Abraham Lincoln Iconoclast page

ABRAHAM LINCOLN ICONOCLAST PAGE

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HAIL CAESAR!

For the upcoming bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, one of America's most beloved historical figures, I would like to set one thing straight. Abraham Lincoln was a tyrant.

No, I do not live in the south, and I was not born there. I was born and raised in New England, traveled extensively throughout the country during a 20-year career in the Army, and currently preside in Colorado.

During my Army career I was stationed throughout the South including 6-years in Louisiana, 3-years in Kentucky (where I actually visited Abraham Cesar's birthplace), and had multiple temporary duty assignment to Georgia. I met many different types of Americans when I was in the Army, along with many civilians around the various Army posts. Some of the boys I met from the South started my education on the real Lincoln. I was reminded that the victor writes the history books. Interestingly enough, the most anti-Lincoln group of people I met were a group of civilians at FT Knox, KY. Not far from Lincoln's birthplace.

Lincoln is a hero to all Americans and especially the Republican Party. I really don't understand why today's right wing, the alleged party of a small central government and federalism, glum onto Lincoln. Lincoln was the first President of the Republican Party, which at the time, was a re-branding of the defunct, big government-loving Whig Party. Whigs favored a large, powerful central government supported by high tariffs and a government controlled central bank.

LINCOLN AND SLAVERY

Lincoln was a racist who believed in the inferiority of the black race, legal inequality between the races, the inability for the two races to live together, and the repatriation of Blacks back to Africa. These feelings were widespread in the North. Though many Northerners abhorred slavery, they were hardly the humanitarians. Segregated Black Codes were in existence everywhere. The Northerners may have been interested in abolition, but they were not interested in racial justice. It is my theory that one of the reasons why the abolition movement started in the north was simply because the industrialized north did not need them. They relied instead on dirt cheap immigrant labor mostly from Catholic Italy and Ireland.

Earlier in his political career Lincoln believed that Southern slavery was going to survive and was indifferent about the plight of the Blacks. When he started thinking about running for President, he began thinking about the issue because he feared that slavery would expand to the new western states. He was afraid that the southern culture of mostly Democrat Party voters would expand west with slavery and this would create Democrat states that would vote against his Republican party in national elections.

So why didn't Lincoln work to end slavery through legislation like the rest of the world did? Less than 25% of Southerners owned slaves, the institution was becoming less and less economically sound, and was on its way out. The tradition had been a natural part of man's existence since history began and within one century had virtually disappeared in the west. The federal government could have started to end slavery by making it more expensive to own slaves. They could have started by repealing the Fugitive Slave Act which would have forced slave owners to spend their own resources chasing after their runaway slaves instead of requiring citizens and police, by law, to turn them in. Or he could have tried to gradually outlaw it and compensate the slave owners. Though it sounds grotesque to prefer a gradual end of slavery, these measures would have probably prevented a war that killed 600,000 Americans and destroyed half the country.

LINCOLN AND SECESSION

Our Founding Fathers were wary of the type of strong central government that had ruled the colonies from England. They designed a federalist system of government that provided for a central government that had its power held in check by certain rights that were maintained by the states. If the states had a dispute with the central government, the issue would be handled by further legislation (Constitutional Amendments) or in the high court. But since the central government owned that court, the results of the disputes were often a foregone conclusion. This left the states with a last resort of seceding from the Union. Today, many Americans are under the impression that membership in the union was and still is irrevocable. But according to James Madison, the Father of the Constitution:

"Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution." -- Federalist Paper No. 39.

The 1860 Winter of Secession was not the first time in history that states had threatened to secede. In 1815 the New England states, upset over the war with Great Britain, debated the idea of seceding when they met during the Hartford Convention. They sent representative to Washington to inform President Madison of their intentions, but the war ended before they acted. Unlike Lincoln, there was no indication that Madison was going to use military force to try to stop them.

The threat of secession was used again in the 1830s by the state of South Carolina over the issue of tariffs. Tariffs were taxes added to the cost of imported goods from Europe. The purpose of these tariffs was to provide funding for the federal government and protectionism for American industry. South Carolina believed that the tariffs forced them to buy inferior American goods, were unfairly distributed to northern interest and infrastructure, and gave Europe a reason to protest by buying their agricultural goods from other countries instead of the South. The federal government at that time responded to South Carolina's threats by lowering the tariffs.

By 1860, the system of tariffs still in place and was helping to centralize power in Washington DC. Two Whig candidates, the party of a strong central government had been elected as presidents in the 183s and 1840s, and Lincoln, our first Republican president, was essentially a re-branded Whig. In his first inaugural speech, Lincoln, who had won the election with only 40% of the vote, threatened to use military force on any state that did not collect foreign trade tariffs. So Lincoln was essentially the American version of King George III, a tyrannical leader who threatened to use military force to collect taxes. In addition to the unfair tariff policies, the South was also concerned that Lincoln would try to end slavery. The 1860 Secession was as much a protest a protest against the growing central power in Washington as it was to to tariffs and the threat to the institution of slavery.

