My latest in PJ Media:
There is growing worry these days about whether or not we are headed for another civil war, and whether the divisions in American society are as bad as they were in the run-up to what is still the bloodiest war in American history. In fact, there is no comparison between the divisions between Americans today and in the run-up to the Civil War. The ones today are far worse. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we are headed for a shooting war, but we certainly may be.
A civil war is by definition a war between citizens of the same country, and the American Civil War was certainly that. Both sides revered Washington, Jefferson, and the other Founding Fathers. Confederate spokesmen often termed the war their own war for independence, insisting that it was a new iteration of the same desire for self-determination that had led to the American war of independence against Britain.
Both sides respected the United States Constitution to the extent that the Constitution of the Confederate States of America was essentially a copy of that of the nation the Confederates were leaving, with a few minor modifications. It protected the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, and the freedom of religion; it allowed for “the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” it protected citizens from unreasonable search and seizure, and contained numerous other provisions taken from the earlier Constitution….
No less an authority than Abraham Lincoln noted the similarity of the two sides in his second inaugural address, even as he pointed out the one thing that sharply distinguished them: “Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged.”…
Rating America’s Presidents shows how Abraham Lincoln’s unique and incisive articulation about what exactly was wrong about slavery, something that was not at all as clear to many of his contemporaries as it is to today’s woke mob, helped break the logjam that had existed in American politics for the previous half-century. It still took a long and bloody civil war to lead to national reconciliation and the binding up of the nation’s wounds….
There is much more. Read the rest here.
Mimmi says
For decades the narrative has been pushed that Abraham Lincoln started the war to end slavery. That’s somewhat true after the fact that he wanted to start the war because many states in the South were seceding leaving the North to finance themselves.
Lincoln could and should have been hung for invading sovereign nations as the South that had it’s own Constitution and President. Why did he get away with it and people put him on a pedestal. His behavior was no less than a dictator tyrant demanding the states come back to the Union.
Wellington says
Disagree. Abraham Lincoln took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States of America. Like Presidents before him, and especially Andrew Jackson during the Nullification Crisis with South Carolina some thirty years before the Civil War, he was of the conviction that the federal government reigned supreme over the states via Article VI of the Constitution which stated that the Constitution and the laws passed under it by the federal Congress “shall be the supreme Law of the Land.”
Lincoln also stated unambiguously that in those states where slavery still existed (15 at the time) that he solemnly promised not to interfere with slavery in such states. But what Lincoln was adamant about was not extending the possibility of slavery into the territories and which is EXACTLY why the Republican Party came into being in 1854 due to the Kansas-Nebraska Act which did away with the Missouri Compromise Line first established in 1820.
Now, I certainly concede this: It was unclear whether a state once joining the Union could leave it. There was nothing in the Constitution either way about this.
But Andrew Jackson when President (and remember he was a Southerner and slave holder) was adamant about any state being unable to nullify federal law. Moreover, another Southern slave holder who became President, Zachary Taylor, wanted the newly acquired territory of New Mexico, won in the Mexican War, to come immediately into the Union as a free state and he brooked no argument to to the contrary from fellow Southerners. But Taylor died in July of 1850 before a crisis could reach a breaking point and men like the new President, Millard Fillmore, and Senators like Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and Stephen Douglas, worked out the Compromise of 1850 to insure the Union would survive. But the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 essentially broke all deals formerly made to keep the Union in tact and hence the birth of the Republican Party and an old Whig politician like Abraham Lincoln moving to this party (as so many others in the North did).
So, Abraham Lincoln was following in a long tradition of the inviolability of the Union which has precedents going back even before the creation of the Constitution in 1787 while America was subject to the Articles of Confederation (and even before this first constitution). Yes, reasonable minds can differ here, as most certainly occurred with people like Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and Robert E. Lee of Virginia, but to assert that Lincoln was some kind of tyrant because he wanted to keep the Union in tact is to err as much in one direction as it is to err in the opposite direction by asserting that men of honor like Davis and Lee were traitors. Such extreme positions on either side does no good, distorts history, distorts the Constitution and does a disservice to where truth ultimately lies, truth being a very subtle phenomenon often times.
One last point. By the end of the Civil War, Georgia, very tired of Jefferson Davis and the CSA, was seriously contemplating leaving the Confederacy and becoming an independent country (being larger than England and possessed of many natural resources it might have pulled this off). In high ironic mode, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, DENIED Georgia’s right to do this. Moreover, some Midwestern states like Iowa and Missouri were leaning to becoming another separate nation, and if the USA had ceased to exist as first formed, and many countries existed instead of a unified USA, just think of the consequences for mankind in the 20th century when a world without a united USA would have quite arguably been an even far darker world than what it became, the USA in the 20th century being the single greatest guarantor “of the last best hope of mankind” as one Winston Churchill knew only too well (as did Lincoln of course) and why Churchill regularly referred to America as the Great Republic.
