Were Lincoln and FDR REALLY that bad?

[JohnBT]

The one thing that has never been adequately explained(to my satisfaction anyway) is this thing about Lincoln wanting to free the slaves. If that was his goal, or one of his goals, then why did he wait until after the war to free the slaves in the north? Did it slip his mind for 3 or 4 years? He didn't even make General Grant's wife give up her slaves during the war.

And the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to those areas in rebellion and even then wasn't enacted until the middle of the war.

Too many inconsistencies to simply say Lincoln wanted to free the slaves.

John

 

[Quartus]

I'm sure Lincoln wanted to free the slaves eventually, but it wasn't his top priority for pursuing the war. To say it was about money is childishly simplistic. There really are idealists in the world who will go to war on principle.


And it's also true that the South seceded because they wanted to preseve slavery, and in Lincoln they saw a threat to that. (With good reason.)


But here's the weirdest idea in this debate:

the treason of the South.

What treason? Leaving a voluntary union? Where in any of the founding writings of this country is there a suggestion that the union was anything but voluntary? This idea of the Union being superior to the individual states is the revisionist history. That idea is not to be found in the FF, as far as I can tell, and is the worst thing to come out of Lincoln's presidency.

BTW, El Cajon, I imbibed all that "treason" stuff for a long time - I grew up on nothing else.

Then I started looking into it for myself. Guess what!

Neither the radical Southern view NOR the standard Northern view is accurate.

 

[Standing Wolf]

We'd have been better off with two nations and a much less powerful federal government. Slavery would have died of its own inherent inefficiency before long, anyway.

 

[Brett Bellmore]

Benjamin, I never heard of Valandigham, but isn't Lincoln the only President to ever order a Supreme court Justice arrested because he didn't like his ruling? And, yeah, it was Taney, but the ruling itself was one of the few where Taney was right.

I think the saying that applies to both is, "He meant to rule well, but he meant to RULE." Neither had any particular patience with anybody who opposed them, particularly judges who dared to suggest that maybe they didn't have the authority to do anything they wanted.

 

[Russ]

Slavery still exists in the US in a sense. Look at the immigrant workers that pick most of the fruits and vegetables you eat. They are mostly Mexicans but they come from many other parts of South America as well.

Many countries have had to find new innovative technolgies to make up for slave wages paid to immigrants because they don't have them anymore. They are now more efficient per acre than is the US as far a harvests go. The lack of low cost immigrant labor has made them focus on technology. We are not doing Mexico or any other part of South America any favors by allowing them to harvest our food for dirt wages. We need to be helping them develop so they don't have to leave home to get jobs in other countries. They prosper, we prosper. Not a zero sum game.

The Civil War was all about slavery for the most part. Certainly it wasn't the only reason but it was the main and overriding reason. To say otherwise is truly revisionist history.

I suggest you look into the whole thing more carefully.

As far as FDR is concerned, he sold the American people down the river. However, let me ask how many of you geniuses are willing to blow off their social security benefits after you have paid into it for 20 plus years?

Let me guess. NONE?

 

[Scottmkiv]

However, let me ask how many of you geniuses are willing to blow off their social security benefits after you have paid into it for 20 plus years?

It doesn't matter if you want to.......
How many of you with 15 or more years till retirement think you are going to get anything wheter we officially end SS or not?

 

[dischord]

On slavery, I'd have a lot more respect for the 1860s federal government and Yankee states' if they had not carved out an exception for themselves in the 13th Amendment. The 13th Amendment says a government CAN enslave you under certain circumstances. (I'm fully aware that modern politics, thankfully, makes government's use of this power virtually zero; but it is there.)

 

[dischord]

However, let me ask how many of you geniuses are willing to blow off their social security benefits after you have paid into it for 20 plus years?

I'm willing to give up 100% of my social security booty. Just because a bunch of octogenarians are stealing my money today does not justify me stealing it from today's children when I get reach retirement.

That would be like the guy who justifies beating his kids because his dad beat him.

 

[Quartus]

I suggest you look into the whole thing more carefully.

