of a recent book, "The Hidden Constitution: How Lincoln Re-cast American Democracy", is that Lincoln had a vision of the USA as a nation-state rather than the constitutional republic envisioned by the founders. His ultimate intention was to impose this vision on the country and government of which he was president. Part of Lincoln's vision was that the USA should be poulated primarily by WASPs sharing a common political vision. After all such uniformity is one of the defining characteristics of the nation-state (nation derives from the Latin natus -- birth). The author argues that Lincoln successfully imposed his vision on the nation. It is enshrined within the Gettysburg Address, whose principles constitute a "hidden" constitution that is every bit as powerful as the original Constitution. The author points out that whereas the word "nation" had hardly appeared in political discussions within the USA prior to Lincoln. The word is used over ten times in the Gettysburg Address.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the author pretty much glosses over the truly fascist nature of Lincoln's vision and the role the "Great Emancipator" envisioned for non-WASPs in his political utopia. To my mind, tt seems that as of to date we've wound up with the dregs of Lincoln's vision.
Haiti did well for a long time. They were quite organized at the start. Look up the Citadel if you want to see 19th century Haitian organization at work.
ReplyDeleteThere is a certain country in South America that had a sizable black population in the 19th century through the legacy of slavery and yet by the turn of the 20th century it had pretty much disappeared.
ReplyDelete" so why was it racist of Lincoln to think that African-Americans could do a decent job of ruling themselves too?"
ReplyDeleteThis is the same point I like to make about the fatehrs of apartheid. How was it racist for people like Verwoerd to have supposed that blacks were inherently capable of self-government - albeit initially under white tutelage? As a lecturer in sociology in the 1930's Verwoerd even explicitly rejected the genetic explanation for African backwardness.
Mormons in Utah is a bad example. They never claimed to have left the United States and remained explicitly loyal to the USA even after they left it. Famously the Mormon Battalion served on the US side in the Mexican-American war. See
ReplyDeleteLincoln suspected that white and black people would not get along (a suspicion that has not been shown to be unreasonable).
ReplyDelete"How was Lincoln supposed to know 150 years ago that Haiti would today be a byword for bad government? " - It was a byword for bad governance back then as well.
ReplyDeleteLiberia's leadership was for the most part, how should I say, very cafe au lait, emphasis on au lait.
ReplyDeleteBlack Separatists are all eventually stung by the reality of what separation actually means: self sufficiency.
ReplyDeleteRhodesia is the prime example in Africa and Detroit is it's American sister.
Lincoln lived more than 2 years after Jan 1, 1863. His administration's policies concerning reconstruction (in areas of the Confederacy under Union control) and concerning blacks were in constant flux during that period. There is a large historical literature on it. From what I've read, by the time he died, Lincoln had long since given up on the colonization idea. In this, he was largely influenced by black soldiers' contribution to the Union war effort.
ReplyDeleteThe elite in Liberia were American-Africans, not African-Americans.
ReplyDeleteBlacks in America are usually never Africans unless they or their parents immigrated recently. That's because most are a melange of African tribes that would never crossbreed in Africa.
I just try not to hold onto pennies or five-dollar notes. Dimes too.
ReplyDeleteSailer says:
ReplyDeleteYet, Zionism has worked out reasonably well for Mormons in Utah and for European Jews in the Middle East, so why was it racist of Lincoln to think that African-Americans could do a decent job of ruling themselves too.
The comparison is flawed actually. Neither Mormons or Euro Jews were chattel slaves in the US for over 200 years. And Zionism has not worked out that well for European Jews in the Middle East- as witnessed by a constant state of war and terrorism ongoing there for over 50 years, and the survival of the Jewish state even today being in doubt. And Mormon zionism was voluntary. There were no gangs of slave traders preventing their move to Utah. Some actually made adjustments in various localities (such as ditching polygamy) and did not move to Utah. They actually had a choice – something black slaves did not get.
Indeed, isn't our assumption that they couldn't kind of racist of us?
Perhaps racist, and perhaps hypocritical. Lincoln also in turn did not call on white people to abandon the lands taken from indigenous peoples by force and deceit and depart for Europe. And Lincoln wasn't heavily concerned about black folk ruling themselves, but wanted a quick fix to get rid of America's original sin- slavery. In this he was certainly both naive and unrealistic.
How was Lincoln supposed to know 150 years ago that Haiti would today be a byword for bad government? We think of black-colonized Liberia as a failed state where the natives massacred their African-American elite on the beach in 1980, but how was Lincoln supposed to know that "Can't we all get along?" wouldn't work among blacks in Liberia?
Haiti was a byword for bad government and simple human decency BEFORE slavery ended, while under WHITE rule. In Haiti, supposedly "mo betta" white governance killed off 50% of the black population within 10 years- a deficit that had to be continually filled by fresh imports from Africa. Haiti was a vicious, brutal place BECAUSE of white rule, which also decimated the pre-colonial population there and in some nearby islands by disease, violence and outright murder. Black rule brought a much higher chance of survival for blacks than supposedly "kindler, gentler" white rule.
And the relatively recent Liberian killings are nothing compared to the European pattern and numerous wars between white people who couldn’t “get along” in the area of religion. What’s 50 or 60 on a Liberian beach compared to, oh, tens of thousands in Europe’s continual religious wars? And this was white people killing otha white people! Imagine that…
And whites themselves are unimpressive "role models" of good governance.
White ruled South American nations across the sea from Haiti produced a continual cycle of political instability and poverty in both the 1800s and 1900s. In Europe white rule produced the Balkans, byword for violence and instability. And supposedly "better" Euros are no better at all. "Good" white rule produced tens of millions murdered and deliberately starved under gentler Joe Stalin, and this is before WWII.
More enlightened white "role models" produced the abomination of the Holocaust, murdering some 6 million European Jews and a few million more Poles, gypsies, and others for good measure. On a positive note, white rule is certainly efficient. The advanced white Germans perfected the art of mass extermination, such as the "sardine pack" used by the SS to improve the "throughput" of shooting Jewish children at mass graves. They even boosted revenue by extracting the gold teeth of the murdered- a shrewd move by reputed “role models” of good governance.
Ignorance of the history of the scale of migrations in the 19th century makes Lincoln's colonization ideas look much extreme than it actually was.
ReplyDeleteRemember that almost 1 million Irish emigrated during the great famine alone with almost no state support, along with the self-organized mass Mormon migration, and the huge waves of British and German migration before the civil war.
Organizing an emigration of 2 or even 3x this size from the South with state support over a decade would have been not particularly difficult, especially given the improvements in transportation and logistics by the 1860s.
The real problem was that the places they offered American blacks for colonization were basically unviable tropical dumping grounds (West Africa, etc) that needed huge amounts of subsidies and didn't offer and obvious way of making a living to agricultural migrants - the sucessful mass migrations of the 19th century needed a pull to a appealing location as well as push out from the homeland, and West Africa really had no "pull".
anON SAID:
ReplyDeleteI think that Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, etc, deserve the credit on that one.After all, they were the ones who attempted to secede in order to preserve a system (slavery) that involved the systematic violation of every imaginable human right.
Indeed. As you say they should be "credited" with the 700,000 deaths and the burning cities.
To Lincoln's mind, this was the liberal solution.If two races cannot live together in amity, then they must dwell apart.Each can then be master in his own house. Remember, the 19th century was the great epoch of the ethno-state (the unification of Italy, nationalist sentiment in the Balkans, Greek independence). Giving American Blacks their own nation should be seen in those terms.
^^Perhaps, but it was also deceptively attractive as a quick fix out of the slavery dilemma. It was also of course, hopelessly naive and unrealistic.
Baldwin said:
In the publicity blitz preceding the release of the Spielberg movie, I noted this revisionist idea popping up that Lincoln had warmly embraced the black race in the few years before his death.
Maybe with some white liberals. But black historians have never had any such illusions about Lincoln. His record has long been made plain by black scholars.
Anon says:
the stock of west African blacks who were enslaved and transported to the USA, 'can't get on' with anyone. No matter which ethnicity they happen to be neighbors with, they will turn on them with emnity over the course of time. Once they've driven out their rival ethny neighbors, they turn on themselves. They remind me of ants in a box.
Presumably the white people who came to the US were able to "get along" with others so well by contrast. Let's see- genocide and land seizures against indigenous peoples. And a Civil War that left 700,000 dead and massive destruction. Yeah, sure.. white people are "role models" for sure on this score...
The South wanted to expand slavery into the West to create a release valve
Maybe, but also to augment its profits made on the backs of black slaves. As Sowell (1981, 1983) notes, slavery, overall, in comparison to other contemporary agricultural systems for mass crop production was profitable. The "release valve" was wholly self-serving.
Lincoln knew the Bible inside out and used biblical metaphors often, like most people of his time. In the Old Testament, the Israelites suffer hundreds of years under slavery in Egypt until they finally win their freedom. Then they go home.
