The very first public statement that Abraham Lincoln made after being inaugurated as the sixteenth president was an ironclad defense
of slavery: “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” He then quoted the Republican Party platform of 1860 that said essentially the same thing; pledged his support for the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution “with no mental reservations”; and supported a proposed constitutional amendment (the “Corwin Amendment”) that would have prohibited the federal government from ever interfering with slavery. In fact, it was Lincoln who instructed William Seward to see that the Corwin Amendment made it through the U.S. Senate, which it did (and the House of Representatives as well).

In the same speech, Lincoln promised a military invasion and “bloodshed” in any state that refused to collect the federal tariff on imports, which had just been more than doubled two days before his inauguration. “There needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority,” he continued. Thus, mere minutes after taking an oath to protect the constitutional liberties of American citizens, Abraham Lincoln threatened to orchestrate the murder of many of those same citizens.

What on earth was he talking about? What would cause a president to wage war on his own citizens whose liberties he had just pledged to protect? Lincoln explained in the very next sentence: “The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using force against or among the people anywhere” (emphasis added). He promised to murder American citizens over tax collection. This was necessary, in the mind of Lincoln, if he was to deliver on what his party elected him to do: to enact a high protective tariff , give away public lands mostly to mining, railroad, and timber corporations, and lavish the railroad corporations, among others, with corporate welfare. This was the old “American System” of Alexander Hamilton, which was endorsed for decades by Lincoln’s Whig Party, and fi nally the Republicans. The overwhelming majority of Southern congressmen had for decades been ardently opposed to all of these things. But now, they must be forced into it, or so Lincoln thought, for the sake of revenue collection. (At the time, the tariff on imports accounted for more than 90 percent of all federal tax revenues.) Southerners (as well as Northerners) needed to be forced to pay for the empire of corporate welfare that the Republican Party hoped would keep it in power for decades. (It did—the Republican Party essentially monopolized national politics for the next half century.) That is why there had to be a war, in the minds of Lincoln and the Republican Party. They were perfectly willing to enshrine slavery explicitly in the Constitution, but there would be no compromise over collecting the newly doubled tariff.

This is also why opposition to war in the North had to be brutally repressed, as it was, and a myth of “national unity” invented. Much of the story of how the Republican Party engaged in a Stalinist spasm of political repression is told by historian William Marvel in his book, Lincoln’s Darkest Year: The War in 1862. (Marvel is a renowned Lincoln scholar, winner of the Lincoln Prize and the Douglas Southall Freeman Award.)

Killing Lincoln will air on TV this weekend, a film which to the best of my understanding celebrates Lincoln as one of our greatest presidents... There are so many things about Lincoln that have been banished from our classroom textbooks that would lay out a different historical perspective of our sixteenth president.... In fact there are those who would compare his campaign of genocide, rape and pillage of the south to the acts of Hitler and Mao... Consider his first inaugural address, then consider the common acceptance at the time of a state's right to secede from the union (well documented) and the cost of lives lost in the Civil war both on the battle field and our cities, both in the north and the south as those in the north who opposed Lincoln often came to an early and untimely demise..... if you doubt the claims made in these few paragraphs the address itself is easy to google, then do a little more research on the severe measures president Lincoln used to suppress dissent from his detractors...

LOL... for those of you who are not interested in politics or of our history.... Please, if you find these types of threads upsetting, then just don't read them....

Killing Lincoln will air on TV this weekend, a film which to the best of my understanding celebrates Lincoln as one of our greatest presidents... There are so many things about Lincoln that have been banished from our classroom textbooks that would lay out a different historical perspective of our sixteenth president.... In fact there are those who would compare his campaign of genocide, rape and pillage of the south to the acts of Hitler and Mao...
. . . .
LOL... for those of you who are not interested in politics or of our history.... Please, if you find these types of threads upsetting, then just don't read them....
. . . .

A-trolling we will go, a-trolling we will go, hi ho the cheerio, a-trolling we will go . . . William Tecumseh Sherman, where are you when we need you?

Somehow I don't see the parallel.... But I am not a defender of Bush, his most the most egregious mistake of his presidency was his decision to invade Iraq... But, that certainly is not the point of this post, it was just to point out that with all the current celebration of Lincoln, that just maybe we should consider his true history and motivations. If you were to peruse his speeches and writings you just might consider his words to be hardly less offensive than those of a modern day white supremacist.

If I'm not mistaken, O UHH History Maven, ol' William Tecumseh's "aggressive hostility" was toward those same fellow American citizens who started the whole shebang by lobbing a little aggressive hostility on Fort Sumter. You reap what you sow, Brutha Blurry, you reap what you sow. . . .

"I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."

"That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes."

"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

"It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the intention of the lawgiver is the law. All members of Congress swear their support to the whole Constitution—to this provision as much as to any other. To the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come within the terms of this clause "shall be delivered up" their oaths are unanimous. "

"The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere. "

This afternoon the President of the United States gave an audience to a committee of colored men at the White House. They were introduced by Rev. J. Mitchell, Commissioner of Emigration, E. M. Thomas, the chairman, remarked that they were there by invitation to hear what the Executive had to say to them.

Having all been seated, the President, after a few preliminary observations, informed them that a sum of money had been appropriated by Congress, and placed at his disposition, for the purpose of aiding the colonization, in some country, of the people, or a portion of them, of African descent, thereby making it his duty, as it had for a long time been his inclination, to favor that cause. And why, he asked, should the people of your race be colonized, and where? Why should they leave this country? This is, perhaps, the first question for proper consideration. You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss; but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think. Your race suffer very greatly, many of them, by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side. If this is admitted, it affords a reason, at least, why we should be separated. You here are free men, I suppose.

A voice—"Yes, sir!"

Perhaps you have long been free, or all your lives. Your race are suffering, in my judgment, the greatest wrong inflicted on any people. But even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race. You are cut off from many of the advantages which the other race enjoys. The aspiration of men is to enjoy equality with the best when free, but on this broad continent not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of ours. Go where you are treated the best, and the ban is still upon you. I do not propose to discuss this, but to present it as a fact, with which we have to deal. I cannot alter it if I would. It is a fact about which we all think and feel alike, I and you. We look to our condition. Owing to the existence of the two races on this continent, I need not recount to you the effects upon white men, growing out of the institution of slavery.