I suggest YOU do that. Lincoln's statements have been quoted, and many more could be added. The southern statements as to the reason for their seccession don't change Lincoln's statements. Slavery certainly was a central issue, but certainly NOT Lincoln's motivation.





And BTW, I don't intend to EVER take a dime of SS "benefits".

 

[Sean Smith]

The South did go to war, in large measure, over slavery. Mike Irwin has several times posted documents here that clearly indicated their leaders were very much concerned with maintaining the institution of slavery. The average Confederate soldier probably did consider himself as fighting for his state, but that wouldn't be the first time fine men with good motives had been used by leaders with different (and not-as-good) motives.

When the documents of secession use "slave" and its cognates over and over and over again, you get the hint that slavery may have been an issue for the Southern legislators when they voted to seceed.

"Message of Jefferson Davis to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America," from J.D. Richardson, Messages and Papers of Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy, Including Diplomatic Correspondence, 1861-1865

Partial quote:

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As soon, however, as the Northern States that prohibited African slavery within their limits had reached a number sufficient to give their representation a controlling voice in Congress, a persistent and organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners of slaves in the Southern States was inaugurated and gradually extended. A continuous series of measures was devised and prosecuted for the purpose of rendering insecure the tenure of property in slaves. Fanatical organizations, supplied with money by voluntary subscriptions, were assiduously engaged in exciting amongst the slaves a spirit of discontent and revolt; means were furnished for their escape from their owners, and agents secretly employed to entice them to abscond; the constitutional provisions for their rendition to their owners was first evaded, then openly denounced as a violation of conscientious obligation and religious duty; men were taught that it was a merit to elude, disobey, and violently oppose the execution of the laws enacted to secure the performance of the promise contained in the constitutional compact; owners of slaves were mobbed and even murdered in open day solely for applying to a magistrate for the arrest of a fugitive slave; the dogmas of these voluntary organizations soon obtained control of the Legislatures of many of the Northern States, and laws were passed providing for the punishment, by ruinous fines and long-continued imprisonment in jails and penitentiaries, of citizens of the Southern States who should dare to ask aid of the officers of the law for the recovery of their property. Emboldened by success, the theater of agitation and aggression against the clearly expressed constitutional rights of the Southern States was transferred to the Congress; Senators and Representatives were sent to the common councils of the nation, whose chief title to this distinction consisted in the display of a spirit of ultra fanaticism, and whose business was not "to promote the general welfare or insure domestic tranquillity," but to awaken the bitterest hatred against the citizens of sister States by violent denunciation of their institutions; the transaction of public affairs was impeded by repeated efforts to usurp powers not delegated by the Constitution, for the purpose of impairing the security of property in slaves, and reducing those States which held slaves to a condition of inferiority. Finally a great party was organized for the purpose of obtaining the administration of the Government, with the avowed object of using its power for the total exclusion of the slave States from all participation in the benefits of the public domain acquired by all the States in common, whether by conquest or purchase; of surrounding them entirely by States in which slavery should be prohibited; of thus rendering the property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless, and thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars. This party, thus organized, succeeded in the month of November last in the election of its candidate for the Presidency of the United States.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What's next, the lie that that North had more slaves than the South? (HINT: read the census data... )

I would say the Civil War is largely the fault of the Southern politicians, who initiated secession to pretect their personal material interest in the continuation and expansion of slave power, and plowed under hundreds of thousands of boys to try to preserve it. As their own public statements attest (reading those pesky primary sources again, sorry... ), they considered slavery a positive moral good, not something that was a necessary evil that would eventually go away. So the claim that slavery would have gone away on its own seems specious to me if the slave owners were making alot of money off it and thought God said it was good to go. Because you know how eager people are to abandon ways of getting rich that have God's seal of approval on 'em.

The State's Right's claim is true as far as it goes, but again by actually reading the primary source material it is clear that the "right" to own slaves was the paramount concern of the Southern politicians. The fact that they could dupe otherwise disinterested farmboys into fighting with some ersatz visions of herrenvolk democracy or wild stories about Republican-sanctioned forced negro sex with their sisters just goes to prove that the public at large is stupid.

