So, where did this information come from about Lincoln?
Can it be reliably checked by me and where would I go to read this change in the history of what I know.
As opposed to what you think you know from 150 years of manipulation and disinformation. All of the facts are there, but they are well-hidden and it is on you, not Muir, to educate yourself about the truth.
I’m not exactly sure what you’re tryin to say, Lincoln was wrong for trying to preserve the Union? Being a history major, I know that Lincoln did some things there were against the Constitution but to be fair, Lincoln never had a chance to return things to normal when the war was completed. I’m willing to give the memory of Lincoln the benefit of doubt.
Considering that he was the first republican president (no others to use as the perfect example), I think it is 21st century conceit to call Lincoln a “rino”. He was what he was and it was a very different time. Imagine having to sneak into Washington for your own inauguration. This was a time when supreme court justices (Roger Taney), routinely wrote that anyone but a white man was inferior. Lincoln may not have been a shining example of a 21st century person but he was a leader of his time. Another thing of import, he accepted his likely death as the cost of the saving the union.
Don’t think of the 19th century as the same as the 21st century when we had democrat law makers trying to murder their opponents on the floor of the House.
April 25, 2023 at 4:37 pm
Henry
“Preserving the Union” by making war on those who voluntarily and peacefully left it is like “Preserving the Mafia” by doing the same.
You are correct. Apparently my reading comprehension is terrible. I was not aware that “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America, actually means “we, the people of half the country endow the President of the United States with virtually unlimited power to force a more permanent Union, suspend justice, insure domestic civil war, provide for a full offensive occupation of half the country, promote the welfare of the industrialized north and ignore this Constitution of the United States where it suits his needs.” My bad.
For starters, trying to have the entire SCOTUS arrested, maybe? Or possibly jailing opposition newspaper editors without charges being filed? Lincoln was the closest thing to a military dictator the country has ever seen. If he had not had the support of most of his generals, he might have been impeached, or at least failed to be elected to a second term.
Don’t forget deporting a Senator. Or the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation was entirely grandstanding, and didn’t actually free any slaves — it declared all slaves to be free only in those areas of the South not already under the control of the Union Army, territory over which Lincoln at the time had no authority.
Dishonest Abe didn’t give a rat’s ass about slaves (said so in his fundraiser letters), just used that as a hot-button ruse to keep the economic engines of the South (agriculture and trade) under his thumb.
The refusal to ‘justly’ solve situations due to some participants desire to continue their unjust power, control, income,and future benefits often results in war.
The US Civil War was such a situation. The results of justice and equality called for in the Declaration of Independence were demanded and expected to occur.
Looking at other areas sensible and usually expected solutions are rejected by those who created wars.
Ukraine is another such example.
I would say the Arab Spring was another created war. That war zone also resulted in another Islamic invasion of Europe and of Christian and Western culture areas by 20 to 30 plus million in asymmetrical armies. Numbers greater than any one army that invaded from that group intending to conquer / change the area to their own system as they have continually tried to achieve since the Seventh Century.
Who benefits.
The ‘big guy’ liked to benefit from his ten percent in some situations.
There was often more going on in history than is acceptable to teach in common schools. Agendas still exist.
Lincoln was a POS that destroyed the South under false pretenses, he also threw newspaper editors in jail that ( did tow the line ). I’m glad he took a bullet in the back of the head.
What’s the old joke about him and the 3 day drinking binge…. ( freed the ******* what )?
Between him and LBJ they have caused more damage to this country than you can ever imagine.
Lincoln: Completely disregarding entreaties from southern states to end the civil war and negotiate a peace, with even slavery on the table from some who knew that it was on its way out anyway. And from his own contemporaneous notes of the time that he was self-shackled to total war until total annihilation of the southern states. He was a monster & were he here today he’d be sending more “forever war” dollars to Ukraine right behind Graham.
He didn’t just declare martial law in friendly states in 1864 to jail editors; some of the political opponents went too. But one isn’t going to find the well-documented writings of Shelby Foote and others taught in the public schools. (To be fair, they’d have to negotiate the price of Foote by the pound.) In schools for the last 100 years, if the premise isn’t “slavery slavery slavery” then the text isn’t picked up to be used.
In today’s World Court, Lincoln, Sherman, and Grant would be “tried” and found guilty of War Crimes for deliberately and knowingly targeting helpless civilian non-actors (about all that was left by that time) and the widespread destruction during their rampages through the South
Don’t start nothing. Won’t be nothing. The south and it’s slavery was the cause of the Civil War and it was started by the south. if anyone doubts the war was over slavery, then read the Declaration of Secession written by the southern states. The British started slavery in the Nothern Hemisphere but the south had the change to end it with the Constitution.
