Spielberg’s Boring Lincoln Like Cramming for the Oscar Final
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Lincoln showcases Steven Spielberg in homework mode. It’s the product of a drudge staying up all night hoping to pass his Oscar exam. But Lincoln won’t win any Oscars, and doesn’t deserve any. It’s a hopeless bore that, in an attempt to humanize an icon, turns him into a mere politician.
The film has a couple of very strong points but otherwise it’s a near total write-off and a waste of your time. Its best aspect is the wonderful lead performance by Daniel Day-Lewis, one of the finest actors living and an artist who never ceases to challenge himself. Most actors would have been so excited by the prospect of playing Honest Abe that they would not have been able to resist playing the role as if all the angels of History were singing a backup chorus at every moment. But while he was living his life, Lincoln was just a man, one with a thin, wispy voice, a sadly nutty wife (Sally Field, who can’t resist hamming it up) and humble surroundings. By being so gentle and restrained, Day-Lewis makes you lean forward to hear every word and marvel at Lincoln’s judgment.
But Spielberg and his screenwriter, Tony Kushner, otherwise flounder. Intent on avoiding cliche, Spielberg keeps swerving around the most dramatic moments. For instance, when the film begins (with a gritty battle scene of Union and Confederate soldiers wrestling in mud that unfortunately has a vaguely comical aspect), Lincoln has already given the Gettsyburg address, and we hear only portions of it recited from memory by the soldiers he is speaking to. This encounter with black Union troops seems forced and improbable, not least for the weirdly casual, even dismissive, way these ordinary soldiers treat their president. Wouldn’t they be even a little bit intimidated?
As the film goes on the big majority of it takes place in 1865, when Lincoln is persuaded that his Emancipation Proclamation had no legal basis because state laws can’t simply be overruled by executive fiat. To formally abolish slavery, Lincoln’s Republicans fight to pass the 13th Amendment during a lame-duck January session of Congress. The Republicans have won in a sweep, but not all of them want to outlaw slavery, so the party sets about rounding up votes from the institutionally racist Democratic party. Democrats who have lost their seats in the November election, Lincoln’s aides reason, no longer have any reason not to vote with their consciences and are free to do the right thing for its own sake.
Spielberg makes me sick.
Jaws, OK, Raiders 1, Close Encounters, OK. Poultergeist, and Animaniacs, EP. Nothing since. Everything he does bludgeons you. The camera zooms in until it’s focused on the nose hairs. Good Nazis. Cartoon characters of all kinds, cardboard plots. And he might not deny a bit of this, it’s all quite intentional. Maybe it even makes for box office, like a laugh track on tv, or a pie in the face. But art, not so much.
The clips I’ve seen of “Lincoln” appeal to me not at all, very stagey to look like old photos, people crammed together, Lincoln seems very odd, cannot imagine how someone like that could win a debate or an election. He should include the Warner Brothers Yakko, Wakko and the Warner Sister Dot in the discussions.
The word of the weekend is “Skyfall”.
Ugh, don’t even mention Raiders of the Lost Ark. It was because of that movie that I grew very terrified of God and viewed him as very destructive, and I still seem to have it buried somewhere, unable to even get rid of the fear of him. The fact that I saw it accidentially while my parents watched under the impression that I was napping, and was barely even five years old when I saw that scene doesn’t help, neither does the Sinners at the Hands of an Angry God, or that Revelations picture bible, or any of that.
The end of Raiders 1 doesn’t make a lot of sense, it was just a junkpile of effects, pretty primitive effects by modern CGI standards. But most of the rest of it is good light entertainment. And the very end, where they stow it away in an anonymous warehouse, is a chuckle.
Actually, had I seen the movie in a theatre, I probably would have felt like laughing at the climax. The words of the French Nazi – in horribly mispronounced Aramaic – are from a prayer sung in synagogues (OK, it is from the Kabalah) when the Ark is opened; a song so much a part of my childhood that I would have found it ludicrous. Not to mention the words -
“May it be Your will that you open my heart i nthe Torah and fulfill the wishes of my heart and the the hearts of your people, Israel.”
Although come to think of it, that’s what happened. (This is not an attack on the movie itself.)
(I saw a clip of the passion movie, and I could understand the Aramiac, but again, horribly mispronounced. With all of the Israelis in Hollywood, can’t they find anybody to teach them?)
If Raiders made you terrified of God, I guess you better avoid the Old Testament. It’s a lot more terrifying.
Lincoln was not a great president. Sorry folks but if not for “freeing” slaves even his assassination would not be big news. He overrode the constitution numerous times much like Obama. His lawbreaking during the civil war should be his real legacy. As far as a movie by the lefty Hollywood types they are not deep thiking enough to pull it off even with good material.
I guess the Southern seizure of assets provided to their locale by the citizens of OTHER states….
Material and Developed Real Estate in the form of Federal Property, Forts, Armories and Arms, Mints, Treasuries, Gold, Currency, the very existence of which was funded by the whole of the Nation, and not by themselves…
Yeah sure, that’s a PERFECTLY legal thing to do when you don’t like the outcome of an election….
I don’t like Obama, most of “my people” didn’t vote for him … maybe we should seize Camp Lejune?
Hey where the heck is Fort Knox, I’ll bet THAT state went red, too!
Not that it matters much after 150 years of Yankee mythology, but the Confederate States offered fair market compensation for all US property in the CSA. The US refused to negotiate. Most arms in The South were state-owned militia arms or private arms, not US Army. As states seceded, to the extent that there were many US troops in The South, they mostly just packed up their stuff and left. Those who only know today’s world of military bases everywhere and millions in a standing army overlook that the ENTIRE US Army in 1860 was about 15,000 men of all arms and occupations. In The South, the primary US assets were court houses, Customs Houses, and the, I think four or five, coastal forts that were minimally manned and armed, the masonry pentagonals like Ft. Pulaski, the War of 1812 Ft. Jackson in Savannah, a couple in and off Florida, those guarding Mobile Bay and the US forts guarding Louisiana. It was easily within the means of the seceding states to generously compensate the US for its relatively minimal assets in The South. What couldn’t be compensated for was the loss of Customs revenue from Southern ports and the losses to the US should The South declare itself a duty free trade zone for the British and French. The Civil War was pretty much lost when the CS declared the cotton embargo rather than throwing open its ports to duty free trade.
“the ENTIRE US Army in 1860 was about 15,000 men of all arms and occupations”
So true, we believed in the Militia System of Citizen Soldiers, but the “professional” armies of tyrants just about makes that impossible…no way to train really competent officers, NCO’s engineers and artillery unless they are full-time…Weapons technology and logistics management made it such that a million untrained/partially drilled volunteers showing up to thwart an invasion would be useless in the face of a professional standing army…
Suffice to say, my friend, I wish some things could be, and that others never were….
So in that spirit, I have a funny story for you if you can stand it…
When I was a Troop Leader (A rare Marine from New F*ckin Joisey) Most of my Platoon were “good ole boys”.
I told them :
“Listen up smartie-pants…where we’re going, they don’t like us…they’re gonna throw rocks and carry signs, hell they may even take pot shots at us with all that yelling and screaming…and you know what theyre gonna say? Their gonna say “Yankee go home”…they might even spell it with a f*cking “Q” for all I know, but I DO know this….They’re talking to YOU Alabama…YOU are a Yankee, ya got that!”
And before shipping out, I received a gift from the platoon, who knew I was acivil War Buff…
A Confederate (20?) dollar bill, with Jeff Davis on the front and an illustrated vignette on the back …
It was a Yankee, sitting in hell, counting on his fingers to explain the list of his treacheries to Satan, who is waving his hands for him to stop, as its too painful for even for Satan to hear…
And the thought bubble from coming from the Yankee says “….spread butter on a grind stone and sold it as CHEESE, and…”
And I still have it, 30 years now…means more to me than all my ribbons!
Good lordy, this was like a breath of fresh air to read….
They still fired on us.
