I don't know how many of you saw Cuomo on The Late Show last night, but personally I think he's insane for this idolization of Lincoln… talking about how Lincoln was for civil rights and similar bullshit. Seriously, what a load of crap. I realize that's what gets taught in America these days, but does no one remember that “the victor writes the history” (especially notable in Lincoln's case since one of his “achievements” was the government-run school system, hugely reducing the quality of education in America, but allowing them to “shape minds and beliefs” more effectively)? Let's take a look at history.
"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it."
- Abraham Lincoln, 1862
Lincoln, a lawyer, defended slave owners in court. He never “freed” slaves at all — any slaveowner loyal to the North could keep their slaves, and Lincoln had most of the Northern States add ammendments banning the freed slaves from settling there (why do you think the “underground railroad” ended up in Canada, not NYC?)… he did on the other hand work with Henry Clay to try and ship them all back to Africa (which is where the country Liberia came from), but because they ran out of money, most ended up in Haiti before the plan collapsed, all the money having been embezzled by the companies that got the government contracts in the first place.
Before moving on, let me quote that actual Emancipation Proclamation:
"...all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free...
the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State or the people thereof shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such States shall have participated shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State and the people thereof are not then in rebellion against the United States."
To be real clear: this means that you can keep your slaves if you're loyal to the North, but if you're not, your slaves are free. Northern slaveowners were absolutely welcome to keep their slaves. To put things into context, at the time of the proclamation, the North was doing badly in the war and was arguably actually losing. However, the South was short on manpower because so many of the men were in the North fighting… It should be pretty damn obvious to anyone with even the most basic of understanding of military strategy that his goal was simple: to start a slave rebellion. When that failed, his men shifted their war to civilian targets:
In conducting the war, Lincoln encouraged his generals to violate international law, the U.S. Military Code and the moral prohibition against waging war on civilians. Lincoln urged his generals to conduct total war against the Southern civilian population, to slaughter them with bombardments, to burn their homes, barns and towns, to use rape as a weapon of war, to destroy foodstuffs, and to leave women, children and the elderly in the cold of winter without shelter or a scrap of food.In order to carry out Lincoln's wishes, a new kind of soldier was needed. Gen. Sherman filled his regiments with big city criminals and foreigners fresh from the jails of Europe. The war against the Southern civilian population was fought with the immigrant soldier.
DiLornezo writes that had the South won the war, there is no doubt that Lincoln and his generals -- Grant, Sherman and Sheridan -- would have been hung as war criminals under the Geneva Convention of 1863.
In any case, Lincoln had one goal when he started the Civil War, and that was to consolidate all power into the federal government. That was what the Civil War was about, not slavery. The Civil War was a war about big government versus distributed government, and ulimately about big business versus the individual. Now, don't get me wrong. This isn't about “defending the South” or anything like this. My core point is that America would be better off idolizing someone like Thoreau, and is not doing itself a favor by becoming an increasingly communist corporate state under the guise of “Lincolnian freedom”.
Well, you're welcome to yell at me for writing this, or you can read more.