Southerners want to whine about their freedoms but they were OWNING human beings. Don’t whine about your freedoms when you have a history of slavery.
Any dictator wants to do what they want. A freedom loving person will fight fot the other’s freedoms.
It is true that the Southern states seceded over slavery.
But the war was primarily about stopping the secession. Lincoln famously said shortly after taking office he’d agree to keep slavery going forever if it would keep the Southern states in the Union. They seceded anyway, not wanting to trust a politician who had barely won office.
By 1863, after the draft riots in New York City, Lincoln needed a new moral cause besides keeping the Union together. Northerners and Southerners had already been alienated over the issue (Northern workers feared competition from slave labor, Southerners worried about ending up like Haiti, which had had a successful slave revolt a few decades earlier.
So to keep the Northerners from withdrawing their support for the war, and to weaken the “Slave Power” which was a core of Southern politics, Lincoln declared the Emancipation Proclamation, limiting its scope to the states not then under Union control.
After the war was over, the now very dominant Republican Congress passed the 13th and 14th Amendments, making sure that the “Slave Power” could not be resurrected.
In my opinion slavery was (and still is) evil and a blight on our culture and the ending of legalized chattel slavery was the one good thing that came out of that war.
It really wasn’t until after World War II and the Nazi example of unalloyed racism that white people in the U.S. started caring about the plight of black people.
I hate to say it, but there was so little difference between “Honest Abe” and his opposite number Jefferson Davis (until 1860 the U.S. Secretary of War, ICYDK), that if the two had switched places the results would probably have been about the same.
Both wanted a single nation from the Rio Grande to the Great Lakes. Both wanted blacks to be a specific “thing”. (Davis ; slaves, Lincoln; citizens.)
Both passed up multiple chances for a settlement that didn’t involve war, starting even before Fort Sumter. On both sides, anybody who didn’t want war was called a traitor.
If Douglas had won the 1860 Presidential election, there might still have been war. He wanted to buy Southerners’ slaves for a fair market value. I don’t think most of the Southern gentry would have sold. Their economy was basically an agricultural “one trick pony” which would likely have collapsed if they’d had to actually pay the workers more than room and board. The fact that paid workers might have worked harder and made them more money was totally lost on them. They weren’t interested in improving their industrial base, in modern terms.
Lincoln’s single biggest mistake was Andrew Johnson. his “compromise” Democratic running mate in 1864 turned out to be a monkeywrench who delayed the Civil Rights Act for nearly a century. (The 1964 version was a slightly-rewritten text of the one Congress passed and Johnson vetoed in 1867.)
The war might have ended (abruptly) in late 1864 if McClellan had won the U.S. presidential election. And please note, Lee’s surrender at Appomattox did not end the actual fighting; it lasted until the fall and early winter of 1865 in the west, far south, and at sea.
The most evil SOB in the whole business? John Wilkes Booth, who killed Lincoln for sheer spite after repeatedly failing to kidnap or kill him for four years. Some call Booth a madman; IMPO, he was an a$$hole.
BTW, 17 of my ancestors fought in the Union Army, mostly infantry but a couple of artillerymen and one cavalryman. None in the CSA. I can still view the whole business with some equanimity, which a lot of people still can’t.
For a quick snapshot of Johnson the First, read https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/andrew-johnson/ , always remembering the source. He was facing the congressional Radical Republicans who wanted revenge upon the South. Johnson was a Democrat and vetoed their Bill…which was over-ridden.
The slave economy’s psychopathic overlords envisioned an empire that extended the “Mason Dixon” line west to the Pacific Ocean, invaded Central America, tried to purchase Cuba twice and invaded it, and saw the entire Caribbean as A 24/7 agricultural bonanza, and themselves as a world power.
In light of that scale of evil, I may have not regarded the Constitutional restrictions as sacrosanct, either.
Lincoln acted to preserve the country, not the government…
It was the pi heads left in place after his assassination who fu@#3d up the endgame.
Had JWB Missed like the rest of the conspirators, Reconstruction would have not given us the KKK and the current DNC/PLD air heads we have to bur-er,uh, deal with…
As one can see, the South still lives…but so does the North. My characters are of each faction. My job is to see it their way…and the other way.
Either way, it stirs strong reflection, which keeps the toon becoming oatmeal mush eventually. Not a ‘I’m just a cartoonist’ thing, it’s simply the way things still are here in America! That’s a good thing. Means we’re all invested in the idea of America still.