ReplyDeleteThis might have been an inspiration, and a moral argument to help the slaves return to their ancestral lands. No ill will necessary.
he real problem was that the places they offered American blacks for colonization were basically unviable tropical dumping grounds (West Africa, etc) that needed huge amounts of subsidies and didn't offer and obvious way of making a living to agricultural migrants - the sucessful mass migrations of the 19th century needed a pull to a appealing location as well as push out from the homeland, and West Africa really had no "pull".
ReplyDeleteActually the real problem was the institution of slavery, a proud "states right" that the white south had no intention of relinquishing, and that made some northerners handsome profits. As Sowell 1981, 1983 shows, slavery as a system for mass production of certain agricultural commodities, was profitable in comparison to existing alternative systems. "Colonization" was never a serious option- too many white people, north and south were getting paid. Lincoln's notion was a naive, quick fix (or cynical talking point to pacify various "bases"). It was always a non-starter.
DanJ said:
ReplyDeleteLincoln knew the Bible inside out and used biblical metaphors often, like most people of his time. In the Old Testament, the Israelites suffer hundreds of years under slavery in Egypt until they finally win their freedom. Then they go home.
This might have been an inspiration, and a moral argument to help the slaves return to their ancestral lands. No ill will necessary.
Maybe but it seems a stretch. Cynical political calculation is more likely. Deportation was a non-starter both practically, financially and realistically, and while it made a good talking point (depending on the audience addressed- the "lullaby" mentioned in the article link) it had no realistic chance. So he could talk about it- and fob off hard questions, while appearing to be both "reaching out" to blacks, and placating whites at the same time that were hostile/indifferent to black aspirations for freedom now. He could play both ends against the middle.
A nice and routine bit of deception (and politics) from the Bible man. There are of course other biblical metaphors that Lincoln ignored- such as the periodic jubilee that set bondmen free in Israel, prohibition against man-stealers, or rewarding the bondman fairly for his work. Buy hey, what politician ever let Biblical metaphors get in the way of staying in power, or keeping the dollars/pol support flowing?
Matthew:L"Whatever you think of slavery, or antebellum Southern aristocracy, it was Lincoln's choice to carry on a war that killed 700,000 Americans, and no one else's."
ReplyDeleteHardly. The choice was the Confederate leadership's.
Matthew:" The North had no moral or legal right to force the South to remain part of a nation it did not want to belong to."
Of course the US government had the right; all governments have the right to protect their territorial integrity. The British, for example, were completely justified in their attempts to hold on to the 13 colonies.
African-Americans don´t fit in West Africa no more than Obama in West Europe. They are Mulatos, not Negros. Where they should go? After independence, Mulatos (that look like average African-American) are killed or expelled in many regions. African-Americans are truly Americans.
ReplyDeleteUnless you want to send them to places where most people is already a mix white-black: Sahara, Etópia, Somalia..
Two key questions:
ReplyDeleteCould it have been done?
Would America be better off today without a significant black population?
I had always thought no to the first question simply because there were too many of them and where to send them? But the poster who mentioned the Irish got me to thinking. In just a few years during the Great Hunger, a million Irish perished and the same number, entirerly of their own resources, got on ships and moved across a whole ocean. So with the full support of a federal government I guess it could have been done. The only problem then was where to send them and would they have agreed to go?
As to the second question I think America would have been better off, but ironically the removed blacks would not have been. Note how the blacks Lincoln suggested this too were decidedly unenthusiastic. Deep down inside, most blacks know they are better off in white countries then in black ones.
"Black Separatists are all eventually stung by the reality of what separation actually means: self sufficiency."
ReplyDeleteSometimes I watch older movies and wonder what the heck happened. Take, for instance, Let's Do It Again with Bill Cosby, Sidney Poitier, and J.J. Walker. Cosby and Poitier are blue collar workers with wives and cars. They dress well and are officers in an all-black lodge where the people appear to be middle-class. They're not rich, because the plot is based on the fact that they're having trouble raising money for a new building, but no one ever says anything about applying for a federal grant. Blacks are portrayed as having a self-sufficient society -- maybe mostly separate from whites, but not suffering because of it.
It's a comedy, but it seems to play the background straight, so I assume this didn't seem outrageous to people in theaters in 1975. What happened?
My guess is that aggressive desegregation moved the top echelon of blacks into white society, leaving the rest behind. So the people who would have been running a real community organization in 1975 moved to the suburbs and got jobs with the state. If they came back to the neighborhood at all, it was as "community organizers," not as members. That left the remainder without capable leaders to run the day-to-day stuff that makes a community work.
Truth - Thanks for the link - I love that phrase "nearly all-white" - sounds like a great name for a blog.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing keeping Israel's survival "in doubt" are the handcuffs placed upon it by European busybodies. Without those restrictions, Israel today would reach all the way to Persia.
ReplyDeleteIsrael got and still gets money, tech and weaponry from the US and Europe. Germany recently delivered the Dolphin nuclear subs that the Israelis can't build. Without US and European help, Israel would be vulnerable to destruction by Iran with Russian and Chinese help.
Conquistadors have been fighting Anglos for a long time. Remember the Spanish Armada tried to invade Britain.
ReplyDeleteCorrection: the Dolphin subs are diesel-electric, not nuclear. Their cruise missiles can be armed with nuclear warheads.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin_class_submarine
Remember that Gerald Bull was building a giant "supergun" for Iraq that could have been used to destroy Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities. German firms were helping Iraq before and even possibly during the Gulf War with its chemical weapons program. The Israelis murdered Gerald Bull and complained to the Germans. So the Germans started providing the Dolphin subs for free and for reduced prices. The US of course went on to destroy Iraq later.
ReplyDeleteSo Israel's security and position has mostly to do with the US/Europe withdrawing help to the Arabs and destroying Arab states, while providing help to Israel.
At the end of Gore Vidal's novel "Lincoln," he dramatizes a conversation about the need to get the economy rolling so that they can raise the revenue needed for colonization. Also, as compensation for the property of erstwhile slave owners. Vidal's general assertion was that the most seemingly outrageous statements in his historical novels, are ones that are completely true, because you would never try to make something like that up.
ReplyDeletehe only thing keeping Israel's survival "in doubt" are the handcuffs placed upon it by European busybodies. Without those restrictions, Israel today would reach all the way to Persia.
ReplyDelete^Reaching all the way to Persia is one thing. Holding on to territory is another. Its like Hitler in Russia- he reached "all the way" to the gates of Moscow, but it didnt quite work out for COrporal Schikelgruber though.
The North had no moral or legal right to force the South to remain part of a nation it did not want to belong to.
Actually most nations on earth will take military action to prevent a part that wants to secede, citing both. The North was no different. ANd what gave the south the "moral" right to hold millions of people against their will in slavery?
In just a few years during the Great Hunger, a million Irish perished and the same number, entirerly of their own resources, got on ships and moved across a whole ocean.
Hardly an impressive accomplishment in an era when there was little government charity to begin with. But prior to the famine, the Irish had heavy representation on the public welfare, including the Irish in Britain (SOwell 1981). And the claim is actually bogus on top of that. The British government set up numerous workhouses and charities in heavily hit areas - some 130 workhouses alone in 1845. And in the 1830s when a number of mini-famines hit, actually offered the Irish small plots of land in Canada for emigration. About 50,000 IRish took the govt offer and left.
And the Irish did not do it all "entirely of their own resources." In fact they enjoyed help from several quarters. The Protestant Quakers based in Dublin ran a large relief operation and as one historian says "the relief provided by the Quakers proved crucial in keeping people alive." The Protestants ponied up 200,000 (pounds) for relief in Ireland. Hardly the picture of noble, "charity free" Irish sailing into the sunset. On the English side, there were numerous relief attempts. Queen Victoria actually wrote two letters in support of charitable efforts to raise help for the supposedly super-independent "don't need nobody" Irish. Under the aegis of the British Relief Association approx 470,000 [pounds] were raised.
Support for the Irish even came from "Third WOrld" sources. India sent 16,500 Pounds, Bombay another 3,000 pounds. As one historian notes: "Florence, Italy, Antigua, France, Jamaica, and Barbados sent contributions. The Choctaw tribe in North America sent $710. Many major cities in America set up Relief Committees for Ireland, and Jewish synagogues in America and Britain contributed generously."
In short, the claim of noble Irish doing it all entirely on their own is bogus.
It could be certainly contended that the govt was stingy. But this was seen as a plus by some British who blamed the Irish for their own predicament- such as their low productivity, high substance abuse rates, high violence, and failure to diversify their agriculture. And many a white racist "biodiveristy" type would say - why spend money for poor, low IQ people? After all government can do little for such lesser folk. So the starvation of the Irish would be quite in keeping with some "biodiversity" - "Let the fittest survive" rhetoric.
And shipping the blacks to Hati or Liberal would not have been 'immoral' LoL!