“Lincoln was not a good president”. Sue, it is one thing to employ a contrarian slant to history based on verifiable yet underused facts. It is quite another to express an opinion borne of nothing other than some disjointed and contextually nescient narratives in a feeble effort to support your ludicrous assertion. Lincoln’s first and only administrative directive, by virtue of the circumstances he was forced to face, was the preservation of the United States of America, which he accomplished. Had he only succeeded in preserving the Union, it wold have been enough. Although a war raged and the Nation was threatened, he was still able to enact some very important domestic legislation including establishment of Yosemite as a protected area, authorization of the transcontinental railroad, Morrill Land Grant, establishing colleges in every state, and the Homestead Act, opening western lands to millions of settlers at very low costs. To suggest his mediocrity is to be completely benighted on the life and times of Abraham Lincoln.
“contextually nescient narratives …”
Can you please articulate the criteria that differentiate those narratives that are “contextually nescient” and those that are not?
I expect that the reviewers real problem isn’t with Lincoln but with Lincoln. After all, the Republican party has been the party of Jefferson Davis for some time now, just as the Democrats have became the party of Lincoln. Obama is pretty much a Whig, a supporter of the Union, civil rights, and national improvements. It was only a matter of time before hatred of what he stands for would slop over into a reassessment of the greatest American Whig of all, Lincoln.
Thanks for giving me the best chuckle of the day. Oh, you were serious.
Ugh. Another leftist moonbat. Democrats are now the Whigs, eh ? As they spend billions on their public employee voters like Jackson’s spoils system. The Democrats were racist then and they are racist now. The plantation is a virtual one this time; the only difference. Lincoln was a practical man. He held an election in the midst of a civil war.
I wonder how anybody can look at a map of the election results and doubt that the two parties have changed places over the last 70 years. Really the red states ought to called the gray states.
Black people have been voting for the Democrats for many years now. It hardly began with Obama. Before the Great Depression, though, they voted Republican, at least in places where they were allowed to vote at all. At the beginning of the last century, Teddy Roosevelt caused an enormous furor in the South by inviting Booker T. Washington, not exactly a black panther, to lunch at the White House. Thing is, you Republicans really don’t offer much to black voters. You’ve become so Southernized (if that’s a word) that you’ve even invested heavily in a modernized version of Jim Crow.
You said “… you Republicans really don’t offer much to black voters.”
What is it that Democrats have to offer black voters? Free money? Free contraceptives? Food stamps? or (coming soon) free abortions?
Does this indicate a high and lofty opinion of blacks by the Democrats? How exactly have the Democrats shown any respect for blacks?
Here folks is the new Meme now with pictures of the electoral map. OOOO…. the votes are all coming from the old Confederacy. Ispo Facto ALL Republicans are slave holding, whip wielding rascists!
Why don’t you check the demographics of which races voted closest along racial lines. I’ll give you some help. It wasn’t the whites, dummy.
Or just look at County results, and the whole frigging Country is red, except for the Inner cities and the Guilty White Liberal rings.
California? Mostly red.
Massachusetts? Mostly red
Same story in every state, all across the country
Republicans offer freedom and the dignity that comes with RESPONSIBILITY.
Democrats offer the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations…welfare and Obama phones in exchange for votes….and an assuaged conscience.
Root83:
That’s the way it is. The blue enclaves are surrounded by red counties all over the USA. A fine tactical point.
Republicans still believe in the things Booker T Washington stood for: self-determination, mutual support, and establishing small businesses owned and run by blacks to provide both for oneself yourself and the larger black community; Booker T and the Republicans are still on the same page: the thing that will really integrate black Americans into the larger fabric of society is economic independence. Herman Cain is an example of this type of man and black “leaders” across American say the most vile and unwarranted things about him and men like him, men who went out into the world and improved it.
Democrats support the racialist policies of people like WEB DuBois and urge for a perpetual class of privileged black aristocrats, the talented tenth, to act as the self-anointed vanguard of the other black people. These black opportunists rarely achieved anything outside the political arena, and are the sole expression of political power, which they wield with depressing familiarity, calling everyone and anyone who doesn’t get their way a racist on the public stage. Jesse Jackson and his lovely son are examples of this type of man. Sorry, but no honorable man can get behind these varieties of racialist demagogues; it’s bad for the nation, and for black people specifically, to have their interests represented by a pack of venal, corrupt, hypocritical con-men who cannot be forced out of power no matter how egregious the offense.
For a more perfect analogy, Bunk and Lester are black Republicans, hard-working, honorable, and always pushed to the margins by the ruling black (and white) power structure because they don’t play ball. And Clay Davis, Mr.”Aaaaawww Sheeeeet,” and Clarence V. Royce are the untouchable Democratic party bosses who make sure guys like Bunk and Lester stay irrelevant.
Yes, Herman Cain is an obvious role model. Why if every black person followed in his footsteps and acquired 168 pizza restaurants, they’d be happy as clams. (An enormous amount of the sheer foolishness in these parts could be avoided if you guys understood the fallacy of composition.)
The fallacy of composition? You mean like if everyone is on welfare, there won’t be anyone left to pay taxes?
Excellent response to Jim Harrison’s predictable, leftist drivel. Harrison does serve a somewhat helpful purpose, though. He is a persistent reminder to decent, patriotic Americans that our free Republic will always possess its unscrupulous enemies — now more than ever.
“After all, the Republican party has been the party of Jefferson Davis for some time now…”
LOL.
The Whigs were, above all else, pro-Capitalist. Obama is anti-Capitalist.
And please recall that one of the main causes of the war was the the Dredd Scott decision, which said that Blacks – not slaves, Blacks – had no rights; a breathtaking disregard of original intent.
P.S. Douglass also claimed the mantle of the Whigs.
Why anybody would think that a conservative Democrat like Obama is anti-capitalist beats me. But then other people in this asylum probably think they’re Napoleon Bonaparte so perhaps mistaking a moderate Democrat for a Marxist is progress.
Obama is a “Conservative Democrat?” Get the hell out, that man is the most blatant, rampant Leftist Ideologue I have seen in my entire 54 years.
Got you beat; he’s the most blatant, rampant, leftist idealogue I’ve seen in my 56 Years!
And I liked the movie.
I agree Spielberg is a hack whose been using the same camera angles since Jaws. I was wondering if this movie could possibly be any good. Thanks for keeping me from wasting the money.
Betcha they don’t show Lincoln saying he’d keep all the slaves in chains if he
could save the union. Betcha they don’t show Lincoln offering to buy the slaves
from the south, and then ship them all back to Africa. Betcha they don’t show
Lincoln pissing all over the constitution anytime it doesn’t fit his agenda.
Betcha…ah, never mind…
I quit watching Spielberg after The Color Purple, which I walked out on. Not
spending another dime to get pounded over the head with more Liberal revisionist
history. Even though I did think Lincoln made a GREAT vampire!
Jim Whittaker
Hemet, CA
Who which constituency was he pleasing when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation? Was he doing it just so Britain wouldn’t supply arms to the Confederacy?
As for his overriding the Constitution — which is true — it was done in the service of preserving the Union. Do you really think that he shouldn’t have done that, if it meant losing the war and the country breaking apart?
Doesn’t the constitution explicitly allow for suspension of Habeus Corpus in case of rebellion?
And by the way, didn’t the CSA do the same thing?
So Randall Terry is not really pro-life because he never blew up an abortion clinic? That’s the equivalent statement.
Sorry, that was meant to go on the original statement. Lincoln was a politician, and he pushed the envelope as far as he could without losing any possiblity of actually getting something done. Even so, he said so much that it probably cost him the Senate seat.
What does “preserving the Union” mean? I have never understood that. I live in the South and can not stand those of the North. I have been treated consistently like a second class citizen in the US, simply because of my accent. This last election clearly demonstrated that there are two thought patterns in the US that are mutually exclusive and can not be supported under the same government. This has been present even before the War of Northern Aggression.
Read a little on Lincoln, and not the books of fiction (which are most of them). The guy was a corrupt monster. He hated blacks (as much of the North did). He wanted to transport all blacks till the day he died. Look at what he did to the Indians, look what he did to the innocents in the South. These actions would not be repeated until WWII.
We in the South only want our freedom.
So from a particular point of view, doesn’t that make Lincoln a reasonable man who would not claim the freedom of another man’s property through executive fiat but would either fairly compensate said man or would allow the man to keep what he has without interference–but not allow him to continue the practice westward, further exacerbating a it on a larger scale and timeline? Considering how willing Lincoln was to find a compromise, it seems a little rash to just walk out on him before he even had the opportunity to govern and present his proposals.