I am pro-Lincoln but even more I get suspicious of even myself for holding ideas too long and not re-examining them. If Lincoln was a dictator, let’s talk about it. Some new insights might emerge. I don’t agree with you but you gave my rocking chair a much needed shove. For that I am very grateful, Chris.
Lincoln got the same PR treatment awarded to YO’Bama:
Godhood endlessly conferred by the printed/re-printed word.
To help Lucius and Ed above with their wondering:
Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. Lincoln backed the Northern raping of the South to build the Erie Canal at the South’s expense.
He refused to negotiate with genuinely motivated Southern representatives who had serious and legitimate factual complaints.
He totally ignored the Constitutional rights of the individual (Southern) states.
He did all he could to make sure the Civil War happened.
He was totally merciless with the defeated South.
You hear of Andersonville. But not one in 500 know anything about Camp Hoffman where Confederate prisoners were left to die. Filth prevailed; wells became contaminated and men literally froze to death in tents. More than 4,000 men died out of 20,000.
Nor would one in 500 would even recognize the name of Camp Rathbun in Elmira, New York… also known as “America’s Auschwitz”. The mortality rate was one in four under unbelievably medieval conditions.
While we are at it, my family had soldiers on both sides.
For those that wonder (see: Lucius and Ed) I would recommend you put down your Reader’s Digest histories and DYODD for a real education of what went down… bearing in mind the victor gets to write the history.
Again for clarity: THE VICTOR WRITES THE HISTORY — for those who innocently or ignorantly accept it in pre-masticated form.
The Erie Canal? It was completed in 1825, when Lincoln was 16 years old. Please explain precisely how a kid out in Indiana had anything at all to do with the Erie Canal.
I think you might have a different canal in mind. the Erie Canal was completed in 1825, 3 decades before Lincoln was involved in politics.
Sadly, POW conditions were often horrendous on both sides, I’m not sure when POW camps improved, perhaps not until after WWI. Certainly the British camps during the Boer War were hell pits.
My ancestors who fought for the Confederacy were among the 97% of the population who didn’t own slaves. So why were they fighting if it was all about keeping the dying slave industry going? They were defending their smokey mountain homes against an invading army of federalists sent by industrialists and federal politicians increasing their hold over private citizens. History repeats.
I imagine similar things will be said 150 years after our second civil war.
While I am (not) on the subject, I am getting on in years (born in 1940) and I have to correct a “Lincoln-style” historical outright lie.
You can search all over the place for the famous quote from McAuliffe to the German Officer demanding the surrender of the surrounded GI’s at Bastogne.
Go ahead. Search everywhere. In ALL written histories today, you will find the answer:
“NUTS!”
A member of my family was standing not three feet from McAuliffe when he gave the real answer — the same answer that General Cambronne gave to Wellington when his 500 men, surrounded by cannons after the battle of Waterloo:
“Merde!”
This was 1944. No way could that get published in American mores at that time. (Clark Gable scandalized everyone with “Frankly lady, I don’t give a damn.”
So when the meeting result was typed up for dissemination to the Army and the US public, his answer was changed.
This USED to be common knowledge among military families.
The truth is lost. Except for here.
A challenge: Someone find corroboration for what used to be common knowledge but has been erased by “historical” records.
Orwell’s 1984, Lincoln’s 1864, and McAuliffe’s 1944 <– All are linked.
Maybe not today if his means and
methods set the tone going forward, but for a while at least, from 1864 onward, there would have been their United States and our Confederated States, two independent sovereign nations serving at the will and for the benefit of their own separate citizens…and I know which one would have flourished and thrived.
Much like will probably play out today if we can extricate ourselves from the disunited states to form and thrive in our own Constitutional States of America, the CSA.
I do not expect the Blues as dominated by their “cities” to survive much past their stolen stores of food and powder, but if the CSA is done “right”? “One Nation under God, WWGOWGA”.
You can give thanks to Lincoln and today’s democrats ( socialists/communists ) for today’s inner city problems.
There filled with highly uneducated rocket scientists out on parole, single mothers sucking on the government tit with 10 children and no real father in sight.
Drugs, murder and children unwilling to learn…..yet they blame everyone else for their problems.
I saw a line the other day that simply said…. ( we would have been better off hiring the Irish and Chinese to pick cotton ).
“Historians” just love to talk about the awful things the losers did, like making Andersonville out to be a deliberate attempt to kill POW. Truth was, none of the POW camps, north or south, were adequately equipped for the numbers received, and disease killed off a huge percentage of both POW and camp personnel.
