Willhud9 Wrote:
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But what provision and what authority makes secession illegal? Because Lincoln the almighty dictator he was, said it was?
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http://www.rationalskepticism.org/viewtopic.php?p=930153#p930153

Will,

Why did (would) you call Lincoln a dictator? I don’t know American history all that well. In fact, I just bought this:



In order to learn more about Lincoln. I haven’t watched it yet. It’s based on the book “Lincoln” by Gore Vidal.

In addition:

Historical rankings of Presidents of the United States

George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt are consistently ranked at the top of the lists.

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Abraham Lincoln is often considered the greatest president for his leadership during the American Civil War and his eloquence in speeches such as the Gettysburg Address.

<Quoted from here:>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States

http://www.etymonline.com/cw/habeas.htm

On April 27, 1861, about a week after the Fort Sumter surrender, President Lincoln ordered Winfield Scott, then head of the nation's military, to arrest anyone between Washington and Philadelphia suspected of subversive acts or speech, and his order specifically authorized suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. Scott passed the order down the line, and Southern sympathizers in Maryland were rounded up in batches.

This was during the crucial first weeks of the war, when Washington, D.C., desperately needed troops to defend itself and the northern regiments were having difficulty crossing Maryland, which had secessionist sentiments and was hostile to the idea of being overrun by the federal army. The Maryland legislature was about to meet, and Lincoln believed it would act to restrict troop movements through the state.

One of the arrested was John Merryman, a prominent Baltimorean -- president of the Maryland State Agricultural Society, among other things -- and an active and vocal secessionist. Merryman was arrested May 25, 1861, and that day his lawyer filed a petition in circuit court, which was overseen by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (Supreme Court justices presided directly over circuit courts in those days). Taney ordered Merryman brought before him on a writ of habeas corpus and commanded the military officer in charge of Merryman to show "the cause, if any, for his arrest and detention."

One of the biggest problems with him. I applaud his effort into keeping the Union intact but suspending the writ of habeas corpus and violating due process because of people's vocal opinion against the growing conflict in the south or supportive of the southern effort of secession is NOT democratic, republican, or liberty ensuring. It is tyranny, justified because "protection of the Union."

Odd, this was the same argument bleeding heart liberals made regarding Bush after 9/11/2001, i.e. Bush was acting a tyrant. But these same liberals generally espouse Lincoln as one of the greatest presidents of our time.

Next, popularity polls mean absolutely nothing. Lincoln is popular today because we are taught he saved the Union from collapsing and was shot, and effectively martyred by southern sympathizers. Which is handy dandy, but let's look closely. Lincoln did not care about slaves, by all means he was racist, believing blacks to be inferior to whites. Although he may have been appalled by slavery, he was not appalled by racial discrimination. Lincoln also arrested those who were against his policies calling them traitors to the Union. Thus violating first amendment rights, 4th amendment rights, and habeas corpus.

Conflicts rarely end neatly, but is some cases they are relatively clearly defined. At the end of WW2, Germany had its "year zero", and Japan decided to "endure the unendurable".

At the end of the Civil War, there were very many who did not accept the outcome at all. Of course, the military solution occured in 1865. But the idea of blacks assuming any sort of place in civil society was very soon snuffed out, and in fact they went back to a position that was little elevated from what it was in 1861. Southern politicians in Washington seemed to be able to twist a lot of arms. And if that was not successful, there was always the KKK.

It took a hundred years for some real movement in this regard, when the civil rights movement of the '60s occured. Did Southern attitudes and culture simply carry on for decades, albiet chafing under unwanted federal interference from time to time? If there was a more defining moment for change, when was it?

Father O Rielly

Posts: 503

Actually, 'father,' you are being fooled by the WAY each history has been described to you. This is common when it comes to the looking back that History is.
Actually, there were plenty of unresolved issues after EVERY war officially ended, no matter which war you want to talk about. It is no different when it comes to WW2. The Japanese may have chosen to "endure the unendurable," but they did NOT accept defeat. They STILL teach their children a different history of the period than the rest of the world teaches, in a way that is actually very similar to how the South remained unrepentant after the end of the Civil War. There is STILL a very strong racist component to Japanese society, which holds all Japanese to be superior to all other peoples.

Here in the U.S. in particular, and also in the other nations that were the Official Winners of WW2, it is generally taught that we not only won the military actions that constituted the war itself, but that we won the IDEA war, and the CULTURAL wars that were involved as well. This is actually more a result of those telling the history, not wanting to go back on all of the PROPAGANDA they spewed out during the war, than a result of us actually WINNING those subsets of the war.

I think that is why you are especially hung up on the Civil War. As with almost EVERY war ever fought, the victors were as tired of fighting as the vanquished, and were unwilling to continue the expensive struggle to actually win the IDEA end of things as well. Conquering armies are usually removed from a conquered land as soon as the victors can manage, to save money and emotional/political stress. A political group who declares victory, but refuses to bring the troops home, will get booted out of office for "lying" about winning the war, because they must (as we are struggling with in Afghanistan and Iraq) admit that we really DIDN'T accomplish what we set out to at all.