ReplyDeleteIt would've been better for everyone. Blacks would've returned to their homeland with the English Language and modern 19th century attitudes and beliefs. In 20 years they would've been running all of West Africa and masters in their own country instead of peons in America.
How was Lincoln supposed to know 150 years ago that Haiti would today be a byword for bad government?
ReplyDeleteOr Detroit, Atlanta, Birmingham, Baltimore, etc. as well documented by Paul Kersey.
Actually most nations on earth will take military action to prevent a part that wants to secede, citing both [moral and legal rights].
ReplyDeleteConsider the way Russia fought ruthlessly to prevent Chechnya from seceding, even though Chechnya contributes nothing but problems.
Peter
The Southerns - whatever their big talk - would accept anything - except the loss of their human cotton pickers.
ReplyDeleteWhenever the South had a choice between black cheap labor (with all its bad effects) and an equal all-white society they chose the cheap black labor.
The "Southerns" weren't in control of government in the years after 1865.
"The "Southerns" weren't in control of government in the years after 1865."
ReplyDeleteThey didn't say a peep in favor of colonization after the Civil war or during it. The newspapers, the average southern, the southern politicians. They didn't even whisper it among themselves. CAUSE THEY DIDN'T WANT THE BLACKS TO LEAVE.
... Buy hey, what politician ever let Biblical metaphors get in the way of staying in power, or keeping the dollars/pol support flowing?
ReplyDeleteWhat about prescriptive, not merely metaphorical, New Testament words about slavery:
The Christian Scriptures and Slavery
Neither Jesus nor St. Paul, nor any other Biblical figure is recorded as saying anything in opposition to the institution of slavery. Slavery was very much a part of life in Judea, Galilee, and in the rest of the Roman Empire during New Testament times. The practice continued in England, Canada and the rest of the English Empire until the early 19th century; it continued in the U.S. until later in the 19th century.
Quoting Rabbi M.J. Raphall, circa 1861:
"Receiving slavery as one of the conditions of society, the New Testament nowhere interferes with or contradicts the slave code of Moses; it even preserves a letter [to Philemon] written by one of the most eminent Christian teachers [Paul] to a slave owner on sending back to him his runaway slave." ( St. Paul was previously rabbi Saul of Tarsus. --DD )
One of the favorite passages of slave-owning Christians was St. Paul's infamous instruction that slaves to obey their owners in the same way that they obey Christ:
Ephesians 6:5-9: "Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men: Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free. And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him."
Other passages instructing slaves and slave owners in proper behavior are:
Colossians 4:1: "Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven."
1 Timothy 6:1-3 "Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed. And they that have believing masters, let them not despise them, because they are brethren; but rather do them service, because they are faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit. These things teach and exhort. If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness;" ...
The Christian Scriptures and Slavery
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteI think that Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, etc, deserve the credit on that one.After all, they were the ones who attempted to secede in order to preserve a system (slavery) that involved the systematic violation of every imaginable human right."
Killing people is also a violation of their human rights. Drafting a guy from Ohio or New York, who didn't even want to fight in Lincoln's war, and then sending him off to be typhus-fodder in McClellan's sitzkrieg would also seem to be a violation of that man's human rights.
The fact is, the confederacy was a nation with legalized slavery that attemped to secede from the United States, another nation with legalized slavery. Slavery flourished much longer under the Stars and Stripes, then it ever did under the Stars and Bars.
The Union was understood at the time to be a federation of sovereign states. Presumably sovereign states should be free to go their own way. That the South stood on the immoral system of slavery does not make the North's actions with regard to secession moral.
To Lincoln's mind, this was the liberal solution.If two races cannot live together in amity, then they must dwell apart.Each can then be master in his own house. Remember, the 19th century was the great epoch of the ethno-state (the unification of Italy, nationalist sentiment in the Balkans, Greek independence). Giving American Blacks their own nation should be seen in those terms."
And yet you assert that the South's desire for independence from the other states should NOT be seen in those terms.
"carol said...
ReplyDeleteseriously, by Lincoln's time there were way too many slaves to deport...Ga and SC had stepped up imports probably in part to forestall this."
The transatlantic slave-trade was outlawed in America long before the Civil War started.
"Of course the US government had the right; all governments have the right to protect their territorial integrity."
ReplyDeleteExcept that, according to Lincoln himself, we have a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." And those people - the people of the sovereign states of the Confederacy - did not want to any longer be part of the United States. Secession is a passive act: you tell the central government you no longer want to submit to its control. Very few of the battles of the Civil War took place in Union territory. It was the North that was actively invading the South in order to force it to submit to its control. That was Lincoln's choice. For better or worse, right or wrong, moral or immoral, the blood was on Lincoln's hads, not Lee's or Davis's or anyone else's.
"All governments have the right to protect their territorial integrity," you say? Why - because might makes right? OK. But that doesn't excuse them from the deaths they cause while protecting that territory.
To research data:
ReplyDeleteYour comments about Ireland are disingenuous at best.
At the height of the famine 30,000 cattle in Ireland were packed off to go to England. In any event the fact that 1,000,000 people could quickly move across the Atlantic in a few years from a small area, clearly suggests that 1,000,000 people COULD have been moved in the other direction.
The Union was understood at the time to be a federation of sovereign states. Presumably sovereign states should be free to go their own way. That the South stood on the immoral system of slavery does not make the North's actions with regard to secession moral.
ReplyDeleteA good point, and the same thing applies in reverse. That the South sought to secede to preserve its primary state's right- slavery- does not make the southern secession moral either.
But true enough, Lincoln never claimed he was fighting the war to eliminate slavery. In fact he oft stated that his primary concern was to preserve the union. Lincoln had to be pressured heavily some historians say to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, and even that did not free a single slave under Confederate jurisdiction. However, it was of importance not only symbolically but laid a legal basis for the emancipation of slaves when the Union Army conquered areas where slaves were.
Black historians have long pointed out such things- and have long bluntly discussed Lincoln's record. The assorted revisionists mentioned in the article trying to make Lincoln look good in a PC sense must be primarily white liberals.
But its not only liberals wanting Lincoln to look good, but conservatives as well. Conservatives have moved to paint Lincoln in a good light, noting that he was walking a very precarious tightrope - with an ongoing a war situation, and extensive white hostility towards black freedom in the north. He had to tread carefully and was not in a position to make dramatic moves future generations who weren't there would like to dream about. They note his skill in not only guiding the government as victory approached but in making freedom of the slaves an explicit war aim. For that Lincoln, whatever his weaknesses, deserves credit.
Your comments about Ireland are disingenuous at best.
ReplyDeleteAt the height of the famine 30,000 cattle in Ireland were packed off to go to England. In any event the fact that 1,000,000 people could quickly move across the Atlantic in a few years from a small area, clearly suggests that 1,000,000 people COULD have been moved in the other direction.
Anything "could" happen at some level, but my posts above do not discuss the feasibility of transport numbers. As to the IRish I demonstrated that the claim that they migrated using entirely their own resources is false. In fact, they got aid from numerous other sources, many of them Protestant. And in fact the famine saw one of the first examples of international food aid. It offers early examples of humanitarian relief efforts, feeding operations (some 1,850 govt soup kitchens for example) and large govt food for work schemes. Britain in addition spent some 10.5 million pounds on relief efforts. All this is clearly documented in books such as Hunger: The Biology and Politics of Starvation By John R Butterly, Jack Shepherd. 2010. So much for that bogus claim.
As for whether "enough" slaves could have been transported- that is not at all at issue. The key point is that such colonization schemes were dubious, and had little chance of occurring politically or financially.
The Civil War was Anglo-Saxon aggression against theSouthern Norman Yoke. They had to pounce on theNorman-Cavaliers before they became uncontrollable. In aworld-historical reversal of fortunes, the Anglo-Saxonsbecame conquerors of the Normans. This was the racialjustice meted out by the U.S. Civil War.The triumph of Lincoln the Conqueror in the Civil War issingle greatest reason that America became an Anglo-Saxon“nation”. Some surely indulged in Schadenfreude whenwitnessing the great Norman race reduced to equality withtheir former slaves. This is how the Anglo-Saxons conqueredthe Conquest in America. And this is how white folk acrossAmerica became “Anglo-Saxon”.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteWhat about prescriptive, not merely metaphorical, New Testament words about slavery:
There was no prescription for slavery in Christianity- just a recognition of unfortunate facts on the ground in that era. For an institution that was around millenia- so common that almost every nation accepted it. SUch an embedded system would take a very long timne to disappear- particularly since people would fight to maintain it. Christianity did not produce instant results on the corrupt human heart or human nature, but it eventually undermined slavery.