“Historians” also fail to talk about Fort Delaware, which was the North’s equivalent of Andersonville in reputation. Nearly 3000 POW died there, out of around 12,500 total (25%) –Andersonville’s death toll was 28%. Various disease outbreaks also killed 109 Union soldiers and about 40 civilians at Fort Delaware. Not a healthy place to be atall atall; pretty much everyone incarcerated or stationed there suffered health problems afterward, mostly due to the fort’s location on Pea Patch Island in the middle of the Delaware River.
On the war itself: Hotheads on both sides refused to be patient and let technology continue to march, which would have ended slavery in the not too distant future because of simple economics. Nope, hotheads on both sides decided a war was just the thing to do.
We’re paying for that war to this day.
“Historians” today do not want us to read actual facts about that war, which is why I continue to maintain my hard copies of Shelby Foote’s voluminous historical tomes. Even though he was a southerner, he saw that war from both sides and left out nothing just because it might put one side or the other in a better or worse light. His is still the most objective history I’ve read of the entire war.
As for Lincoln, I will continue to look at him through the eyes of the 19th century. If that makes him look bad to folks today, tsk tsk.
“Historians” “Journalists” Liars of all stripes.
Read or listen to today’s words About President Trump and his accomplishments by the opposition. Read or listen to today’s words about President Biden by him or the opposition. Is there any truth? So we can argue about what happened 100 years ago, but consider the ‘truth’ of what happened between what my children “know” versus what I lived through.
It is Not the same.
Argue, disagree. But don’t go away offended or angry. Chis is totally right. We need to argue and disagree. The thing leading us to a civil war, is one side refusing to let the other side talk and express what they see. Also different levels of Justice.
According to my Confederate ancestors, they kicked butt for years, until they finally figured out the damyankees weren’t really after our women. Once they realized what they actually wanted after the “emancipation”, they sort of lost interest in the fight!
Well Gentlemen, is it time for coffee and cake, or will you require something stronger ?
History has been glossed over, edited and deleted since day one.
The difference between Truths and Facts is who lives it and who chronicles it.
Fact~ Everyone on this planet is descended from slaves.
Government Sanctioned Slavery is still happening here is these United States of America. Women and Children are being sold into Sex Slavery from both Borders and Oceans.
There is no nobility in extinction. It is unlikely anybody will remember you. If by some chance they do, they will misquote you and misspell your name.
My great grandmother was a young immigrant from England who married an older gentleman in Nashville in the 1870’s. His family’s farm in Greenbrier, just north of Nashville, was the site on a union army camp prior to the battle of Nashville. Their crops were harvested, their livestock were slaughtered, and the family was basically impoverished by their “liberators”. When the city was occupied, the man’s tobacco store was looted to the bare walls, leaving him without the means to make a living. Fort Negley was a union outpost built by the army and occupied by a detachment of soldiers during “reconstruction”. In the 1950’s my elderly, frail GGM would tell me about them roaming through town intimidating people, and foraging through people’s gardens and barnyards, using the bayonets on their rifles to skewer chickens, ducks, and small pigs to supplement their rations. Is there any wonder that the “Solid South” voted democrat for almost 100 years? “Reconstruction” did more to punish the Confederate states than the actual fighting ever did!
64 Comments
Wow. The truth will out. Bravo, bravo, bravo.
And a little dark hilarious truth is good for what ails us.
Way to freakin’ go, Chris Muir!
So, where did this information come from about Lincoln?
Can it be reliably checked by me and where would I go to read this change in the history of what I know.
From (actual) history.
As opposed to what you think you know from 150 years of manipulation and disinformation. All of the facts are there, but they are well-hidden and it is on you, not Muir, to educate yourself about the truth.
Out of curiosity, what, if placed in Lincoln’s position in March of 1861, would YOU have done?
I’ve never understood the bad rap people want to land on Lincoln.
To associate him with Biden is atrocious.
Bye.
Lincoln invaded a foreign country, and turned the united states into a single state.
The SCOTUS case to determine whether the secession of the confederate states was legal remains in limbo to this day.
Start here… then read practically any book that Thomas J. DiLorenzo has written.
Abraham Lincoln and the North … reconsidered.
Read the late great Dr. Walter Williams’ columns about the “Civil War” …
Historical Ignorance – http://walterewilliams.com/historical-ignorance/
Historical Ignorance II – http://walterewilliams.com/historical-ignorance-ii/
I’m not exactly sure what you’re tryin to say, Lincoln was wrong for trying to preserve the Union? Being a history major, I know that Lincoln did some things there were against the Constitution but to be fair, Lincoln never had a chance to return things to normal when the war was completed. I’m willing to give the memory of Lincoln the benefit of doubt.
