A House-Divided

[Wild Bill]

Slavery would have lasted at least until 1912 according to Lincoln's plan for gradual emancipation submitted to Congress in Dec 1862.

Lincoln cleverly forced the South to fire the first shot or reveal itself as not really independent.

[Eva Elisabeth]

Thanks, Bill (and without Lincoln's plan?). I agree Lincoln was a clever (and diplomatic) brain! However, I do not think he sought war. I think he gave the best assessment of the situation in his Second Inaugural Address:

"Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came...
These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war...
Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph..."

[Wild Bill]

Eva, read James Oaks, Freedom National (2013) on Lincoln and the Republicans and wanting war

[Eva Elisabeth]

This one?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/...story.html
Looks absolutely interesting - thanks, Bill!!!

[maharba]

My point was apparently well taken by both the South and by Lincoln's friends. That he was re-launching himself with the radicals and appearing as an Abolitionist. The abolitionists had long sought to break up the Union. They caviled, sneered at,
and even burned the U.S. Constitution, itself. William Herndon and others rightly saw this new policy of (senate candidate) Lincoln as a death knell to his election prospects. And he went
on to lose to Senator Douglas. Lincoln himself had tried only one case before Chief Justice Taney and lost. Lincoln now became dismissive of the High Court decision in Dred Scott. And in the House Divided address, he gives a hyperbolic anticipation of future Supreme Court rulings. Lincoln calls for an overthrow, he is apparently joining the Abolitionists to say that the U.S. Constitution was a mistake, after what three-score and ten years? The North had been impairing the Constitution, their abolitionists calling openly for disunion. When the South finally did secede, the same radicals Republicans and abolitionists suddenly switched gears and their newfound passion to 'save the Union'. Then, they projected an instantly reversed view of the Constitution: which allowed no disunion and no secession.

[Eva Elisabeth]

Your point was apparently well taken by both the South and by Lincoln's friends???

Abraham Lincoln AFAIK never considered himself an Abolitionist nor a Radical.
He even bowed to the southern interests inasfar that all he proposed was to not allow slavery to extend to the new territories. However, he was a genius politician IMO, also in handling different interests and groups, and I think succeeding without applying these skills would not have been possible.

IMO the Drett Scott decision was (however legal) evil (as Tany seemed to me). Sometimes a mistake or constitutional shortcomings aren't perceived (or not perceived strongly enough) to take action to correct these unless three-score and ten years or more have passed.
Such happened then as it does now as it did and does in other countries - I don't think there's any constitution/basic law in the world without ammendments.

As Gene said, a great wrong needed to be righted. (Maharba, I wonder why you don't look critically at the Constitution or the DOI instead that hadn't explicitly endowed all humans with the same rights. Making an evil legal simply doesn't make it righteous. I know, it was not yet in the spirit of those days, that's just the way it was.)

[maharba]

Your point was apparently well taken by both the South and by Lincoln's friends???>

Herndon and others rightly concluded that Lincoln was shooting himself in the foot with that House Divided speech. Sounded too much like wacky Wendell Phillips and other radicals. Phillips family had tried to have him commited to an insane asylum. And Herndon was right: Lincoln lost the senate run to Steven Douglas. So then, the South, the electorate of Illinois, and even Lincoln close friends did not like what they heard in the House Divided speech.

But Lincoln was far more savy than Wendell Phillips. He 'laid back' here, and added more, there. Gave the appearance of such and such now, then receded later on.

As Gene said, a great wrong needed to be righted. (Maharba, I wonder why you don't look critically at the Constitution or the DOI instead that hadn't explicitly endowed all humans with the same rights. >

You might be asking me to: place myself NOW and examining rights of all folks (including women, Indians, possibly then to sexually ambiguous folks and on). Or the notion might be to place myself BACK in time to 1858, and shouldn't I then
have ranged myself with folks wishing to toss out the Constitution and rather have disunion than 'a more perfect union' with the slavery South to continue on. The abolitionists concluded and clamored for the dissolving of the Union, and a new Constitution (probably with the South gone). But when the South seceded, then the same folks became super-patriots and just loved the Union again and their (revised again) vision of the Constitution.