It would be altogether misleading for any to say that Christianity ENDORSED or APPROVED slavery. It recognized the institution, and the conditions that created it- such as the constant flow of captives from Rome's wars - but this in no way ENDORSES or APPROVES slavery or war. There are four reasons why there is no "prescription":
First, the passages quoted in Ephesians, COlossians and Timothy apply to not simply slaves but ALL classes of men under bond obligation- from paid employees, to the debt bondman working off his unpaid loan, to criminals making restitution, to an indentured type bound for a limited number of years, to war captives purchased at auction. Christianity did not single out the type of chattel slavery blacks endured for any special approval or endorsement.
Second, it is clear from Christian doctrine that many methods used to acquire slaves were wrong- such as kidnapping, making war, or using fraud in debt obligations to create a bondman. Rome's frequent massacres of conquered populations and enslavement of survivors, or pirate raids to kidnap people is in no way "approved" or "endorsed" by Christianity. ELiminate these methods and slavery would have been insignificant. Christianity also did not prescribe such things as sexually exploiting slave children- a moral impossibility.
Third, by its very nature CHristianity undermined slavery. You did not quote from the Epistle of Philemon where a bondman ran away from Philemon and became converted under Paul. Paul sends him back but adjures Philemon to accept him as "a brother beloved" - in other words- while Philemon would have to carry out his obligations his master would have to treat him very differently that an ordinary bondman. Commonly accepted things such as raping Philemon's wife or selling their children would not have been tolerated. Such prohibitions laid the basis for undermining slavery.
Fourth, Christianity was one of the leading forces in the abolition of slavery as the true conditions of the evil trade and system became known to a wider audience.
In short, recognition of facts on the ground does not constitute any prescription or endorsement or approval at all. In time, the Christian vision of freedom won out over human corruption. Biblical standards laid the basis for Christianity rejecting slavery. The human heart was slow to accept those standards- it would take much time- but eventually enough people did and slavery went.
European people are ruled over by business interests. Slavery/ cheap labor is good for business. European people have made little effort at all in changing the dynamics of business' bottom line ruling all. Where were the people burning slave ships? Where were the people making it hostile for people bringing Africans here? Apparently, European people wouldn't do anything until after the fact and then be stuck with these moral dilemmas and problems. The reality is government is of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations.
ReplyDelete"Research data said...
ReplyDeleteA good point, and the same thing applies in reverse. That the South sought to secede to preserve its primary state's right- slavery- does not make the southern secession moral either."
That is not the reverse, and it does not apply. Slavery is immoral. Secession is not.
"Lincoln never claimed he was fighting the war to eliminate slavery. ..... but laid a legal basis for the emancipation of slaves when the Union Army conquered areas where slaves were."
Yes, I know all that. Your lectures are rather tiresome. So whatever his war aims were, he lied about them to sell them to the northern public. Either it was about preserving the Union, but he said it was about slavery, or it was about slavery, and he said it was about preserving the Union.
The fact remains that the war consumed the lives of 600,000 Americans, and this can mainly be laid at Lincoln's feet. For a man who was concerned with "government of the people", he put a lot of people in the ground. And many of those who were killed were impressed into service - they were never asked if they wanted to fight to free the slaves, the enslavement of whom they had no part in. He also engaged in numerous acts of tyranny, having people arrested and held incommunicado and shutting down newspapers that criticized him.
If Lincoln had been President of any other nation and conducted that nations affairs as he conducted ours, most Americans would consider him a fool and a butcher. You can think him a great man, if you want. I used to as well. I don't now.
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteWhere were the people burning slave ships? Where were the people making it hostile for people bringing Africans here?"
They were at sea, serving in the Royal Navy and the American Navy. Both Britain and the U.S. eventually outlawed the transatlantic slave trade, and together they hunted down slavers and stamped out that particular traffic in human flesh. Arab nations continued it much longer, even to the present day.
"Anonymous Paul Mendez said...
ReplyDeleteIn 1978, I had a college professor who swore that Africa would be the continent of the future."
And he may have been right. Our future might very well look like Africa.
Lincoln posts always bring out the deluded dummies, stuffed full of propaganda. One can't even begin to deprogram them.
ReplyDeleteFor those interested in the alternate reality (the real one), you should start by reading "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government" by Jefferson Davis (you can download it free from Amazon).
Sometimes, you see, the losers DO get to write history. And it is amazing what you can learn from them.
The fact remains that the war consumed the lives of 600,000 Americans, and this can mainly be laid at Lincoln's feet. For a man who was concerned with "government of the people", he put a lot of people in the ground. And many of those who were killed were impressed into service - they were never asked if they wanted to fight to free the slaves, the enslavement of whom they had no part in. He also engaged in numerous acts of tyranny, having people arrested and held incommunicado and shutting down newspapers that criticized him.
ReplyDeleteIf Lincoln had been President of any other nation and conducted that nations affairs as he conducted ours, most Americans would consider him a fool and a butcher. You can think him a great man, if you want. I used to as well. I don't now.
Actually it could be said that the death and destruction can be laid at the feet of leaders of the Confederacy, who refused to relinquish their primary "state's right" and the profits that flowed from it.
As for Lincoln's war management- sure he made mistakes and blunders. There are few civil war, or regular war for example where some blunders don't happen. In WWI and WWII the British made numerous blunders. The US was also no paragon of perfection- neither in Korea, WWII or Vietnam. Warfare 101- welcome to the club.
Some northerner's impressed into service in a flawed process? Uh huh.. But many volunteered alongside. And Confederates themselves blundered in their manpower policies as detailed by the link below.
http://www.etymonline.com/cw/conscript.htm
Lincoln suppress criticism? Well the Confederates also did the same among their white population and their slave population it should be noted didn't have much chance to express their opinions.
It is not necessary to lionize Lincoln as a great man. He was flawed, as all politicians are flawed. And his policies were sometimes unsuccessful. The key is putting him in context, with the hand he was dealt, and drawing a balanced picture. Sweeping negativism is just as bad as the liberals who try to sanitize him.
"For those interested in the alternate reality (the real one), you should start by reading "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government" by Jefferson Davis (you can download it free from Amazon). "
ReplyDeleteLMAO... yeah I am sure any book by Jefferson Davis is gonna be propaganda free "truth". You are right about one thing though, it is "alternate" reality... lol
"If Lincoln had been President of any other nation and conducted that nations affairs as he conducted ours, most Americans would consider him a fool and a butcher. You can think him a great man, if you want. I used to as well. I don't now. "
ReplyDeletefallout 3 begs to differ....
Civil war posts DO bring out Dummies but its mostly the dumb Pro-Confederates who don't know their history.
ReplyDeletepeterike said...
ReplyDelete"Lincoln posts always bring out the deluded dummies, stuffed full of propaganda. One can't even begin to deprogram them"
This is true: it's nearly impossible to have a rational conversation about Lincoln in nearly any forum; I feel conflicted about his career, myself. I think this is because Lincoln was the uber-Daddy/founding father of America, Phase II, just as Washington filled the role for America Phase I, and FDR for America Phase III. It's the rank dishonesty of the Lincoln-rulz partisans that gets tiresome: it's always stuffed full of tedious "you could argue" and *tu quoque* silliness, and somehow always works it way back to the peculiar institution. The old Soviet Union honed the tactic well: "And you are lynching Negroes". It's little wonder their Leftist cousins once-removed across the pond continue to employ that tactic when discussing the late War Between the States.
As has been pointed out repeatedly, what the Southern states were fighting for 1861-65 was not slavery or abolished tariffs or any of that other jazz, but for the right to govern themselves. One can say that a collective body of people who permitted the institution of slavery should not have been permitted to rule themselves, but if you say A you gotta say B: by that standard, the American Revolution should have failed, since that body of 13 successfully seceded states collectively permitted that very institution until 1865. If the Civil War was "about" slavery, then so was the Revolution: neither were, however, and it's really rather absurd to argue the contrary. They were both about self-determination and self-rule for a body of people who wanted no further part of another body of people in the collective enterprise of government: one succeeded, the other failed.
As to what should have been done after the conflict with the newly emancipated freedmen, the howls of "you couldn't have sent them all back to Africa!!!11" is equally absurd: of course the U.S. government could have done just that. At enormous cost and logistical heartache, no doubt, but they could have done it. Hand-waving possibilities one does not favor away does not make those possibilities any less realistic.
The question, rather, is: should they have? Certainly what they did wind up doing - not much other than wave bayonets in the defeated South's face for eleven years and then skedaddle back to Beantown - hasn't worked out very well for anybody 150 years-on except the Diversity Industry.
Some notable Negro leaders from the post-bellum era such as Edward P. McCabe had ambitious ideas of an all-black state, from which non-blacks would have been excluded. This was Lincoln's "colonization" scheme with it's sights set a little closer to home: whether it would have worked or not, we will never know, but it might have. The Detroit template wasn't inevitable.
Anyway, all interesting stuff.
so what you are saying is that Lincoln did them the favor of not calling them slaves?