The First Rino might well have been the murderous manipulator for whom the phrase “The end justifies the means” was originally written.
Considering that he was the first republican president (no others to use as the perfect example), I think it is 21st century conceit to call Lincoln a “rino”. He was what he was and it was a very different time. Imagine having to sneak into Washington for your own inauguration. This was a time when supreme court justices (Roger Taney), routinely wrote that anyone but a white man was inferior. Lincoln may not have been a shining example of a 21st century person but he was a leader of his time. Another thing of import, he accepted his likely death as the cost of the saving the union.
Don’t think of the 19th century as the same as the 21st century when we had democrat law makers trying to murder their opponents on the floor of the House.
“Preserving the Union” by making war on those who voluntarily and peacefully left it is like “Preserving the Mafia” by doing the same.
You are correct. Apparently my reading comprehension is terrible. I was not aware that “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America, actually means “we, the people of half the country endow the President of the United States with virtually unlimited power to force a more permanent Union, suspend justice, insure domestic civil war, provide for a full offensive occupation of half the country, promote the welfare of the industrialized north and ignore this Constitution of the United States where it suits his needs.” My bad.
For starters, trying to have the entire SCOTUS arrested, maybe? Or possibly jailing opposition newspaper editors without charges being filed? Lincoln was the closest thing to a military dictator the country has ever seen. If he had not had the support of most of his generals, he might have been impeached, or at least failed to be elected to a second term.
Don’t forget deporting a Senator. Or the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation was entirely grandstanding, and didn’t actually free any slaves — it declared all slaves to be free only in those areas of the South not already under the control of the Union Army, territory over which Lincoln at the time had no authority.
TL;DR version…
Dishonest Abe didn’t give a rat’s ass about slaves (said so in his fundraiser letters), just used that as a hot-button ruse to keep the economic engines of the South (agriculture and trade) under his thumb.
The refusal to ‘justly’ solve situations due to some participants desire to continue their unjust power, control, income,and future benefits often results in war.
The US Civil War was such a situation. The results of justice and equality called for in the Declaration of Independence were demanded and expected to occur.
Looking at other areas sensible and usually expected solutions are rejected by those who created wars.
Ukraine is another such example.
I would say the Arab Spring was another created war. That war zone also resulted in another Islamic invasion of Europe and of Christian and Western culture areas by 20 to 30 plus million in asymmetrical armies. Numbers greater than any one army that invaded from that group intending to conquer / change the area to their own system as they have continually tried to achieve since the Seventh Century.
Who benefits.
The ‘big guy’ liked to benefit from his ten percent in some situations.
There was often more going on in history than is acceptable to teach in common schools. Agendas still exist.
Lincoln was a POS that destroyed the South under false pretenses, he also threw newspaper editors in jail that ( did tow the line ). I’m glad he took a bullet in the back of the head.
What’s the old joke about him and the 3 day drinking binge…. ( freed the ******* what )?
Between him and LBJ they have caused more damage to this country than you can ever imagine.
Lincoln: Completely disregarding entreaties from southern states to end the civil war and negotiate a peace, with even slavery on the table from some who knew that it was on its way out anyway. And from his own contemporaneous notes of the time that he was self-shackled to total war until total annihilation of the southern states. He was a monster & were he here today he’d be sending more “forever war” dollars to Ukraine right behind Graham.
He didn’t just declare martial law in friendly states in 1864 to jail editors; some of the political opponents went too. But one isn’t going to find the well-documented writings of Shelby Foote and others taught in the public schools. (To be fair, they’d have to negotiate the price of Foote by the pound.) In schools for the last 100 years, if the premise isn’t “slavery slavery slavery” then the text isn’t picked up to be used.
In today’s World Court, Lincoln, Sherman, and Grant would be “tried” and found guilty of War Crimes for deliberately and knowingly targeting helpless civilian non-actors (about all that was left by that time) and the widespread destruction during their rampages through the South
Criminally funny and true. Ouch!
If memory serves, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus for the duration of the war.
Hi Chris,
Please remove my name as sponsor for the April 25, 2023 toon.
Thanks,
William Boyington
Don’t start nothing. Won’t be nothing. The south and it’s slavery was the cause of the Civil War and it was started by the south. if anyone doubts the war was over slavery, then read the Declaration of Secession written by the southern states. The British started slavery in the Nothern Hemisphere but the south had the change to end it with the Constitution.
Southerners want to whine about their freedoms but they were OWNING human beings. Don’t whine about your freedoms when you have a history of slavery.