So, I see Abraham Lincoln’s greatness not only measured by 19th-century standards and realities but by 20th-century standards and realities as well. Indeed, I think his greatness is for all time, as General Douglas MacArthur knew completely, and why he asserted that George Washington created the United States and Abraham Lincoln saved it. Indeed, Washing above all other men and Lincoln above all men gave birth and continued life respectively to the greatest polity ever created by man. Look at matters from this angle if you will, Mimmi.
Your turn if you care to respond. Give it a shot.
James Lincoln says
Much thanks for the highly educational post, Wellington.
Westman says
Well said, Wellington.
Every truly free nation in the world looks to the US as the final hope that they will remain free. Lincoln saved more than just one nation.
gravenimage says
Spot on, Wellington.
David Elstrom says
Let me help your excellent historical analysis in part. In our first attempt at at establishing a unifying government the states formed “Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union.” When this proved inadequate, the Constitution set out to form “a more perfect union.” Logically, a state would require serious reasons to break faith with these pledges. The issue that sparked the Civil War was clearly the spread of slavery into new territories and states. Any assertion to the contrary simply fails.
This leaves the so-called revolution clause in the Declaration of Independence. Southern slave states and Democrat slavery defenders in the North insisted that the Federal government was abusive of the “right” to own slaves. But that’s only a partial quotation of the Declaration, because it goes on to say that revolutionaries are obligated to lay their reasons for dissolution before the world so others can judge the morality of their cause. And this is where the pro-slavery advocates fail. As Lincoln pointed out in his debates with Stephen A. Douglas, who advocated for Popular Sovereignty (a right of citizens to vote for slavery), before we can say there is such a “right” we first have to say wether slavery is right or wrong in a moral sense—because if slavery is not right, there is no “right” to do wrong. The Confederacy failed this test, and under the Declaration’s requirements therefore failed to justify breaking their commitment under the articles of Confederation or the Constitution.
Lincoln was a steady defender of the Declaration’s principles and the Constitution. The exceptions are things such as suspension of habeus corpus. But Lincoln himself knew he was on thin ice there, justifying his actions as emergency measures. And I agree with that. Congress was not in session at the state of the succession crisis, the capital was in chaos with Southern sympathizers inside the federal government, and decisions had to be taken. The Emancipation Proclamation was a temporary war measure (applicable only in Confederate states not yet occupied by Federal forces) because Lincoln insisted that only a constitutional amendment could end slavery. The late historian Harry V. Jaffa commented that his first book on Lincoln talked about Lincoln’s values, but by the time he wrote his second volume “A New Birth of Freedom,” he realized how much Lincoln was in the tank for the Declaration and Constitution and that Lincoln’s values were really the Founders’ values.
Wellington says
Thanks for your reply. Yes, the law and ethics should go hand-in-hand, but when they don’t, as they surely did not with slavery, than ethics must be paramount. Rather akin to what William Seward said about there being an even a higher law than the Constitution, something mentioned respecting “higher law” at least as far back as Thomas Aquinas.
On a specific matter, Congress was indeed not in session in 1861 between early March and early July (the latter date being indicative of a special session called by Lincoln) and thus Lincoln had to act in the Spring of 1861. I would argue he did so with great skill and much cleverness.
Westman says
With that logic perhaps you would like to see the end of a sovereign United States as it becomes just another vassal state under the UN or some other global entity; melding into some conglomeration thereby abandoning the Constitution?
This isn’t Star Trek, it’s real life, and we certainly will fight to preserve the Union and our Constitution. If CA, OR, and WA want to secede and create some new entity it will ultimately lead to hostility because, like Islam, they can’t keep to themselves; believing, like all the other great socialist failures, that they can do Marxism, “right”.
The violent riots of BLM, is a taste of a lawless entity that such a system would become before the inevitable marxist dictatorship arises within its own ranks to stop it.
gravenimage says
Re Mimmi, the claim that the North–which was far richer than the regressive South–“started” the war because of the financial damage of losing the South is ludicrous:
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/north-and-south
You can see here that in every category save that of “large farms”–ie, plantations–that the North much outstripped the South in terms of wealth.
