One Hundred and Fifty Years Ago On This Day

[icenine]

Well Dave

when we were kids in school Lincoln was lumped with Washington and sort of presented as a equal to the Founders because he ended slavery. Simplistic yes but a good foundation for kids and future citizens to understand that freedom from slavery, equal rights regardless of color, and democracy were indeed good things. Nothing wrong with that at all.

You can get into revisionist territory when one becomes a graduate student and takes seminars on Civil War and the South and discuss the economics behind slavery and the military situation on the battlefield that influenced Lincoln.
I am by no means an expert on the Civil War. However I was taught by guys at Kent State who had all been influenced by the history department at the University of Wisconsin....in short the intellectual birthplace of American Civil War historiography.
No one ever took the sort of arguments about self-determination of the South seriously. In fact, none of us would even think of bringing up such an argument. We studied slavery and what made the South different, but the paradigm is that slavery was an evil institution and that Lincoln defeated it because the nation had to in order to survive.

Was Lincoln John Brown?
no
Was there racism in the North?
yes

at the end of the day however the North realized that slavery had to be ended.

The North had to militarily defeat the South on the battlefield and forge a complete surrender on the part of the Confederacy.

All the South had to do was wait it out and see if the North would get tired of fighting. We are lucky we had Lincoln.
A lesser President might have caved. The world is lucky too.

Imagine Hitler tearing across Europe 80 years later and the Western Democracies in Europe having an American ally only half as strong or completely isolated. Imagine Hitler having an alliance or a neutrality pact with a Confederate nation whose birth was indeed predicated on the institution of preserving servitude based on race.

Imagine apartheid being in place in half of our continent in 2013.

I don't like the revisionist world at all as you can tell.


If you make a statement that the South had the right of self determination because they wanted to expand slavery into new territories seized from Mexico you need to really think about what you are saying.

[bobabode]

Hell's bells, Mencken was known as the 'Sage of Baltimore' ferfuksake, a thoroughly rough and tumble, irascible in nature, segregated and bigoted city even into the 1970s, in my personal experience. The bars at Fell's Point were a classic example of the raucous, knock down & drag out and toss your ass into the street port town. Much like I imagine Port Royal, Jamaica was centuries ago before the earthquake and tsunami swallowed that pirate hellhole up.
That is until it was cleaned up and all gentrified by all those yuppified hipsters from the 'burbs in the '80s & '90s.

I've heard that the denizens of Balamer threw rotten cabbages and bricks at the Union troop trains as they rolled through the city on their way to the Capitol and points south during the Civil War. Most people think of B-more as some heroic and patriotic footnote of the Revolutionary war because some lawyer with a penchant for florid prose set a poem to paper while watching the British bombard and burn the city and Fort McHenry while sitting on his ass on a British prison ship.

They ought to take a stroll down the Block downtown with all of it's hookers, pimps, muggers, sneak thieves and dealers one summer night. It's been more than 30 years since I've been there so, that's probably been cleaned up too.
Hitting the Civic Center for more than a few concerts and getting hammered while barhopping at Fell's Point were fun as hell for me but what can I say? I used to enjoy low places when I was young and dumb as the proverbial fencepost.

Sorry for rambling and reminiscing as I hope there was a point somewhere in the previous. Maybe it's just that I view Mencken as a wicked satirist and a Baltimoron. Funny reading but not someone I would view as a great mind. Am I making any sense? Don't really give a crap...where's the bourbon?

[bobabode]

No offense intended to any Baltimorians, the gentrified or morons.

[Charles]

Originally Posted by bobabode

Hell's bells, Mencken was known as the 'Sage of Baltimore' ferfuksake, a thoroughly rough and tumble, irascible in nature, segregated and bigoted city even into the 1970s, in my personal experience. The bars at Fell's Point were a classic example of the raucous, knock down & drag out and toss your ass into the street port town. Much like I imagine Port Royal, Jamaica was centuries ago before the earthquake and tsunami swallowed that pirate hellhole up.
That is until it was cleaned up and all gentrified by all those yuppified hipsters from the 'burbs in the '80s & '90s.

