April 15, 1865: Lincoln's Death and its...

[sutherngent985]

Im a little hazy on my history but didnt the Emancipation Proclamation say the the slaves "in the states under rebellion" were freed or something along those lines? If that was the case, Lincoln didnt have the power to free the slaves as the states that were mentioned were not under federal authority or am I wrong in my thinking here?

 

[Huckleman2000]

Interestingly, today is also the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier. Many MLB players, including some whole teams, wore #42 today in his honor.

 

[Belegon]

Even if the South had won the war, they would have had to abolish slavery... their economy was too dependent on exports and the countries buying their cotton would have insisted.

It's never an "empty gesture" to do the right thing, though. Even if you do it for the wrong reasons. I'm glad the Emancipation Proclamation took place, even though it was in reality a political tool of limited real value outside of it's impact on the pysche of the nation(s?)

 

[Extreme Bohunk]

I used to have one of those collector Lincoln/ Kennedy pennies. It was a reguar penny, but had a smaller Kennedy head on it along with Abe. It came with a list of interesting similarities between the two. Things like 'Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse & hid in a theatre', while 'Booth shot Kennedy & hid in a warehouse.'
Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln & Lincoln has a secretary named Kennedy. They were both elected in a year that ended in zero, etc etc.
They ran out of steam near the end, some of the listings were like 'Neither guy liked getting shot in the head'. The one I found most interesting was that a month before he died, Lincoln was in Monroe Maryland and a month before he died, Kennedy was in Marylin Monroe.

 

[Sherry Hawk]

Even if the South had won the war, they would have had to abolish slavery... their economy was too dependent on exports and the countries buying their cotton would have insisted.

It's never an "empty gesture" to do the right thing, though. Even if you do it for the wrong reasons. I'm glad the Emancipation Proclamation took place, even though it was in reality a political tool of limited real value outside of it's impact on the pysche of the nation(s?)

I wasn't debating it's morality, Bel (I would hope you know me better than that), but illustrating to R.R. that the war wasn't just about slavery.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

True enough, but to state that the civil war was about slavery is about as far from reality as you can get, and it's a mistake that way too many people make.

eta: the end result was the same, whether it was "about" slavery or not....or at least the result is the same as far as slavery is concerned. But it's an oversimplication that too many believe, and it just isn't true to say that it was "about slavery."

The Civil War was about slavery.

If there had not been slavery in the southern states, there would not have been a Civil War.

Can anyone seriously doubt that?

(That's rather too substantive a point to be called a "quibble," yet somehow I suspect that when we get down to cases there wouldn't really be any disagreement. I just get a little irked at that particular formulation when it's hung out there all by itself like that.)

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

I like Jay Winik's book, "April, 1865."

I like the quote attributed to Lincoln when he toured Richmond, and an officer asked him how they should treat the Southerners: "I'd let 'em up easy."

Lincoln's Second Innaguraul was a saintly evocation of the spirit of reconciliation and healing. It's worth a read, at http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/presiden/inaug/lincoln2.htm

Better yet, visit the Lincoln Monument at night, and read it chiseled in stone up on the wall.

Here's the last paragraph:

"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."

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

R.R., you need to bone up on your history, big time. Not to mention your economics.

1) To do as you asked, buy all the slaves, the South would have to be willing to sell all the slaves, AND stop the slave trade. Otherwise, it would do no good. You sell the slaves, and then import more. The North would just have to keep buying them up.

The importation of slaves into the U.S. was banned in 1808. Actually, all the states had passed laws banning it by 10 years previously.

Slavery was deeply embedded in the culture and economy of the southern states. However, it still would have been unlikely to have survived much past 1865 for a variety of reasons, including the growing industrial revolution, the conscience of populations outside the south with whom it had to trade, and much more.

If Americans had known in 1861 what the cost would be in blood and treasure, it seems to me that they would have found a way. Ah, well - the same could be said about many events in history. If the western democracies had stood up to Hitler when he re-entered the Rhineland in 1935 . . . If Johnson had known in the summer of 1965 . . . If Bush had known in April of 2003 . . .

 

[R. Richard]

Slavery was deeply embedded in the culture and economy of the southern states. However, it still would have been unlikely to have survived much past 1865 for a variety of reasons, including the growing industrial revolution, the conscience of populations outside the south with whom it had to trade, and much more.

There were several underlying problems with the slaves in the South.