Even if you somehow accept that this circimstance can co-exist with being on the "right" side, you have to recognize that secession was a suicidal strategy that made certain all the bugaboos that the war was supposed to prevent in the first place. It directly lead to a vast expansion in federal power and set the South as a whole back 100 years. Even if we accept for a moment that the South was fighting for all the right reasons, and that secession was perfectly legal, we are still forced to conclude that the war itself was folly on an immense scale... a gamble for high stakes where the other guy has the stacked deck.

 

[Russ]

Quartus and dischord,

If you don't want your SS checks, if and when you get them, send them back to the Govt or if you like, forward them to me. E mail me and I'll tell you where to send them. Make no mistake, The US will never default on this "entitlement" as long as there is a US. It may be less than expected but it will be there.

Oh wait, perhaps you will suck off the government in other ways. Federal and state employees (including the ever-whining teachers) don't have to pay into this system yet they get better benefits than those who do pay in. I know people with millions of dollars who still get their social security benefits. They don't send them back. You won't either if you live long enough to get them. My guess is you are fatalists in that you think the system will fail, or you work for the government and other people pay for you.

Must be nice to be 14.

 

[dischord]

Russ,

Play nice now.

 

[Penforhire]

Can't say I've studied Lincoln that much but FDR should have "toughed-out" the Great Depression. My feeling is he sold the future and we are still paying the price.

 

[Russ]

Dischord,

Sorry if I insulted you but as far as government pension or "FICA insurance" benefits go , you will get them or they will go to your heirs whether you like it or not if you have paid into the system. What you do with them is your choice but unless the U.S. fails, you will get them. These benefits are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. The money you get may not be worth much if inflation goes through the roof but you will get them. That is my point.

I think the whole systems stinks but don't tell me you won't take the money because they will track you down and give it to you like it or not.

To me, the better solution would be to put the current 15.3% of your net income or gross wages into your own retirement plan. You would be a multi millionaire after 20 years of that. However, we live in a quasi welfare state that is broken and will not be fixed, in my opinion, and that of many others, without a war or other serious armed confrontation. This is what FDR and LBJ set up for our futures. The idiots in Washington keep making it worse.

I had an elderly client worth $85,000,000 and by golly he still got his 20K+ SS benefits every year. Did he need them? NO. Did he have a choice? NO.

If you don't want it, give it to charity.

 

[Linux&Gun Guy]

Thats why we need to fade out SS. Everyone that payed into it gets the money but new people(have not started paying into it yet) never start paying into the SS bin.

 

[MeekandMild]

there was nothing but praise heaped on FDR, for dragging us out the Great Depression

Considering his policies worsened and lengthened the depression I think that was mighty nice of them.

 

[dischord]

I think the whole systems stinks but don't tell me you won't take the money because they will track you down and give it to you like it or not.

Maybe so. Nonetheless, I stand by my statement that I'm willing to give up 100% of the SS booty.

BTW, if you dislike the system so much, you might want to consider giving up the "pay into" newspeak to describe a cycle of robbery.

A steals from B,
then B steals from C,
then C steals from D,
then D steals from E,
and so on.

 

[JPinAZ]

If you really want to see just how big of a Ponzi scheme social security is, do a little research into the first person to receive monthly benefits. (Hint: her first check was just a couple dollars shy of what she contributed.) I'm 30 right now and cannot believe that people my age are factoring it into their retirement plans. I have absolutely no confidence it will be around by the time I retire.

 

[Art Eatman]

This thread ain't about SS...

, Art

 

[Standing Wolf]

Slavery still exists in the US in a sense. Look at the immigrant workers that pick most of the fruits and vegetables you eat....

They're not slaves. They're felons.

 

[rock jock]

Excuse me, but how exactly was the South standing up for liberty while allowing slavery to exist? The Southern apologists talk about freedom, but then ackowledge that the alternative to the war would have resulted in years, perhaps decades of slavery for a large number of human beings. So much for concern for your neighbor.

With attitudes like this, a Civil War II will never succeed. The Southern apologists will only fight for their own property rights, their own guns, their own interests. When it comes to their neighbors, well, "suck it up" is the dictum of the day.

 

[Leaky Waders]

the Civil War was no more about slavery as WW2 was about freeing the Jews...