From another point of view, this does not cast Lincoln in a very favorable light, and I’m sure a man like Fredrick Douglas would have something to say about it, but you can’t hold the first point of view and them complain like you held the second point of view, those viewpoints are mutually exclusive.
I seem to recall that Feredrick Douglas was proud to be a friend of Lincoln.
Think of this in the light of the abortion debate. Abolitionists were considered nutes, dangerous radicals.
Good point.
Staunch no-compromise Abolitionists were viewed like the “Akin” types of the abortion debate today….
Lincoln, while trying to stay within the racial(ist) language of the day, tipped his hand a LITTLE too much with compassion for the Negro Soul in those debates…
And that made a lot of folks who may have agreed “in principal” that Slavery was “generally wrong” fear the consequences of voting for him, because it represented a potential social change they could not “imagine” the consequences of, so they balked.
Rather like those many people who will agree that a full term healthy child, one day from natural delivery, should not be killed simply because they have the wrong EYE Color….but out of fear of what it “could mean down the road”, don’t EVER politically support ANY restrictions on Abortion, because they just don’t want to deal with it.
I aint a slave and I don’t own one, so hand me a cheeseburger while I ignore the morality of the status quo. I don’t like either end of that “sliding bar”, and I’m damn sure not gonna stick my neck out to say where the middle ought to be.
So it stays where it is…
“Aside from THAT, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy your night at the theater?”
How is John Wilkes Booth different than any OTHER hollywood type today?
Their politics “deserve” to use violence, because THEY’RE political opinions are SO IMPORTANT
When my eight-year-old grandson watched Raiders he was disturbed that Jones seemed to be murdering those soldiers.
Before you see the movie you should (re-)read D. K. Goodwin’s
‘Team of Rivals’. Lincoln was a masterful politician. Part
of that is because he refused to hold grudges against his
political opponents. You get that, and much more, from the
book.
To get an idea about Lincoln’s sheer bandwidth as an early
adapter of technology, you should (re-)read Tom Wheeler’s
‘Mr. Lincoln’s T-Mails’. Not surprising, I suppose, when
you realize that Lincoln remains the only President to have
successfully filed a Patent.
Right you are right…
Lincoln loved machinery, he recognized technology would create wealth and raise standards of living by easing labor. He was not above getting on his hands and knees to look under and around any new invention that came into his view, asking informed questions about the what and how of its function.
My favorite story is when Spencer brought his Repeating Carbine to the Whitehouse (!) and Lincoln happily tried it out…
And then had a major “WTF!” conversation with the folks who gave him (spencer) the Run-Around, when he found out Spencer tried to get the Army to consider it several times before, and was blown off without a even a demonstration.
Not a perfect man or President, none are, but I will tolerate no openly hostile ill will toward him, considering the magnitude of issues he dealt with.
It could have gone much, much worse but, I do believe, not much better.
“Before you see the movie you should (re-)read D. K. Goodwin’s
‘Team of Rivals’”
Books? BOOKS!
BOOKS ABOUT HISTORY!
Liberals dont READ, silly…
Why go through the troble to READ somethin’ when you can sit back and just be “TOLD WITH PICHERS” what you want to hear?
History Books are Kryptonite to Liberals
(see how many never read the Constitution?)
Actually, D K Goodwin is a liberal. Worked with LBJ in his White House. I tried reading her biography of him but it was chronologically disordered making it a bit confusing. I went to a different author instead.
Becuase I was familiar with her writing and leanings, I was concerned about how this movie would play out. I was pleasantly surprised to find it respectfully and tastefully done. Very sensitive without trying to impose 21st century views on 19th century America. Instead it brings the audience into the 19th century, with a respect for the difficulties the nation was facing. It takes great pains to establish the overt Christian nature of the country at the time. It shows the tragedies and triumphs very well.
I know many here will disagree with me, I can already tell from the wording of several of the comments. But I recommend this film. There are some moments of Hollywood trying to stylize dialogue that we can only guess at. Conversations that took place behind closed doors, etc. But overall it is very artfully done.
Dear God, can we please move on from tying to portray America’s first dictator as someone just short of the Messiah?
I swear I feel the need to gag every time the latest veneration movie comes out idolizing him.
He had no authority to force the Confederacy to remain part of the United States, he never obtained a declaration of war from Congress to fight the Confederate States, he had no authority to free the slaves – hence the need for amending that pesky old Constitution after he was assassinated, even when he DID produce the Emancipation Proclaimation it didn’t apply to slaves in any areas outside of Confederate States control (hence leaving slaves in United States territory as ….. Ta da…. Slaves), even in the United States he suspended rule of the Constitution and suspended habeus corpus, jailed his political opponents, and shut down newspapers in spite of the First Amendment.
What in the Hell did he do that was so great?
Oh, preserve the Union….by trashing the very compact that set the conditions under which the states agreed to come together and make that union in the first place?
Of course to make that argument is to admit that the union can only be maintained through involuntary membership and the constitution won’t apply when it’s inconvenient.
If the argument was that slavery was so evil that it was necessary, then what about now? After this weeks elections I once again wish my ancestors had done two things – won the war and pick their own damn cotton.
Don’t even get me started on his hypocrisy regarding Texan secessionism from Mexico, or West Virginia seceeding from Virginia…..
He was nothing more than a petty tyrant.
You want to k now why we have the problems with the federal government that we do today? Go back and look at how the basic relationship between the states and tbhe federal government was changed 1861-1865 at the barrel of a gun.
The conversation seems to be going on between you and the squirrels in your head.
Has anyone here compared Lincoln to the Messiah? Bueller? Bueller?
Do you think the Constitution should have written into it that the president’s job is to preserve the Union?: “Oh, by the way Mr. Jefferson, be sure to put in that the president has to leave the country in the same condition as he found it, else he’ll lose his deposit.”
And the day after the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter and forced it to surrender — you remember the place, don’t you? It’s owned by the federal government. Says so on the deed. — Anyway, the day after that, there were a couple hundred thousand men willing to sign up to fight back. You say Lincoln should have said, “Go home, boys. We need to ask Congress for a declaration of war.”
Because in your nutty head, a gang of white slaveholders — who want to keep men, women and children in bondage, do as they like with them, including torture, murder, branding, buying and selling them — getting together and declaring themselves a nation, should be treated the same as, you know, an actual nation like France and Britain? They’re really the same?
And I’ll ask you the same thing: Lincoln is faced with a country falling apart. He’s the man in charge. He’s supposed to let it fall apart? Let the Copperheads in Ohio agitate for separation? Let Confederate sympathizers set fire to New York City? Let the draft riots continue lynching blacks and burning buildings?
I’m guessing many would have preferred the Buchanan or General Twiggs approaches.
Buchanan, “Apres le deluge” or Twiggs active Traitor.
Ignore this dope.
Ah, exactly where did you disprove any assertion I made?
Are you suggesting he DIDN’T suspend habeus corpus? Are you suggesting I am incorrect in describing the true effects of the Emancipation Proclaimation? Are you saying he didn’t jail his political opponents? Are you saying he never, in years worth of war, have time to get an actual declaration of war as required by the Constitution? Are you suggesting that the relationship between the states and the federal government was not fundamentally changed at the barrel of a gun and over the objections of the states?
Surely you are not saying that compact is the same now as it was understood by the guys who wrote it and the state legislatures that ratified it? If not – then by what authority was it changed?
If you are suggesting he was within his authority to wage that war, how does that square away with his complete disregard for the rest of that document – or are you saying he was within his constitutional authority to suspend the constitution in order to…ah…preserve the constitution? Kind of circular logic there.
Or is it a matter of picking only the bits and pieces that were useful while ignoring the parts that were inconvenient?
And if you want to argue that slavery was such an issue that it warranted a war to stop – then it kind of undercuts things since, ya know, slavery no longer exists here.
Easy for you to try to get the moral high ground – but before ya hop on that sanctimonious high horse how about responding to some specifics there.