ReplyDeleteNo I am saying that the Confederates suppressed dissent among southern whites in their jurisdiction. I also noted that as far as manpower policies, the COnfederacy made numerous blunders. http://www.etymonline.com/cw/conscript.htm
what the Southern states were fighting for 1861-65 was not slavery or abolished tariffs or any of that other jazz, but for the right to govern themselves.
Not really. WHat was the "all that jazz" all about? The "right" to hold slaves.. Slavery. No matter how many euphenisms are used- whether it be "sovereignty" or "nullification" or "self-determination" - slavery was the bottom line. Indeed, in almost every declaration of secession, the seceeding Confederate states mentioned slavery in detail, including lamentations of the anti-slavery sentiment and actions of the non-slave states.
of course the U.S. government could have done just that. At enormous cost and logistical heartache, no doubt, but they could have done it.
^WHy should the US government, which had just spent tens of millions, and hundreds of thousands of lives to end slavery, do that? However much that action may have warmed the hearts of white racists today as they calculate ship carrying capacities, any such action would have been absurd both financially, politically and morally. Indeed, it would have been opposed by the white south, which wanted black labor on hand to rebuild.
Some notable Negro leaders from the post-bellum era such as Edward P. McCabe had ambitious ideas of an all-black state, from which non-blacks would have been excluded.
Inaccurate. McCabe wanted a "black majority" state- black governed and run. Neither whites or any other ethnicity would have been excluded.
"Both Britain and the U.S. eventually outlawed the transatlantic slave trade, and together they hunted down slavers and stamped out that particular traffic..."
ReplyDeleteAfter almost 200 years and millions of Africans they finally did something to stop it. Where were European people from the start to reject the slave trade? European people didn't have the passion to create a hostile environment where businessmen rejected the idea of slavery on their own knowing the community wouldn't allow it.
Finally! Something worthy of both admiration and emulation with regard to Lincoln.
ReplyDeletecipher
"Not really...slavery was the bottom line."
ReplyDeleteUh, no. Self-government and self-rule was the "bottom line," just like it was in 1775. The motives for wanting to exercise that self-rule make for a good bill of particulars as to why the party that attempted to leave wanted out of a contract it had every historical and legal reason to believe it could void with the consent of its citizens; but they are not what the conflict was "about."
That slavery was a motivating factor in wanting to exercise that self-rule, among other things, is no more the "bottom line" than tax stamps were during the Revolution: the colonies seceded from the Crown in order to rule themselves. That they did so to rule themselves about such matters as taxation important to their interests goes to motive as to why they wished to rule themselves: but it's not what the Revolution was "about."
Read the above enough times - repeat it out loud to yourself, even - and I'll believe you'll get the hang of it eventually. Good luck.
"indeed, in almost every declaration of secession, the seceeding Confederate states mentioned slavery"
That's nice. Irrelevant to this discussion, as shown, but nice nonetheless.
"WHy should the US government...do that?"
See post of mine above @ 1:11 pm. I urge you to peruse it at leisure, rather than haste. It makes it easier to avoid simply talking past the person you are replying to. Pro-tip.
"Inaccurate. McCabe wanted a "black majority" state- black governed and run. Neither whites or any other ethnicity would have been excluded."
Let's see, McCabe was a big mover & shaker in the "all-Black towns" movement and spoke frequently and explicitly about admitting a territory to the Union as a "Black state," but he was all about the inclusion, at heart, just like a modern day Leftist with 2012 sensibilities would be.
Ho-kay.
I urge you to spend less time Googling "Edward P. McCabe" and more time browsing Amazon for works on the matter.
In any event, I ask you: what would have been wrong with such a state? Why would McCabe have been wrong to ask Congress to write into such a territory's Organic Act or admission charter a provision to exclude non-Blacks (there would no doubt have been exceptions and a Sunset provision) from such a state?
And if you come back with "it would have been unconstitutional" or some other silly such, I'm simply going to laugh and let you get back to Googling historical figures you've never heard of before.
Thanks!
ReplyDeleteMathew:Except that, according to Lincoln himself, we have a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." And those people - the people of the sovereign states of the Confederacy - did not want to any longer be part of the United States."
Somehow, I tend to think that a rather large portion of the people in the South (the slaves) were not consulted vis-a-vis secession.
Mathew:"Secession is a passive act: you tell the central government you no longer want to submit to its control."
Telling the government that you will no longer follow the laws passed by the government is not passive; it is an act of rebellion.
Mathew:"Very few of the battles of the Civil War took place in Union territory."
Well, yes. The South lacked the manpower to invade the USA.
Mathew:"It was the North that was actively invading the South in order to force it to submit to its control."
Yes; in order to stop crime, one must apprehend the criminals.
Mathew:"That was Lincoln's choice. For better or worse, right or wrong, moral or immoral, the blood was on Lincoln's hads, not Lee's or Davis's or anyone else's."
Hardly; Davis and Lee chose to rebel in the name of defending slavery.They could have stopped fighting at any moment.
Mathew:"All governments have the right to protect their territorial integrity," you say? Why - because might makes right?
Because a state is defined as a sovereign entity. Once a state gives up that claim, it ceases to exist.Hence, our current refusal to defend our border with Mexico signals the end of America. Sadly, our current leadership, both Republican and Democrat, lacks Lincoln's patriotism.
Mathew:"OK. But that doesn't excuse them from the deaths they cause while protecting that territory."
Of course it does. When a policeman shoots a criminal who is resisting arrest, one blames the criminal, not the policeman.
"DirectInstruct said...
ReplyDeleteThe key is putting him in context, with the hand he was dealt, and drawing a balanced picture. Sweeping negativism is just as bad as the liberals who try to sanitize him."
The context you are putting Lincoln in is that he was as bad as Jefferson Davis and the Confederate leadership. So why is it evident that his cause was right? Lincoln instituted a draft, the South eventually did so too. Lincoln suppressed dissenting opinions, and the South did so to. The South stood for slavery, and Lincoln said that he would preserve slavery too, in order to hold the Union together. The South fought on after 1863, when it seemed that they couldn't win. Well, the North fought on until 1863, when it seemed as though THEY couldn't win. I don't see much that puts Lincoln in a better light than his Confederate adversaries, other than a hundred and fifty years of hagiographic propaganda.
I'm reasonably certain, however, that the nation (or, rather, nations) would have been better off if the 600,000 men who died in the war had not died, or at least not so many of them. They certainly would have been better off. Wouldn't they?
"Slavery. No matter how many euphenisms are used- whether it be "sovereignty" or "nullification" or "self-determination" - slavery was the bottom line."
And forcing people unwillingly into a political union that they did not want - a kind of slavery itself - was the Union's bottom line.
"Actually it could be said that the death and destruction can be laid at the feet of leaders of the Confederacy, who refused to relinquish their primary "state's right" and the profits that flowed from it."
ReplyDeleteNeither here nor there. The Union Army invaded states that desired independence from the USA, attacked its armies, blockaded its ports, destroyed its infrastructure, and burned its cities to the ground.
You can argue that this was morally justifiable, despite putting 500-700 thousand Americans in the ground, and despite impoverishing the South for generations. You can argue that freeing a few million slaves who might have eventually been freed anyway, was worth 500-700 thousand mostly white dead men. But the choice was the North's. If Lincoln's armies had not invaded, there would have been no war and no mass slaughter.
Lincoln, keep in mind, was an extremist who thought it brutally immoral to expend a few thousand lives to take half a million square miles of unsettled land claimed by Mexico, but was perfectly willing to slaughter half a million men to "free the slaves" and "preserve the Union."
Mr Anon:"Killing people is also a violation of their human rights. Drafting a guy from Ohio or New York, who didn't even want to fight in Lincoln's war, and then sending him off to be typhus-fodder in McClellan's sitzkrieg would also seem to be a violation of that man's human rights."
ReplyDeleteSomehow, I tend to see chattel slavery as a rather larger assault on basic civil liberties than conscription. Conscription, after all, has an end point; chattel slavery is eternal.
Killing someone as a violation of human rights: Only if you are a pacifist. To the majority of the world's population, killing someone in order to stop a great crime is perfectly justifiable.
Mr Anon:"The fact is, the confederacy was a nation with legalized slavery that attemped to secede from the United States, another nation with legalized slavery."
Yes, and the Confederacy attempted to secede because they feared that growing anti-slavery sentiment would get in the way of their "peculiar institution."
Mr Anon:"Slavery flourished much longer under the Stars and Stripes, then it ever did under the Stars and Bars."
Well, yes. Since the USA did not allow the South to secede, the life of slavery in the Confederacy was cut short.
Mr Anon:"The Union was understood at the time to be a federation of sovereign states. Presumably sovereign states should be free to go their own way."
Ah, the sovereign states theory...rather odd that the South was so enthusiastic about coercing "sovereign" states in the North via the Fugitive Slave law...
Mr Anon;"That the South stood on the immoral system of slavery does not make the North's actions with regard to secession moral."
Actually, it does. The South seceded in the name of chattel slavery, one of the most grotesque systems to ever flourish.
