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Banned
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Originally Posted by Mr Mephisto
And if you disagree with my suggestion, please give reasons.
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(pulling out my big honkin book of Lincoln quotes)
Here's one for you, Mephisto...
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Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled or hanged.
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What's more interesting is that he actually carried through on it, having an Ohio Congressman named Vallandigham arrested, tried by a military tribunal, stripped of his citizenship, and deported.
Or, how's this on race relations? Source: http://www.nps.gov/liho/debate1.htm First Lincoln-Douglas debate
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"My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia,-to their own native land. But a moment's reflection would convince me, that whatever of high hope, (as I think there is) there may be in this, in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible. If they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough in the world to carry them there in many times ten days. What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery at any rate; yet the point is not clear enough to me to denounce people upon. What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment, is not the sole question, if, indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, cannot be safely disregarded. We cannot, then, make them equals. It does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted; but for their tardiness in this, I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South."
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Or this?
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I don't want to read at any greater length, but this is the true complexion of all I have ever said in regard to the institution of slavery and the black race. This is the whole of it, and anything that argues me into his idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro, is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a horse-chestnut to be a chestnut horse. [Laughter.] I will say here, while upon this subject, that 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. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that, notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. [Loud cheers.] I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.
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From the Second debate: http://www.nps.gov/liho/debate2.htm
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I do not now, nor ever did, stand in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive Slave law. (skip a bit) As to the first one, in regard to the Fugitive Slave law, I have never hesitated to say, and I do not now hesitate to say, that I think, under the Constitution of the United States, the people of the Southern States are entitled to a Congressional Fugitive Slave law. Having said that, I have had nothing to say in regard to the existing Fugitive Slave law, further than that I think it should have been framed so as to be free from some of the objections that pertain to it, without lessening its efficiency.
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Sounds like quite the White Supremacist, doesn't he?
The Emancipation Proclaimation was a tool to use against the South during the war. You'll remember that NORTHERN slaves had to wait for the ratification of the 13th Amendment to be freed...which happened well AFTER Lincoln's death.
Or how about Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeus corpus in 1861, and his imprisonment of a decent chunk of Maryland's legislature in Fort McHenry? Let me ask you this...what would you think if Bush had filled Gitmo with Congresscritters who opposed the war? Because that's pretty much what Lincoln did. The Supreme Court said basically "You can't do that, that's unconstitutional!" in U.S. v. Merryman, issuing a writ ordering the release of the imprisoned lawmakers. Lincoln's response? He ignored it and left them in jail. Eventually Congress passed a law giving him that power....but only AFTER he'd already purged everybody that disagreed with him (like Vallandigham).
So, I guess Lincoln has some problems as far as considering him the greatest American...unless, of course, Julius Caesar was the greatest "president" of the Roman Empire... |