Basic fact is he forced a change without regard for constitutional authority, and to hold him up as an example of a great leader who should be emulated would be a very bad thing for the current office holder to take to heart.
I am not advocating a split in the country – but I do hold that constitutionally the Confederate States had the better of the argument.
Habeus Corpus? The suspension of it in times of unrest, let alone concerning enemy action in time of war–this is a usual and customary power of the executive in Anglo-Western law. The Constitution invested all such usual and customary executive/war powers in Lincoln without restraining or delineating them in any way with respect to seizing the enemy. It empowered Congress to suspend it for whatever reason and term it saw fit-anything might be public safety–Lincoln as chief executive was certainly empowered do so once the lead started flying, never mind which Congress seconded him in any case. No crime against constitution or man was done, your interpretation would be to say the military cannot take prisoners and spies in time of war–a ridiculous assertion.
” Are you suggesting I am incorrect in describing the true effects of the Emancipation Proclaimation”
The true effect of the Proclamation was two fold, and they were to add a just and noble goal to the war aims, thereby forestalling British intervention–Britain was also abolitionist–and encouraging the Union in the main and to permit the confiscation as contraband the “property” of the Confederacy as it were taken, relieving the slaves of the evil of slavery and Confederates of any support retaining slaves might provide them were lines to shift in their favor. I cannot conceive of why object to or mock his not Emancipating slaves not in CSA territory, he had no authority to do that. You complain when he plainly respected the limits of his powers!
“Are you saying he didn’t jail his political opponents? ” The Copperheads were conspiring with CSA in wartime. Tain’t kosher, McGee, and never has been!
“Are you saying he never, in years worth of war, have time to get an actual declaration of war as required by the Constitution?” That’s only required when fighting outside the country. Suppressing rebellion aint’t it.
” Are you suggesting that the relationship between the states and the federal government was not fundamentally changed at the barrel of a gun and over the objections of the states?” No it wasn’t. The Union had not one power after the war it didn’t have from the Constitution before the war.
“Surely you are not saying that compact is the same now as it was understood by the guys who wrote it and the state legislatures that ratified it? If not – then by what authority was it changed?” Absolutely not, we’ve had many amendments since then, and before the war besides, the majority of which Lincoln being dead and them passed decades later, he had nothing to do with. The problems have been the changes made generally without benefit of amendment, and generally under and since Wilson.
“If you are suggesting he was within his authority to wage that war,”
Absolutely, the constitution and his oath of office in it demanded it of him.
“how does that square away with his complete disregard for the rest of that document – or are you saying he was within his constitutional authority to suspend the constitution in order to…ah…preserve the constitution? Kind of circular logic there.”
He never did suspend the constitution, when do you pretend he did? How do you think he disregarded it?
“Or is it a matter of picking only the bits and pieces that were useful while ignoring the parts that were inconvenient?”
There’s not one part he ignored I know of, in contrast to the rebels, who tried to get away with ignoring all of it.
“And if you want to argue that slavery was such an issue that it warranted a war to stop – then it kind of undercuts things since, ya know, slavery no longer exists here.” It did warrant a war to stop it, but that is not how the war started, it started with the armed treason of the CSA. The Proclamation was a constitutionally valid means to deprive rebels of war material. And just in case it escaped your attention, slavery did certainly exist in the South at the time.
“Easy for you to try to get the moral high ground – but before ya hop on that sanctimonious high horse how about responding to some specifics there.” That’s exactly what I’m doing. Responding to your idiocy specifically, and I am on the higher horse morally. Your horse, it’s dead.
“Basic fact is he forced a change without regard for constitutional authority,”
He didn’t change one thing.
“and to hold him up as an example of a great leader who should be emulated would be a very bad thing for the current office holder to take to heart.”
Obama can’t get what he wants by respecting the constitution, and Lincoln did nothing other than preserve and respect it.
“I am not advocating a split in the country – but I do hold that constitutionally the Confederate States had the better of the argument.”
There’s not one scrap of the constitution that could give the CSA what it wanted, other than the Amendment clause, and that’s not the path they even tried. They only tried the crime of unjust war and got the snot beat out of them as they so richly deserved.
First of all, I love the fact I have gotten so far under your skin. Doing that to someone with such obvious loathing of the South does my hear good. I can just imagine the spittle running down your chin as you foam at the mouth while repeating the propaganda you so desperately cling to.
Let’s try another approach, shall we, since you are a little slow on fact and kind of full of …..well, we’ll just say your own opinions.
For Lincoln to have been correct from a legal AND constitutional position, the following would have had to happen.
First, the states in ratifying the Constitution would have to agree that it was a permanent union and that no legitimate reason would ever justify leaving – period.
Yeah, I can see that argument going well during the ratification process among the states immediately after the colonies had just seceded from the British Empire……
Then you have to assume that, if the states took that position, that they likewise acknowledged that the president, as commander-and-chief, would have the authority to then raise an army without a declaration of war, invade any of the signatory states ratifying the Constitution at that time, overthrow its state legislature and governor and all elected officials down to county sheriff, and appoint replacements from other states, and then declare martial law for an indefinite period of time.
In the process, those states ratifying the Constitution and joining the union voluntarily, would have agreed that the Constitution would be the law of the land that everyone had to abide by EXCEPT that the president in the above noted circumstances would be able to exercise authority not specifically granted to the federal government or the executive branch – even though those same founding fathers also included an amendment in the bill of rights specifically stating that ALL POWERS not delegated to the federal government WERE RETAINED by the states and the people, respectively. The authority to secede was a power claimed by the states and was never specifically surrendered at the constitutional convention.
So basically, you are arguing that that old weasely politician named Lincoln was given the authority under the constitution to exercise power not delegated to him by the constitution as those powers were not specifically ever handed over to the federal government by the states in the first place, states which had soveriegn authority, and that he could then suspend the constitution – while simultaneously claiming that as the source of his authority – to exercise powers he was not and could not be granted by that same constitution….you know, the one he was ignoring….as the states never specifically delegated that power to the federal government.
And let’s not forget that Lincoln was also on the record as supporting the secession of Texas (wherein slavery was practiced) from Mexico. The South had the same level of legal authority – but it was too inconvenient for Lincoln to acknowledge while waging an unconstitutional and undeclared war.
No wonder the north never seriously tried to charge the Confederate States leadership with treason as even a kangaroo court would have had a hard time with that logic.
Face it – Lincoln never had the authority he exercised unconstitutionally to keep the Confederate States in the union. The Confederate States were not attempting to overthrow the United States government – which would have been treasonous – but rather were exercising the constitutional authority they retained as a condition when agreeing to enter the union in the first place.
Oh, and a few other things.
When the orignal 13 states (formed from the original 13 colonies that seceded from the British Empire) formed a government, that original organization was under the Articles of Confederation. That document contained the phrase “perpetual union”.
It was obviously not so “perpetual” since we no longer operate under that document.
Then we get into the constitutional convention itself.
As part of their own state constitutions, the states of New York, Virginia, and Rhode Island specifically noted that they retained the right to secession, and this condition was part of the understanding under which these states joined the union.
Other states did not place similar references in their own constitutions – but they didn’t feel the need to.
For instance, believe it or not there was an argument against incorporating a Bill of Rights into the Constitution. \
The argument was that rights were so self evident that no listing was necessary, and there was also a fear that if rights were listed then the government could take the position that those were the only rights the people or states had – hence the inclusion of the 10th Amendment.
I think we can all agree that it’s a good thing that the Bill of Rights was ultimately included over the objections of the naysayers.
As with the argument that no bill of rights was necessary, many likewise felt that no specific enunciation of a right to secede was necessary either as, like the Bill of Rights, that right was self-evident.
At any rate, the states of New York, Virginia, and Rhode Island were not claiming anything that the other states did not likewise feel they also had the right do, and any rights that one state had then all would have had equally.
Oh, and George Washington himself presided over the constitutional convention.
Then a few decades after the creation of the United States, Timothy Pickering, who had served as the third US Secretary of State under those former British secessionists George Washington and John Adams, was a central figure in the secessionist movement in New England that wanted to leave the United States to the Southern states and form their own country.
Later still there was yet another secessionist movement after the War of 1812 suggesting the original 13 states pull out of the union and leave the US to the remaining states.