First, the slaves usually could not read of write and had few skills outside of field hand. [Yes, there were house slaves who were trained to serve and also to do things such as play the piano, but they were very much in the minority.] If the slaves had been freed, what would they have done and where? [People in the South were actually concerned about the slaves. People in the North generally just wanted the slaves freed, with no concern about what would happen to the freed slaves.]

Second, the people in the South worried about Negro slaves marrying Caucasians. It was a major fear and led to all kinds of trouble after the slaves were actually freed.

Thirdly, the slaves represented real wealth. A prime field hand hand was worth $750 in the mid 1800s. A plantation owner with 100 slaves had maybe $75,000 tied up in slaves. The sum of $75,000 was an enormous amount of money back then.

Perhaps an example will show what was though of the slaves. Cotton was hauled on wagons down to 'the river.' Usually, the river had cut deep into the land and flumes were used to slide the cotton bales down to the docks. Slaves drove the wagins and oushed the bales down the flumes. However, free men, usually Iriash, handled the bales at the bottom. Sometimes the bales would drop of tumble and a man at the bottom could break a leg. Slaves were too valuable to risk a broken leg. The Irish, on the other hand, were free men desperate for work.

The interaction of slaves and Caucasian southerers was a very complex thein with a lot of overtones that are not obvious from a distance.

 

[Weird Harold]

If there had not been slavery in the southern states, there would not have been a Civil War.

Can anyone seriously doubt that?

Yes, I seriously doubt the accuracy of that statement.

In fact, I believe that if slavery were the only, or even the primary, issue, in antebelum politics, there would not have been a civil war.

It's nearly impossible to separate out the abolitionist influence on the issues that did lead to secession and open warfare, but slavery did not become an overt issue until a couple of years into the war.

If the South's economy had depended on paid field labor, the economic and states rights issues might well have led to secession and warfare a decade sooner -- they wouldn't have had the economic margin to tolerate the tariffs and economic bullying of the North for as long as they did.

 

[Sherry Hawk]

Yes, I seriously doubt the accuracy of that statement.

In fact, I believe that if slavery were the only, or even the primary, issue, in antebelum politics, there would not have been a civil war.

It's nearly impossible to separate out the abolitionist influence on the issues that did lead to secession and open warfare, but slavery did not become an overt issue until a couple of years into the war.

If the South's economy had depended on paid field labor, the economic and states rights issues might well have led to secession and warfare a decade sooner -- they wouldn't have had the economic margin to tolerate the tariffs and economic bullying of the North for as long as they did.

Exactly. Thank you, Harold.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Yes, I seriously doubt the accuracy of that statement.

In fact, I believe that if slavery were the only, or even the primary, issue, in antebelum politics, there would not have been a civil war.

It's nearly impossible to separate out the abolitionist influence on the issues that did lead to secession and open warfare, but slavery did not become an overt issue until a couple of years into the war.

If the South's economy had depended on paid field labor, the economic and states rights issues might well have led to secession and warfare a decade sooner -- they wouldn't have had the economic margin to tolerate the tariffs and economic bullying of the North for as long as they did.

I'm sorry, but I just think that is nonsense. It was slavery that generated the passion that fueled the underlying moral, economic, cultural and social conflicts to a level that generated a war. Without that passion you might get a Whiskey Rebellion-level event, maybe a step or two up from that even, but you would not have gotten a ruinous four-year bloodbath.

 

[Sherry Hawk]

I'm sorry, but I just think that is nonsense. It was slavery that generated the passion that fueled the underlying moral, economic, cultural and social conflicts to a level that generated a war. Without that passion you might get a Whiskey Rebellion-level event, maybe a step or two up from that even, but you would not have gotten a ruinous four-year bloodbath.

You can think it's nonsense all you want, Roxanne, but it's true.

I'll be glad to look up sources for you tomorrow, but I'm trying that sleep thing again here in a moment.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

You can think it's nonsense all you want, Roxanne, but it's true.

I'll be glad to look up sources for you tomorrow, but I'm trying that sleep thing again here in a moment.

I gotta go beddie-bye too, but - go ahead and look up sources, but they won't speak to the human factor, the passion to which I refer. I think that for this war in particular that was such a critical aspect, and those cold "materialist" explanations make no place for it.

 

[Weird Harold]

...go ahead and look up sources, but they won't speak to the human factor, the passion to which I refer. I think that for this war in particular that was such a critical aspect, and those cold "materialist" explanations make no place for it.

Dry academic sources don't tend to illustrate the passion very well, but many of the "materialistic" explanations for the civil war are very similar to the "materialistic" reasons for the American Revolutionary War.