And much of the wealth the South did have was based on slave labor–in which case, the North abolishing slavery would have made no sense. Try again…
Moreover, this apologia for slavery is just appalling,
Idol and Icon says
Completely agree with Mimmi. What you write are inconvenient facts.
gravenimage says
Are you pro-slavery, Idol and Icon? Is so, Islam is the creed for you–enslaving victims is a core part of that ideology.
Webbo666 says
Wellington, what a response. As a Brit, I appreciate the learning I have received from that post.
nospa says
its just a continuation of the original civil war. the democrats never got over it and said they would rise again, here they are
CogitoErgoSum says
There’s no law preventing anyone from leaving the U.S. if he/she does not want to be a part of this country. You just can’t take any real estate with you when you go. Sell your property and move somewhere else if you don’t like it here. Those of us who do like living here won’t stop you. I for one would be more than glad to bid you farewell. Why are those people who said they would leave when Trump was elected still here? So leave already. Please, just do it.
roberta says
”Why are those people who said they would leave when Trump was elected still here? So leave already. Please, just do it.”
+1000, in fact, please leave yesterday you brave ex-patriots.
Well I guess they could never be any type of ex-patriot, since they were never any type of patriot to begin with. They can take a knee and leave yesterday.
But they wont, they will stay here crying and whining like a hen pecked, half man, wimp husband.
James Lincoln says
CogitoErgoSum,
Every single one of those “celebrities” was just bluffing. I think they like staying in the United States just to make life miserable for the “deplorables.”
I have a niece who is the one full-blooded Leftist in my extended family. She has a Bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree – and is still totally brain-dead.
She moved to Canada because Pres. Trump got elected in 2016 but moved back to United States within a year.
I would’ve been happier if she had stayed in Canada, but I guess she got “homesick”…
gravenimage says
Very grim.
Idol and Icon says
Didn’t Lincoln say that he would die in office due to all the deaths he had caused by starting a war. Did he not also state he would have started the war even if there was no slavery in the South. I’m not a fan of Lincoln. There were also slaves in the north such as New York. He was, in my estimation, a hypocritical war monger.
Reziac says
According to one of my long-ago history teachers (who was not, per the sorts of trivia she dredged up, a leftist) Lincoln was easily led by his advisors, and was even called “Mr. Yea and Nay” for being unable to make up his own mind. So starting the war may not have been, shall we say, entirely his own idea. (I do remember he penned something that made it clear slavery was not the real issue.) It’s hard to be certain, given that the North is now assumed to have been entirely in the right, and that in the day, a great deal of what was printed as news, we’d now recognize as propaganda (on both sides).
OTOH, I think the conflict was inevitable once that industrial vs rural divide became the driving economic force. Do you sense a theme that applies even today?
Wellington says
Reziac: Lincoln in the first year of his Administration was pulled to and fro, though even during his first year he showed decisiveness on many occasions. However, by the Summer of 1862, Lincoln was completely in charge and everyone in his cabinet knew it, including William Seward, Secretary of State, who at first thought that he should have been President, not Lincoln, but who eventually came to admire Lincoln greatly and was unambiguous in his esteem for the 16th President, thinking as did so many others, for instance Generals Grant and Sherman, that he was the greatest human being among them all.
As the masterful American historian, Samuel Eliot Morrison, wrote in the second of his three volume work, The Oxford History of the American People, by the Summer of 1862 “Lincoln had emerged humble before God but the master of men.” Volume 2, p.432
gravenimage says
+1
Wellington says
Idol and Icon: I know of no statement by Lincoln that he would have started the Civil War even if there was no slavery in the South. The only reason he came out of political retirement, having served in the Illinois state legislature and in the House of Representatives for one term at the federal level, was BECAUSE of the expansion of slavery in the territories due to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Lincoln had no animosity toward the South and said the sin of slavery was on all Americans and not just the South. He also encouraged the South to remain in the Union, very much so, including in his First Inaugural Address, a masterpiece of oratory as well as sapient compassion. Where you got the idea that Lincoln stated that he would have started the war even if slavery no longer existed in the South I have no idea—and I taught American history for a third of a century. This also demonstrates that THE cause of the Civil War was slavery and not state rights, tariff and other economic issues, cultural differences, etc., though these factors did play a secondary role.
