The 1619 Project (in the New York Times Magazine)

[David Lockmiller]

(05-27-2020 06:48 PM)AussieMick Wrote:  To say that the completion of emancipation resulted through civil war is a tad misleading.

Professor Harris wrote in her email to me: "My point is more about the weakness of the Constitution as a tool to end slavery."

The Southern slave colonies would not have signed their approval to the Constitution without satisfactory provision therein that the issue of slavery was a "state's rights" issue and therefore not an issue upon which the federal government might intervene or encroach.

President Lincoln explained the basis for his constitutionally correct intrusion to Mr. George Thompson, the English anti-slavery orator:

"It seems clear, then, that in the last extremity, if any local institution threatened the existence of the Union, the Executive could not hesitate as to his duty. In our case, the moment came when I felt that slavery must die that the nation might live! I have sometimes used the illustration in this connection of a man with a diseased limb, and his surgeon. So long as there is a chance of the patient's restoration, the surgeon is solemnly bound to try to save both life and limb; but when the crisis comes, and the limb must be sacrificed as the only chance of saving the life, no honest man will hesitate."

At the occasion of the Illinois Supreme Court Memorial to honor the memory of Abraham Lincoln, May 3, 1865, the Supreme Court of Illinois convened in the court room at Ottawa. The Hon. J. D. Caton, formerly Chief Justice of the court spoke in part as follows:

"If he discovered a weak point in his cause, [Lincoln] frankly admitted it, and thereby prepared the mind to accept more readily his mode of avoiding it."

President Lincoln's entire speech to the Committee of Colored Men on Colonization (Post #16)was a series of such frank admissions followed by reasoning that these free black men should accept and advocate for his proposal, and even themselves participate in its success.

Two days after President Lincoln's speech, the Committee responded as follows:

“We were entirely hostile to the movement until all the advantages were so ably brought to our views by you,” the delegation chief wrote Lincoln two days later, promising to consult with prominent blacks in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston who he hoped would “join heartily in Sustaining Such a movement.” (Source: Team of Rivals, The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin, (2005), page 469.) (Post #17)