Well researched Historical Fiction, like the North and South Trilogy by John Jakes, put those dry academic sources in a human context. Well researched documentaries, which make extensive use of personal letters to give a human context to historical events, also demonstrate the "passion" behind events leading up to secession and open warfare.

Virtually every source that goes beyond the dry list of events and dates to the human element shows that the people involved were more passionate about things other than slavery at the beginning of hostilities.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of their existing government, they can exercise their Constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."

"It has long been a grave question whether any government not too strong for the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to endure in great emergencies."

"Bad promises are better broken than kept."- Abraham Lincoln

Not exactly the words of a dunce or a tyrant at heart.

 

[Sherry Hawk]

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of their existing government, they can exercise their Constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."

"It has long been a grave question whether any government not too strong for the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to endure in great emergencies."

"Bad promises are better broken than kept."- Abraham Lincoln

Not exactly the words of a dunce or a tyrant at heart.

I never said he was stupid, but as to the other, do some more research, Sev.

He also authorized the largest mass hanging in this country: 39 Santee Sioux...all at once - Dec. 16, 1862. The gallows constructed is still intact, and in a museum.

In 1851 the Santee Sioux Indians in Minnesota sold twenty-four million acres of land to the federal government for $1.4 million. By August of 1862 thousands of white settlers continued to pour into the Indian lands even though none of the money had been paid to the Santee Sioux. There was a crop failure that year, and the Indians were starving. The Lincoln administration refused to pay them the money they were owed, breaking yet another Indian treaty, and the starving Sioux revolted.

It all started over four young men, not even out of their teens, stealing a couple of chicken eggs, because they were starving to death.

Lincoln put one of his favorite generals, General John Pope, in charge of federal forces in Minnesota. Pope announced that "It is my purpose to utterly exterminate the Sioux . . . . They are to be treated as maniacs or wild beasts, and by no means as people with whom treaties or compromise can be made."

The Santee Sioux were overwhelmed by the federal army by October of 1862, at which time General Pope held hundreds of Indian men, women, and children who were considered to be prisoners of war. The men were all herded into forts where military "trials" were held, each of which lasted about ten minutes according to David A. Nichols in Lincoln and the Indians. They were all found guilty of murder and sentenced to death even though the lack of hard evidence was manifest and they were not given any semblance of a proper defense.

Minnesota political authorities wanted the federal army to immediately execute all 303 of the condemned men. Lincoln, however, was concerned that such a mass execution of so many men who had so obviously been railroaded would be looked upon in a bad light by the European powers who, at the time, were threatening to support the Confederate cause in the War for Southern Independence.(not concerned about how many families he would decimate, but instead, that he might "look bad.") His compromise was to pare the list of condemned down to 39, with a promise to the Minnesota political establishment that the federal army would eventually kill or remove every last Indian from the state. As a sweetener to the deal Lincoln also offered Minnesota $2 million in federal funds.

So, the Sioux never got the money that was owed to them, but the State of Minnesota was paid $2 million to exterminate them instead.

Not a tyrant?

Tell me again what a "great man" Lincoln was.

 

[oggbashan]

Book of condolence

I used to have an official book of condolence that contained all the messages sent to the US through its embassies and consulates around the world, and messages from various parts of the US.

The majority of the messages expressed shock, regretted the loss to the US and expressed their sympathy. The variety of places and organisations that considered it essential to write was amazing.

There were very few such messages from within any of the recently defeated Confederate States and most of those were from organisations that appear, from their titles, to have had little sympathy with the Confederacy. There were even fewer from Native American groups.

It would have been interesting to know how many of the messages were not for Lincoln the man, but for Lincoln the President and the representative of the US. Many of the messages from the UK appeared to regret the man, and regret that he would not be able to lead the divided US to a peaceful reconciliation. Apparently, UK people felt that he could have healed if given the chance.

I sold the book to a US citizen.

Og

 

[Sherry Hawk]

It would have been interesting to know how many of the messages were not for Lincoln the man, but for Lincoln the President and the representative of the US.

Indeed.

It's a sore point with me, obviously, but people that praise the "great man" Lincoln often don't know the entire story.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Dry academic sources don't tend to illustrate the passion very well, but many of the "materialistic" explanations for the civil war are very similar to the "materialistic" reasons for the American Revolutionary War.

Well researched Historical Fiction, like the North and South Trilogy by John Jakes, put those dry academic sources in a human context. Well researched documentaries, which make extensive use of personal letters to give a human context to historical events, also demonstrate the "passion" behind events leading up to secession and open warfare.

