Mr. Lee

[LincolnToddFan]

(04-18-2014 03:30 PM)J. Beckert Wrote:  Lee did an honorable (and illegal at the time) thing by making sure his slaves had at least a rudimentary form of education before he freed them. I think that is most benevolent as compared to Lincoln's two choices - colonization or the "root hog or die" plan.

I think Laurie made an excellent point here :

Quote: the fanatic New England abolitionists were so perfectly mad on the subject of slavery that their whole soul was filled with burning gall, and they were ever seeking an opportunity to spit...venom on the South, for the purpose of withering down her institution, even at the very hazard of shivering into fragments, our glorious Union

Slavery always provokes an emotional response. It's always better to know all the facts and come up with a long range plan. I think that's the gist of Lee's 1856 letter.

The Abolitionist's emotional fervor and foaming at the mouth over this subject caused 600,000 Americans to perish in a vicious war. All other cultures that abolished slavery did it without a drop of blood. There's something very wrong with that.

I don't think I can agree with the idea that it was the Abolitionist "frothing" alone which caused 600,000 Americans to perish. As much or even more responsibility must be taken by men like the Southern so-called "Fire-Eaters"...Robert Barnwell Rhett, Louis Wigfall and William Yancey who had begun beating the drum for secession and even war as early as 1850, years before AL even took the oath of office. Edmund Ruffin, Fire-Eater extraordinaire, even left the Commonwealth of Virginia in disgust because he disliked the moderate approach to the issue of secession there. Ruffin moved further South to the Carolinas where the drumbeat for war and secession was louder and more to his liking.

Why are the Northern Abolitionists more culpable than the Southern Fire-Eaters for starting the war?

As for AL, it's not as if he or anyone else knew that the repercussions of holding on to Fort Sumter would lead to a Civil War that would drag on for four years and cost so much in blood. He was not raring to go to war and spill blood just on a trifle. I am not 100% sure he would have committed himself to war if he had known, but he did feel for better or worse that keeping America as one Nation was at least worth the risk. Once he was in it, he was REALLY in it, and other than complete capitulation to the Confederates there was no way out for him other than the political tightrope that he(brilliantly imo) walked for four nightmarish years.

My personal opinion, in view of the threat faced by America and the world in 1914 and especially later in 1938 is that history has more than vindicated Abraham Lincoln.

As for the Southern emancipation of slaves being imminent(without war), the reading of Prof. Bruce Levine's "Fall Of the House of Dixie"(2012) put the lie to that for once and for all and has convinced me that the Civil War was all but inevitable. The North was certainly no Promised Land of milk and honey for African Americans, but the South was no where close to abolishing slavery before 1861. The institution was at the very core of every part of Southern life and culture and most likely would have remained so for generations to come. One of the great ironies of the Civil War is that by pushing the issue of secession by war if necessary, it is men like Ruffin and Rhett who ultimately became the TRUE great emancipators and guaranteed the end of their cherished way of life, much more quickly than what would have happened if they had not instigated secession and the breakup of the country. Lincoln had no desire to destroy slavery in the South when he was elected in 1860, much less commit the country to war over it.