Then we have ol (dis)honest Abe Lincoln’s thoughts on secession as well.
“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable,– most sacred right–a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government, may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much of the territory as they inhabit.”
Oh wait, that applied only to TEXAS seceding from MEXICO….he was such a hypocrit.
Besides all of that, are you denying that the CSA by the end of the war was also nothing like the country is started with? Lincoln didn’t change the US, the war did.
We don’t hate the South or Southerners; we love them. We do hate the CSA and everything that it stood for (although I given them kudos for appointign one of my co-religionists as Sercretary of State).
By the way, you realize the Judah P. Benjeman, as a Sephardic Jew, counts as Hispanic?
“Besides all of that, are you denying that the CSA by the end of the war was also nothing like the country is started with? Lincoln didn’t change the US, the war did.”
Of course the CSA by the end of the war (1865) was not the country it started out as (1861).
Estimates are between 21% and 34% of it’s fighting age men (fighting age being quite flexible by then, some were very young) were dead, it was under occupation by a foreign government, it’s citizens were stripped of any civil rights – even the right to vote in their own local elections, an invading army had deliberately conducted a scorched earth policy through a 300 mile swath of the Confederate States and destroyed all infrastructure and left untold numbers of civilians to die (what they didn’t kill in the process), the states had their civilian governments overthrown and a foreign government appointed officials from governor on down to the local sheriff, and during the military occupation that followed the former Confederate soldiers were deliberately targeted for harassment and murder all while the South was being looted by both the occupying foreign army as well as carpet baggers, and then there was the whole taxation thing wherein the federal government enforced a requirement that all federal and state taxes for the previous war years had to be paid – right then – in US dollars……how on earth could it be the same country at that point?
Lincoln did change the US – and he changed it through war. To assert that he didn’t change it but that the war did is to ignore the fact that he was responsible for starting that war in the first place.
“We don’t hate the South or Southerners; we love them. We do hate the CSA and everything that it stood for (although I given them kudos for appointign one of my co-religionists as Sercretary of State).”
By the way, you realize the Judah P. Benjeman, as a Sephardic Jew, counts as Hispanic?”
I disagree.
I’ve seen far too many negative references to the South and its people to ever believe that. Look at the last election – due to the South rejecting the Bamster it is claimed that the South did it only because we’re all racists. Look at the voting rights act – the only states it applies to are Southern states. Look at the KKK – it’s most active in a northern state, not the South. Lots of other examples could be provided…
Ironically, my daughter and her friend got together for her birthday yesterday and while I was chatting with her mother – an African American – it came out that she had voted for Romney in the election.
Can one be racist against themselves?
The South has always had a very colorful (pun intended) demographic and history and mix of cultures.
To assert that you hate what the Confederate States stood for, you’d have to have agreement on exactly what that entails.
For northerners, the current argument is that the war was conducted to end slavery (even though that argument, while good propaganda, is thin in light of actual history), while for Southerners it’s about the state’s right to self determination and adhering to the Constitution (and I continue to hold that they had the better constitutional argument).
As for your example of Confederate States Secretary of State Judah Benjamin, you seem to be focusing in on the fact he was Jewish.
I’d suggest he was just one small example that displays how diverse the South was, but would also suggest you check out some other interesting facts about the South without the blinders modern interpretations of that era usually demand.
For instance, there were black confederate soldiers.
Check out the Confederate Black Horse Cavalry of Virginia’s Fauquier County, the Louisiana Native Guard, or the estimated 3,000 black confederate soldiers who were with General Stonewall Jackson when he occupied Frederick, Maryland. Consider what General Nathan Bedford Forrest said about the black confederates serving under him.
These were not isolated incidents and it’s shameful they are not a greater part of the story of the war than they are, and there are plenty of other examples for anyone who wishes to do real research into the issue.
There were even Cherokee Confederates, and even some of the Cherokee owned slaves.
Beyond that, slavery is always exclusively portrayed as a white man owning a black man. However, even this is not accurate. Blacks owned slaves, native American indians owned slaves, and there were even white slaves who were abducted from the port areas of Britain and Scotland.
Not to get too political, but as long as you modern-day Republicans/conservatives have guys like THIS in your camp, you’re going to continue to lose national elections.
Pro-Confederacy … what a joke.
Given the gusto with which so many petitions have now succeeded, the joke may end up being on you.
So, what you are saying is that Republicans have been boring since jump street? There is a reason why Obama won in one of the biggest landslides in history. The Republican Party is finished.
Along with the country.
“Obama won in one of the biggest landslides in history”
Seriously?
You need to get off MSNBC and Wikipedia, read some BOOKS
“Landslide”?
“You keep using tha’ hword…I do no’ think it means…what you think it means”
–Inigo Montoya
biggest landslide in history? When exactly was this?
Richard Nixon carried 49 states. Two years later his party was almost finished. Obama carried how many?
Of course, it helps to own the MSM.
The MSM had it in for Nixon, not so with the Bamster. They will cover for him until the end.
I knew I wasn’t going to go see it when Spielberg said in an interview that, “The parties have reversed positions over the last 150 years.”
That is one of the common lies of the ‘liberal’ class. They even stole the word liberal so they could take credit for the stuff **Classical Liberals** had achieved.
But I won’t give money to him to let him spread the lie further.
Why else do you think they painted us Permanent Red?
In Politics, Red used to be for the Challenger and Blue for the Incumbent because Blue is the more “traditional” color for America…. like traditional Union Blue uniforms, Presidential Blue, notice that pretty Blue Stripe on Air Force One? The Presidential Seal is never on a red background, it just doesnt “look good” against that color
So, The Democrats (well, the media, same thing) decided to steal Blue for themselves PERMANENTLY, in every election, in every “designation” of party, they are “Officially” Blue and have assigned us Permanently Red…
The Challenger, The Redcoats, the Rebel Flag Red, Commie Red…you know, the “other” the “outsider”…forever.
Lying thieving bastards that they are.
You’re over-thinking the red/blue thing, buddy. Democrats got blue because the guy in charge of graphics for the news networks rightly realized he would be fired if he used a nice socialist-red to signify Democrats.
I always assumed it was because blue looks darker on film. We didn’t get a color TV until many years later, and I was pretty annoyed that they used colors at all.
The film is getting good reviews, and I’ve noticed that I tend to agree with the majority when it comes to whether or not a movie is good, and I’m a Civil War buff, so I’ll probably give it a gander when it comes out on disc.
Sorry, that John Boot didn’t care for it.
I’m with you Dave. I’ll see any movie that is related to the Civil War.
Remember “Gettysburg”‘s Tom Berenger as Longstreet and the squirrel that was his beard?! Dang squirrel kept changing places in each scene!
I think it likely Spielberg will get the historicity right anyway…
Lincoln was one of the worst monsters in history. A little FYI, he hated blacks. He certainly wanted to limit (not eliminate) slavery. But the reason to limit the practice had nothing to do with a desire to see blacks treated as anything but second class people. In fact, his desire was to send them back to Africa. Lincoln also supported the 13th amendment, which in its original form would have made slavery legal to this day. Also, the Civil War did not start with the South firing on Fort Sumter. It started with the attempted invasion of Charlston harbor by a fleet of US ships. All the South wanted was its freedom and self-determination. That is the same thing we want now. Especially after this election.
The south also wanted to keep slaves. It doesn’t matter if slavery “might” have eventually been abolished in a generation or two. Holding people in slavery is abhorrent. It also doesn’t matter what personal views Lincoln may or may not have held. The facts are, for whatever reason, slavery was ended. It’s difficult to speculate how any other president would have handled things back then. To say Lincoln was a monster is to completely ignore the facts on the ground then, and to comfortably second guess actions from 150 years ago, that coincidentally didn’t include the second guesser living life as a slave.
For the entirety of that war, slavery continued to exist in a legal fashion in areas under union control regardless of any presidential proclaimations. Even after the war was over, slavery was still legal and even General Grant retained his own slaves. It was only by the amendment process that the practice ended. As for a legitimate reason for going to war to end it, it was a constitutionally allowed practice, so again you’d have to argue that the actions of the north – if to end slavery – were not constitutionally permissable.