Virtually every source that goes beyond the dry list of events and dates to the human element shows that the people involved were more passionate about things other than slavery at the beginning of hostilities.

Sure they were passionate about other things; people are passionate about all kinds of things. But the really big thing in the ante-bellum U.S. was the existance of slavery in the southern states. All those other material and political factors are one or two orders of magnitude less powerful than dominating reality, and in most cases revolve around it. Therefore, all of those other factors must be looked at, and only make sense, in the light of that reality. Failure to do so inevitably results in erroneous conclusions.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Some points. It is true that the Lincoln Administration was a bit hostile to Native Americans (only he called them something else at the time). There is no question that he was, besides a man with vision, also a man with prejudices that limited such vision. He did have racist views, enough though he opposed slavery. That wasn't unique. Sherman and many others were the same way. He even considered a ploy to send the freed slaves to Central America (as if the locals would welcome a flood of refugees from the American South).

It is a very sad fact of history that the "better angels of our nature" as he put it, didn't always win out in his own head and heart. General Pope was sent there to Minnesota in disgrace, after losing at Second Bull Run to General Robert E. Lee. It was an exile for him, and he never forgave Lincoln for it. That probably made him even worse than he might have been, but Lincoln definitely didn't (at least publically) condemn his atrocities. He might well have even approved. This is a man who lived on the frontier in his youth, and probably had the usual, negative views of the Native Americans holding lands that he and his fellow frontiersmen craved or had already taken for themselves.

Bear in mind that this is also the same man who signed the Morrill Act, the first federal law against Mormon polygamy. He had other biases, too, it would appear. Tack on syphillis as a plausible factor, and that might explain such things better, but I doubt that it excuses it at all. Admittedly, what he did to the Native Americans was far worse than what he did to the Mormons (though we can't be sure what he might have done had he lived longer). I am not blind to Lincoln's war crimes. He had no qualms about Sherman's March to the Sea or the human consequences of the blockade.

If you look at the record of the man who waged and prosecuted an undeclared and unprecedented war against 11 secesesionist states, you will no doubt find many deep personal vices and despicable acts. You will also find a willingness to let the South off easier and to pardon deserting or sleeping soldiers at times. This is also a man who loved his wife and children (questions of fidelity aside) very much.

He was in some ways ahead of his times (opposition to slavery, support for the idea of the USA as a single nation rather than a simple union of states, and the Land Grant bill, for example). In other ways, however (anti-Native, anti-Mormon, and white supremacist views) he was still a man of his times.

He was definitely not a plaster saint, by any means. He was a mixed bag of virtues and vices: a man of the 19th Century, a politician, a man who waged a civil war for the express purpose of keeping 11 states from leaving the Union, a man with deep empathy for the common, working man, a racist, a loving father and husband, a man with ambigious religious beliefs that he perhaps deliberately never clarified (being politically inexpedient to do so), a man rumored to be a closet homosexual or bisexual, a man whose marriage was deeply flawed in some ways (though it didn't seem to stop him from being caring toward his wife and family), and also a man who actually used his lower-class background for votes, while secretly resenting any private mention of it to him.

He was a man who defended criminals and alleged criminals in court, who relied heavily on connections and political spoils to get government jobs when the Whigs were in office, who widely practiced cronyism and nepotism while in office, but who also had the courage to oppose the Mexican War while in Congress because he thought it was an aggressive war waged to expand slavery. He stood firmly for the Monroe Doctrine in defense of Mexico's right to self-determination, but also had dissidents at home jailed without trials because it was inexpedient to let them loose during a civil war, exiled one Congressman to Canada for his anti-war views, deposed a duly elected governor in one state and allowed a duly elected legislature in his home state to be suppressed.

He spoke of freedom and expanded it for some, but repressed it for others. Ex parte Milligan was a legal precedent created by the Supreme Court because of one of the Lincoln Administration's wartime acts. It is highly unlikely that he would have done so in peacetime. It is also quite true that he did such things and justified them in the name of saving the Union.

So, yes, Sherry, you have some very good points about Lincoln. It doesn't take away the good, but it is fair and in the spirit of a free forum (not to mention the deliberately open question that I raised on the anniversary of his assassination) to note the evil as well.

What is it that Shakespeare wrote, "The evil men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones." It is fair enough to say that to a large extent, the tendency in most textbooks has been to make the opposite true by glossing over the dark side of Lincoln. It is also fair enough to say that the evil doesn't negate the better side of him, either.

