Lincoln

[REDWAVE]

OK, history buffs, here's your chance to talk about what I consider the quintessential American political figure: Abraham Lincoln. Talk about what made him great, talk about why you think he was a scurrilous scumbag, etc. Any and all points of view are welcome.

I'll start it off by noting he was a man of many contradictions-- apparent contradictions, at least. He was known as "Honest Abe," yet he was also a very shrewd, wily politician, a master at manipulating other people. He was a man of peace, yet he presided over one of the bloodiest wars in our nation's history. He became known as the "Great Emancipator," yet he also suspended the writ of habeas corpus, and it can be argued that his famous "Emancipation Proclamation" was merely a cynical political ploy which actually freed no one at the time. His beard and craggy features would be a distinct drawback today: he was not at all photogenic and certainly would not be telegenic. Most of all, whatever you think of him, he seemed to have a strong sense of personal integrity-- something lacking in the current occupant of the Oval Office or for that matter, from Washington, D. C. generally in recent years.

 

[70/30]

I like Lincoln. Thomas Jefferson

 

[Vinny]

George Bush rules

 

[Lasz]

yeah I hate Lincoln that fucker was too damn tall! I hate tall people!

 

[REDWAVE]

lol Laz

"Short people got no reason to live"-- Randy Newman

 

[70/30]

had 200 slaves completely clear off Monticiello's mountaintop so his masterpiece could be admired from afar. He gave too many people too many excuses, he claimed principles but left the biggest one on the shelf. At least Washington's retirement plan included an emancipated Ohio Valley. One would only wish he lived to be over 90 instead of the worthle

 

[REDWAVE]

Trivia question

Who was the ONLY member of Congress to vote against the Mexican-American War?

 

[LovetoGiveRoses]

The Gettysburg Address was a masterful speech. It's very stirring.

 

[REDWAVE]

The Gettysburg Address

It's also quite short:

"Four score and seven years ago, our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.


But in a larger sense we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled, here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

 

[A Desert Rose]

Re: Trivia question

Who was the ONLY member of Congress to vote against the Mexican-American War?

Would that be Lincoln, Alex?

 

[REDWAVE]

Yes!

Please be sure to phrase your answer in the form of a question. Very good, Rosie! Yes, it was Lincoln. Highly ironic that he later ended up presiding over the Civil War. You win the door prize, Rose. But you'll have to come over to my place to collect it . . .

 

[Spinaroonie]

Abe Lincoln invented breakdancing.

 

[A Desert Rose]

Re: Yes!

Please be sure to phrase your answer in the form of a question. Very good, Rosie! Yes, it was Lincoln. Highly ironic that he later ended up presiding over the Civil war. You win the door prize, Rose. But you'll have to come over to my place to collect it . . .

What a wit you are.....LOL

 

[70/30]

It's funny how history repeats. The Libertarian Party supports GWB and supported Reagan without pause. They think they understand Thomas Jefferson, I guess in part they do.

 

[Lost Cause]

Lincoln..........The Conspiracy...

A LINCOLN Continental was the car Kennedy was in at Dallas.
President LINCOLN'S secretary was named Kennedy.
President Kennedy's secretary was named LINCOLN.
For "Freeing" the slaves, LINCOLN is the only presidental image facing to the rear on the cheapest, colored coin, the penny!


www.scvcamp469-nbf.com

 

[REDWAVE]

God Damn the Confederacy!

Ugh, Confederate flags-- icky!

 

[Lost Cause]

A life like ours...

From log cabin to White House, from poverty to the presidency, Lincoln faced many obstacles, political and private, but overcame them by faith and the determination to never give up.

Lincoln has long been remembered for his endurance in the face of adversity. President Roosevelt once said that Lincoln's life "preeminently and distinctly embod[ied] all that is most American in the American character ... not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life."

Consider the numerous political and personal challenges he confronted:

ran for the legislature in Illinois and was defeated
entered business with a partner, and when it failed was left with debts that he spent the next 17 years paying off
fell in love with a young lady, became engaged to her, and then she died
proposed marriage to another young lady and was turned down
ran for Congress and was defeated
attempted to get an appointment to the U.S. Land Office but failed
became a candidate for the U.S. Senate but was defeated
became a candidate for the vice presidency and was defeated
defeated by Douglas
suffered the loss of two young sons -- Eddie, 3, and Willie, 12. Willie's death caused severe emotional devastation upon the Lincolns, a loss from which Mrs. Lincoln was said never to have recovered.
throughout his life was employed in numerous job positions, including: railsplitter, boatman, manual laborer, store clerk, soldier, store owner, election clerk, postmaster, surveyor, state legislator, lawyer, Congressman, and President of the United States


What was his secret?
"I have been driven many times to my knees," Lincoln said, "by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day."

Lincoln's humility may have led him to feel "insufficient" in wisdom but his words have been penned and reprinted over the span of several generations.

Following are some quotes from this man who rose to become the 16th President of the United States.

On Education: "The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next." Abraham Lincoln.

On Government: "This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

On Humor: "With the fearful strain that is on me night and day," Lincoln once sid, "if I did not laugh I should die."

