Sunday, August 29, 2010
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Lincoln the Abolitionist
Fellow-Countrymen:
AT this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. 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. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
War of the Rebellion trivia
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Spare me...
****
How sad that when the general public looks to find out what “libertarian” means, so many of them will be directed to such ignorant and histrionic nonsense as the writings of Thomas DiLorenzo. - Timothy Sandefur, Positive Liberty
Even more sad are the deluded Lost Causers who quote DiLorenzo's nonsense as gospel. Nothing is quite as irritating as wannabe Rebs who pine for the once and future Great Secession and are armed with the voluminous nonsense penned following the American Civil War, and lately by hacks like DiLorenzo, that glorifies the late, unlamented Southron aristocracy.
In general, I find the folks at the Mises Institute to be astute champions of liberty. With such minor contact as I've made with some of them through events like the Acton University and reading their various blogs and papers, I've been more than impressed with the level of scholarship I've encountered. I'd love to discuss the ACW with Jeffrey Tucker over a beer - maybe at the next Acton University. Who knows?
Then there's DiLorenzo -
From the time of Jefferson Davis's The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government and Alexander Stephens's A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States, the anti-Lincoln columns have marched over and over the same tired ground. Edgar Lee Masters's Lincoln the Man, which DiLorenzo quotes approvingly, was a breathless compilation of every slander ever made against Lincoln. But if DiLorenzo's message is old hat, the incompetence of the messenger is surely unprecedented. The book is a compendium of misquotations, out-of-context quotations, and wrongly attributed quotations — one howler after another, yet none of it funny. - Thomas Kranawitter, Claremont Institute
I frequently encounter Lost Causers on the net - proof that I need to get out more often, I suppose. As you might have already gathered, I've encountered several over the past few days and my patience is wearing thin. At the risk of being uncharitable, and while I certainly don't intend to tar all unreconstructed Rebs with the same brush, I get the impression that there is a strong undercurrent of racism in many of the arguments for a return to the Glory Days of a Confederacy that never existed, except in the romantic delusions of disaffected good ol' boys.
I sympathize with the desire for a rebirth of true liberty in the United States, but with the secessionist fantasies of neo-Confederates, not so much. On the other hand, it's a break from the even more prevalent anti-Catholic silliness that seems to permeate the net. No wonder people have a hard time taking libertarians seriously. I am one, and even I get exasperated with 'em.
Labels: Civil War
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