H.L. Mencken on Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

by

H.L. Mencken

From "Five Men at Random," Prejudices: Third Series, 1922, pp. 171-76.

First printed, in part, in the Smart Set, May, 1920, p. 141

Abraham Lincoln - Politician

Some time ago a publisher told me that there are four kinds of books that seldom, if ever, lose money in the United States—first, murder stories; secondly, novels in which the heroine is forcibly overcome by the hero; thirdly, volumes on spiritualism, occultism and other such claptrap, and fourthly, books on Lincoln. But despite all the vast mass of Lincolniana and the constant discussion of old Abe in other ways, even so elemental a problem as that of his religious ideas—surely an important matter in any competent biography—is yet but half solved. Was he a Christian? Did he believe in the Divinity of Jesus? I am left in doubt. He was very polite about it, and very cautious, as befitted a politician in need of Christian votes, but how much genuine conviction was in that politeness? And if his occasional references to Jesus were thus open to question, what of his rather vague avowals of belief in a personal God and in the immortality of the soul? Herndon and some of his other early friends always maintained that he was an atheist, but the Rev. William E. Barton, one of the best of later Lincolnologists, argues that this atheism was simply disbelief in the idiotic Methodist and Baptist dogmas of his time—that nine Christian churches out of ten, if he were live today, would admit him to their high privileges and prerogatives without anything worse than a few warning coughs. As for me, I still wonder.

Lincoln becomes the American solar myth, the chief butt of American credulity and sentimentality. Washington, of late years, has been perceptibly humanized; every schoolboy now knows that he used to swear a good deal, and was a sharp trader, and had a quick eye for a pretty ankle. But meanwhile the varnishers and veneerers have been busily converting Abe into a plaster saint, thus marking him fit for adoration in the Y.M.C.A.’s. All the popular pictures of him show him in his robes of state, and wearing an expression fit for a man about to be hanged. There is, so far as I know, not a single portrait of him showing him smiling—and yet he must have cackled a good deal, first and last: who ever heard of a storyteller who didn’t? Worse, there is an obvious effort to pump all his human weaknesses out of him, an obvious effort to pump all his human weaknesses out of him, and so leave him a mere moral apparition, a sort of amalgam of John Wesley and the Holy Ghost. What could be more absurd? Lincoln, in point of fact, was a practical politician of long experience and high talents, and by no means cursed with idealistic superstitions. Until he emerged from Illinois they always put the women, children and clergy to bed when he got a few gourds of corn aboard, and it is a matter of unescapable record that his career in the State Legislature was indistinguishable from that of a Tammany Nietzsche. Even his handling of the slavery question was that of a politician, not that of a messiah. Nothing alarmed him more than the suspicion that he was an Abolitionist, and Barton tells of an occasion when he actually fled town to avoid meeting the issue squarely. An Abolitionist would have published the Emancipation Proclamation the day after the first battle of Bull Run. But Lincoln waited until the time was more favorable—until Lee had been hurled out of Pennsylvania, and more important still, until the political currents were safely running his way. Even so, he freed the slaves in only a part of the country: all the rest continued to clank their chains until he himself was an angel in Heaven.

Like William Jennings Bryan, he was a dark horse made suddenly formidable by fortunate rhetoric. The Douglas debate launched hum, and the Cooper Union Speech got him the Presidency. His talent for emotional utterance was an accomplishment of late growth. His early speeches were mere empty fire-works—the hollow rodomontades of the era. But in the middle life he purged his style of ornament and it became almost badly simple—and it is for that simplicity that he is remembered today. The Gettysburg speech is at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history. Put beside it, all the whoopings of the Websters, Sumners and Everetts seem gaudy and silly It is eloquence brought to a pellucid and almost gem-like perfection—the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Nothing else precisely like it is to be found in the whole range of oratory. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous.

But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination—"that government of the people, by the people, for the people," should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. What was the practical effect of the battle of Gettysburg? What else than the destruction of the old sovereignty of the States, i.e., of the people of the States? The Confederates went into battle free; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision and veto of the rest of the country—and for nearly twenty years that veto was so effective that they enjoyed scarcely more liberty, in the political sense, than so many convicts in the penitentiary.

H. L. Mencken

About the Author:  


Henry Louis "H. L." Mencken
(September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956) 
was an American journalist and magazine editor, popularly known as the "Sage of Baltimore."  He is regarded as one of the most influential American writers of the first half of the 20th century. Many of his books are still in print.

Bill O'Reilly Spins the Abraham Lincoln Myth

Open Letter to Bill O'Reilly

from Valerie Protopapas

Dear Sir:

Bill O'Reilly

Obviously, you are not a stupid man but sadly, your intellect seems non-existent when it comes to your judgment about American leaders. You have stood foursquare against the current socialist trends in the federal government. You have condemned the excesses of Congress and the Administration and the ever growing centralization of power in Washington as well as the trashing of the Constitution. You have mentioned time and again that such excesses are diametric to the founding principles of the nation, flying in the face of that same document—and I have applauded you for your public defense of those republican (with a lower-case “r”) principles and the men (and women) who have championed them.

Yet, the other evening, I heard you—yet again—claim that the “gold standard” of American leadership was none other than President Abraham Lincoln. I actually became so enraged I turned off the TV! I could not bear to listen any longer. All that we currently endure we do so because of Abraham Lincoln! It was Lincoln who embraced the movement of power away from the Sovereign States and the People as envisioned by the Founders. It was Lincoln who adopted the socialist/communist ideologies brought into the United States from Europe with the arrival of the so-called “48ers,” the mostly German followers of Marx fleeing their failed revolutions in Europe. However, it is also true that Lincoln had adopted those same policies independently before he was influenced by Europe’s socialist upheaval. Did you know that Marx adored Lincoln for the very reason that he worked to centralize power in the federal government? And did you know that Lincoln’s government and military was filled with Marxists and socialists? It was Lincoln who abandoned all constitutionally imposed restrictions on the federal government and the presidency when he planned and initiated war against states performing an act guaranteed to them in the Constitution—that of secession from a union that was no longer in the best interest of their people. It was Lincoln who deliberately and with malice brought that war to fruition—a war that cost over a million lives both military and civilian and destroyed an entire section of what had been the united (lower-case “u”) States for a century or more. And the list goes on and on. There is no more infamous lie in the annals of American history than Lincoln’s analysis of the causes of the so-called “Civil War”—“…and war came.” War didn’t “come,” Lincoln brought it into existence in what proved to be a successful attempt to prevent the loss of eleven Southern states and the 75% of the federal revenues paid by those States. Indeed, the South, by Lincoln’s time, had become nothing more than a politically impotent economic colony supplying endless revenues to the rest of the Union while being driven ever deeper into poverty.