On Law: "The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly."

On Morality: "The only assurance of our nation's safety is to lay our foundation in morality and religion.

On Motherhood: "All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother."

On Parenting: "It is my pleasure that my children are free, happy and unrestrained by parental tyranny. Love is the chain whereby to bind a child to its parents."

On People: "You may deceive all the people part of the time, and part of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time."

On Political Office: "If ever this free people, if this government itself is ever utterly demoralized, it will come from this incessant human wriggle and struggle for office, which is but a way to live without work."

On Prayer: "I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day."

On Religion: "I do not think I could myself be brought to support a man for office whom I new to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion."

On Right: "Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us to the end, dare to do our duty, as we understand it."

On Scripture: "Take all this book upon reason that you can, and the balance on faith."
"I believe the Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man. All the good from the Savior (Jesus) of the world is communicated to us through this book."

On War: "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 bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every 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 judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'"

 

[REDWAVE]

Good C&P

Good post, Lost Cause, although it's obviously C&P. There's a couple of typos you might want to fix. Here's another trivia question: As I mentioned earlier, Lincoln was in Congress when the Mexican-American War began. He was a one-term Congressman, being defeated the next election. That was the ONLY elective office he ever held before becoming President. He had a very unusual political career, to say the least. When he was in Congress, the Republican Party did not even exist yet. What party did Lincoln belong to when he was in Congress?

 

[mbb308]

Re: Good C&P

Good post, Lost Cause, although it's obviously C&P. There's a couple of typos you might want to fix. Here's another trivia question: As I mentioned earlier, Lincoln was in Congress when the Mexican-American War began. He was a one-term Congressman, being defeated the next election. That was the ONLY elective office he ever held before becoming President. He had a very unusual political career, to say the least. When he was in Congress, the Republican Party did not even exist yet. What party did Lincoln belong to when he was in Congress?

A Whig, I would suppose.

 

[REDWAVE]

Ding! Ding! Ding!

A winner! Yes, it was the Whig Party. For extra credit, tell us a little something about the Whig Party.

 

[mbb308]

Re: Ding! Ding! Ding!

A winner! Yes, it was the Whig Party. For extra credit, tell us a little something about the Whig Party.

Maybe Zach Taylor was a Whig. It shit the bed about 1854 or so, I think.

 

[REDWAVE]

The Whig Party

From the Encyclopedia Americana:


WHIG PARTY

Whig Party, hwìg pär'te, a POLITICAL PARTY in the United States during the second quarter of the 19th century, formed to oppose president Andrew JACKSON and the DEMOCRATIC PARTY. The term Whig came into common use in 1834, and persisted until the disintegration of the party after the presidential ELECTION of 1856. The anti-Jackson groups drew upon the political history of two revolutions, the American and 17th century English, for their name. In both cases the opposition to the king had called themselves Whigs. Now it was "King Andrew" Jackson who was the alleged tyrant.

The Whigs' direct political antecedents were the National Republicans, the administration party during John Quincy ADAMS' presidency (1825-1829). They advocated a nationalistic economic policy (the "American System"), but were stymied by the rising power of the Jacksonians, who were thereafter called Democrats. Jackson's inauguration in 1829 began the period of National Republican opposition and prepared the ground for the coalition of political forces which formed the Whig Party. Henry Clay of Kentucky, and Daniel Webster of Massachusetts became the party's leading figures. Webster was more of a nationalist than Clay, as he demonstrated in his famed Reply to Hayne of South Carolina (Jan. 26-27, 1830). But both men urged a program of tariff protection, federally sponsored communication projects (internal improvements), continuation of the national bank, and a conservative public land sales policy--the "American System," much of which could be traced back to Alexander Hamilton's Federalist economic policy of 1791. This was a program with especially strong appeal to merchants and manufacturers whose business operations went beyond state lines. Clay made the president's veto of a bill to recharter the second Bank of the United States the key issue of the election of 8132, but Jackson easily won reelection.

State sovereignty, not economic nationalism, was the idea which brought a significant addition to the ranks of those opposing Jackson. John C. CALHOUN of South Carolina broke his alliance with Jackson when he realized that he would not be the next Democratic president, and the split widened during South Carolina's attempt of nullification of federal tariff laws. Jackson reacted sternly to this defiance, giving Clay an opportunity to introduce a compromise tariff bill in February 1833. Calhoun approved the compromise and for several years acted in uneasy association with other anti-Jacksonians. Another source of recruits was the Anti-Masonic Party, particularly strong in New York and Pennsylvania. The stated purpose of this strange phenomenon in American history was to combat the supposed threat of Masonic power over judicial and political institutions. It also provided younger politicians with a convenient means for advancement. Among those Anti-Masons who became important Whig leaders were William H. Seward and Thurlow Weed of New York, and Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania. With the addition of two more groups, antinullification states' rights Southerners and the so-called Democratic Conservatives, who opposed their party's financial policies after 1836, the Whig coalition was complete, but hardly united.