Even General Grant is on record as having stated that if the aim of the war was to end slavery he would have resigned his commission and offered his sword to the other side.
Now tell me why slavery is so bad. It has been the rule of thumb in civilization for all of recorded history. The slavery practiced in the US was benevolent. Since the end of slavery, blacks have fought to be enslaved again, with this current election they have achieved that desire. Slavery will return at the end of our current technology era.
Sad to say, I’m hearing a lot of that from local voices as well.
I think some of the reason(s) I took to this comment thread originally has to do with the fact that this week I have been hearing multiple references to splitting the country up. On the radio, for instance, and even in my white collar office. The most surprising comment to that effect came from the mouth of a transplanted yankee, who was deeply deeply deeply disappointed in the election results – and expressing frustration that those supporting the Man Child’s reelection don’t just pack up and move to a blue state!
The point being made is that you have a nation pretty evenly split between two diametrically opposed views of what government should do, and those views are irreconcilable to the point that many are coming to the conclusion that the two view points cannot be sustained within the same country.
So within this environment you have a Lincoln movie (haven’t they made enough of them already!?!), previously Lincoln was portrayed in another movie slaying the evil Southerners who were vampires, and on top of that you have books portraying him as the greatest man to ever hold office (That would be O’Reilly’s fixation).
If one wants an honest conversation about this individual, be prepared for views that don’t agree with the pop culture version if him.
But yeah, I get what you are saying….
This is completely false. Read something about the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Lincoln spoke up for racial equality as far as he could get away with it. He declared it was in the declaration, albeit only as a theoretical concept. Douglas claimed the Declaration only refered to whites. Lincoln has to walk on eggshells (ask Todd Akin about that) and even he said enough that he lost the state elections (the debates were about gettign a legislature that would appoint him to the Senate).
You can cherry-pick all of the quotes from Lincoln you want, but there are others that say the opposite. Abolitionists were considered radical nuts. Illinois – on the Northern border of the US – had Jim Crow laws that would make Lester Maddox green with envy. Separate but equal? Are you kidding? There was not even a pretense of that.
And rememeber, Douglas, who also gave his life for the union, never used anything but the N-word, and he was a “moderate” whose own President was trying to get rid of him. It was a much different time.
Ahem….
From a speech Lincoln delivered in 1858 in Charleston, Ill.:
“I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races—that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
Doesn’t sound like he was in favor of equality at all…
I listened to Lincoln’s speeches while driving. At one point, I had to eject the CD and check that something was not wrong as he sounded just like David Duke. I used to hear David Duke almost daily at LSU in free speech alley. I now know where he obtained his material.
The jig was up for me as soon as I read who made the film and who was in it. As good as Daniel Day Lewis is, I agree his performance here does not live up to what Lincoln must have been. The voice seems way off to me. I never pictured Lincoln as a whining tenor but more of measured, deliberate baritone, speaking with authority.
Sally Field? Her expiration date passed a long time ago. Same with Tommy Lee Jones. He has the exact same demeanor in every role he plays which goes for Field too. I suspect there is some dramatic license at play also, probably to sneak in a good measure of liberal propaganda. No thanks.
“I never pictured Lincoln as a whining tenor but more of measured, deliberate baritone, speaking with authority”
I feel that way about General Patton too, but from what I understand*, they both had voices that didnt quite match their legacy, from the “Hollywood ” standpoint we come to expect from “Heros”.
I’ve read several original source references to his (lincolns) delivery of The Gettysburg Address, and they were clear in their descriptions of a frail and scratchy pipsqueak of a voice, such that they were EMBARASSED that “this” was Our Presidents Speaking Voice.
It wasnt till people began READING The Gettysburg address re-printed in newspapers that the majesty of it began to take hold…the minds voice providing the appropriate gravitas we all imagine simply MUST be there…
Like George C Scott?
*my dad’s Liberty Ship was transporting Pattons Command Staff (After Sicily?) and he came aboard while in port to meet with them in the ward room. He “talked like a girl” according to pop, who was NOT a Patton Hater by any means…
Tommy Lee Jones is a hack and an arrogant ass. I once watched him berate staff at the Harvard Cooperative Society with the constant refrain, “do you know who I am?!”
I am very much afraid I said out loud, “yeah, some loudmouthed runty A**hole with an attitude problem.” And he heard me, from the glare he gave me.
Love that story.
I knew this movie would stink because Tony Kushner is a Bad Writer. Not just a bad writer. He’s BAD. The ARthur Miller of his generation and purveyor of turgid agitprop.
you mean this is a movie that finally portrait Democratic Party as racist?
OTOH, I would highly recommend Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. I know, it’s a ridiculous premise, but it’s a very strange – and cool – mashup that works… weirdly.
‘I knew I wasn’t going to go see it when Spielberg said in an interview that, “The parties have reversed positions over the last 150 years.”’
LOL. Spielberg is an idiot, but he makes good movies.
I was interested in seeing this due to my love of all things from that period, but I just wacthed the attached trailer, and I threw up in my mouth.
Mandella?
Ghandi?
Love the subtle messages….Like somehow, WE’RE marching to some better ideals, better illustrated ELSEWHERE….Oh and the TIMELINE is backwards?
“Lincoln, dear children, finally made the United States measure up to the ideals of Ghandi, and Mandella”
I still may go just to see Lincoln fleshed out on a big screen, but if the “message” is anything like the trailer, I’ll certainly be dissapointed
I’m like keithp. If it’s about the Civil War…I’m interested.
When I heard about “Saving Private Ryan”, I thought it sounded totally idiotic, but I decided to give it a look anyway.
One of the greatest war movies ever, if you ask me.
Spielberg doesn’t hit a home run every time…but, he’s one of the best movie makers out there.
The character of the Democratic and Republican parties today has insufficient relationship to those in the 1860s to say anything about their continuity or reversals of position. Would you like to compare the views of Lincoln and Davis on, say, abortion, socialized medicine, nuclear proliferation, militant Islam, same sex marriage or any other serious current issue? Or even affirmative action or racial quotas or the like?
Well, they both claimed the mantle of the Whigs, so they were both pro-capitalist, but the Republicans had the better claim. Douglas was all “local option”. Lincoln was the strict constructionist, Douglas – de facto, even if he would deny it – the “living constitution”. Douglas was more Federalist, but even he had to give in on railroad funding. Douglas was against election fraud to the point of incurring the wrath of his own President – hardly a modern-day Democrat. Lincoln may be our least religious President (in claim), yet the second inaugural reads like a sermon.
Lincoln was for equality, albeit in a moderate way (like opposing abortion except in cases of rape). Douglas was against it, forsquare, outright, 100% racist in every way. They were both moderates. They both gave their lives to rpeserve the union.
I would imagine they both opposed abortion and homosexuality.
Again, I provide the quote I noted previously:
From a speech Lincoln delivered in 1858 in Charleston, Ill.:
“I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races—that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
And to claim Lincoln was a strict constructionist is…..sigh….
I’d also say he was anything but a moderate.
Spielberg did at least some homework. According to Sandburg’s biography, the reaction to Lincoln’s stories was pretty much just as described.
Tony Kushner? Say no more. Angels in America was excruciating.
For a more realistic understanding of the Civil War and Lincoln, read Thomas DiLorenzo’s books –
The Real Lincoln
and
Lincoln Unmasked.
“Wouldn’t they be even a little bit intimidated?”
Probably. OTOH
Look away, look away…
I’ve never understood why there hasn’t been a George Washington movie, at least big screen, big budget. If there is one focused on Washington, I don’t remember it.
In reading much history, a subject that used to bore the hell out of me as young man which has been quite interested in middle age, I’d like to see Father George on the screen. Lincoln was great, but enough.
In my opinion, our first President was still our best President.
Agreed. Lincoln was a total screw-up.
Most of the time, when a nation descends into a bloody civil war that causes over a million casualties and leaves six-hundred thousand citizens dead, it does not reflect favorably on that nation’s political leadership. Lincoln of course, is an excption. He’s viewed favorably, despite the worst disaster in American history unfolding on his watch.
Right after Lincoln was elected, bofore he took office, the South seceded. So who was hotheaded? And he refused to fire the first shot.