It was Lincoln who embraced—and profited from—Hamilton’s “American System,” which today we call “crony capitalism” and which is really nothing other than the enemy of free enterprise, fascism. Lincoln was supported for the presidency by the economic interests of states such as Pennsylvania to which he promised a high tariff to protect their manufactured goods and a continuation of the flow of capital from the South to the North. Lincoln had been a lawyer with one of the railroads supported by such tax-funded largesse and was so successful that he was allowed to choose the eastern terminus for the contemplated trans-continental railroad. It is interesting—and revealing—to note that the property he chose for that site just happened to be owned by him! Lincoln’s sobriquet at that time—Honest Abe—was bestowed by his contemporaries for the same reason that the sobriquet “Little John” was bestowed upon Robin Hood’s very large lieutenant. In other words, it was a reference to behavior diametric to the appellation and therefore not a complement.

Finally, if you think that we had election fraud in 2008, Lincoln made use of the military to assure his re-election, something that was by no means guaranteed in November of 1864. General Benjamin (Beast) Butler was sent to New York from which he triumphantly informed Lincoln that no Democrats had been permitted to vote. The same happened in other states such as Ohio where both Lincoln and Lincoln’s war were not popular. Soldiers were permitted to vote in areas in which they did not live to assure his re-election. Meanwhile, their presence at the polls was a warning to those who might vote Democrat. In fact, in many instances the ballots were color-coded so that the party chosen by the voter was immediately obvious to those partisan “poll watchers” and many Americas were “discouraged” from voting if a wrong color ballot was observed.

There is so much more on Lincoln’s illegal, unconstitutional and immoral actions that is a part of the public record and yet, he continues to be revered, even worshipped, by people who despise and reject the things for which he stood and on which he acted. Even the popular belief that Lincoln “freed the slaves” or, in fact, had any feeling for them individually or as a group is nonsense, proven over and over by his own words and actions. He cared nothing for slavery and even less for “the African” and was willing to put slavery into the Constitution in the original 13th Amendment (Corwin) if it would keep the Southern states compliant.

Even the claim so often made that he fought the war to “preserve the union” is a lie though many Northerners were deceived and indeed fought for that stated purpose. First, a union is by its nature voluntary. Coercion at the point of a bayonet is nothing but conquest and occupation, not “union.” Then, Lincoln, his government and all of the states who fought ostensibly to preserve the Union were traitors according to Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution. Indeed, the only act defined as treason in that document is the waging of war against any of the signatory states and aiding and abetting in that war. If there was ever an act more worthy of the taint of treason and the openly guilty parties more exposed to public view, it has to be America’s “Civil War” in which the federal government—or should I say, the President—declared war on seven (later eleven) signatory states and initiated total war against them. Of course, all of those who supported or permitted this war were themselves traitors to a greater or lesser degree. It is ironic that the taint of treason was spread so liberally—and so successfully—on states that had acted constitutionally in attempting to remove themselves from a hostile and eventually murderous “union” while the actual traitors have been lauded to the skies historically as heroes and “true Americans.”

No, Mr. O’Reilly, your “stand” against those attempting to make of what remains of this nation another “Peoples’ Republic” cannot be believed so long as you refuse to acknowledge where America started to leave the path of Aristotle, Locke and the Founding Fathers and embrace the governing theories and actions of Hobbes and Marx. Actually, you have only two choices: understand and admit that “the nation’s greatest president” was a traitor and a murderer (over a million dead) and repudiate his “vision” for the nation—a federal tyranny—or cling to delusion, deception and myth and, by doing so, render your own message null and void and yourself foolish at best and dishonest at worst. You cannot have Lincoln and liberty.

Valerie Protopapas
Huntington Station, New York

When America Went Crazy

By Eric Peters

Eric Peters

America lost its mind 146 years ago and hasn’t been the same since. Or rather, it’s been a different country ever since.


A psychotic, self-referential, duplicitous country – largely ignorant of its own history and convinced of its messianic role in world affairs. A country not merely content to live – and let live. But one determined to to force others – everyone – to live its way.


At bayonet point, if need be. 


It all goes back to the events of 1861-1865. The struggle for Southern independence, which the modern histories dishonestly – not merely mistakenly – call the “Civil War.”


Which it was not.


The Southern states had no desire to dominate the Northern states, nor to control the government of the North. (Which is what the “federal” government had become by 1861, as the Northern states and Northern corporatist cartels controlled it; Lincoln was the front man for these corporatist interests – a shyster lawyer and born grifter who would do anything – to anyone – in the service of his paymasters.)


 No, the Southern states simply wished to exercise that right which the American colonists themselves had exercised in 1776 (and which some Northern states had themselves threatened to exercise on prior occasions, for similar reasons). The right to withdraw from the voluntary union entered into by each sovereign state at the time of the ratification of the federal Constitution. The motives were no different – and no less honorable or legitimate: The Southern states, like the American colonies, had come to regard the central authority as distant, unrepresentative and increasingly tyrannical. It no longer served their interests. It no longer represented them. And to paraphrase the author of the original Declaration of Independence, when a government no longer operates in the best interests of the people as they see those interests; when it no longer represents them; and when its actions evince a systematic effort to subjugate them, when other remedies have not proved fruitful, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish the government – and start over.


This is what we celebrate on July 4th but what we also (in typically demented/ignorant/hypocritical American fashion) excoriate the Southern states for having done.


This was the Southern conception of “consent of the governed” – the same one held by the American revolutionaries – and the same one eradicated by the victory of the North over the South.


Since that unlucky event, there has been no recourse, no escape from Washington’s self-proclaimed, self-defined, self-interpreted and increasingly unlimited authority. We the People are not governed by consent but by force. This fact is too obvious to require extensive elaboration, yet many continue to believe we are “free” because we have “democracy” – that is, we may vote. But we do not have a choice. There is no freedom option. Just Government X (Republican) or Government Y (Democrat). This duopoly is far more subtle – and thus, far more effective – than the obvious single-party tyrannies of the past. But in fact we do have a single ruling elite – and so, no real choice – if your choice is liberty.


Lincoln – the ur American tyrant who set the stage for the blood-soaked Deciders to come – was the first to twist plain English and the meaning of the American Revolution into their dark matter opposites.


“Consent of the governed” became somehow a consolidated federal leviathan from which there is no appeal or escape. The consent of the Southern people (and thus, all Americans) trampled underfoot, to be kept forevermore in a forced union, like a bad marriage – at bayonet point.


“Republican” government – that is, delineated (and thus, inherently limited) powers became “democracy” – open-ended, unlimited mob rule, via the vote – administered by millions of petty tyrants from the DMV to the TSA to EPA to the IRS.


From this sprang the ends-justify-the-means (any means) rationales that have been used to abrogate every single formerly sacred right that the Bill of Rights was written explicitly to declare and protect.


And it was Lincoln and his crew – including war criminals such as Sheridan and Sherman (who would have made fine corps commanders in Hitler’s Waffen SS or Stalin’s Red Army) that gave life to the American Mission, the subjugation of the world itself.


Not merely consolidation and uniformity. A conviction that there is only one morally right way to live – the Yankee (corporatist/empire) way – and it must be brought to every corner of the Earth, by any means necessary.