"To Lincoln's mind, this was the liberal solution.If two races cannot live together in amity, then they must dwell apart.Each can then be master in his own house. Remember, the 19th century was the great epoch of the ethno-state (the unification of Italy, nationalist sentiment in the Balkans, Greek independence). Giving American Blacks their own nation should be seen in those terms."
Mr Anon:'And yet you assert that the South's desire for independence from the other states should NOT be seen in those terms."
Yes, seeing as how the liberal ethno-state vision was predicated on the notion of national liberation. The South was seceding in the name of permanently suppressing an entire race, a completely different idea.
More enlightened white "role models" produced the abomination of the Holocaust, murdering some 6 million European Jews and a few million more Poles, gypsies, and others for good measure. On a positive note, white rule is certainly efficient. The advanced white Germans perfected the art of mass extermination, such as the "sardine pack" used by the SS to improve the "throughput" of shooting Jewish children at mass graves. They even boosted revenue by extracting the gold teeth of the murdered- a shrewd move by reputed “role models” of good governance.
ReplyDeleteI would have added the Holodomor to your list too.
ReplyDeleteMr Anon:"That is not the reverse, and it does not apply. Slavery is immoral. Secession is not."
Secession in defense of slavery is immoral.
Mr Anon;"The fact remains that the war consumed the lives of 600,000 Americans, and this can mainly be laid at Lincoln's feet."
Hardly; the blame can be laid at the feet of Jefferson Davis and the Confederate government.
Mr Anon;"For a man who was concerned with "government of the people", he put a lot of people in the ground. And many of those who were killed were impressed into service - they were never asked if they wanted to fight to free the slaves, the enslavement of whom they had no part in. He also engaged in numerous acts of tyranny, having people arrested and held incommunicado and shutting down newspapers that criticized him."
Small beer next to the monumental crimes committed under chattel slavery. That's rather like saying that conscription during WW2 makes the USA the moral equivalent of Nazi Germany.
Mr Anon;"If Lincoln had been President of any other nation and conducted that nations affairs as he conducted ours, most Americans would consider him a fool and a butcher. You can think him a great man, if you want. I used to as well. I don't now."
A perverse point of view; given the absolute moral superiority of the anti-slavery cause, most Americans would regard a "foreign" Lincoln as a great statesman.
After almost 200 years and millions of Africans they finally did something to stop it. Where were European people from the start to reject the slave trade?
ReplyDeleteWhere was anyone else?
After almost 200 years and millions of Africans they finally did something to stop it. Where were European people from the start to reject the slave trade? European people didn't have the passion to create a hostile environment where businessmen rejected the idea of slavery on their own knowing the community wouldn't allow it.
ReplyDeleteA fair point. Slavery might have continued on for a good deal longer were it not for a small minority of abolitionists- black and white alike that affected popular opinion and pressured governments to eventually dump a generally (not 100% in every place) profitable system. It took them over a century to do it. But they were not alone.
Some historians expand that to include insurrections, rebellions and evasions on the ground that threatened the slave regime from within- a range of resistance stretching from the successful revolt in Haiti, other lesser but still serious revolts, escape and avoidance tracks like the Underground Railroad, and the unremitting guerrilla warfare waged by the black freedom fighters aka the maroons- from Jamaica (they fought the British regime to a standstill), to Panama, to Columbia, to the hard-hitting quilombos of Brazil. Even America had these maroons- ranging from bands in the Great Dismal Swamp area, to escapees from Georgia and Florida who joined the Seminole Indians to fight on as guerrillas.
Many of these black fighters had little to lose- and were unimpressed by alleged "benefits of civilization." In Haiti for example about 50% of the population died off within 10 years under the brutal white slave regime- any alternative would have been better. All of this resistance from below was part of the mix that weakened the slave system.
Keep in mind several scholars (Sowell 1981, 1975, 1983 et al) show that in comparison with existing alternatives for doing the same thing, slavery was a profitable system for mass production of certain crops like cotton and sugar- crops that fed the growing industrial mills of the north- gaining additional profitable turnover. In fact, owning slaves was a means of upward mobility for ambitious southern whites, even poor ones. One standard track to that mobility was to acquire some land and slaves to work it, joining the generally profitable slave-based economy. Then there were a host of secondary industries and work benefiting whites built around slavery, south and north. Southerners were thus correct when they pointed to the complicity of those northerners who condemned slavery- while getting paid directly and indirectly through slavery. Lincoln's "resettlement" notion would have cut into white profits in the north, not only the south.
As the war went on and northern public opinion changed in favor of abolition, Lincoln's dubious "resettlement" scheme became even more of a non-starter. By 1863 many in the north would no longer settle for half-baked measures like "resettlement". It was too late for such notions. The ground was thus ripe for the Emancipation Proclamation.
Jason Slyvester says:
ReplyDeleteUh, no. Self-government and self-rule was the "bottom line," just like it was in 1775.
Use whatever semantics you want – they don’t change the facts. Every southern state in their secession declarations cited slavery. Sorry… Back to fantasy world for you if you think you can airbrush slavery away. “Good luck” with that..
Let's see, McCabe was a big mover & shaker in the "all-Black towns" movement and spoke frequently and explicitly about admitting a territory to the Union as a "Black state," but he was all about the inclusion, at heart, just like a modern day Leftist with 2012 sensibilities would be. I urge you to spend your less time Googling "Edward P. McCabe" and more time browsing Amazon for works on the matter.
But your bluster still doesn’t disguise the fact that your claim that McCabe wanted to exclude whites is in fact bogus. His “black state” was a call for a black majority and says nothing about “excluding whites.” I urge you to actually know what you are talking about before making such claims. Google should help.
In any event, I ask you: what would have been wrong with such a state?
^^You are the one posing as an expert on McCabe. Answer your own question. So far your have not produced anything credible, only your own claims which I have debunked as inaccurate. You claim it is on Amazon? Fine. Its your claim. Produce the evidence. Thanks!
"Use whatever semantics you want... your bluster still doesn’t disguise...Answer your own question".
ReplyDeleteFunny stuff. Funny, semi-coherent stuff; but some laughs nevertheless. One link pretty much demolishes the core of it:
From Sodom to the Promised Land:
E.P. McCabe and the Movement
for Oklahoma Colonizaton
Money quotes: "They proposed to found a Negro state... The brotherhood proposes to fill all state, county, and municipal offices and will have only Negro teachers in their schools...They will not...permit a white man to be elected to any office whatever. We will rule."
Then there's this and this and much, much, more.
So, whatever.
I still urge Amazon upon you: in books you will find the depth to back up your assertions with more than faux internet "bluster."
Yet another kindness of mine; a protracted Pro-tip, you might call it.
Good luck.
Wow, some bad history by the Lincoln fans. I'm afraid they haven't faced the fact that the same social studies teachers who told them to worship Lincoln, are the same ones who say race and gender don't matter and that Marxism is the way! I would have thought you could figure out pretty much all their history was bad.
ReplyDeleteI am surprised that after all this time, there is still a desire to justify the butchering of 700,000 White Americans.
"And forcing people unwillingly into a political union that they did not want - a kind of slavery itself - was the Union's bottom line."
ReplyDeleteAgain, I tend to think that the slaves in the South were rather keen on staying in the Union; Of course, the Confederacy was quite intent on making sure that their desires were never followed.
Stopping secession as equal to slavery: Sure it was. Being a White man in the South in 1868 was like being a slave in 1858...
Jason Sylvester:"Uh, no. Self-government and self-rule was the "bottom line," just like it was in 1775. The motives for wanting to exercise that self-rule make for a good bill of particulars as to why the party that attempted to leave wanted out of a contract it had every historical and legal reason to believe it could void with the consent of its citizens; but they are not what the conflict was "about." "
ReplyDeleteThe good old neo-Confederate line. Don't look at that slavery business. This has nothing to do with slavery. this is about the abstract proposition of states' rights and the right to secede.
As for self-government and self-rule, please note that the slaves, a huge percentage of the Southern population, were not in favor of secession.
Jeffery, you guys were the ones that thought it was a good idea to secede in the first place.
ReplyDeleteI think that Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, etc, deserve the credit on that one.After all, they were the ones who attempted to secede in order to preserve a system (slavery) that involved the systematic violation of every imaginable human right.
Indeed. Clearly the north invading the south and starting the war that took far more American lives than any other before or since was the fault of southerners.
It's similarly clear that the north emancipating the slaves was the south's fault.
Two observations:
1) Expelling all the black people from America would have been enormously immoral and unjust.
Indeed. Bringing them here and enslaving them was an immense sin, but sending them back and emancipating them would have been enormously immoral and unjust.
"How was Lincoln supposed to know 150 years ago that Haiti would today be a byword for bad government? " - It was a byword for bad governance back then as well.
Yep. Haiti was what informed the south and their "no way in hell" attitude toward emancipation.