And if it wasn’t about slavery, then why did they secede before he did anything?
Per Lincoln’s own words:
“I would save the union. I would save it in the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.” If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forebear, I forebear because I do not believe it would save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.”
Letter from Abraham Lincoln to Horace Greeley dated August 22, 1862.
On the union side, they were actually lynching blacks in northern states when it was first suggested that the war be fought to end slavery. This was during the New York City riots of July 13-16, 1863.
“They were furious at being conscripted into a war [by then] dedicated to freeing slaves.” wrote historian Philip B. Kunhardt Jr..
On the Confederate States side, the majority of citizens did not and never had owned slaves as they were too expensive. The majority of Southerners were basically very low income farmers. As such, slavery was an activity engaged in predominantly by the wealthier planter class.
There was also the history of slave revolts that had led to the murder of whites, and as such they viewed freeing slaves as a bad idea whether or not they ever owned, or ever wanted to own, slaves.
John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry was an effort to start an armed slave uprising.
Only a few decades before there was also the Nat Turner slave revolt that resulted in the murders of at least 55 men, women, and children as Turner and his band traveled from plantation to plantation in Virginia murdering any white they came into contact with.
Southerners would have been very much aware of this violent history and structured their views accordingly.
No doubt slavery was a main factor for some on both sides, especially the wealthy who tended to make up the political leadership in the South and the abolitionists who tended to be more politically active in the north – but for the average citizen there were other factors at work than slavery as an issue for secession.
It’s kind of like saying the modern Tea Party movement is all about abortion.
There are some Tea Party activists for whom that is THE primary issue, and for certain Tea Party critics that is THE main focus of their criticism/fears, but for the vast majority of Tea Party activists I’d say abortion ranks really low on the list of priorities.
I’d suggest that the values and principals George Washington held dear are not the kind of things our leadership class is comfortable with the majority of people being familiar with.
Better in their opinion to push the narrative that the government is not one of limited powers as that justifies the whole might makes right approach to governance.
Sure they could. They would simply base it on Wilson’s biography. Personally, I would rather they based it on Glen Beck’s.
Washington was the greatest president, Lincoln the second. The problem is, no-one would believe the truth. Washington was a head taller than everyone else, and so morally straight that people were in awe of him.
Washington was the kind of guy that movies like to destroy.
There was a TV movie, and they tried, on not enough evidence, to have him do something a little out of line. Course, Hollywood could always show the slaves as contrast; that would be like them.
Lincoln suffers hugely in comparison to Washington.
Washington founded a nation based upon a constitutionally limited federal government whose delegated powers were counterbalanced by the states retained powers.
He did not want the job of president, and had to be talked into it. He served two terms in office – the key word here being “served”.
He stood for office unopposed – twice, such was the respect that every citizen had for him.
During the course of his duties as president, he upheld all of the Constitution, not just the parts that were convenient, and never tried to twist meaning out of that document that contradicted the common understanding of what was written.
When officers sought to overturn the Constitution make him king, he himself put them down.
Lincoln, in contrast, was more than willing to climb over dead bodies to be president.
His view of the nation was so divisive that he ultimately divided a nation. Even his own generals opposed him, at least one even ran for president against him.
He waged war against civilians.
He ignored the Constitution.
He forever destroyed the balance of power between the federal and state governments, thereby giving us a government not of a written constitution that respected the concept of federalism and retained state powers, but rather a federal government that mandates its will via force.
Lincoln isn’t even a thin shadow compared to the likes of Washington, and was nothing more than an opportunistic politician who sought glory for himself and had no problem exacting the price for that perceived glory in a massive butcher’s bill.
Washington would have done EXACTLY what Lincoln did.
Washington would have vomited at the concept of an “American” empire of expanded slavery spreading into Mexico and the Caribbean…it was the ANTITHISIS of the principals he fought for, completely at odds with the Declaration of Independence he carried INTO war, with black troops under arms to support those concepts.
Washington was DESPERATE to do something “honorable” with his slaves, as Mount Vernon was equal parts Child Day-Care Center and Old-folks home to negro servants he could hardly sustain. He felt setting them “free”, without the means to fend for themselves, was ultimately a crueler human act than keeping them as “property”….
and he cursed the whole concept of Slavery, as a despicable, intractable moral morass that would ultimately drag us down if we did NOT find a way to eradicate it, effectively and peacefully, and soon.
How right he was….
Read Lincolns First Inaugural Address, and see who was desperate, DESPERATE to preserve what we started as the First Free and Self Governed People, without descending to war over “rights” that morphed within a generation into an evil that was no longer defensible by honest men. Raping and impregnating your “property”, and then enslaving your own offspring? To be latter sold if you so desire?
THIS was so precious, so pious and so “lawful”, as to dissolve the nation and go to war?
Over an election you disagreed with?
And for that these dishonest men fired first, and dare complain the about the “rule of law”?
You were treated better in defeat than any other force in History.
No Gulags, no mass graves.
No mass executions of your Generals, Officer Corps and political class.
Be thankful….
Thankful that better men than yourselves, were the victors over YOU.
“Washington would have done EXACTLY what Lincoln did.”
Washington DID exactly what Lincoln did. I do not approve of excise taxes, but he put down the Whiskey rebellion–and if anything they had a better case than the South did.
While Jefferson was founding the Democrat party, Washington was doing as “the Root ’83″ states, and Jefferson was having children whipped to satisfy his partying debts–while scheming to keep himself and his planter class at the top of the pyramid. Washington was no saint, by our standard he was crony capitalist using the whiskey tax to hold down his competition.
But he was opposed to slavery, and ultimately Jefferson and his Democrats were not. He also upheld the Constitution and ultimately Jefferson and hid Democrats did not.
Hah…imagine my surprise you continued to argue long after I had left this conversation…just browsing and saw you comments, and they must be responded to.
Who exactly is engaging in revisionist history here? Certainly not me as I have actually quoted the participants accurately, factually, and within context.
Washington was the greatest president we have ever had or ever will have. However, it is also a fact, as much as I revere him, that he WAS a slave owner. For you to claim that his version of slavery was some sort of equal parts day care and old folks home is to blatantly ignore the fact that Washington oversaw a vast plantation that literally at one point had more occupants and workers (slave and free) than the federal government had employees.
It was a massive endeavor, and under the economic system of the day he could not have operated it as a charity as you have so disingenuously suggest.
It was a working plantation, with the key word being “working”.
Furthermore, Washington was a strict disciplinarian. He even had soldiers whipped for letting slip a curse word, and hanged some for various infractions as a means of maintaining discipline. He maintained an equal level of self discipline in his own life.
Do you really want to argue he didn’t take this same approach to running his plantation?
None of this detracts from him. He was a product of his age, and we must accept all of the facts rather than using rose colored glasses when it gets uncomfortable.
Having said that, I also believe Washington was an incredibly fair man who tried to live as morally correct as he could. In addition to the aforementioned hangings, he also directed his troops to attend church on Sunday and was the first to hire chaplains for the Continental Army. His writings are full of religious references.
I have never heard nor read of any slave unrest or uprising in connection with his plantation. This leads me to suspect, as much as this likely pains you to contemplate, that he treated those under his roof fairly and they may have been content with their lot in life.
Anyone finding such an acceptance of their circumstances as a slave as difficult to imagine need only contemplate the slightly more than 50% of the population who during the last election were willing to submit to an even greater federal yoke around their neck due to Obamacare. They have literally chosen slavery to the state and the perceived security they think they will get rather than insist on greater personal freedom.
As for being desperate to get rid of the institution, you are willfully ignoring the fact he presided over the Constitutional Convention wherein the compromises over slavery were worked out – AND he was a slave owning Virginia planter (albeit apparently a decent man in how he treated them).
If he were as you claim, there should be mountains of evidence showing this to be the case – but there isn’t. Slavery during his lifetime was a common practice in every corner of the world, just as it had been throughout all of human history.
He may have been uncomfortable with it, but he would not have seen it as odd or shocking in practice.
Indeed, his stature even then was such that had he elected to speak out publicly and repeatedly against the practice then it would have made a huge difference, but he didn’t.