 

[Sherry Hawk]

I never said he was evil, Sev, but he wasn't what so many want to make of him.

As for me, I have no respect for the man, and get rather disgusted at the accounts in history books that are taught as fact.

He was as bloodthirsty as any other human, no better.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

I never said he was evil, Sev, but he wasn't what so many want to make of him.

As for me, I have no respect for the man, and get rather disgusted at the accounts in history books that are taught as fact.

He was as bloodthirsty as any other human, no better.

The history books definitely reflect a certain bias where he is concerned. What I call a blind spot. Instead of letting inconvenient facts get in the way of a legend or myth, they idolize some people. Not just Lincoln, but Woodrow Wilson and FDR. The not so great things about them are left out. Same with Andrew Jackson, but you are already aware of his dark side. It's far too prominent in the history of Native Americans, I am sure.

To me, a balanced and accurate view of history requires not only the bare facts, but all of the facts, both flattering and less than flattering. And a more profound, philosophical look involves what some might call idle speculation, but I disagree. Such is this thread. I wanted to raise the issue of what this country would be like today if Lincoln had survived. That can not be accurately weighed or considered without looking at the more disturbing facts about the man in question.

It is like those speak of Woodrow Wilson and fail to consider his ties to segregationists and acceptance of Jim Crow in the South. Sure, he did some good, but his greatness has been much exaggerated as a President. Or those who ignore the poor civil rights record of LBJ before 1964- something on which Goldwater took him to task as a hypocrite after certain people accused Goldwater of being pro-segregationist.

Truman, on the other hand. One has to admire and respect Harry Truman, politics aside. He ended Jim Crow in the military more than a decade before it ended in civil society. Say what you want about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but Truman has been one of the most underrated Presidents in history, if you ask me.

Mind you, there are more issues than segregation, but that is a clear case of where certain famous and idolized Presidents fell short of living up to their reputations. Not all of the historical "bad guys", like Nixon, were always so bad. Take his leadership on the environment, just for example. It wasn't Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, or Clinton who created the EPA. It was Nixon, working with a Democratic Congress in a rare, worthy case of bipartisanship.

 

[Sherry Hawk]

I think we tend, as a country, to try to make our presidents into something more than human...or at least have our history treat them that way.

For too long, the history that is taught in schools is sanitized; made palatable to everyone. Most of what I know of history wasn't taught to me in any school, although I received a good, solid grounding in it due to one remarkable professor in college. That was luck of the draw, though.

What really amazes me, I suppose, is programs on stations like A&E, or Discovery, or even the History Channel that teach that same sanitized history, when normally those stations are much better at telling the truth than others. I can remember watching one show about the Battle of Little Bighorn, and at the end, they eulogized Custer as if he had been some tragic hero, instead of the not-so-bright and cowardly women and children killer that he was in reality (as an aside, that was what he was known as to the natives: Womankiller).

It's not just that, though. Our society as a whole treats these people as if they were larger than life; somehow more perfect than the rest of the human race, and their lives exempt from examination.

I would love to be around in 200 years just to see what the history books will say about GW. I guarantee it won't be the truth.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Knew that Custer was an SOB, but I didn't know about his name there. But I agree about a disappointing tendency to whitewash history. It's as if we are supposed to ignore things like MacArthur putting down the Bonus March, just because he led our forces to victory in the Pacific. Both are true. The former is to his debit, the latter to his credit.

Or little details like Butler treating the women of New Orleans as if they were prostitutes, simply because they were hostile to his occupation. It's also true that he took in escaped slaves during the war (though he mainly did so to have cheap labor, not for any principled reason).

Frederick Douglass was a great escaped slave and abolitionist. He was also very suspicious of woman suffrage. Susan B. Anthony and the other suffragettes were notoriously unsympathetic to the lack of the franchise for freed slaves in the South. They were also notoriously involved in the Temperance Movement, which was infamous for anti-Irish sentiments as part of its motivation. Woodrow Wilson was reluctant to back the franchise for women or African-Americans.

No historical figure or movement was simon-pure. Much of the labor movement in its early days was distinctly racist toward African-Americans and Chinese immigrants. A bit of concern for historical veracity at the expense of public perceptions is hardly going to be the Apocalypse.

As for Bush or the others, it is hard to say. Most likely, there will be his apologists, people who will justify everything he did because of al Quaeda and the crimes of Saddam Hussein.