I've heard that the denizens of Balamer threw rotten cabbages and bricks at the Union troop trains as they rolled through the city on their way to the Capitol and points south during the Civil War. Most people think of B-more as some heroic and patriotic footnote of the Revolutionary war because some lawyer with a penchant for florid prose set a poem to paper while watching the British bombard and burn the city and Fort McHenry while sitting on his ass on a British prison ship.

They ought to take a stroll down the Block downtown with all of it's hookers, pimps, muggers, sneak thieves and dealers one summer night. It's been more than 30 years since I've been there so, that's probably been cleaned up too.
Hitting the Civic Center for more than a few concerts and getting hammered while barhopping at Fell's Point were fun as hell for me but what can I say? I used to enjoy low places when I was young and dumb as the proverbial fencepost.

Sorry for rambling and reminiscing as I hope there was a point somewhere in the previous. Maybe it's just that I view Mencken as a wicked satirist and a Baltimoron. Funny reading but not someone I would view as a great mind. Am I making any sense? Don't really give a crap...where's the bourbon?

Damn, that sounds a lot like Colfax Avenue back in the '70's.

Chas

[bobabode]

Originally Posted by Charles

Damn, that sounds a lot like Colfax Avenue back in the '70's.

Chas

What city?

[Charles]

Originally Posted by bobabode

What city?

Denver.

Chas

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by icenine

Turning Lincoln into a saint because he preserved the Union and ended slavery is certainly nothing to be critical about.

It is buying the falsehood that only he could have accomplished this feat and deifying him for it.

Given the circumstances and alternatives -- presuming preservation of the Union was paramount -- any competent Executive would have been FORCED to make the same choice(s).

1. Do we want a Union?

Yes.

2. Can we exist with a free North and slave South?

Not any longer.

3. We have to take the South.

Clearly.

4. We have to free slaves.

See Number Two.

End result is what occurred.

Right?

[Charles]

Originally Posted by Zeke

It is buying the falsehood that only he could have accomplished this feat and deifying him for it.

Given the circumstances and alternatives -- presuming preservation of the Union was paramount -- any competent Executive would have been FORCED to make the same choice(s).

1. Do we want a Union?

Yes.

2. Can we exist with a free North and slave South?

Not any longer.

3. We have to take the South.

Clearly.

4. We have to free slaves.

See Number Two.

End result is what occurred.

Right?

Based on your initial assumption, I would agree that the remainder of your analysis is basically sound.

As to whether the preservation of the Union was necessary, or even wise at that particular point in time, is a topic which is best viewed as a separate issue.

Unfortunately, the fire breathers on both sides of the issue labored under the false assumption that somehow a civil war would be a gay affair settled within a month or two.

Now considering that what could have been, what should have been, and the ramifications of pursuing a different avenue can make for some interesting discussions, they are inconsequential as the water has already passed beneath the bridge. And they ignore the primary lesson.

Which is inflammatory rhetoric is a poor excuse for a rational dialogue. And had cooler heads prevailed, quite possibly none of this would have been necessary.

Chas

[JJIII]

Originally Posted by Charles

And they ignore the primary lesson.

Which is inflammatory rhetoric is a poor excuse for a rational dialogue.

Chas

Exactly!


(Is there an echo in here?)

[icenine]

Originally Posted by Zeke

It is buying the falsehood that only he could have accomplished this feat and deifying him for it.

Given the circumstances and alternatives -- presuming preservation of the Union was paramount -- any competent Executive would have been FORCED to make the same choice(s).

1. Do we want a Union?

Yes.

2. Can we exist with a free North and slave South?

Not any longer.

3. We have to take the South.

Clearly.

4. We have to free slaves.

See Number Two.

End result is what occurred.

Right?

I sort of buy into the Big Man Theory of History, which is sort of politically incorrect but stipulates that history in influenced more by powerful individuals rather than mass movements....that is a simplification.

A lesser man than Lincoln could have gave up after Bull Run. Sure another man may have been as strong as Lincoln and saved the union and ended slavery.

So he would be the hero....so who cares?
It is the outcome.