What RTFirefly said. Remember, Lincoln refused to back the Crittenden Compromise, which, had it been successful, probably would have brought the seceeding states back. (Crittenden had proposed some constitutional amendments to guarantee that slavery would always be legal and couldn’t be banned in the territories)
A good way to look at the letter to Greeley is as political cover. Lincoln had probably already decided to issue the Emancipation Proclamation when he wrote the letter to Greeley (a preliminary proclamation was written a month later), but he had to know that the proclamation was going to be unpopular, and that critics would try to put the worst face on it as they could…“Lincoln wants race war! Lincoln favors the Negro over the white man!, etc.”
Now, the New York Tribune had the reputation of being a “good, Republican” paper…it was generally friendly to the administration, and would usually follow its lead. In his letters to Greeley, it looks like Lincoln is trying to plant an editorial…he’s trying to put a “good spin” on the upcoming Proclamation.
Oh, let’s do have some fun with this. It’s been a while since I got to do a vivisection by vB
If you are going to label anyone ‘too p.c.’ who disagrees with your stance on an issue regarding not only civil rights but civil liberties and anything but the most fundamentalist interpretation of those rights as expressed in the Bill of Rights pre: formal cessation to slavery, you might wish to check your facts at the door.
Further, if failure to support an at-best romantically revisionist organization makes on too p. c., consider how much in tune with the modern world your definition of ‘too p. c.’ is. You may be surprised to learn that merely disagreeing with members of a conservative ‘historian’ society does not necessitate this label you bandy around as if it carried with it some communicable disease.
Nowhere do I state (you’ll want to revise this slightly if in fact you made the mistake of telling him he isn’t allowed to speak his mind, which I don’t think you did or would do in this context) any belief on the abridgment of civil rights (consider that phrase for just a second, will you?) regarding freedom of speech. And the wonderful thing is that every American citizen, regardless of their appearance. has that same right. The right to not only disagree with government but also individual citizen, private and/or public company, the printed or aired word, and not be subject to personal or capital penalty for such. I have as much right to believe you miss the entire point of the Civil War as you have to believe I have done myself a grave disservice by not joining your organization.
God forbid that anyone attempt to paint in a positive light that which painfully, and with great loss of life, gave an undeservedly yoked people their freedom. I shall take great pains in the future not to similarly talk about the following conflict, which helped to end the murderous and inhuman regimes of dictators:
World War II.
I do not see any great disservice done anyone by talking about the justice done by the freeing of slaves in America due to the North’s victory in the Civil War. I do not see it as being untrue to anyone to label as a glorious event that which freed that same undeservedly yoked people.
How would someone sympathetic to the South’s side of the war paint things? As a war to maintain a way of life that necessitates the perpetual subjugation of a people who have done nothing wrong and worked for no money and in at-times atrocious conditions so that an at-best uptopian lifestyle could be continued to its ultimate demise?
You seem to lose yourself in thinking of that war as something unnecessary. it is partially due to this same shared mindset that in some areas of this country we are still fighting for equal rights for black people.
Revolutionary War soldiers fighting for the colonies were fighting for their independence. Rebel Civil War soldiers were fighting against another people’s independence. Whatever one soldier believed or did not, the accuracy of that belief must be called into question immediately if the above statement is to be borne out in reality.
Show me as brutal a conflict where war reparations were not demanded from the losing party and I will drive to your headquarters and eat my hat in full view of everyone present there. To blame and find fault with the North for the reparations and safety demands they levied on the South is as preposterous and disingenuous as to insinuate that no reparations should have been demanded of Germany for the warmongering they brought about. “To the victor go the spoils,” the saying goes. How would you have done it in their position? Bearing in mind, of course, that the entire economy of the south was ravished by the war to the point that it took decades to recover and the new business in the North, save for railroads, were neither as shared nor as present in the South.
It is kind of you to assume the role of “Northern Brutality against the South” Historian for me, but I assure you no such half-hearted, nor equally factually consistent, account is necessary. I am as aware of the events in Andersonville as I am aware of the more than one hundred years of forced involuntary servitude forced upon black slaves by the South. If you are looking to play the sympathy card, look first to your own people and ensure they are not guilty of any wrongdoing. Defending slaveholders is not the way to do this.
I seem to have landed in Bizarro World, where capitalism does not exist. People have business for the purpose of making money. Even non-profit companies make money.
Rather than pointing to a cloud of smoke, do you perhaps have a hot match or some kindling to show me, or has your fire already burnt out?