Black Separatists are all eventually stung by the reality of what separation actually means: self sufficiency.
Which is why black separatism, black nationalism, and back to Africa are all non-starters.
Research data, why don't you give us some data on good black governance? Your spin on Haiti is all well and good, but the fact is that black rule is synonymous with dysfunction. White rule is not. Whites have shown consistently capable of advanced civilization, blacks have shown themselves consistently incapable. All the best examples of black populations living in advanced civilizations come to us from "white supremacist" societies.
Hardly. The choice was the Confederate leadership's.
"Ve haff ways of making you talk. Remember, it's your choice. If you surrender and tell me what I want to know, the torture will stop. It's up to you."
Ah, the familiar language of the headsman. A favorite tongue of the yankee.
"The North had no moral or legal right to force the South to remain part of a nation it did not want to belong to."
Actually most nations on earth will take military action to prevent a part that wants to secede, citing both. The North was no different.
Surely you're not so stupid as to conflate right and might? Oh wait, you just did.
ANd what gave the south the "moral" right to hold millions of people against their will in slavery?
What gave the north the "moral" right to turn them loose in America? If it was so wrong to bring them here in chains, they should've been sent back.
It was the North that was actively invading the South in order to force it to submit to its control. That was Lincoln's choice. For better or worse, right or wrong, moral or immoral, the blood was on Lincoln's hads, not Lee's or Davis's or anyone else's.
Nah. It was the south's fault; if they'd just bent knee, there would have been no bloodshed.
Similarly, if Kunta Kinta had bent knee and not tried to escape, there would have been no bloodshed.
As anon has so wisely pointed out, governments will always respond to secession with violence, just as all slavemasters will always respond to uppity slaves with bloodshed. Yankee imperialism 101.
In short, recognition of facts on the ground does not constitute any prescription or endorsement or approval at all.
ReplyDeleteI have to disagree here. Silence is assent, and all that. Regulating slavery without commenting either way on its morality is tacit approval.
Secession in defense of slavery is immoral.
War to prevent secession is immoral.
Use whatever semantics you want – they don’t change the facts. Every southern state in their secession declarations cited slavery. Sorry… Back to fantasy world for you if you think you can airbrush slavery away. “Good luck” with that..
Semantics would be a step up for you. Every southern state used self-rule and self-government and opposition to tyranny in their secession declarations. Obviously self-rule was the bottom line. That is not semantics, it's common sense. The North offered compromise on slavery, did it not? Did the offers work? No. Because self-rule, not slavery, was the bottom line, and that on which no compromise was offered.
Yankee imperialists will always find some lame excuse for violently opposing secession, because that's what imperialists do.
The same yankee imperialists will of course support the right of anyone to divorce his spouse for any reason, even if it's founded on adultery or any other immoral act.
ReplyDeleteThe right of slaves to be free, even if they fully intend to go on to buy slaves themselves.
It's fun watching them tie themselves into knots justifying imperialism; invading people who want to be free is so 'Merican. So much the better if they can deny freedom in the name of freedom.
If another secession movement ever gains traction, rest assured they'll be salivating at the prospect of killing "racists" to defend their own precious brand of racism.
"Since the dawn of history the Negro has owned the continent of Africa - rich beyond the dream's of a poet's fancy, crunching acres of diamonds beneath his bare black feet. Yet he never picked one up from the dust until a white man showed to him its glittering light. His land swarmed with powerful and docile animals, yet he never dreamed a harness, cart, or sled. A hunter by necessity, he never made an axe, spear or arrow-head worth preserving beyond the moment of its use. He lived as an ox, content to graze for an hour. In a land of stone and timber he never sawed a foot of lumber, carved a block, or built a house save of broken sticks and mud. With league on league of ocean strand and miles of inland seas, for four thousand years he watched their surface ripple under the wind, heard the thunder of the surf on his beach, the howl of the storm over his head, gazed on the dim blue horizon calling him to worlds that lie beyond, and yet he never dreamed a sail! He lived as his fathers lived - stole his food, worked his wife, sold his children, ate his brother, content to drink, sing, dance, and sport as the ape!"
ReplyDeleteOf course, today, the idea of helping African-Americans move to a black ruled state like Haiti or Liberia sounds utterly inhumane.
ReplyDeleteThe underlying concept of the above statement is that Black Ruled States are inhumane.
Svigor:"War to prevent secession is immoral."
ReplyDeleteSecession in the defense of slavery is immoral.
Svigor:
"Semantics would be a step up for you. Every southern state used self-rule and self-government and opposition to tyranny in their secession declarations. Obviously self-rule was the bottom line. That is not semantics, it's common sense. The North offered compromise on slavery, did it not? Did the offers work? No. Because self-rule, not slavery, was the bottom line, and that on which no compromise was offered."
The offered compromises on slavery did not work because the Confederates knew that the USA was turning against slavery; they knew that no pro-slavery compromise would stick. Hence, their vaunted talk of independence and self-rule boiled down to a mere cover for their desire to preserve slavery.
Frankly, I would have more respect for the America-hating neo-Confederates if they would just fess up and say that they lie slavery. That would at least be honest.
svigor:"Nah. It was the south's fault; if they'd just bent knee, there would have been no bloodshed."
ReplyDeleteBetter than dying in defense of slavery....unless you think that slavery was really, really great.
svigor:"Similarly, if Kunta Kinta had bent knee and not tried to escape, there would have been no bloodshed."
Yeah, that's the ticket....See, the slave-owning South in 1861 was just like a slave in terms of its relationship to the US government. See, the USA was turning against slavery, and there is no greater tyranny than being told that you might one day not be able to own another human being.
Deportation? They were Americans. You can only be deported to your home country.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's the ticket....See, the slave-owning South in 1861 was just like a slave in terms of its relationship to the US government. See, the USA was turning against slavery, and there is no greater tyranny than being told that you might one day not be able to own another human being.
ReplyDeleteNit-picking analogies is the hallmark of the small mind and the loser of arguments.
Mr. Anon made some excellent points, perhaps most especially this one:
ReplyDeleteAnd forcing people unwillingly into a political union that they did not want - a kind of slavery itself - was the Union's bottom line.
Exactly. They fought slavery by imposing it. Burn the village to save it. Until we come to terms with the North's monstrous actions, we won't save the future for our children.
Frankly, I would have more respect for the America-hating neo-Confederates if they would just fess up and say that they lie slavery. That would at least be honest.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, the less respect I have from tyrants and their apologists, the better I feel.
Svigor:"War to prevent secession is immoral."
ReplyDeleteSecession in the defense of slavery is immoral.
Secession (with anything attached) has the moral high ground on war to prevent secession (with any excuse attached).
Anonymous:"Frankly, I would have more respect for the America-hating neo-Confederates if they would just fess up and say that they lie slavery. That would at least be honest."
ReplyDeleteSvigor:"Frankly, the less respect I have from tyrants and their apologists, the better I feel."
MMMM, seeing as how you are an apologist for the tyranny that was Southern slavery, how does that work on a personal level?
Svigor:"Secession (with anything attached) has the moral high ground on war to prevent secession (with any excuse attached)."
ReplyDeleteQuit dancing around the "S" word and say it; like all neo-Confederates, you feel that slavery was worth fighting for.
lizards can talk:"Mr. Anon made some excellent points, perhaps most especially this one:
ReplyDeleteAnd forcing people unwillingly into a political union that they did not want - a kind of slavery itself - was the Union's bottom line.
Exactly. They fought slavery by imposing it. Burn the village to save it. Until we come to terms with the North's monstrous actions, we won't save the future for our children."
Yes, we all recall how the USA imposed chattel slavery on the White population of the South. Such tearful scenes, the plantation owners son being sent off to work in the fields for the rest of his life...thank God that horror came to an end with Strom Thurmond's march on Washington.
svigor:"Nit-picking analogies is the hallmark of the small mind and the loser of arguments."
ReplyDeleteI don't know, dear boy, your comparison of the White south to a Black slave was such a large, ripe nit...I simply could not resist.
Svigor:"Frankly, the less respect I have from tyrants and their apologists, the better I feel."
ReplyDeleteCome now, Sviggy, any man (?) with such a love for Southern slavery is, ipso facto, a lover of tyranny...or are the kind of hypocrite who plays "who, whom" games?
svigor;"Secession (with anything attached) has the moral high ground on war to prevent secession (with any excuse attached)."
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing then that you would have no qualms about a Hispanic secession movement attempting to wrest free of American control Texas and Arizona?
Mr Anon;"For a man who was concerned with "government of the people", he put a lot of people in the ground.
ReplyDeleteSailer is right that some liberals may want to sanitize Lincoln's deportation notion, but that is not the whole story. Lincoln had to drop such notions- which is why we had the Emancipation Proclamation, not the Deportation Proclamation. And the death from war? Sure.. and that's what many civil wars do since the beginning of human history. Lincoln had a war to fight, and blunders were made by he or the men he chose. Same on the other side.