Any dictator wants to do what they want. A freedom loving person will fight fot the other’s freedoms.
It is true that the Southern states seceded over slavery.
But the war was primarily about stopping the secession. Lincoln famously said shortly after taking office he’d agree to keep slavery going forever if it would keep the Southern states in the Union. They seceded anyway, not wanting to trust a politician who had barely won office.
By 1863, after the draft riots in New York City, Lincoln needed a new moral cause besides keeping the Union together. Northerners and Southerners had already been alienated over the issue (Northern workers feared competition from slave labor, Southerners worried about ending up like Haiti, which had had a successful slave revolt a few decades earlier.
So to keep the Northerners from withdrawing their support for the war, and to weaken the “Slave Power” which was a core of Southern politics, Lincoln declared the Emancipation Proclamation, limiting its scope to the states not then under Union control.
After the war was over, the now very dominant Republican Congress passed the 13th and 14th Amendments, making sure that the “Slave Power” could not be resurrected.
In my opinion slavery was (and still is) evil and a blight on our culture and the ending of legalized chattel slavery was the one good thing that came out of that war.
It really wasn’t until after World War II and the Nazi example of unalloyed racism that white people in the U.S. started caring about the plight of black people.
I hate to say it, but there was so little difference between “Honest Abe” and his opposite number Jefferson Davis (until 1860 the U.S. Secretary of War, ICYDK), that if the two had switched places the results would probably have been about the same.
Both wanted a single nation from the Rio Grande to the Great Lakes. Both wanted blacks to be a specific “thing”. (Davis ; slaves, Lincoln; citizens.)
Both passed up multiple chances for a settlement that didn’t involve war, starting even before Fort Sumter. On both sides, anybody who didn’t want war was called a traitor.
If Douglas had won the 1860 Presidential election, there might still have been war. He wanted to buy Southerners’ slaves for a fair market value. I don’t think most of the Southern gentry would have sold. Their economy was basically an agricultural “one trick pony” which would likely have collapsed if they’d had to actually pay the workers more than room and board. The fact that paid workers might have worked harder and made them more money was totally lost on them. They weren’t interested in improving their industrial base, in modern terms.
Lincoln’s single biggest mistake was Andrew Johnson. his “compromise” Democratic running mate in 1864 turned out to be a monkeywrench who delayed the Civil Rights Act for nearly a century. (The 1964 version was a slightly-rewritten text of the one Congress passed and Johnson vetoed in 1867.)
The war might have ended (abruptly) in late 1864 if McClellan had won the U.S. presidential election. And please note, Lee’s surrender at Appomattox did not end the actual fighting; it lasted until the fall and early winter of 1865 in the west, far south, and at sea.
The most evil SOB in the whole business? John Wilkes Booth, who killed Lincoln for sheer spite after repeatedly failing to kidnap or kill him for four years. Some call Booth a madman; IMPO, he was an a$$hole.
BTW, 17 of my ancestors fought in the Union Army, mostly infantry but a couple of artillerymen and one cavalryman. None in the CSA. I can still view the whole business with some equanimity, which a lot of people still can’t.
clear ether
eon
For a quick snapshot of Johnson the First, read https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/andrew-johnson/ , always remembering the source. He was facing the congressional Radical Republicans who wanted revenge upon the South. Johnson was a Democrat and vetoed their Bill…which was over-ridden.
The slave economy’s psychopathic overlords envisioned an empire that extended the “Mason Dixon” line west to the Pacific Ocean, invaded Central America, tried to purchase Cuba twice and invaded it, and saw the entire Caribbean as A 24/7 agricultural bonanza, and themselves as a world power.
In light of that scale of evil, I may have not regarded the Constitutional restrictions as sacrosanct, either.
Lincoln acted to preserve the country, not the government…
It was the pi heads left in place after his assassination who fu@#3d up the endgame.
Had JWB Missed like the rest of the conspirators, Reconstruction would have not given us the KKK and the current DNC/PLD air heads we have to bur-er,uh, deal with…
As one can see, the South still lives…but so does the North. My characters are of each faction. My job is to see it their way…and the other way.
Either way, it stirs strong reflection, which keeps the toon becoming oatmeal mush eventually. Not a ‘I’m just a cartoonist’ thing, it’s simply the way things still are here in America! That’s a good thing. Means we’re all invested in the idea of America still.
I am pro-Lincoln but even more I get suspicious of even myself for holding ideas too long and not re-examining them. If Lincoln was a dictator, let’s talk about it. Some new insights might emerge. I don’t agree with you but you gave my rocking chair a much needed shove. For that I am very grateful, Chris.