There is a meaningful line in the Clint Eastwood movie, The Outlaw Josey Wales.  A union officer is confronted by a tired scout who admonishes him that the war is over; that it is time to stop the carnage. To let people be. The officer replies, “There ain’t no end to doin’ right.” In this you can hear the future echos of George W. Bush – or Barack Obama. From Iraq to Libya to main street, USA – there ain’t no end to doin’ right.


The orthodox histories pass over all this, touting instead the morally righteous crusade of the North to free the slaves and help the Black Man. Except of course the North did no such thing. Not only was slavery protected in the North and Northern-held territories until after the war was over (in other words, for nearly two years after the so-called Emancipation Proclamation of 1863) but the Northern populace would have revolted if Lincoln had touted his determination to subjugate the South – to “save the union” – as a crusade to free the black man. Not only was Lincoln himself a virulent racist (and a founding member of the Illinois “back to Africa” movement) but so was the North, which saw free blacks as threat to free white labor and which had “black codes” every bit – and often more – brutal than the black codes students are endlessly lectured about as being a Southern exclusive.


But pay no mind to that man behind the curtain. The war was about saving democracy and the consent of the governed. America is righteous. Let freedom ring.


Even though – as singer Merle Haggard put it – the average American has less real freedom today than he had as a parolee back in 1969.


Until the American people recover their senses the American consolidated Empire will only grow more oppressive, more and more openly brutal.


A people incapable of leaving their neighbors alone cannot be expected to leave the world alone.


Cloverism was born at Appomattox.


It is up to us to see it strangled.

Reprinted with permission from EricPetersAutos.com.

Copyright © 2011 Eric Peters

About the author: 

Eric Peters is a longtime car/bikes/Libertarian-minded journalist. His new book, "Road Hogs," came out June 2011.

Peters has been writing a weekly column about cars for almost 20 years now. He is the author of "Automotive Atrocities" and "Road Hogs" (MBI). He lives in rural SW Virginia with his wife and a polyglot crew of animals.

Abraham Lincoln's Reign was Evil - according to British Observers



Abraham Lincoln
Considered evil by Europeans in his day.

 A very interesting article in the Guardian,  a newspaper in Great Britain, dares to remind it's readers that, while Abraham Lincoln is mostly venerated by the British today, anti-Lincoln sentiments were strong to the point of being an obsession when he was living in the White House and waging a ruthless war against the freedom loving citizens of the Confederate States. 

The Guardian quotes it's own pages from almost 150 years ago, when in October 1862, the paper had this to say about his election:  

"...it is impossible not to feel that it was an evil day both for America and the world, when he was chosen president of the United States".

And in April, 1965, upon the occasion of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the Guardian opined: 

"Of his rule we can never speak except as a series of acts abhorrent to every true notion of constitutional right and human liberty,"

Here is a link to the current Guardian article:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/24/1865-guardian-stance-us-civil-war#start-of-comments

See the Ad Banned by The History Channel

Video Script:

The Morrill Tariff

Another major cause of the War Between the States of which you've probably never heard was the Morrill Tariff Act initiated in 1859 which increased tariffs on the South from 15 percent to nearly 50 percent. Lincoln's first inaugural address stated his resolve in collecting these taxes no matter what.

He said, "The power confided in me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property, and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts (tariffs, in other words), but beyond what way may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion - no using force against or among the people anywhere."

Ultimately, he was willing to sacrifice 620,000 American lives with his illegal invasion of the Southern states who had legally seceded... and all this just to keep money pouring into Washington, DC.

These were the grounds that sparked the first meeting for Secession 150 years ago.

The Most Cynical and Hypocritical Speech Ever Delivered

By Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Over the Thanksgiving holiday (decreed by Lincoln in 1863) one neocon Tabloid, National Review, reprinted Lincoln’s October 3, 1863 proclamation, highlighting Abe’s cynical reference to "the Most High God . . ." Another neocon Tabloid, The American Spectator, published the typical sappy, a-historical, fact-free, rhetorical mumbo jumbo about "Father Abraham" that Harry Jaffa and his fellow Lincoln cultists are known for.

The references to God in Lincoln’s Thanksgiving proclamation, like all other such references in his political speeches, are breathtakingly cynical because of the fact that Lincoln never became a Christian (according to his wife and his closest friend and law partner, William Herndon); he never joined a church; rarely ever stepped foot into one; as a young man wrote an entire book that disputed Scripture; and was famous for his vulgar stories and language. But he studied the Bible as a political tool, just as today’s politicians study opinion polls.

Prior to 1863 Lincoln’s references to God and the Bible in his political speeches were mostly catch phrases and buzz words ("a house divided cannot stand"). But as more and more fellow American citizens were murdered by the thousands by his army, and as the war crimes mounted, Abe stepped up his Biblical lingo. By the time of his second inaugural he wrote a speech in which he absolved himself of all blame for the war ("the war [just] came," he said), blaming the whole bloody mess on God. Presuming to know what was in the mind of God, he theorized that the Lord was punishing all Americans, North and South, for the sin of slavery. He did not theorize on why God would not also punish the British, French, Spanish, and others who were responsible for bringing 95% of all the slaves to the Western Hemisphere. In other words, his Biblical language was always a diversion and a cover-up for the war crimes against American civilians (among other atrocities) that he was micromanaging.

The first sentence of Lincoln’s Thanksgiving proclamation is a real howler. The year 1863, he said, "has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies." What? Healthful skies?! As of the fall of 1863 there had been several hundred thousand battlefield casualties, including thousands of men in both armies who died of yellow fever and other dreaded diseases. There were more than 50,000 casualties in the Battle of Gettysburg alone, just three months earlier.

In the second sentence, Lincoln the non-Christian claimed that "we" are "prone to forget" that all of those "healthful skies" come from "the ever watchful providence of Almighty God." Speak for yourself, Abe!

This is followed by another howler, claiming that "peace has been preserved with all nations." He apparently forgot about the Confederate States of America that he was waging total war against.

It gets worse (and funnier). The next thing he says is that "order has been maintained." Stalin said the same thing about the Soviet Union. By that time Lincoln had imprisoned thousands of Northern political dissenters without due process since he illegally suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus. He had shut down hundreds of "unorderly" opposition newspapers, and deported poor old Congressman Clement Vallandigham of Dayton, Ohio, his most outspoken critic in Congress.

As Dean Sprague wrote in Freedom Under Lincoln (p. 299), under Lincoln’s "policy of oppression," the "entire judicial system was set aside" as "the laws were silent, indictments were not found, testimony was not taken, judges did not sit, juries were not impaneled, convictions were not obtained and sentences were not pronounced. The Anglo-Saxon concept of due process, perhaps the greatest political triumph of the ages and the best guardian of freedom, was abandoned."

