Lincoln Lecture in Salzburg, Austria

[RJNorton]

Many thanks to Amy for sending this notification. She lives in Salzburg, Austria, and is alerting folks to a lecture entitled “The Road Not Taken: Abraham Lincoln and the Peaceful Abolition of Slavery” to be given by James H. Read this December 12th in Salzburg. Amy, if you attend the lecture, please post a summary. Thank you, Amy!

For information on the lecture please CLICK HERE.

[LincolnMan]

I second Roger. Would love to see a summary.

[Eva Elisabeth]

Yes. (One of my favorite poems...) I didn't know about that society.

[LincolnMan]

Is there a Lincoln statue in Austria? Just wondering.

[RJNorton]

Yes, Bill. Please see Angela's post here.

[LincolnMan]

Ah, thank you! Thought so.

[Eva Elisabeth]

I think it's the only in Continental Europe. (I would love to see, but it's quite a trip).

[Amy L.]

Eva - I do not think it would be worth a trip to see the sculpture. I do not think the work captures Lincoln. His proportions relative to the horse he's riding are that of a typical man, and I think the artist only used a profile-picture to model Lincoln's face; it doesn't look like him from the front.
But it would be well-worth a trip to Salzburg for the region's landscape and culture.

[Angela]

@Eva: We'll DO this trip to Salzburg! And also there ARE some more statues in Europe - Norway, Portugal, San Marino and Paris are home to statues und busts of Abraham Lincoln.
@ Amy: It is so very nice to meet you and I wish I had known you earlier when I did my research trip to Salzburg some years ago. You are quite right when you state that the statue does not fully capture Lincoln's face, even as a young men. But then, the artist was known for her animal statues first...that is why the horse looks so good ;-)

[Gene C]

That same statue is at a small park in Lincoln, Oregon (interesting story behind that) and the New Salem Village near Springfield, IL

Angela & Amy are right. It's a better statue of the horse than the rider.
But it's still pretty good.

[Amy L.]

12. Dez. 2019, Salzboirhe (that’s how they say it)

Notes and thoughts from author James H. Read’s Lecture:
“The Road Not Taken: Abraham Lincoln and the Peaceful Abolition of Slavery”

I believe unfortunately the author didn’t get into much of the meat of his ideas for the book, because the lecture was mostly an overview of what lead to the American Civil War. The lesson to us ~ 12 attendees:
• DOB, where lived, Missouri Compromise, Bleeding Kansas, Fort Sumter, etc.
• Lincoln was no Abolitionist
• The 3/5 Clause was not going to guarantee an advantage for the South in the Legislature for much longer, because immigrants kept moving to the North.
• The 1860 election showed that the Republicans were not Sectional (that they could be conservative and compromising), because some Republicans were elected in the South.
• Lincoln fought Sectionalism (or, tried to influence southern Sentiment) by appointing Republicans to southern positions (aka Post Master)

Interesting points:
• There would not have been a 13th Amendment if the war had not happened. It’s true. The North was just as rife with racism. It would have taken YEARS for Congress to grant equal rights to African Americans without the war.
• The South violently suppressed Freedom of Speech. (I remember in Congress there was a gag rule against discussing Slavery, but that there was such suppression and limit of constitutional rights… Two Americas.)
• If the South were left alone (like, if the leadership was as inept as James Buchanan) and allowed to secede, there would STILL have been war. The South’s economic engine was the trading of slaves. They needed buyers. If the West became Free States, that meant less buyers of enslaved African Americans. And then also the clear and immediate ambition, the South would want more land and resources (esp. California). And there would be war. (I’d never thought of that! Read says, ”Lincoln did.“)

The last chapter of the book will discuss what America’s divisions today share with divisions at the time of the Civil War, but that will not be the main theme of the book.

My questions to the author:
• Did the Kansas-Nebraska Act bring Lincoln out of his shell because he felt strongly about Slavery? Or was it that he felt strongly about the power and threat of the Slavocracy? (hmm, or better, both. The causes are not mutually exclusive...)
• Were Southern Plantation owners really so powerful and aristocratic? Was the slave economy really so successful, especially in comparison northern Industrialization? What about Hinton Rowan Helper’s “The Impending Crisis of the South”? Helper’s analysis showed the North leaps and bounds ahead of the South, and perfectly capable of surviving without the resources and labor of the South, and that the South was in the North’s hand. …
• What was the importance of the example of successful American Democracy to the wider world?
• States’ Rights – Could States justifiably veto Federal Law? (think I got this question from looking into James Read’s previously published book, “Majority Rule versus Consensus: The Political Thoughts of James Calhoun”) The author replied something like, “Funny question. I wrote a book about that.” Well.

Closing thoughts:
• I unfortunately did not closely concentrate to the lecture and parts of the discussion. Perhaps there were more points of speculation…
• I must say, it was neat to meet an author, and someone brave enough to attempt another Lincoln book.

Also, ich möchte etwas auf Deutsch schreiben, weil:
• bei dieser Veranstaltung Deutsch gesprochen war,
• in Lincolns Springfield die Leute um herum sicher Deutsch geredet haben,
• John Nicolay, in seinem politischen Kreis, auf D. gequatscht hat,
• ihr alle Google Translate nutzen könntet.
Wir haben kurzzeitig geredet – Viele Frauen waren freimütig über die notwendige Gleichberechtigung von den Sklaven. Aber ich denke, die Frauen haben nicht absichtlich ihre Rechten opfernd zur Seite gelegt, um die Schwarzen zu unterstützen. Schwarzen haben gegen 1870 ihre Rechte zu wählen bekommen, 1920 ENDLICH wir Frauen. Frauen sind unter den Bus geworfen.

[Rogerm]

This is in response to what was written above in German. It is known that Lincoln supported a German-language newspaper for a while in Illinois. I have read somewhere that the leaders of the women's voting-rights movement did not show much sympathetic concerns about Jim Crow era segregation laws. Maybe, that was out of resentment for the slowness of their being able to obtain the right to vote.

[Eva Elisabeth]

What do you think then was the (white) women's attitude towards black women, who ranked the lowest? Were they included in the female want for vote?

[Amy L.]

I did not make that statement correctly, thank you for more precisely defining 'women', Roger.
Should have been more like, ‘Die Frauenwahlrecht Bewegung’.

My comment was in reference to one of the women standing up before the group, and in her very good english talking about Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, and mentioning how their suffrage movement was also very interested in African American suffrage.
(I know the term ‘African American’ is modern, but it seems like an appropriate label or categorization.)

Good question Eva! Hmm, anyone know?
(I unfortunately know very little about the Women’s Suffrage Movement, only benefit from it.)
Online: https://www.usconstitution.net/sentiments.html#res
'Resolved, that the equality of human rights results necessarily from the fact of the identity of the race in capabilities and responsibilities.'

[David Lockmiller]

(12-14-2019 05:08 PM)Amy L. Wrote:  

---

If I can repeat myself, I had a bit of an epiphany during the lecture.
Mr. Read repeated, “Lincoln was against Slavery”, “His cause was against Slavery.” But then Lincoln refused the label of Abolitionist, and was fine to let is stay where it was, to supposedly ‘die a slow death.’ I think it would be more appropriate to say ‘Lincoln was against Slave Power.’

Excerpts from President Lincoln's 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.

The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses;for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."