-----------------------
svigor:"Nit-picking analogies is the hallmark of the small mind and the loser of arguments.... "Frankly, the less respect I have from tyrants and their apologists, the better I feel." ..Secession (with anything attached) has the moral high ground on war to prevent secession (with any excuse attached).
anon: I don't know, dear boy, your comparison of the White south to a Black slave was such a large, ripe nit...I simply could not resist... .. any man (?) with such a love for Southern slavery is, ipso facto, a lover of tyranny...or are the kind of hypocrite who plays "who, whom" games? ..
'm guessing then that you would have no qualms about a Hispanic secession movement attempting to wrest free of American control Texas and Arizona?
^^Good points all Anon... that one was ripe for picking. Its curious how the much touted "sovereign freedom" to own slaves" never gets around to giving actual freedom to the actual slaves, until forced to. And how come this love of secession does not translate equally? lol excellent point.
Anon
I would have added the Holodomor to your list too.
Indeed. Ahh Holodomor, the deliberate man-made famine in the Ukrainian SSR between 1932 and 1933. During the famine, which is also known as the "Terror-Famine in Ukraine" and "Famine-Genocide in Ukraine," in which some 2-5 million Ukrainians were systematically starved. Certainly an example of the good governance by touted "role models."
Svigor says:
Research data, why don't you give us some data on good black governance? Your spin on Haiti is all well and good, but the fact is that black rule is synonymous with dysfunction. White rule is not. Whites have shown consistently capable of advanced civilization, blacks have shown themselves consistently incapable. All the best examples of black populations living in advanced civilizations come to us from "white supremacist" societies.
Actually let’s start with white governance. Half the slaves in Haiti died off under white brutality within 10 years- a rate so high that the population could not sustain itself by natural increase, and had to be constantly replenished with imports from Africa (L. Dubois 2005. Avengers of the New World: 39-40, 93-94). Under the calculus of “enlightened” white rule and slavery - it was cheaper to work people to death and import fresh bodies rather than spend resources maintaining the existing population (Knight et al (1997) General History of the Caribbean). The improvement to white rule was to get rid of it- which Haiti's freedom fighters did.
And your notion that “All the best examples of black populations living in advanced civilizations come to us from "white supremacist" societies” is dubious. It is easily debunked with detailed scholarship and full citations here (Morkot 2005, Keita 1992, 2003, 2005, Lovell 1999, Yurco 1996, 1989, Shaw 2003, Redford 2001 et al.) and here
As for dysfunction, see Anon's example of Homodomor's "role models"..
I'm guessing then that you would have no qualms about a Hispanic secession movement attempting to wrest free of American control Texas and Arizona?
ReplyDeleteHere is where the guy who's chosen a handle answers the guy who refuses (so he doesn't have to be held to account for his comments over time), as if he deserved a straight answer:
You guess correctly (I'll avoid semantics and pretend you observed better diction; of course I'd have "qualms," which would be irrelevant). I'm guessing that you oppose secession regardless of what's attached? I'm also guessing you comment under "Anonymous" to hide your lack of character?
(I'm always amused by these questions freedom-haters ask about secession, which usually only serve to reveal their imperialist leanings and hatred of freedom; I'm supposed to rule out secession when my ox is gored, or something. They project their deeply-held abhorrence of self-determination and decentralized power onto everyone else)
Come now, Sviggy, any man (?) with such a love for Southern slavery is, ipso facto, a lover of tyranny...or are the kind of hypocrite who plays "who, whom" games?
I'll leave you to play with your straw man on southern slavery; it is, after all, yours.
I'll bite on your conflation of hypocrisy and "who-whom?" though; what's hypocritical about "who-whom?", per se?
Yes, we all recall how the USA imposed chattel slavery on the White population of the South. Such tearful scenes, the plantation owners son being sent off to work in the fields for the rest of his life...thank God that horror came to an end with Strom Thurmond's march on Washington.
*Checks*...yep, nit-picking analogies is still the hallmark of small-minds and argument-losers.
Good points all Anon... that one was ripe for picking. Its curious how the much touted "sovereign freedom" to own slaves" never gets around to giving actual freedom to the actual slaves, until forced to. And how come this love of secession does not translate equally? lol excellent point.
Well, America did secede from Britain in defense of slavery, what with Britain ending slavery before America. The only real difference being that America won their war. So might makes right then? I'm also curious as to how the Confederacy was supposed to free the slaves when the Confederacy was invaded, butchered, and burned, resulting in its total collapse and surrender. Blaming a dead man for inaction is the argument of the moral cretin. Brazil ended slavery, eventually. Obviously the Confederacy would have, too. It might not've been the cluster-fuck the yankees perpetrated, though.
If the yankees just wanted to end slavery, and didn't mind secession per se (a position so laughably stupid, and so obviously a PC retcon, that I had to pause while typing for snorts of derision), why didn't they just let the south secede after manumission?
Yes, yankees only wanted to save the poor negroes! They would've allowed a morally pure secession. This argument is absurd on its face; the yankee imperialist definition of "morally pure" here means, practically speaking, "not trying to secede."
Slavery's your excuse for enslavement. Burn the village to save it is indeed apt.
Actually let’s start with
The ancient Egyptians? That's your response? I'll just let our exchange stand then, with no further comment.
As for dysfunction, see Anon's example of Homodomor's "role models"
Fun fact: Rwandans in their genocide exceeded the death rate of the Jewish Holocaust, using only machetes.
While I am not a fan of slavery, I will say this. If I was offered a choice in 1865 between:
ReplyDelete1. Keeping blacks enslaved.
2. Emancipating blacks onto American soil.
I'd choose #1 every time. The wrong of slavery does not justify the greater wrongs of race-replacement and ethnic cleansing. The great mass of American whites did not deserve to have inflicted on them the consequences of the choices of the small minority who made the institution possible in the first place.
If offered a third choice:
3. Return black slaves to whence they came, emancipating them in the process.
I would take it over #1 or #2, every time.
ANon said:
ReplyDeleteLincoln lived more than 2 years after Jan 1, 1863. His administration's policies concerning reconstruction (in areas of the Confederacy under Union control) and concerning blacks were in constant flux during that period. There is a large historical literature on it. From what I've read, by the time he died, Lincoln had long since given up on the colonization idea. In this, he was largely influenced by black soldiers' contribution to the Union war effort
Indeed. And while some liberals as Sailer says may try to paper over his deportation plans, his abandonment of them is also clear from the record.
Svigor said:
Fun fact: Rwandans in their genocide exceeded the death rate of the Jewish Holocaust, using only machetes.
A bogus claim actually, like so many others you proffer. I challenge you to back up your claim with credible data and sources re this "exceeding" of the death rate, using "machetes." Let's see what you got.
I don't see anything to debate. Sailer is spot on. Lincoln wanted deportation, until his hand was forced. Liberals want to downplay it. Case closed. And trying to downplay Jewish deaths by converting them to a "daily death rate" going back to 1933 is ludicrous sleight of hand. For one thing the mass killings known as the Holocaust did not begin in 1933 as credible historians show. Your "roughly accepted duration of the Jewish Holocaust" is bogus. It began in December 1941, giving the Nazis 3,5 years of good killing work or approximately 1300 days. Look at an actual scholarly book cited from the Wikipedia references. As one notes:
ReplyDelete"In autumn 1941, the first German Jews to be deported at the spearhead of the combing out process of European Jewery was dispatched to the Warthegau. The possibility of liquidating ghettoised Jews had by then been explicitly raised for the forst time, in the summer of 1941, significantly by Nazi leaders in Warthegau. The first mobile gassing units to be deployed against Jews operated in the Warthegau in the closing month is if 1941. And the systematic murder of the Jews began in early December 1941 in the first extermination- actually a 'gas van station' - established at CHelmno on the Ner..."
FROM: Ian Kershaw. 2008. Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution. p 60
And its not only 6 million Jews but another 5 million Poles, Slavs, prisoners of war and other sub-humans who were systematically murdered. 11 million murdered souls over 3.5 years or 1300 days gives an impressive 8,461 bodies per day.
And the systematic Holodomor and collectivization engineered by Stalin impacted wide swathes of Russia. Credible estimates put the toll over the Soviet Union at 10 million during just one year -1932/33 (Wädekin et al. 1982. Agrarian Policies in Communist Europe. pg 16) and this does not count other millions from mass deportations and executions) --working out to approximately 27,397 per day murdered in just that year. On Rwanda, the same Wikipedia article on Rwanda shows about 500,000- 800,000 were killed according to 2 cited works, and shows that firearms were widely used including mortars, assault rifles, and grenades over a period of 4 months- 120 days, not the 100 as claimed. 800,000 over 120 days gives around 6,700 per day. The 27,000 per day of Stalin is over 4 times this amount, and the Nazi rate is 20% more than this amount.