Three months earlier there had been draft riots in New York City that one could hardly describe as "orderly." An eye witness to the riots was Colonel Arthur Fremantle of the British Army, who wrote the following about the New York City draft riots in his book, Three Months in the Southern States (p. 302):

The reports of outrages, hangings, and murder, were now most alarming, the terror and anxiety were universal. All shops were shut; all carriages and omnibuses had ceased running. No colored man or woman was visible or safe in the streets or even in his own dwelling. Telegraphs were cut, and railroad tracks torn up.

Lincolnian "order" was restored when Abe sent 15,000 troops to New York from the just-concluded Battle of Gettysburg. The troops fired indiscriminately into the draft protesters, killing hundreds, more likely thousands, of them according to Iver Bernstein, author of The New York City Draft Riots. (This scene was portrayed in the movie Gangs of New York, where Bernstein worked as an historical consultant to director Martin Scorcese).

But let’s not let historical facts get in our way. Let’s follow the neocon lead and swoon and weep and get chills up our legs over Abe’s Big Lie that "harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict."

The notion that there was "harmony" and "unity" in the Northern states during the war is one of the most outrageous lies in American history. Historian Ella Lonn described how Lincoln created "harmony" within the U.S. Army in the face of massive desertions by literally hundreds of thousands of Northern men in her book, Desertion During the Civil War. Draftees "were held like veritable prisoners" and Lincoln’s government "had no compunctions about shooting or hanging deserters," wrote Lonn. The murder of deserters achieved Nazi-like efficiency: "A gallows and shooting ground were provided in each corps and scarcely a Friday passed during the winter of 1863–64 that some wretched deserter did not suffer the death penalty in the Army of the Potomac. . . . The death penalty was so unsparingly used that executions were almost daily occurrences. . ." The "method of execution" was "generally shooting but hanging seems to have been used occasionally."

The Thanksgiving speech gets even worse. The very next uttering of Abe’s is that "the laws have been respected and obeyed." Well, not by Abraham Lincoln, certainly. Even his own attorney general, Robert Bates, stated that his suspension of Habeas Corpus was illegal and unconstitutional, as was the suppression of free speech throughout the North. West Virginia was illegally carved out of Virginia to form a new slave state as part of the union. And where in the Constitution is the president permitted to order soldiers to imprison and deport an opposition member of Congress without any due process? Or rig national elections and imprison duly-elected members of the Maryland state assembly without due process? Doesn’t the Constitution require presidents to see to it that the states have republican forms of government?

Indeed, Lincoln’s invasion of the Southern states was the very definition of treason under the U.S. Constitution. Article 3, Section 3 proclaims that: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort" (emphasis added). Treason under the U.S. Constitution consists "only" in waging war against "them," namely, the free, independent and sovereign states, plural. Lincoln redefined treason to mean any criticism by anyone of him or his administration. In fact, he even said that a man who stands by and says nothing while the war was being discussed was guilty of "treason."

Lincoln also violated international law and his own military code by intentionally waging war on American civilians for four years, killing more than 50,000 of them according to historian Jeffrey Rogers Hummel. Even pro-Sherman biographer Lee Kennett wrote in his book, Marching Through Georgia (p. 286), that "had the Confederates somehow won, had their victory put them in position to bring their chief opponents before some sort of tribunal, they would have found themselves justified (as victors generally do) in stringing up President Lincoln and the entire Union high command for violation of the laws of war, specifically for waging war against noncombatants."

All the "great things" that had happened since he became president, said Abe, were "the gracious gifts of the Most High God . . ." Therefore, he said, "we" should celebrate as "the whole American People" to give thanks to God with a national holiday. This was another very large contradiction: Lincoln never admitted that secession was legal, therefore, he always considered Southerners to be a part of "the whole American people" for political purposes. It is doubtful that a single Southerner, in 1863, would have heeded Abe’s advice and given thanks for all that he had done for them.

Lincoln concluded his Thanksgiving propaganda speech with more religious lingo, thanking the Lord for "the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility," and, get this – Union. The Union – always spelled with a capital "U" – was not just a practical political arrangement created by the founding generation mostly for foreign policy purposes, as Thomas Jefferson said it was. It was supposedly divine, the work of God. Lincoln the non-Christian knew this for sure. It’s what created The Divine Right of Lincoln, similar to The Divine Right of Kings during the Middle Ages.

This deification of the state echoed the words of the fanatical New England Unitarian preacher Henry W. Bellows, who worked in the Lincoln administration as its Sanitary Commissioner and whose son, Russell, was Robert Todd Lincoln’s Harvard classmate and best friend. (Lincoln’s son Robert spent the war years "fighting" for good grades at Harvard). Bellows authored a creepy, totalitarian-sounding book in 1863 entitled Unconditional Loyalty which declared that "the state is indeed divine, as being the great incarnation of a nation’s rights, privileges, honor and life" itself." Moreover, "the first and most sacred duty of loyal citizens" was "to rally round the president – without question or dispute."

In his new book, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and Slavery (p. 265), Lincoln cultist Eric Foner informs us that "it is not surprising that Lincoln seemed to share this outlook." This "outlook" would have caused George Washington to reach for his sword and lead another Revolution against another despotic and dictatorial regime.

November 30, 2010

Thomas J. DiLorenzo is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and the author of The Real Lincoln; Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed To Know about Dishonest Abe and How Capitalism Saved America. His latest book is Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution – And What It Means for America Today.


Copyright © 2010 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Cleveland, Tennessee - as Strategic as Richmond to Abraham, Lincoln

“To take and hold the railroad at or east of Cleveland, in East Tennessee, I think  fully as important as the taking and holding of Richmond."
Abraham Lincoln, June 30, 1862, in a letter to Major General Halleck 

Bradley County Confederate Monument, Cleveland, Tennessee

When I was a kid growing up in Cleveland, Tennessee, we lived on Eighth Street, and this monument is in a small island where Eighth crosses Broad and Ocoee - the main streets that lead through downtown.  I passed this spot literally thousands of times.  On each of those occasions I was - and still am - proud of the great Southern heritage which the monument represents.

The inscription on the west side of this monument reads:

ERECTED BY THE,

JEFFERSON DAVIS CHAPTER

UNITED DAUGHTERS

OF THE CONFEDERACY,

1910

The inscription on the east side reads:

"MAN WAS NOT BORN

TO HIMSELF ALONE

BUT TO HIS COUNTRY."

In front of the monument are the words:

TO OUR KNOWN

 AND UNKNOWN

CONFEDERATE DEAD.

I remember pausing to read these words often, even as early as when I was in the first grade, walking past "The Monument" on my way to and from school.

Some historians are quick to point out that a majority of the residents of Cleveland voted against secession and therefore it was a Union town. However, that was before Abraham Lincoln, in his micro-management of the War to Prevent Southern Independence, specifically targeted Cleveland. He placed a high priority upon capturing and controlling the railroad in this strategic town because occupying Cleveland would enable Yankee troops to control supply lines to the looming battle in Chattanooga in November of 1863.