[Gene C]

(12-06-2015 10:07 PM)maharba Wrote:  And in the House Divided address, he gives a hyperbolic anticipation of future Supreme Court rulings. Lincoln calls for an overthrow, he is apparently joining the Abolitionists to say that the U.S. Constitution was a mistake, after what three-score and ten years?

I must have missed or misunderstood something.
Were and what does Lincoln say that calls for an overthrow (of the Supreme Court, or the Constitution?) and the U.S. Constitution was a mistake?

The abolitionist may have had a loud voice, but they didn't have the political clout you seem to ascribe to them. The same with the secessionist (north and south).

[Wild Bill]

For not having much clout as you assert, the secessionists sure did bust up the country.

We have spoken about the Republicans and the Constitution before, and how the Radicals wanted to junk it and write another until Major William Whiting of the Adjutant General's office convinced everyone that amendments were all that were necessary to straighten everything out (Harold Hyman, A More Perfect Union has a couple of chapters on this).

BTW the Rads also wanted to close down West Point for having graduated all those Rebel generals that were so hard to beat during the war.

[Gene C]

(12-08-2015 12:38 PM)Wild Bill Wrote:  For not having much clout as you assert, the secessionists sure did bust up the country.

I may have overstated my point.
Extreme viewpoints on either side of the issues rarely have the political clout to win. They have to cloud the issue, they can't win on their basic premise
In my opinion, if the secessionist viewpoint had been clearly stated, without the firebreathing rhetoric, it would not have been a majority opinion of the people of the south.
But that's my opinion, and it has a margin of error of +/- 40% to 45%.
And your right, they sure did bust up the country.

[Wild Bill]

Oh, Gene, dream on! You think that secession was not clearly stated? Why did all those nonslaveholders fight in the Confederate Army? I know that there has been an attempt to show that Lee's Army was filled with more slaveholders in the ranks that historians previously thought, but the average Southerner was more than willing to fight the Yankee invader whether they held slaves or not. Don't forget that slavery was more than a labor system. It was also racial separation system. This is why blacks, when freed after the war, bragged about the bottom rail being on top, and why the KKK had such purchase until suppressed by the army or until white and black Reconstructionists were suppressed. Read Charles B Dew, A;jostles of Disunion and Allen Trealease, White Terror

[Gene C]

Thanks for correcting me Bill, still I am only slightly outside my margin of error.

Somewhere I got the impression that the Civil War wasn't about slavery, but states rights.

Why did all those nonslaveholders fight in the Confederate Army?
That is a good question. I used to think I knew the answer, but I'm not so sure anymore.

[Wild Bill]

I see I have yet to learn to type. Dew's book is Apostles of Disunion

[Eva Elisabeth]

(12-08-2015 03:25 PM)Wild Bill Wrote:  It was also racial separation system.

Racial separation lasted at least until Civil Rights Act of 1964, or not?

[L Verge]

"Somewhere I got the impression that the Civil War wasn't about slavery, but states rights." And extra-territoriality, and economics, and centuries-old cultural differences, and plain old political power grabs, and fear of a highly centralized federal government.

As for why the non-slave holding Southerner fought for the Confederacy, I have always thought it was to support and protect the land of their birth (which meant their state to them), the fear of losing lands and employment to freed slaves, perhaps the hope of becoming a slaveholder, and finally just because the abolitionists and the fiery rhetoric of how evil the South was really got on their nerves (just as it does mine today)!

Eva, if you are referring to racial separation that had to be corrected by laws and statutes, yes, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was supposed to correct that. However, there is still racial separation under various guises today, and each race is responsible for perpetuating it. The "guilt" does not fall on just one race or culture.

I will probably have a few cannon balls lobbed at me for repeating something my mother said to me in the early-1960s or before when we were going through the racial turmoils of the 20th century. "Laurie, if God had intended for all men of all races to live together in harmony, he would not have placed them on separate continents to begin with."

Remember one of my posts on a different thread when I declared that there have been times in my life when I though I was a Deist? Trying to analyze the racial issues that won't go away is one of those times. God created the varying races and perhaps even set them against one another, and is now sitting back waiting to see how we humans can reason our way out of the differences. Just a thought...