Well said, sir.
Lincoln got the same PR treatment awarded to YO’Bama:
Godhood endlessly conferred by the printed/re-printed word.
To help Lucius and Ed above with their wondering:
Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. Lincoln backed the Northern raping of the South to build the Erie Canal at the South’s expense.
He refused to negotiate with genuinely motivated Southern representatives who had serious and legitimate factual complaints.
He totally ignored the Constitutional rights of the individual (Southern) states.
He did all he could to make sure the Civil War happened.
He was totally merciless with the defeated South.
You hear of Andersonville. But not one in 500 know anything about Camp Hoffman where Confederate prisoners were left to die. Filth prevailed; wells became contaminated and men literally froze to death in tents. More than 4,000 men died out of 20,000.
Nor would one in 500 would even recognize the name of Camp Rathbun in Elmira, New York… also known as “America’s Auschwitz”. The mortality rate was one in four under unbelievably medieval conditions.
While we are at it, my family had soldiers on both sides.
For those that wonder (see: Lucius and Ed) I would recommend you put down your Reader’s Digest histories and DYODD for a real education of what went down… bearing in mind the victor gets to write the history.
Again for clarity: THE VICTOR WRITES THE HISTORY — for those who innocently or ignorantly accept it in pre-masticated form.
Another well-written post. Thank you also, sir
The Erie Canal? It was completed in 1825, when Lincoln was 16 years old. Please explain precisely how a kid out in Indiana had anything at all to do with the Erie Canal.
I think you might have a different canal in mind. the Erie Canal was completed in 1825, 3 decades before Lincoln was involved in politics.
Sadly, POW conditions were often horrendous on both sides, I’m not sure when POW camps improved, perhaps not until after WWI. Certainly the British camps during the Boer War were hell pits.
My ancestors who fought for the Confederacy were among the 97% of the population who didn’t own slaves. So why were they fighting if it was all about keeping the dying slave industry going? They were defending their smokey mountain homes against an invading army of federalists sent by industrialists and federal politicians increasing their hold over private citizens. History repeats.
I imagine similar things will be said 150 years after our second civil war.
While I am (not) on the subject, I am getting on in years (born in 1940) and I have to correct a “Lincoln-style” historical outright lie.
You can search all over the place for the famous quote from McAuliffe to the German Officer demanding the surrender of the surrounded GI’s at Bastogne.
Go ahead. Search everywhere. In ALL written histories today, you will find the answer:
“NUTS!”
A member of my family was standing not three feet from McAuliffe when he gave the real answer — the same answer that General Cambronne gave to Wellington when his 500 men, surrounded by cannons after the battle of Waterloo:
“Merde!”
This was 1944. No way could that get published in American mores at that time. (Clark Gable scandalized everyone with “Frankly lady, I don’t give a damn.”
So when the meeting result was typed up for dissemination to the Army and the US public, his answer was changed.
This USED to be common knowledge among military families.
The truth is lost. Except for here.
A challenge: Someone find corroboration for what used to be common knowledge but has been erased by “historical” records.
Orwell’s 1984, Lincoln’s 1864, and McAuliffe’s 1944 <– All are linked.
While we are linking…Brandon’s 2024.
“Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Barry Goldwater.
Do you sometimes wonder what would have happened if Barry G had won in ’64 instead of Lyin’ Landslide Lyndon?
There wouldn’t be a United States today if Lincoln had not been extreme and radical.
Maybe not today if his means and
methods set the tone going forward, but for a while at least, from 1864 onward, there would have been their United States and our Confederated States, two independent sovereign nations serving at the will and for the benefit of their own separate citizens…and I know which one would have flourished and thrived.
Much like will probably play out today if we can extricate ourselves from the disunited states to form and thrive in our own Constitutional States of America, the CSA.
I do not expect the Blues as dominated by their “cities” to survive much past their stolen stores of food and powder, but if the CSA is done “right”? “One Nation under God, WWGOWGA”.
Even today, the South refers to it as The War Of Northern Aggression. That is the result of the North’s heavy-handed treatment of the South.
If Lincoln hadn’t been extreme and radical there would still be USA but it wouldn’t have a bloody blot in the middle of its history.
Razorfist has a good piece on Lincoln.
It’s on You Tube.
Also available on Rumble as well.
You can give thanks to Lincoln and today’s democrats ( socialists/communists ) for today’s inner city problems.
There filled with highly uneducated rocket scientists out on parole, single mothers sucking on the government tit with 10 children and no real father in sight.
