Lincoln has all the hallmarks of a tyrant. He shut down news outlets that criticized his policies. He arrested northerners who opposed him and imprisoned them without trials. He suspended Habeas Corpus. I mean common. That's not just bending the constitution a little, and even if it was, i'd still oppose it. That's outright doing away with whole parts of it. I mean I don't disagree that there are worse tyrants than lincoln, but I do believe he was one.fidosim
I still fail to see how you think he could have handled the situation any better. Considering the south's breakaway was an apparent inevitability by the time he took office. Besides, Lincoln fully intended to, and DID return all power to the government by the end of the war. So how, exactly, does he fit in the roll of tyrant if he decided to give up his power?
That is an elementary view of how the war started. There was a large movement in the north to enforce a nationwide ban on slavery, allowing no room for the south to dissent on the issue. Again, the south saw this as part of a larger movement to completely override state rights and instead favoring the will of an all powerful federal government. The way they saw it, it was seceed or give up state rights and let their economy crumble. They chose the former. Maybe it was foolish, but that's not what this debate is about.
Again, Southern Documents of Secession clearly indicate that the South was withdrawing from the Union over slavery. They DID feel they were losing general power in the government, even though they were dead wrong. Despite that, all of their session clauseswere almost unanimously about slavery.
I've already done so. He could have won the war without completely razing the south.
Granted. But it's not like Southoners still have any more right to complain about such a thing.
He could have adopted the strategy many western nations used to end slavery; buying the slaves and then freeing them.This is an economic solution that not only would've possibly saved 600,000 lives, but would have probably costed less than it did to rebuild the southern infrastructurehe eviscerated.Do you have any idea how widespread and deep rooted slavery was inthe south?Their were southern plantation owners who literally refused to sell their slaves to abolishonists because they knew they were going to free them. Southoners didn't just view slaves as tools, they viewed them as status symbols.
That is a weak arguement. The reason the south seems ego-centric is because it has felt that it has been backstabbed by the federal gov't since the drafting of the constitution. Once again, Lincoln's razing of the south did little to quell this animosity.
How can anyone say the south doesn't have ego issues when it SECCEDED as a result of them? When every other country had given up slavery and the North was pushing for the South to do so, why did they refuse? Why do southoners to this day believe that they were on the right side of the civil war? Because Lincoln curb stomped them? That's a pathetic reason to justify southern actions during the war.
The confederacy never intended to conquer the north. Lincoln knew this.
Of course. But the reality was that the North was going to pursue war with the South. Lincoln knew this. So why then, would he want to withdraw military bases in the south?
Looking at his own policies, and the way events unfolded, it was obvious Lincoln was looking for a chance to aggressively conquer the south. The civil war was simply an invasion of the south by the federals, it was not a mutual struggle for domination of the whole country. To suggest otherwise would be naive.
Nice strawman, I didn't claim once that the south was trying to force its idealogy upon the north. I'll concede the North was forcing its own policy on the south by the time of the war. But I would fail to see how the eradication of slavery from the south would be a bad thing. The "horrors of war" could have been completely avoided had the SOUTH, simply admitted slavery was not something worth protecting. But no, they just HAD to keep their cheap labor.
Look, Lincoln wanted to reunite the country by force, and come off looking like the hero after doing so. But there were many southern sympathisers in the north who would have protested (and many did during the war) if Lincoln had made the first move.
What kind of first move are we talking about here? Seccesion is illegial via thelaws of theFederal Government. The South Secceded. They made the first move. Theirisno need to complexify this analysis with "deeper intentions". Occam's Razor.
There are plenty of historians who claim that leaving Sumter garrisoned was a ruse to pull the south into a war. I'm not making this stuff up. This is something that is widely regarded among historians.
Then you admit that the south made the first move militarily as well? Sorry, but the Fort Sumter conspiracy theories don't tread well on me. Yet again, Occam's Razor. Which is the better explanation? That Lincoln placed a garrison in the Fort to make an attack look like a vicitimization? Or because war with the south was inevitable even before he was elected?
You're making the same arguements and i'm making the same rebuttals. Lincoln didn't NEED to reunite the country by burning and pillaging the south. He could have fought the war conservatively and still saved the union.Or his radical party could have offered economic solutions to bring the south back into the fold. How did burning southern cities to the ground help the union? All it did was create resentment and cost the American people an assload of money to repair the damages during reconstruction.
Do you honestly think it would have been possible at all to lure the south back into the Union via peaceful resolution? They were DEAD SET on leaving and had no interest in staying. Southern states already had plans to secede before Lincoln took office. Maybe Lincoln was needlessly brutal to the south, but the overall result of this is still because of the South's monumental ego.
I'm not a southerner.
I didnot say you were. Was it seemingly implied?
And i'm not making the suggestion that the treatment of slaves in the south wasn't horrendous. You can cry vengeance all you want, but the fact remains that Lincoln's invasion was excessive and it made southerners hate northerners...and hate blacks even more.
Baloney. This is circular logic at its highest. Southoners hated black even more because they had lost the war to Lincoln and the North? That's just covering their asses. I've never seen such a blatently obvious shift of blame. It fell upon southern society to treat blacks better. Something which they blatently failed at. They had BEEN failing at it since the Revolutionary era.
With that logic we should never have seceeded from the British Empire, because they were obviously more powerful than we were. But again, **** Lee, this is about Lincoln.
Except that the British Empire was thousands of miles away and had far more interest invested in India. It's not like the Revolutionaries had to directly contest the BE. All they had to do was make them lose interest in trying to keep a low profit colony system thousands of miles away. But this another discussion.
Once again, Lincoln's war policies created anger in the south, which was then turned against blacks. Why do you think the KKK was so popular during reconstruction? Lincoln's war created a deep rooted resentment of northern politics. If Lincoln had not been so vicious, the south may have been more willing to cooperate with a more conservative, economical approach to ending slavery, instead of the "You all must DIE!!!" Policy that they got from Lincoln. Lincoln helped create an anti-northern, racially charged militarism that exists in the south to this very day.
Oh come on, the South likes to complain that the way they treated blacks was all Lincoln's fault. Which shows they they are AWARE of how wrong they are.
Refer to my last reply. Lincoln's policy was horrendous and it stoked the fire brewing in the south.
And things might had gone better had a certain JWB notblown awayLincoln's skull. That's the main problem with his post war Reconstruction policies isn't it? He's not going to be there to supervise them because a southoner killed him. Or are you going to say that it was all his fault that a southoner killed him? Which would again, be shifting the blame.
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