After the Civil War fighting ended, and the slaves were technically freed, there wasn't any political will left in the people of the northern states, to keep paying the huge cost of manually running the entire Southern States lives for them, and for policing their behaviors in detail. Therefore the Northern troops were sent home, and the Southerners were permitted to do as they wished. You want to look primarily at the IDEALISTS goals for fighting that war, and decry that they were left unresolved, and that therefore that war didn't end in 1865. I don't oppose your dislike of what happened after that time, but it really isn't useful to try to tie it to the war itself, unless you are consistent about this, and recognize that almost NO modern war has EVER ended. In fact some, like the Korean conflict, haven't even OFFICIALLY ended the shooting part, yet.

willhud9 wrote:I applaud his effort into keeping the Union intact but suspending the writ of habeas corpus and violating due process because of people's vocal opinion against the growing conflict in the south or supportive of the southern effort of secession is NOT democratic, republican, or liberty ensuring. It is tyranny, justified because "protection of the Union."

To what extent shall one allow freedom of speech? John Stuart Mill - On Liberty - argued that a struggle always takes place between the competing demands of liberty and authority, and we cannot have the latter without the former - http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freedom-speech/ - so that freedom of speech must be curtailed to some extent in order to preserve the authority of a nation - indeed, to preserve the nation itself.

... I'm not sure that Lincoln had a choice in this matter. The aforementioned opinion threatened the authority of the government and the actual nation itself. Since primary in his concerns was the preservation of the union/nation, he had no choice other than to impose the constraints which you mention. Further, it is well to note that freedom of speech cannot happen outside the confines of a nation which affords such a right, so that the freedom itself is contingent upon the survival of the body which provides and maintains that right. Clearly, if opinion undermines said body, then that body should have the right to resist. I believe that Mill's Harm Principle is apt, at this juncture: that freedoms should be allowed to the point that they harm others, or even the nation itself.

Next, popularity polls mean absolutely nothing. Lincoln is popular today because we are taught he saved the Union from collapsing and was shot, and effectively martyred by southern sympathizers. Which is handy dandy, but let's look closely. Lincoln did not care about slaves, by all means he was racist, believing blacks to be inferior to whites. Although he may have been appalled by slavery, he was not appalled by racial discrimination.

I find it difficult to judge men such as Lincoln on the basis of contemporary thought. He lived and was raised in a time when racism was utterly rife, so in some sense his views would have been 'natural' (which is not to say that they were right). Consider, for example, that almost everyone was deeply-religious in, say, 17th century England. Consider, also, that perhaps one day 'nationalism' may seem as naive a belief as once racism was. In other words, it's easy for intelligent men to become victims/harbourers of irrational mindsets.

Odd, this was the same argument bleeding heart liberals made regarding Bush after 9/11/2001, i.e. Bush was acting a tyrant. But these same liberals generally espouse Lincoln as one of the greatest presidents of our time.

I want to take issue with this small side comment. The reason it is not a valid challenge (aside from declaring that everyone who opposed the Bush choice to ignore the law of the land was being "liberal"), is that the situations were different. Lincoln had no existing laws and powers available to take the action he thought he needed to, but Bush DID have a legal structure in place, and chose to ignore it.

igorfrankensteen wrote:

Odd, this was the same argument bleeding heart liberals made regarding Bush after 9/11/2001, i.e. Bush was acting a tyrant. But these same liberals generally espouse Lincoln as one of the greatest presidents of our time.

I want to take issue with this small side comment. The reason it is not a valid challenge (aside from declaring that everyone who opposed the Bush choice to ignore the law of the land was being "liberal"), is that the situations were different. Lincoln had no existing laws and powers available to take the action he thought he needed to, but Bush DID have a legal structure in place, and chose to ignore it.

Fair point. Never really looked at it that way.

Although the most profound headlong rush towards industrialization occurred after 1860, no industrial economy expanded faster in the first half of the nineteenth century than that of northern America.

The only major obstacle standing in the way of becoming the world’s largest economic power was the conflict or dichotomy between an industrial and farming north, and a semi-colonial and quasi-feudal south (with some Sir Walter Scott notions chivalric notions tossed in for good measure).

The North, as an independent economy, profited hugely from the capital, labour, and skills of Europe, the South, importing few of these resources, remained your typical dependent economy of Britain, a state perpetuated by its very success in supplying latter’s mills with almost all their cotton.

The South stood for free trade, enabling it to sell cotton to Britain in return for cheap finished British goods, the North heavily protected the domestic industrialist against foreigners through tariffs, the British in particular, who then would have undersold them.

North and South also both competed for the territories of the West, the one for slave plantations and backward self-sufficient hill squatters, the other for more commercial farming, slaughterhouses, mechanical reapers and the like. The South in fact held some strong economic cards by its control over the Mississippi delta through which the Middle West found its chief outlet.

Amongst other things, the Civil War thus in effect comprised the unification of America by and under Northern capitalism.