Friday, February 13, 2015

The High Crimes and Misdemeanors Of Abraham Lincoln

 Lincoln Portrait
When I was sophomore at a Christian college in Texas back in the 70's, I went through some culture shock. Texas is, in some respects, a nation unto itself and it was most definitely a part of what was called the Confederacy back in the mid 19th century. What I learned while there was that wounds heal slowly and if those wounds are cultural, sometimes they just go on festering and itching and never completely heal.

I was an Iowa boy that grew up believing that Abraham Lincoln was the greatest American president in the history of the Republic with the possible exception of George Washington. I was taught this in school. It was reinforced by my family and there were monuments in Washington DC to prove it. So when this ground hog went to Texas and to college and he studied American history under the tutelage of Dr Smith (whose first name escapes me), he had to reassess his initial programming.

When we came to the history of what I thought was the American Civil War, me and my classmates were all quickly informed that it was not the civil war, but in fact it was the war between the states. Then for the next two days, we had to endure a lecture about the 16 impeachable offenses of Abraham Lincoln. My first thought was that Dr Smith was a revisionist and we were being treated to an alternate version of American Civil War history that was not written by the victors of said war. But as I listened (and tried to argue with without success), the crimes of Lincoln and the Union government of the north were revealed to me in convincing fashion. I felt like a light had been turned on in my brain.

The war between the states was a terrible thing and it had nothing to do with slavery. It had everything to do with the death of states rights and increasing the power of the federal government over them. In a very real sense, the good guys lost that war. It's true that slavery is a terrible thing, but the fact is that slavery was on its way out as an institution. The industrial revolution was under way throughout the western world and slaves were going to be replaced by factories and machines that did agricultural work. Slavery was doomed. This war was not about slavery. It was about consolidation of political power and economic power.

All of this came flooding back to me yesterday when I got to thinking about Lincoln (it was his birthday) and googled a few things. I found this article in the Southern Sentinel blog that details the whole issue. I thought I would share some of it here. Let me know what you think.

   
LINCOLN’S CRIMES
1. Lincoln waged a war that cost the lives of 620,000 Americans. Including the murder of 50,000 innocent Southern civilians.
2. He arrested several thousand Marylanders suspected of Southern sympathies, including 30 members of the State legislature, a US Congressman representing Maryland, the mayor and police commissioner of Baltimore, and most of the Baltimore city council. These political detainees were imprisoned in Fort McHenry and Point Lookout without trial, in many cases, for several years.
3. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus without the consent of Congress (as required by the Constitution).
4. He illegally shut down and confiscated the printing presses of dozens of newspapers that had spoken out against him.
5. He re-instated and summarily promoted an Army officer who had been court martialed and cashiered by the US Army for war crimes.
6. He even had an arrest warrant issued for the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court because said justice refused to back his illegal actions.
7. Chief Justice Roger B Taney ruled that Lincolns actions were illegal, criminal and unconstitutional.
8. He invaded the South without the consent of Congress as required by the Constitution.
9. He blockaded Southern ports without a delclaration of war, as required by the Constitution.
10. He imprisoned without trial, hundreds of newspaper editors and owners and censored all newspaper and telegraph communication.
11. He created two new states without the consent of the citizens of those states in order to artificially inflate the Republican Partys electoral vote.
12. He ordered Federal troops to interfere with Northern elections to assure his Parties victories.
13. He confiscated private property, including firearms, in violation of the Second Amendment; and effectively gutted the Tenth and Ninth Amendments as well.
14. He had his Generals attack US cities full of women and children and burn them to the ground.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Number 14 is particularly interesting to me. There were Iowans in the front lines of General Sherman's army when he put Atlanta to the torch. And when that army marched north to Columbia, it was an Iowan that tore the Confederate flag from the rooftop of the capitol. That flag is on display today in the capitol building in Des Moines. Is it any wonder that southerners still refer to that time as "the recent unpleasantness"? I doubt they will ever forget it. It is deeply burned in the southern conscience. 

 Image result for confederate flag