As far as slavery in the North was concerned, by 1861 when the Civil War began slavery in the North was almost entirely gone (this does not include the four slave states that stayed in the Union—Delaware, Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland). Many states, e.g., Pennsylvania, had phased out slavery gradually rather than all at once. By 1850 the only Northern state that had any remaining slaves was New Jersey with some 236 and by 1860 NJ had only 18 slaves left. There can be no question that slavery was very much on its way out in all Northern states by the middle of the 19th century. If Southern states had also adopted gradual emancipation, this would have more than satisfied moderates like Lincoln who were against slavery but who would have found this quite acceptable a compromise but not firebrands like William Lloyd Garrison, though the firebrands alone would not have had enough clout to engage in any kind of civil war.
President Lincoln also, on many occasions, argued for compensation for slave owners. He wanted to start with Delaware because they had less than two thousand slaves by 1860 and he thought Delaware would serve as a good test case for his compensation plan, though to Lincoln’s chagrin this never came to pass.
As for Lincoln being a hypocrite, I completely refute this accusation. In fact, I would go so far as to say that there wasn’t a hypocritical bone in his body. The man was brilliant, profound, a magnificent writer (many think Lincoln the greatest American writer of all time, for instance Gore Vidal said this) and about as ethical as a human being can be. The war did grieve him greatly and the photos taken of him in the latter stages of the war reveal a man who felt tremendous sorrow because of all that had occurred. And in his Second Inaugural Address, given just five weeks before his assassination, he showed an enormous compassion for the about to be defeated South. In his very last cabinet meeting, held the morning of his being shot at Ford Theatre on April 14th, 1865, he told his cabinet members he wanted no revenge taken against Confederates and opined that he wished higher officials in the Confederacy, including President Jefferson Davis himself, would simply go into exile to Europe, South America or wherever. It is a mark of this great man that he said this just literally hours before his death.
I think you should reconsider things. I really do.
Wellington says
I would add one matter. Lincoln was adamant that the Union must be preserved and should the South have wanted to leave the Union for some reason other than slavery, for instance over tariffs which had prompted the Nullification Crisis with South Carolina in the late 1820’s and early 1830’s, Lincoln would have resisted this as well. For Lincoln, the Union had to be preserved above all other matters, even slavery which Lincoln personally detested.
But slavery was the single main cause of the war, as demonstrated by how much attention it got in the 1850’s with such events as the Compromise of 1850, the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in 1852, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, the entire phenomenon of Bleeding Kansas, the Pottawatomie Massacre and the Bully Brooks Affair, both in May of 1856, the Dred Scott decision of 1857, the Lecompton Constitution fiasco of 1858, John Brown’s Raid of 1859, et al.
James Lincoln says
Wellington,
I greatly admire your detailed knowledge of American history. I am personally trying to improve my own knowledge base.
Your posts are most informative…
Wellington says
You’re too kind, James, but I thank you nonetheless. And don’t forget that history is my area of expertise, even more than the law. I am deficient in many other areas, including your area of expertise, medicine. As Clint Eastwood said as Dirty Hairy, a man’s got to know his limitations. Or, as Socrates opined, the true beginning of wisdom is to realize you know nothing.
In New England right now and enjoying August because I am right next to a pond I swim in most every day, often after a run of 2-3 miles. Damn, I do like retirement and relish not knowing sometimes whether it’s Tuesday or Wednesday and not caring a whit that I don’t.
Hope you are doing well. Just came back from a run and a swim and am now enjoying a fine porter. Take care, my friend. I wish we could meet someday.
James Lincoln says
Wellington,
Sometime in the future, there’s always Hart’s Turkey Farm, Poor People’s Pub, etc.
Best wishes to you and yours…
gravenimage says
Fine posts, Wellington.
Idol and Icon says
Overlong rambling post, not surprised you are unaware of Lincoln’s statements. Glad you don’t resort to name calling and attempted insults.
Wellington says
So terribly sorry for the rambling, Idol and Icon. Why don’t you post the so-called Lincoln statements you spoke of but have not yet provided?
Wellington says
Still waiting for those statements, Idol and Icon. I will assume continued silence will mean that your bark is worse than your bite.
gravenimage says
Still waiting, Idol and Icon…
gravenimage says
Lincoln did indeed fear that he would die in office–as he did. Idol and Icon’s claim that Lincoln believed that an assassin had the *right* to kill him is utter calumny. Just appalling.
Would Idol and Icon prefer that slavery had not been abolished in the United States? It sounds like it…*Ugh*.
Giacomo Latta says
It is the like of the above differences of opinion and the tolerance but not necessarily the love of other people’s opinions that have made the US the strongest democracy in the world. However, I see something headed down the pike that does not appeal to me and that is the attempts of some to render illegal the opinions of others. Obviously if we tolerate the publishing of the koran then all other opinions on all other subjects appear rather pollyannaish.
gravenimage says
Giacomo, if printing the Qur’an is criminalized, it won’t stop Muslims from getting their hands on it–but it *will* mean that law-abiding Infidels will never be able to learn what Islam has in store for us.