Hard times following the panic of 1837 and the popularity of their candidate, Gen. William Henry HARRISON, brought the Whigs victory in 1840 over
Jackson's successor, Martin VAN BUREN. The new Whig managers stole a turn from the Democrats by outdoing them in raucous electioneering during the "Log Cabin" campaign--the most tumultuous presidential campaign the nation had yet seen. (This was the formula for the only other Whig victory, that of Gen. Zachary TAYLOR in 1848). Harrison's death on April 4, 1841 (one month after assuming office), was especially disastrous
for the party. John TYLER, a Virginia states' rights former Democrat, replaced him and vetoed a succession of key Whig tariff and banking bills.
The frustrated Whigs read their president out of the party, but the last pre-Civil War opportunity for passage of a modified "American System" had slipped by.

When the Whigs next won the presidency in 1848 the nation was deeply involved in the problems of lsavery and national expansion. With disunion threatening, the aged Whig leaders Clay and Webster tried, in January and March 1850, to compromise the main points of sectional friction. President Taylor blocked their moves, but his death on July 9, made Millard FILLMORE, a party man from New York, president. While the Compromise of 1850 was not solely a Whig accomplishment, the Whig leadership had been prominent in its passage. Webster, now Fillmore's secretary of state, dreamed of capturing the presidency at the head of a Union movement in 1852. But both major parties accepted the Compromise, and on June 16, 1852, the Whigs reverted to form in nominating another general, Winfield Scott. Two weeks later Clay was dead and Webster died in October. The passing of these two great figures heralded the Whig disaster of 1852. The party never recovered from this defeat. Its call for moderation and Union, by now far more prominent than the national economic policy, became ever more ineffective as the Civil War neared. Southern Whigs, fearful of Northern encroachment on slaveholding rights, thought the Democrats more receptive to their interests; and a key number of Northern Whigs had already moved into the antislavery Free Soil Party, which had been formed on the eve of the 1848 election.

The rise of the Republican and the anti-immigrant Know-Nothing parties completed the Whig downfall. Defections to Republicanism were numerous, while the former Whig president, Fillmore, accepted the
Know-Nothing nomination. A Whig national convention met in 1856, but simply endorsed the Fillmore ticket. Thus the party of Unionism came to an end, a victim of sectional controversy. In 1860 a feeble remnant of Whiggery organized a Constitutional Union Party, a last-ditch attempt to prevent disruption of the Union. They fared badly in the election; their constitutional conservatism was politically dead, and with it had perished the Whig Party.

It is difficult to speak of Whig doctrine in a party of such diverse elements. Politically, the opposition to Jackson dictated an attack on excessive presidential energy. Whigs believed CONGRESS should initiate policy, not the president. Whig views of the CONSTITUTION ranged from Webster's nationalism to Tyler's states' rights views, with the nationalistic view predominating. But its national economic policy best characterized the Whigs, although not all those calling themselves Whigs accepted it.
Politically, this was a premature nationalism, at a time when the effective power of government remained to a large extent with the states. The
Democrats, through their generally superior state political organizations and greater identification with popular interests, were usually able to maintain their ascendancy. The absence of true nationalism before the Civil War, meant that the party with a national economic policy had to depend on nonsense and war heroes for its two national victories. With no Southerners in Congress during the Civil War, and with a former Illinois Whig, Abraham Lincoln, in the White House, the Republican Party finally passed much of
the economic legislation on tariff and banking which the Whigs had long advocated.

Frank Otto Gatell
University of Maryland

 

[Andra_Jenny]

This is superior to your normal offerings...

Shouldn't THIS have been the first suspicious assasination and been used to lay proper groundwork for the lunacy that you postulated in the last thread that I opened?

Lincoln also speaks to homeschooling vs. Governmental schooling in my eyes in the most positive manner.

 

[Lost Cause]

C&P...What's the problem?

Whether I copy word for word, or cut & paste for expediency, you still wouldn't accept history as it is, based on your dogma. Much ado about nothing.

 

[REDWAVE]

Early history of the Republican Party

The Republican Party was organized in 1854 to oppose the extension of slavery into the territories. It grew out of the earlier Liberty Party of 1840 and the Free Soil Party of 1848. There was a massive outburst of protest against the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which led to the formation of the Republican Party. The Kansas-Nebraska Act left the question of slavery to the residents of the two territories, repealing the Compromise of 1820, which had banned slavery in that area. Two meetings in Ripon, Wisconsin, and Jackson, Michigan led to the formation of the Republican Party.

Its first Presidential candidate, the famous explorer John C. Fremont, ran in 1856 on the slogan "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Speech, Free Men, Fremont!" He lost, but garnered 33% of the popular vote, and 114 electoral votes. James Buchanan, a pro-slavery Southern Democrat, won the election. Former President Millard Fillmore also ran as the candidate of the "Know Nothing" (American) and Whig parties. The election marked the collapse of the Whig Party, whose voters defected to the Republicans in droves, although a remnant of the Whigs did run a candidate in the 1860 Presidential election.

The early Republican Party was a radical abolitionist party, but it was also a party whose program was attractive to big merchants and bankers.