Cleveland was occupied by Lincoln's invading hordes much of the time during the War Between the States and the people of the area suffered severely as a consequence. During so called "Reconstruction" they suffered even more. If a slight majority of the people of Cleveland were pro-Union before the atrocities of the War, they were heavily pro-Confederate afterwards. A remembrance of the war can still be found at Cleveland's First Presbyterian Church which was badly damaged during the War.  Musket balls are still embedded in the steeple. This church, as many in the South, was attended by both black and white worshippers before the Northern invasion.  Segregation was exacerbated for 100 years in the South as a result of the North's extreme punitive abuses during Reconstruction.

During the war, the Union army made its base at the site of Fort Hill Cemetery, overlooking downtown Cleveland, a place I loved exploring as a young man.  A few Union graves can be found in the cemetery, but the most intriguing monument of all is the simple headstone in the cemetery which marks the spot where 270 unknown Confederate soldiers are buried.

Headstone for 270 Unknown Confederate Soldiers - Fort Hill Cemetery, Cleveland, Tennessee

Story and Photos by J. Stephen Conn

History Quiz: American Presidents

By Dr. Clyde Wilson
Distinguished Professor of History (ret.) 
University of South Carolina,

• What American President launched a massive invasion of another country that posed no threat, and without a declaration of war?

•  What President raised a huge army at his own will without the approval of Congress?
• What President started a war of choice in violation of every principle of Christian just war teaching?
• What President said that he had to violate the Constitution in order to save it?
• What President declared the elected legislatures of thirteen States to be "combinations" of criminals that he had to suppress?
•  What President said he was indifferent to slavery but would use any force necessary to collect taxes?
•  
• What President sent combat troops from the battlefield to bombard and occupy New York City?
• What President sent the Army to arrest in the middle of the night thousands of private citizens for expressing their opinions? And held them incommunicado in military prisons with total denial of due process of law? And had his soldiers destroy newspaper plants?
•  
• What President was the first ruler in the civilized world to make medicine a contraband of war?
•  
• What President signed for his cronies special licenses to purchase valuable cotton from an enemy country even though he had forbidden such trade and punished other people for the same practice?
• What President refused medical care and food to his own soldiers held by the enemy country?
•  
• What President presided over the bombardment and house-by-house destruction of cities and towns that were undefended and not military targets?
•  
• What President’s forces deliberately targeted women and children and destroyed their housing, food supply, and private belongings?
•  
• What President’s occupying forces engaged in imprisonment, torture, and execution of civilians and seizing them as hostages?
• Under what President did the Army have the largest number of criminals, mercenaries, and foreigners?
• Who was the first American President to plot the assassination of an opposing head of state?
•  
• Who had the least affiliation with Christianity of any American President and blamed God for starting the war over which he presided?
•  
• What President voted for and praised a law which forbade black people from settling in his State?
• What President said that all black people should be expelled from the United States because they could never be full-fledged citizens?
•  
• What President was the first to force citizens to accept as legal money pieces of paper unbacked by gold or silver?
•  
• Who was the first President to institute an income tax?
•  
• Who was the first President to pile up a national debt too vast to be paid off in a generation?
•  
• Who is considered almost universally as the greatest American President, indeed as the greatest American of all times and as a world hero of democracy?
•  
• What predecessor is President Obama most often compared to?

Hint:  The answer to every question above is the same.  His photo is below:

 Source:  http://www.lewrockwell.com/wilson/wilson31.1.html

The Mount Rushmore Myth

Mt. Rushmore Photo by J. Stephen Conn

By Brion McClanahan

Two million people travel annually to South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore. The imposing sculptures of Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln have become a symbol of the American spirit. The artist in charge of the project, Gutzon Borglum, intended his work to be a summary of the first 150 years of American history, but the choice of figures has helped create a lasting problem in American history: who owns the founding tradition? Borglum has led many Americans to believe that Lincoln and Roosevelt constitute the bridge between the founding generation and the modern era. While there were certainly times Lincoln and Roosevelt could rhetorically sound like the Founders, their actions do not mesh with the principles of that generation. Lincoln and Roosevelt helped create a "new" United States, perverted the founding documents and ruined the founding principles of limited government and state sovereignty.

The true expositors of the founding tradition are not the sectional president, Lincoln, or the first progressive president, Roosevelt; they are two Unionists who are often classified as Southern extremists: John C. Calhoun of South Carolina and John Randolph of Roanoke, Virginia. These men were on the cusp of the founding generation. Calhoun was born in 1782 and Randolph in 1773. They were too young to participate in first events of the early republic but knew many of the participants. Most importantly, they understood what the founding generation meant by "union."

The Founders forged a union based on the consent of the States – a compact among them – for their benefit through defense and commerce. They recognized sectional differences and knew that these differences should be respected. Thus, many in this generation, Northerners and Southerners alike, cautiously guarded the interests of their communities through the sovereignty of the states. As long as the benefits and burdens of the union were distributed equally, they suffered and prospered together. Such had been the case in the War for Independence. No one conceived that one section or one faction should have the right to plunder the other. Madison insisted in Federalist No. 10 that the Constitution was written to protect against such infractions. Early American documents are littered with statements in defense of a mutually beneficial union. All that ceased in the following two generations.

In an 1833 speech, Calhoun made the following observation:

"In the same spirit, we are told that the Union must be preserved, without regard to the means. And how is it proposed to preserve the Union? By force! Does any man in his senses believe that this beautiful structure – this harmonious aggregate of States, produced by the join consent of all – can be preserved by force? Its very introduction will be certain destruction of this Federal Union. No, no. You cannot keep the States united in their constitutional and federal bonds by force. Force may, indeed, hold the parts together, but such union would be the bond between master and slave: a union of exaction on one side, and of unqualified obedience on the other."

Such is what Lincoln accomplished through the War Between the States. The South was forced to remain "loyal" under the yoke of the federal government. He preserved the "union," but not the union of the Founders. It was a union of Lincoln’s and the Republican Party’s creation.

Randolph, in similar fashion, lectured Northern secessionists during the War of 1812 for their stand against the good of the whole. He reminded them that the South had stood shoulder to shoulder with the North during the Revolution and that Virginia had sacrificed far more for the good of the Union by ceding her western lands to the central government than any Northern state in the history of the confederation. Each section suffered due to British hostility, and though Randolph personally opposed the war and foreign alliances, he believed secession during a time of war damaged the prospects of opposition. New England had its chance to secede in 1807 following the Embargo Act, a time of peace, but 1814 was a different story. He said, "Our Constitution is an affair of compromise between the States, and this is the master-key which unlocks all its difficulties."

Randolph was the consistent defender of state sovereignty throughout his career, and he clung to the union of the "good old thirteen states." Likewise, Calhoun insisted that state’s rights was the traditional policy of the founding generation. He called Jefferson "the true and faithful expositor of the relation between the States and General Government," and labeled the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 "the rock of our political salvation" in a letter to the citizens of Philadelphia. Only through a firm reliance on state’s rights could the government be brought "back…to where it was, when it commenced."