And it will mean the arrest and imprisonment of good Anti-Jihadists like Robert Spencer. I have several copies of the Qur’an myself.
Giacomo Latta says
I was promoting the opposite. What must be stopped is the oncoming criminalization of political opinion.
gravenimage says
Okay.
congmingde says
Who are we kidding? Civil War II has already begun. It’s time to fully acknowledge this unpleasant truth- the Left sure has.
OLD GUY says
I would venture to say that 70% of the under 40 population don’t know what you all are talking about. Let’s put factual history back in our schools and give our children a sense of what the idealism of the American dream is about for everyone. And yes some of our history is ugly and treated segments of our population wrong. But let’s also recognize that we have as a nation attempted to move forward and correct our errors.
We can do better, but we won’t get there by fighting each other and destroying our cities and neighborhoods.
Please but your energy towards good not destruction of OUR AMERICA.
Wellington says
+1
gravenimage says
Hear, hear, OLD GUY!
Yohanan says
Lincoln’s greatness was the abolition of slavery and preservation of the Union. Spencer could also state that Trump is wrong to promote maintaining Confederate symbols which have racist history.
Civil wars are toward top of worst possible national traumas. “Or else civil war-” that kind of talk is usually nonsense or scare-mongering. Pendulum of democracy works it meandering muddy and bloody ways.
Wellington says
Would you tear down all Confederate symbols? How about those on the battlefields of Gettysburg and Antietam?
There is also the matter of Northern states’ hypocrisy at times; for instance, when the Civil War ended in 1865 only five of the twenty-four Northern states allowed blacks to vote.
I am quite glad that the North won the Civil War. Better for America. Better for all the world.
But I must register opposition to tearing down statues and even the complete denigration of the Confederate Flag. Yes, this flag has a giant negative attached to it, i.e., racism and all the more compounded by slavery. But it also has two great positives—Southern heritage and the greatest damn flag of all time with respect to representing the eternal rebel that resides in so many of the human species. There is also the factor that the American flag, born during the Revolutionary War, was representative of 13 states, ALL OF WHICH in 1776 still had slavery, as did the British Empire, as did virtually all the world. What are we to do? Get rid of all such flags?
I am heartily glad that slavery is over in the West (though still not in the Islamic world and other areas on earth), but obliterating history by tearing down statues of people who were possessed of a mindset in their time which we would have held too almost certainly had we been born then, is a barbaric, ignorant, mindless way to treat with history. Besides, a la the German poet Heine, where statues are torn down, eventually people will be torn down as well unless they conform to an Orwellian type of world. We’re already partly there in our time—and this is deeply troubling.
In short, statues to those who still believed in the democratic process, even if for only a minority of citizens, are not the same as statues honoring those who held democracy in contempt, as people like Lenin, Hitler, Mao and Stalin did. Huge difference (so, for the record, I am OK with tearing down their statues). Might as well tear down statues to Solon, Cleisthenes, Perciles and other great ancient Athenians who developed and believed in democracy because they had slavery and did not allow women the right to vote. There is a vast distinction between polities with the capacity to evolve, apologize for their wrongdoings, and incorporate more and more people into the body politic, as opposed to polities like those on the Far Right and Far Left who have no capacity in any of these areas.
toomanyhobbies says
difference is the civil war bloody yet was for a just cause to end slavery yet muslims own over 24 million slaves today!
infidel says
And the entire credit for this division which is only getting worse by the day must go the FERAL ISLAM in the USA.. I have told here many times b4 that ISLAM EXACERBATES divisions in khafir infidel societies by vicious innuendos and rumor mongering and sets the dhimmi Khafir dead against the non-dhimmi Khafir. Read the dhimmi as the Left Dems and the non-dhimmi as the right-Reps… As simple as that. In Eu and India too, Islam plays the same game of deepening the R-L divide almost to a point of no return. The day, the R and L TRULY unite against this selfish 3rd party called Islam, that will be the day of some hope against global Jehaad.
Idol and Icon says
Anyone who wants Lincoln’s quotes should do their own research because that’s the only way to demonstrate your genuineness. Name calling aside, I’m impervious to insult, and those who resort to it is an indication of the weakness of their position.
gravenimage says
Lincoln said a great many things. Which quotes is Idol and Icon referring to? Of course, he does not say.