Now I’ll address the far more disturbing issue that is revealed in your comment. Your repeated use of the word “you”. It is as if the past 150 years had not happened, and displays nothing less than the disdain you feel for the South even now. Your animosity is personal and directed, not at men dead for centuries, but at living men who have never owned a slave in their lives.
Fortunately, I think I can speak for a majority of Southerners in informing you that we really don’t give a rat’s a$$ what you think.
@ Tom Perkins,
I have just responded in detail to The Rood ’83 – now it’s time to take you down as well.
Your assertion that Washington would have done the same as Lincoln is nothing more that your opinion, and I can validly argue that you are wrong.
The Whiskey Rebellion you refer to was a group of brewers who decided they did not like the idea of paying a tax that had been passed constitutionally by the legitimately seated Congress while Washington was President.
The tax was legal and constitutional.
The method by which the tax became federal law was legal and constitutional.
Washington acted within his constitutionally mandated authority in upholding the new federal law.
None of these facts are the same in the secessionist movement of 1861, and indeed Washington likely would have ACCEPTED the idea that half the states in the union had the constitutional authority to secede in the first place!
I notice, for instance, that you didn’t even respond to the facts I listed under comment #9 above, such as New York and Rhode Island writing into their own constitutions that the specific power to secede was NOt being ceded to the new federal government they were creating and agreeing to join – and that Washington sat through the Constitutional Convention and never argued otherwise….
In my own opinion, Washington likely would have been appalled at the South seceding, but just as likely would have also been just as appalled at Lincol’s actions and taken up his sword in defense of Virginia and chosen the side of the Confederacy in that conflict.
Heck, the South even had images of Washington on their currency!
“Sorry folks but if not for “freeing” slaves even his assassination would not be big news. He overrode the constitution numerous times much like Obama.”
Choice A: Follow the Constitution to the letter.
Choice B: Put down a rebellion by a pack of slaveowning (Democrat) traitors and free millions from slavery, as well as ending slavery for good (hopefully).
I’ll take choice B any day of the week.
Now we are all slaves and most blacks are free in name only. I like the Utah territory way of doing things in Brigham Young’s day: Let the government pretend they are rulers, but every one knows who really had the power because the people gave it to them.
“Now we are all slaves…”
Kinda seems that way when April 15 rolls around, don’t it?
OTOH, I’m a slave that owns a couple of houses out in the country, has a bank account packed with cash, and I do exactly as I please every single day (now that I don’t work any more). That’s a type of slavery I can live with.
Better deal than what the slaves back in 1860 had, anyway.
“Better deal than what the slaves back in 1860 had, anyway”
And you didnt even have to BE a slave, either….
Rebels in Adams County PA were rounding up FREE BLACKS during the Gettysburg campaign, and sending them south as war booty…
Nice huh?
“fightin’ fer ma rats”
And what rights would they be, sloppy?
“ta grab s’mbody else’s!”
But dont THEY have rights to be left alone?
“Nope…only MINE matter…ta me, anyhow”
I will forever respect their competency on the battlefield, and gladly welcome them back to the Family of The Free…
But I regard the Armies of the CSA with the same hate and contempt as the Armies of Mohammad…Hezbolla, Hamas, and the rest.
Evil is evil, no matter where you find it.
Since he was the first President to be assasinated, this is hardly true.
I’m not an admirer of Mr. Lincoln in general. And I’m not interested in Spielberg’s spin on the man in particular.
DD Lewis sems physcally made for the part. But even so, you can put me down as not interested.
So Spielberg, who is at best ambivalent about America, and Kushner who really doesn’t like it very much at all, in a snarky, gay transgressive and slightly deniable, wink-wink, sort of way, are going to tell me how they think I should think about Lincoln? Not any real Lincoln, but their imagining of him that anachronistically and with minimal connection to reality they use to advance their own peculiar and rather warped views America 150 years later, projected onto him and his times?
And my wife and I are supposed to pay $20+ and devote an afternoon or evening for the privilege?
The traiers look dreadful, btb–if those are the best shots in the movie, calculated to pique my interest, I don’t know if I could live through the whole thing without my head exploding.
So… I don’t think so.
Marty, I agree with your sentiments whole heartedly. I think I’ll save my money and watch it on Netflix.
OMG; Lincoln was so much like Obama!
lincoln was…arrgh! What’s the use. Most of you are worse than liberals. i.e. Your opinions trump the facts every damned time…
I liked the movie. I thought some of it was labored and improbable, but I liked the strategizing. I also liked the glimpse into the relationship between Lincoln and Mary – you get to see a little of what made Mary such a valuable political ally in the scene where she takes down Thaddeus Stevens.
Re: Spielberg, what can he do next? He’s been an ambassador to alien life, twice. He’s saved the Jews from the Holocaust. He’s freed the slaves. He’s fought and won WW2 in Europe and the Pacific. He’s fought WW1 (not sure of that outcome). He’s revenged Israel for the Munich assassinations. He’s produced human like artificial intelligence. He’s dug up artifacts and fought the Nazis over them. What worlds are left to conquer?
Spielberg is an idiot savant. Just one example being the hiring of flaming homo Kushner to write the screenplay.
I enjoyed the movie, but considered it more of a “souped up” documentary than a serious piece of fact based entertainment.
If the war was to end slavery, why didn’t the Union invade the rest of the world too?
Why did the Emancipation Proclamation only apply to conquered Southern states and not to Union slave-states?
If the war was about slavery, why did Virginia, Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee only secede AFTER Lincoln put out a call for 75,000 volunteers?
Why did Lincoln put out a call for 75,000 volunteers when only Congress has the authority to raise armies?
Why was the grandson of Francis Scott Key imprisoned in Ft Lafayette?
Why was the bigoted, racist and immoral Confederacy more tolerant of criticism of the government by the press?
Why is it that most people who have gone through the public education system believe in sacred cows like Lincoln being the greatest president ever?
If the Confederacy was a racist, immoral nation for owning slaves, does that mean the Romans and Greeks were also reprehensible?
If white slave-owners were incredibly racist, what does that make the African traders who sold them the slaves?
If the war was to end slavery, why didn’t the Union invade the rest of the world too?
1) Lincloln wasn’t President of the rest of the world.
Why did the Emancipation Proclamation only apply to conquered Southern states and not to Union slave-states?
2) Slavery had been outlawed in Union states.
If the war was about slavery, why did Virginia, Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee only secede AFTER Lincoln put out a call for 75,000 volunteers?
3)What difference does it make?
Why did Lincoln put out a call for 75,000 volunteers when only Congress has the authority to raise armies?
4) I suppose that’s why they are called “volunteers”
Why was the grandson of Francis Scott Key imprisoned in Ft Lafayette?
5) What does this have to do with the topic at hand?
Why was the bigoted, racist and immoral Confederacy more tolerant of criticism of the government by the press?
6) Because the “government” as far as they were concerned was the Union and I’m not sure the Confederates had the authority to censor the press.
Why is it that most people who have gone through the public education system believe in sacred cows like Lincoln being the greatest president ever?
7) Of course I am not a big fan of the public education system.But your argument has a serious fallacy
ublic education is dreadful ergo anything you learn through that system is bound to dubious.Well kids do learn a lot of nonsense but surely they also learn that George Washington was the 1st President(I know I know its John Hanson but play along) and that 2+2=4. Should we therefore doubt the last two assertions just because its a result of learning in the public school system.You have to do better than that.
If the Confederacy was a racist, immoral nation for owning slaves, does that mean the Romans and Greeks were also reprehensible?
8) We do not judge Greeks and Romans by the promise of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence but by the world in which they lived.As such we can appreciate their customs, laws,culture ,art,governance,language and military system but look askance upon their treatment of slaves,”barbarians”, their transparently exploitative wars and creating a desert and calling it peace and so on.
Once again:bad analogy by you.
If white slave-owners were incredibly racist, what does that make the African traders who sold them the slaves?
9) They are reprehensible.However the British navy took care of them and their Portuguese and Spanish clients much before the Civil War so there was no need to do anything on that front.
Also one judges the citizens and government of the United States(including the Confederates) by a higher moral standard than the society of African slavers.
Thank you for playing and visiting us from LewRockwell.com , have a safe trip back and hopefully make a coherent case the next time around.