It must be noted that Randolph did not trust Calhoun, and he considered nullification a foolish doctrine (he preferred secession, and did not see how a state could remain in the Union after it nullified a federal law), but when Andrew Jackson as president threatened to use force to coerce South Carolina during the Nullification Controversy of 1832, Randolph said he would strap his "dying body" to his horse "Radical" and enter the field of battle rather than see a sovereign state threatened by the bayonet.

From the 1880 through the 1908 presidential election, there was consistently a clear divide between the North and South. The South voted one way, the North another. Both sections implicitly recognized that the Union was dominated by the North, and no election showcased this more clearly than Roosevelt’s victory over Alton Parker in the 1904 election. Roosevelt was not a "national" candidate; he was a sectional one with sectional support. He was not the heir of the Founding Fathers and the founding principles of limited government, state’s rights, neutrality, and peaceful trade. He was a bully, an imperialist, and a man who used executive power in a way the founding generation consistently warned against.

Why does this matter? Because Americans are still burdened by factional government and the tyranny of elected despots. We now witness a rural/urban conflict along with a North/South split. Half the population can take from the other half and Americans feel helpless in wake of the political onslaught of "progressivism." But there is hope. Americans still have power in their state and local communities. The states are still sovereign, and Americans have more control over their state and local representatives than those in congress or the executive branch. If Americans recognize that the Union must burden and benefit all equally, as the founding generation, Calhoun, and Randolph emphasized, than there is still hope to salvage the founding principles of the United States. Otherwise, the Founding Fathers will continue to be eliminated from our historical consciousness or will be perverted by progressives such as Barack Obama who invoke their name but know nothing of the founding principles. Mount Rushmore should be split between Jefferson and Roosevelt. That way, Americans could see the canyon – not the bridge – between them.

Brion McClanahan received his Ph.D. in American History from the University of South Carolina and is a History Professor at Chattahoochee Valley Community College in Phenix City, Alabama. He is the author of Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers (Regnery, 2009).



Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com. 

Did Lincoln Save the Union?

By Bill Miller

Many debates on secession eventually get around to someone arguing that secession would “destroy the Union.” It is likely this idea came from the one most famous for declaring such—Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln claimed he had taken an oath to preserve the government, and of all the reasons Lincoln offered for rejecting the right of States to withdraw from the Union, he was steadfast in his frequently stated objective of “saving the Union.” In his inaugural address of 1861, he said:

"You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to “preserve, protect, and defend it."

On the surface, this sounded both reasonable and true, and still today many assume, without the slightest bit of skepticism, that indeed there was a threat to the viability of the Union. But the Union was not in any danger of being destroyed, and the solemn oath Lincoln swore to uphold was “to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution,” NOT the government.

Regardless of his confusion, intentional or otherwise, on his duty to the Constitution, the central issue was if, due to the withdrawal of those initial seven States, the Union was teetering on dissolution. One method of determining if such destruction was imminent is to compare the Union as constituted in 1788—a Union our Founders believed was viable—with the Union on the day Lincoln assumed office in 1861.

In 1788, a lawful and bona fide Union was established when New Hampshire became the ninth State to ratify the Constitution. At the time of Lincoln’s inaugurated in 1861, this Union had grown to 27 States, and that was AFTER those initial seven States had withdrawn. Using this gauge, the Union Lincoln claimed was being destroyed and needed “saving” had three times the number of States than when it was founded

In addition, on the day of Lincoln’s inauguration, the Union was approximately eight times as large based on population and almost six times as large based on area. So, whether it was the number of States, the population, or the size of its territory, the Union Lincoln inherited in 1861, was much larger and more robust than the Union of 1788—not exactly what you might call a Union on the verge of dissolution, and certainly not one in need of being “saved.”

Given the significant growth of the Union during its first seventy plus years, it is unreasonable to assume that a relatively small contraction of its growth posed any real threat. Could it then be that the potential threats to the Union were instead functional in nature—threats such as anarchy, military invasion, geographic fragmentation, or economic disaster? The problem with this theory however, is that none of these threats were evident when Lincoln assumed office, and there was no likely scenario for any such cataclysmic “Union destroying” developments.

When Lincoln assumed office on March 4, 1861, both the United States and the Confederate States were functioning normally and without any insoluble problems. While Lincoln claimed, for legal reasons supporting his planned invasion, that the seceding States were in rebellion, there was no anarchy or rebellion. In addition, there was no threat whatsoever of an invasion by the Confederate States, the territory of the new Confederate States did not create any geographical barrier between any of the remaining United States, and the economies of both confederations were relatively healthy.

Simply stated, the Confederate States posed no threat of any kind, either physically or functionally, to the United States, and since Lincoln never identified the threats he believed would lead to the dissolution of the Union, we can only assume it was nothing more than typical Lincoln rhetoric. The only other possibility was some hidden agenda (e.g. profit considerations of Northern businesses), but such speculation is not germane to this analysis.

The irony of the situation is that Lincoln’s response to a few States choosing to leave was akin to a U.S. Air Force Major’s statement about a town in Vietnam, when he said, “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”

When Lincoln called upon the remaining States to supply troops for a possible invasion of the Confederacy, four States reacted to his unconstitutional actions by also leaving the Union. Then, his invasion and the subsequent four years of a bloody war resulted in an enormous loss of life and resources on both sides—not exactly a saving of anything.

It’s hard to imagine any more damage to the Union than was done by Lincoln’s war, but his precedent setting assumption of dictatorial, and clearly unconstitutional, powers could just possibly have been even more devastating. While Madison is acknowledged as the father of the Constitution, Lincoln is surely the father of the intrusive all-powerful central government we have today. Unfortunately, instead of Lincoln’s straw man of “saving the Union,” it is reasonable to assume that while maintaining the geographic components of the Union, Lincoln’s actions ended up destroying the Constitutional Union he had sworn to preserve and protect.

Republished with permission from http://secessionuniversity.com/
© 2010, Secession University

Remembering Lincoln the Racist

This striking monument to Stephen A. Douglas (left) and Abraham Lincoln (right) is the centerpiece of Washington Square in downtown Ottawa, Illinois. It marks the site of the first of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates which was held here on August 21, 1858.

Between late August and mid-October, 1858, Lincoln and Douglas traveled together around the state of Illinois to confront each other in seven historic debates. Douglas, a Democrat, was the incumbent United States Senator; Lincoln, a Republican, was his challenger. Here in Ottawa, before a crowd of 10,000 citizens, Douglas accused Lincoln of being a secret abolitionist, a charge which Lincoln soundly denied by declaring:

"I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."

When pressed further Lincoln continued:

"I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is physical difference between the two which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position."

A few weeks later, before a crowd of 15,000 in Charleston, Illinois Lincoln re-emphasized his anti-negro stance:

"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; 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."

He continued:

"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."