Drugs, murder and children unwilling to learn…..yet they blame everyone else for their problems.
I saw a line the other day that simply said…. ( we would have been better off hiring the Irish and Chinese to pick cotton ).
I got a chuckle when an acquaintance made a crack about “the most expensive surplus agricultural equipment in world history.”
“Obsolete farm equipment.”
“Historians” just love to talk about the awful things the losers did, like making Andersonville out to be a deliberate attempt to kill POW. Truth was, none of the POW camps, north or south, were adequately equipped for the numbers received, and disease killed off a huge percentage of both POW and camp personnel.
“Historians” also fail to talk about Fort Delaware, which was the North’s equivalent of Andersonville in reputation. Nearly 3000 POW died there, out of around 12,500 total (25%) –Andersonville’s death toll was 28%. Various disease outbreaks also killed 109 Union soldiers and about 40 civilians at Fort Delaware. Not a healthy place to be atall atall; pretty much everyone incarcerated or stationed there suffered health problems afterward, mostly due to the fort’s location on Pea Patch Island in the middle of the Delaware River.
On the war itself: Hotheads on both sides refused to be patient and let technology continue to march, which would have ended slavery in the not too distant future because of simple economics. Nope, hotheads on both sides decided a war was just the thing to do.
We’re paying for that war to this day.
“Historians” today do not want us to read actual facts about that war, which is why I continue to maintain my hard copies of Shelby Foote’s voluminous historical tomes. Even though he was a southerner, he saw that war from both sides and left out nothing just because it might put one side or the other in a better or worse light. His is still the most objective history I’ve read of the entire war.
As for Lincoln, I will continue to look at him through the eyes of the 19th century. If that makes him look bad to folks today, tsk tsk.
“Historians” “Journalists” Liars of all stripes.
Read or listen to today’s words About President Trump and his accomplishments by the opposition. Read or listen to today’s words about President Biden by him or the opposition. Is there any truth? So we can argue about what happened 100 years ago, but consider the ‘truth’ of what happened between what my children “know” versus what I lived through.
It is Not the same.
Argue, disagree. But don’t go away offended or angry. Chis is totally right. We need to argue and disagree. The thing leading us to a civil war, is one side refusing to let the other side talk and express what they see. Also different levels of Justice.
According to my Confederate ancestors, they kicked butt for years, until they finally figured out the damyankees weren’t really after our women. Once they realized what they actually wanted after the “emancipation”, they sort of lost interest in the fight!
Just FYI and IIRC, that little deringer spit out about 20-25 gram balls…
Must have really gotten upcloseandpersonal for that kind of penetration.
“History is something that never happened written by a man who wasn’t there.” ~ Anonymous
Anon nailed it.
Just say “NO!”
https://thenationalpulse.com/2023/04/25/shall-not-be-infringed-missouri-officials-refuse-to-cooperate-with-feds-on-gun-control/
Well Gentlemen, is it time for coffee and cake, or will you require something stronger ?
History has been glossed over, edited and deleted since day one.
The difference between Truths and Facts is who lives it and who chronicles it.
Fact~ Everyone on this planet is descended from slaves.
Government Sanctioned Slavery is still happening here is these United States of America. Women and Children are being sold into Sex Slavery from both Borders and Oceans.
More wisdom from Lady Pamela.
Winners write history.
The future belongs to those who show up.
There is no nobility in extinction. It is unlikely anybody will remember you. If by some chance they do, they will misquote you and misspell your name.
Good thoughts and some solid links to research material. Thanks all, for the discussions.
Apropos our definition of “history,”
Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit. -Edward R. Murrow, journalist (25 Apr 1908-1965)
My great grandmother was a young immigrant from England who married an older gentleman in Nashville in the 1870’s. His family’s farm in Greenbrier, just north of Nashville, was the site on a union army camp prior to the battle of Nashville. Their crops were harvested, their livestock were slaughtered, and the family was basically impoverished by their “liberators”. When the city was occupied, the man’s tobacco store was looted to the bare walls, leaving him without the means to make a living. Fort Negley was a union outpost built by the army and occupied by a detachment of soldiers during “reconstruction”. In the 1950’s my elderly, frail GGM would tell me about them roaming through town intimidating people, and foraging through people’s gardens and barnyards, using the bayonets on their rifles to skewer chickens, ducks, and small pigs to supplement their rations. Is there any wonder that the “Solid South” voted democrat for almost 100 years? “Reconstruction” did more to punish the Confederate states than the actual fighting ever did!
For giggles, compare the looting committed by the US National Guard in the Virgins during Hurricane Hugo.