Each was a bi-product of the war...

My bias southern teaching teaches that states rights were the cause for the war. The north refused to acknowledge those rights...thus the south started the war by firing on fort sumter. In other words get off of our land...no...yes...no..yes...ok have it your way boom.

The slaves were not emancipated until well within the war...mainly to try to take resources away from the enemy...not for some highly phlosophical reason...as has already been posted. Also, the northern states were excluded from the proclamation, probably for the same reason.

As for the original question...I agree with most historians who say that Lincoln and FDR were some of the greatest presidents that ever served. They both successfully 'preserved the union' under times of great stress.

Lincoln could've let the South become another country or try to hold the union together...he held it together with might and afterwards diplomacy for the short time that he was around; likewise, FDR took a severely depressed nation that wasn't even a major player and basically morphed it into a superpower that turned the tide of war around the world.

We should be thankful for their sacrifices and insight...if not for them we could be rated as high as Bolivia is presently on the world scene or possibly be speaking german or writing in kanji.

Sometimes I wonder if I haven't stumbled on some communist or skinhead bulletin board with all the bashing of government officials around here.

Next people will be burning the flag or saying how the alamo was a farce or something.

My two disgruntled cents,

L.W.

 

[Benjamin]

Quartus:
What treason? Leaving a voluntary union? Where in any of the founding writings of this country is there a suggestion that the union was anything but voluntary? This idea of the Union being superior to the individual states is the revisionist history. That idea is not to be found in the FF, as far as I can tell, and is the worst thing to come out of Lincoln's presidency.

Not sure that leaving would constitute treason, but it's a violation of Article 4. If there be treason, it was attacking Ft. Sumpter. What in hell can attacking a federal fort be other than an act of war? That was the act that turned the secession from an uncomfortable political question into the Civil War. Remember, states started seceeding during Buchannan's lame duck period.

The Civil War started to stamp out an insurrection, to put down an attacking army. After a few years, eliminating slavery became justifiable as a means of prosecuting this end. Slavery was always a question subordinate to the Union.

Brett Bellmore:
<snip>
but isn't Lincoln the only President to ever order a Supreme court Justice arrested because he didn't like his ruling? And, yeah, it was Taney, but the ruling itself was one of the few where Taney was right.

Don't know offhand, but he's certainly the only one ever to so order re: Taney. On that note, I'm not actually sure he did order Taney's arrest. Taney was never arrested. I find it hard to believe that if Lincoln were so incensed as to order it, he'd just let some Federal Marshall slack off. Further, such would be out of character for Lincoln, and there was no need to do so, as it was basically Taney and no one else who had that view of matters.

Lincoln put up with a lot from several sources. What springs to mind immediately was the BS from Chase re: resignation, and virtually everything that McClellan did.
And no, I don't think he meant to RULE per se. He still had a very much whiggish concept of the executive during "normal" times. He vetoed only 4 bills during his tenure, IIRC, 3 of which were minor matters. He largely deferred to the legislature.

 

[joab]

You are all woefully ignorant

The American Civil War was instigated and architected by a little known northern secret society/ generational sect known as Skull and Bones which had roots in old England

They infiltrated southern politics with agents for decades. Their plan was designed to be implemented over generations , with the final outcome to be a one world goverment called something along the lines of League Of Nations or something similar

I don't know where you people get your information, but you should look to more reliable sources such as Art Bell and George Norrie


And by the way the war is over everybody lost get over it.
Three hundred thousand Yankees are dead in Southern dust
We got three hundred thousand before they conquered us
They died of Souther fever and Southern steel and shot
I wish we got three million instead of what we got

Johnny Rebel

 

[cropcirclewalker]

Hi, ho, Benjamine

You stated that your capstone was the suspension of habeous corpus, then you never mentioned it again. So? Did he?

Are you a product of government schools?

Since when has the forceable removal of trespassers from your soverign property become an invasion or treason? South Carolina resigned from the Union.

We have all become subjects of the benevolent USof A. George Washington, John Adams or Thomas Jefferson would NEVER had said the pledge of allegiance. The spirit of federalism was killed. By Lincoln.