Lincoln failed in his bid for the Senate seat, but just two years later he was nominated to run for President of the Untied States in the newly formed northern Republican party. In a pre-nomination speech, delivered at Cooper Union in New York City on February 27, 1860, Lincoln said that slavery was "an evil not be extended, but to be tolerated and protected." In his prepared text he emphasized, "This is all Republicans ask -- all Republicans desire -- in relation to slavery," He went on to state that any emancipation should be gradual and carried out in conjunction with a program of scheduled deportation, sending the negroes back to Africa.

During the campaign Lincoln vowed to increase already high tariffs that put an extremely unfair tax burden on the South for the benefit of the North. He did not carry a single southern state and garnered only 39% of the popular vote nationwide. However, in a four way race, Lincoln became the president through the electoral collage.

Upon Lincoln's election, the southern states began to exercise their Constitutional right to seceed from the Union - one which defended the institution of slavery but unfairly taxed the South, which held only about 30% of the votes in congress. The former Vice-President John C. Calhoun put it this way:

"The North had adopted a system of revenue and disbursements in which an undue proportion of the burden of taxation has been imposed upon the South, and an undue proportion of its proceeds appropriated to the North… the South, as the great exporting portion of the Union, has in reality paid vastly more than her due proportion of the revenue."

Upon taking office, while still promising to defend slavery, Lincoln called for an army to invade the peaceful South in order to collect his tariffs, under the guise of preserving the Union.

Observers in Europe saw through the rhetoric of "preserve the Union" and recognized what was really at stake. Charles Dickens observed:

"Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this, as of many other evils. The quarrel between the North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel."

Karl Marx quoted newspaper accounts from Great Britain which agreed:

"The war between the North and the South is a tariff war. The war is further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery, and in fact turns on the Northern lust for sovereignty."

A friend recently said to me that in spite of Lincoln's many faults and even his atrocities against the South, he should be credited with saving the Union. Really? In truth, Abraham Lincoln did more to destroy the United States - and the Constitution that holds it together - than any other person in history.

Story and photo by J. Stephen Conn

Solidifying the Cult of Lincoln, Penny Wise

By Brion McClanahan

In case you missed it (I did), Friday was Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. In honor of the Great Centralizer, the United States Mint unveiled a new design for the penny. This should put to rest all of the discussion about the elimination of the worthless copper-clad zinc cent, but the real emphasis should be on the new message the penny pushes on the American public: Lincoln "saved the Union" and State’s rights is a fallacy. Don’t forget it.

The face of the penny will remain unchanged, but the reverse will feature a shield with thirteen stripes and the phrase "E Pluribus Unum" emblazoned across the top. The Mint described the symbolism of the new penny as thus: "The new Lincoln "Preservation of the Union" penny is emblematic of President Lincoln’s "preservation of the United States of America as a single and united country." The 13 vertical stripes of the shield represent the states joined in one compact union to support the Federal government, represented by the horizontal bar above [emphasis added]." At the unveiling of the new penny in Springfield, IL, Mint Director Ed Moy said, "This one-cent coin honors the preservation of the union, which was Abraham Lincoln's ultimate achievement. Because of his presidency, despite bitter regional enmity and a horrific civil war, we remained the United States of America." This shield was widely used in the North during the War for Southern Independence as a propaganda piece. Nothing has changed. The penny will be in circulation for at least 50 years.

Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois pushed legislation to redesign the penny through Congress, and it is probably no coincidence that the new penny directly attacks the rejuvenated interest in State’s rights and Tenth Amendment issues across the United States. Notice that according to the Mint, the States are in the Union to support the "Federal" government and are a "single united country." That would be news to the founding generation. Outside of the ardent "nationalists" like Alexander Hamilton or James Wilson, very few believed that the States joined in a compact to "support the Federal government." In fact, the Constitution would not have been ratified had this been the case.

Even Lincoln’s contemporaries doubted his character and his decision to go to war to "preserve the Union." Few Americans realize that less than forty percent of the American public voted for Lincoln in 1860 and that he narrowly won re-election four years later (he trounced George McClellan in the Electoral College but received only fifty-five percent of the total Northern vote. Had the South voted, he would have lost). United States Senator James A. Bayard of Delaware called Lincoln an "ordinary Western man" who had no idea about "republican government." During a three-day speech in 1861, Bayard labeled Lincoln a tyrant and issued this warning:

"You may attempt by war to keep the States united – to restore the Union; but the attempt will be futile. Conciliation and concession may reunite us; war, never! The power may be exercised for the purpose of punishment and vengeance. It may be exercised if you propose to conquer the seceding States, and reduce the nation into a consolidated nation; but if your intention be to maintain the Government which your ancestors founded – that is, a common Government over separate, independent communities – war can never effect such an intention."

The other Senator from Delaware, Willard Saulsbury, remarked in 1863 that, "I firmly believe that the usurpation of arbitrary power upon the part of the Executive to arrest peaceful citizens in loyal States has done more to render that disunion of these States, which now is a fact, permanent and eternal, than anything else…." Representative Fernando Wood of New York opined that Lincoln had created permanent sectional animosity by waging war against the South, and more importantly, had destroyed the United States. "Graves in our valleys, sufferers in our hospitals, desolation at every hearthstone, distrust in our rulers, distrust in ourselves, bankruptcy, anarchy, and ruin – these are the triumphs won by your relentless policy."

This is just a scattering of the multitude of comments made in opposition to Lincoln and the War, and to these men, Lincoln did not preserve the United States; he forged a new centralized despotism, the antithesis of the Founders’ "united States." The Mint, the Congress, and Americans in general gloss over the fact that many Northerners resisted the Federal draft, believed Lincoln started the War and unnecessarily whipped the North into a bloodthirsty frenzy, and blamed Lincoln for the destruction of the Constitution. The new penny is another attempt to whitewash the historical record and dupe Americans into believing that Lincoln was the greatest president in American history and the savior of the republic. Those treasonous Southerners deserved the beating they received, and every American, North and South, rejoiced once the Union had been "preserved" and State’s rights crushed under the Federal heel. It seems the winds of decentralization have blown into Congress and the propaganda machine is revving up to meet this new challenge to their authority. The misnamed "Preservation of the Union" penny is the clearest example yet. Keep applying the pressure.

Brion McClanahan, Ph.D., is the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers and a history professor at Chattahoochee Valley Community College in Phenix City, Alabama.

This article is republished with permission from http://www.lewrockwell.com/.

Happy President's Day - Down with the Presidency!

By Lew Rockwell

There have been four huge surveys taken of historians’ views on the presidents: in 1948, in 1962, in 1970, and in 1983. Historians were asked to rank presidents as Great, Near Great, Average, Below Average, and Failure. In every case, number one is Lincoln, the mass murderer and military dictator who is the real father of the present nation. His term was a model of every despot’s dream: spending money without Congressional approval, declaring martial law, arbitrarily arresting thousands and holding them without trial, suppressing free speech and the free press, handing out lucrative war contracts to his cronies, raising taxes, inflating the currency, and killing hundreds of thousands for the crime of desiring self-government. These are just the sort of actions historians love....