And you, who seem so keen on educating me but for your lack of ability to complete the circle, so to speak, would do well to actually make your case instead of waving a big stick and hoping I run away. It does not serve your purpose to attempt to coerce agreement by bluffery. Make your case.
Since you have deemed yourself sufficiently knowledgeable as to attempt to educate me on the nuances of the Civil War, perhaps your vast holdings of information would care to enlighten me as to what part of my education on Abraham Lincoln is remiss. Did those same schools who (evidently erroneously, in your view) taught me that the losing side in a conflict is made to make amends also make a mistake in teaching me that Lincoln, while not a pure abolitionist, was less than a fair and decent man? Again, instead of waving a stick in the air or pointing to a cloud of smoke, make your case instead of insinuating that another one is around the corner.
See above. If you are going to infer something, at least make your case or you come off as nothing but someone who keeps saying “but … but … but no! That isn’t true!” The next part of this statement is “Because…”, not “Come on!”
Do you care to elaborate on that position or is your stance yet again firm and unwavering in a non-commital factually lacking representation of an at-best unpopular, and at worst uneducated stance regarding the Civil War?
If you could get back to me with the relevance of this comment, I would appreciate it.
Should he show more ardent enthusiasm for the study of history, as opposed to the romanticized self-rendered “dead men tell no tales, but we will” account you would give, I am sure he would join me in my own opinion regarding you and yours.
Captain Amazing, It is possible to wish for something but to know your duties may well preclude that wish from coming to fruition, you know.
gobear, I’m not a revisionist, as I do not alter the past to fit my own conception of things. I think you’re looking for the slimeballs the ADL fights.
Interesting quotes from those racists. Robert E. Lee’s opinions on slavery were not much better, but he did, at least, pay lip service to abolition. Jefferson Davis, however, was pro-slavery, and he was the President. Point conceded.
RTFirefly and Captain Amazing, again, I think you two have convinced me. I always thought the Emancipation Proclamation was mere cover, to prevent England from entering the war on the Confederacy’s side, and the Greeley letter was closer to Lincoln’s own feelings on the issue. I hadn’t considered the problem Lincoln had with admitting new slave states as part of an anti-slavery, as opposed to an anti-Southern, sentiment.
>If you’re not From The South, you can’t really imagine the Pride of Dixie in some people’s hearts. So, saying things like “you’re a racist,” “you guys lost,” “it wasn’t Northern aggression, it was all about the slaves,” are going to get hostile reactions.<
I must agree. How about a statue of General Robert E. Lee in Washington D.C.? I was born in California, but I have come to have a great respect for the Confederacy and the soldiers who fought and died wearing grey. I have walked the fields of Gettysburg and climbed Little Round Top. My home flagpole has proudly flown the “Don’t tread on Me” flag, the original Old Glory, and the Confederate flags: the Stars and Bars, the Battle Flag, and the Bonnie Blue flag. I’m Union all the way, but I honor the Confederacy as part of my American heritage.
8% of Southerners owned slaves. The other 92% were defending their homes from an invading foreign army that was trying to crush the South’s bid for independence just as the British tried to stop the US from becoming independent. Imagine a Brit telling all of us that we lost the war for independence, get over it and bow to the Queen.
No need, really. It happens that the Robert E. Lee Memorial is right across Memorial Bridge from the Lincoln Memorial.
Why? Because they fought bravely and believed in their cause? That’s not enough. I don’t think I’m Godwinizing when I point out that the same was surely true of typical German soldiers in WWII.
mostly didn’t want the slaves freed, either.
You may honor the Confederacy, but you’ve evidently forgotten who started the shooting.
If we had in fact lost that war, I’m sure we would have gotten over it a long time ago. Particularly in the Deep South, which was the colonial region least interested in independence from Britain.
And of course, if we’d lost that war, slavery in what is now the U.S. would have ended in 1838, when the Brits banned it.
Actually a lot of the people who fought (on both sides, honestly) because all their friends had joined and they wanted to go with them, or because they figured it would be exciting, or because anything’s got to be more fun than walking up and down a hot field looking at a mule’s ass all day, or because they needed the sign up bonus, or because they couldn’t get in the woods fast enough when the draft people came.
And not all of them did fight. Unionism in the Confederacy was always a presence, especially in the upper South, but even in the Deep South, by 1863, desertion had become a major problem in the Confederate army, and, before the war was over, every Confederate state except for South Carolina had raised at least one volunteer unit for the US army.