What does greatness in the presidency mean? It means waging war, crushing liberties, imposing socialism, issuing dictates, browbeating and ignoring Congress, appointing despotic judges, expanding the domestic and global empire, and generally trying his best to be an all-round enemy of freedom. It means saying with Lincoln, "I have a right to take any measure which may best subdue the enemy."

The above is a small excerpt from a much longer, very thought provoking article by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.  See the full text here:  http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/down-presidency.html

Abraham Lincoln Destroyed George Washington's America

From The Barnes Review
http://www.barnesreview.org/

GEORGE WASHINGTON, WHILE FLAWED, AS IS ANY HUMAN BEING, was surely the best president the United States ever had. Abraham Lincoln may well have been the worst president—although there is no shortage of runners-up for the title, such as GeorgeW. Bush and Bill Clinton, and others. Lincoln certainly brought more destruction on the country than any other president. There is a myth that Lincoln fought his war against the Southern states to end slavery. He did not. That was an afterthought, in a bid to rally support in the Northern states (some of which themselves had slavery). He fought his vicious war supposedly to “preserve the union.” Having voluntarily joined the union, didn’t the states have the right to leave? Was it worth the cost in blood? Some say slavery wouldn’t have ended without the war, but that’s not true. Britain and many other countries stopped slavery without a war. In addition to the vast cost in human lives, Lincoln’s war completely changed the nature of the U.S. government—elevating the federal government’s importance in some decidedly unfortunate ways. Many other presidents were mediocre or tyrannically followed in Lincoln’s footprints. So why is Lincoln’s birth celebrated on George Washington’s birthday?


BY CHUCK BALDWIN

What began as an observance for President Washington but has since the 1980 smorphed into the generic “Presidents Day” (it will be Feb. 15 in 2010), a politically correct celebration of mediocrity that forces our nation’s greatest president to be lumped together with incompetents such as George W. Bush, Ulysses S. Grant, FDR and Woodrow Wilson.

On the occasion of Presidents Day, a USAToday/Gallup poll asked the American people to select the greatest president. The top five presidents, according to the poll, are (in order): Ronald Reagan (he was rated No. 1), John Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and George Washington.

Can you believe it? Washington was rated fifth. Fifth! With a vote total of only 9 percent, no less. Washington is positively the greatest American to ever live—bar none. It is no hyperbole to say that without Washington, there would be no United States of America. Washington almost single-handedly kept a struggling Continental Army (along with a fledgling nation, for that matter) together. Take away Washington, and there are no stories of Valley Forge, the crossing of the Delaware River, no Yorktown victory.

A lesser man would doubtless have succumbed to the call of many to institute a monarchy in America. A lesser man could not have delivered the greatest-of-all-presidential addresses that we find in his “Farewell Address. ”Washington’s Farewell Address became the guiding light and compass for American policy and philosophy for many generations. In fact, it is the abandonment of the principles of that address that is systematically destroying this country. Therefore, a return to the wisdom of that address would doubtless return our country to its former greatness.

There is only one “Father of His Country,” and it is Washington. Yet, in the minds of today’s Americans, Washington is inferior to the likes of FDR and JFK.

Furthermore, the Gallup survey concludes that both Democrats and Republicans (and conservatives and liberals) share special infatuation with Lincoln. I have witnessed the veracity of Gallup’s findings. Go to just about any private Christian school and one will find Lincoln idolized almost to the point of deification.

The same is also true in state schools, of course. Now, virtually everyone is saying that the election of Barack Obama is the fulfillment of Lincoln’s vision. They might be right. But just exactly what does that mean?

According to the current edition of Newsweek magazine, “We are all socialists now.” The article states, “The U.S. government has already—under a conservative Republican administration—effectively nationalized the banking and mortgage industries.” It continued, “Whether we want to admit it or not . .. the America of 2009 is moving toward a modern European state.”

Again quoting Newsweek: “The architect of this new era of big government? History has a sense of humor, for the man who laid the foundations for the world Obama now rules is George W. Bush, who moved to bail out the financial sector last autumn with $700 billion. Bush brought the ‘Age of Reagan’ to a close; now Obama has gone further, reversing Bill Clinton’s ‘End of Big Government’.”

Unfortunately, Newsweek is dead right. By the end of two George W. Bush terms and one Obama term, the United States will resemble socialist France far more than the independent nation envisioned—and created—by Washington. Yes, in a very real and practical sense, this really is Lincoln’s America. More than any other single person, Lincoln shaped and formed modern America.

It was Lincoln who was the first president to flagrantly and deliberately violate his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. His disregard and contempt for the Constitution cannot be overstated. In order to “preserve the union,” Lincoln destroyed the very principles upon which the union was created. His audacity is without equal. Of course, he was more than willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of America’s finest and best to destroy Thomas Jefferson’s declaration that the states of our union are “free and independent states.”

I invite all those Lincoln apologists out there to seriously answer this question: Does a husband who beats his wife have the right to force her (at the point of gun) to remain married to him? (Even the God of the Bible, Who cast marriage in the most sacred terms, recognizes the right of lawful separation.)

If you answer no, how can you continue to justify Lincoln’s actions? In a political and governmental sense, that is exactly what Lincoln did. Forced union, of any kind, is slavery. In the name of emancipating slaves, Lincoln enslaved an entire nation. It was Lincoln who, for all intents and purposes, destroyed federalism and limited government in America. In fact, on December 15, 1866, renowned British historian Lord Acton wrote a letter to Gen. Robert E. Lee. In the letter, Acton said, “I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.”

It was Lincoln who first established the nanny state, Big Government, Big Brother etc. Everything that Big-Government presidents such as Wilson, F.D. Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton, Bush I and Bush II and Barack Obama learned, they learned from Lincoln. That is why these men love to quote Lincoln so much. What is appalling is the manner in which the American people (including professed Christians) have allowed the “politically correct” propaganda machine to brainwash their reasoning. Conservatives and liberals, and Democrats and Republicans, now embrace Lincoln’s America. As Newsweek said,

“We are all socialists now.”

What could prove to be a very interesting and even promising note, however, is the fact that more than 20 states have recently proposed (or are in the process of drafting) resolutions advancing their individual state sovereignty. What do these states see coming? Do they see socialism’s twin sister, oppression, lurking around the corner? Are these states looking into the future and preparing to take a stand for freedom and independence? What an exciting prospect. Perhaps the great country that Washington birthed is not dead after all.

CHUCK BALDWIN is a nationally known pastor, radio broadcaster,  and writer from Pensacola, Florida.  He was the nominee for President of the United States by the Constitution Party 2008.

See more of Chuck's writings at www.chuckbaldwinlive.com.

See The Barnes Review article here:  http://www.barnesreview.org/html/july2009lead_124.html