In March of 1861 Senator James Doolittle of Wisconsin submitted a proposal for an Amendment to the Constitution to prevent states from seceding, but the move failed. If it was understood at that time that the states could not legally secede, then why did a Senator feel the need to introduce an Amendment to prevent it?

After hostilities started, Lincoln made it clear that the war was being fought over the preservation of the Union and mobilized the Federal Army to invade the Confederacy. His war was never about slavery, it was about "Saving the Union," or as we should say, saving the central government.

But Lincoln later experienced a change of heart about the issue of secession. In 1863 he allowed the new state of West Virginia to secede from Virginia in order to create another state that would help him in his 1864 re-election bid.

The War Between the States 1861-1865

Northern historians and most of America call this war the American Civil War. But was it a Civil War? When I think of a civil war I think of two military parties fighting for political control of a country. Two of the most famous examples are the 17th century's English Civil War fought between Royalists and Parliamentarians, and the 20th century's Spanish Civil War fought between the Republicans and Nationalists. The American Civil War was a war of secession, not a civil war. It was an invasion by the north of the secessionist south. But as I mentioned before, the victors write the history books and dubbed it a civil war in order to justify their invasion.

Lincoln's War Policies

After Lincoln declared it illegal for a state to secede from the Union he preceded to introduce other policies that changed our country forever. Helping to end federalism and centralize power in Washington. The first precedent Lincoln introduced to our country was conscription. The Union had over estimated their military abilities and under estimated the South's. The early part of the war was a disaster for the Union and they needed more manpower. Lincoln's conscription meant that for the first time in US history a citizen could be forced to participate in an offensive war for the national government. His conscription policy also favored the rich with a deferment available for those who could afford the price of $300.

The second tyrannical Lincoln policy was his 1862 income tax, our nation's first. Citizens were forced by the government to surrender a tax on their income at a progressive rate of 3 and 5%. This was illegal. By constitutional law, a tax had to be imposed equally apportioned among the states based on their census. A progressive income tax violates this rule. Lincoln's income tax was ruled unconstitutional 1872, by which time the top rate had increased to 10%. When another income tax was enacted 1884, the Supreme Court struck it down once again because it was, by nature, "unapportioned." It took an Amendment to the Constitution in 1913 to legalize an income tax. You can thank Lincoln for setting the precedence for today's progressive income tax.

Lincoln's Other Controversial War Policies

The suspension of habeas corpus during invasion or rebellion is discussed in our Constitution in Article 1 Section Nine of the Constitution, but it is a Congressional power, not a presidential one. Lincoln signed the law and used it to arrest approximately 18,000 people without criminal charges. Mostly in border states, but also in the north. He also ordered the US Postmaster General not to deliver newspapers that were critical of his war effort. So much for the First Amendment.

Two of the most famous cases dealing with the suspension of habeas corpus dealt with a former member of Congress and the grandson of an American hero. Lincoln had Clement Vallandigham, a former Congressman from Ohio and vocal critic of the war, arrested without charges and sent to prison. The courts ordered him out of prison and Lincoln deported him to Tennessee. The grandson of Francis Scott Key, Francis Key Howard, was imprisoned without trial or charges at Fort McHenry (ooh the irony).

Lincoln authorized war against the civilian population, allowed his armies to burn Southern cities and lay waste to the Shenandoah Valley. His naval blockade of the South included medicine. He was the first president to micromanage the war effort thanks to the new telegraph technology. He censored the telegraphs, confiscated firearms, nationalized the railroads, and confiscated private property. He sent troops fresh from the Battle of Gettysburg, where he made his famous speech about a government of the people, by the people and for the people, to New York City to violently end the draft rioting.

The Emancipation Proclamation Myth

Lincoln wanted war in order to maintain central power in Washington DC. He believed the war would be over shortly and the issue on whether or not to end the stubborn slavery issue would not have to become part of his presidency. But as the war waged on he realized that he could use slavery as a political tool to help him.

The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 freed the slave living in Union controlled areas of the Confederacy. It was a calculated political move used to improve Lincoln's standing in the north, keep European nations out of the war (they favored the south where they got much of their agricultural goods), and there was also the hope that it would lead to slave insurrections throughout the Confederacy forcing the Confederate Army to shift their soldiers to the home front.

But forgotten to our history classes in our fine public schools was the issue of slavery in the North. The Emancipation Proclamation ignored the plight of the slaves in the northern slave states (KY, MD, DE, and MO). Lincoln freed the slaves in the South, where Washington had no power to do so, and left them enslaved in the northern states where he had the power to free them. So this was purely a political move by Lincoln; not a humanitarian one.

Lincoln's Legacy

The outlawing of secession was probably the most damaging self-inflicted wound to our Founding Fathers' original intent of federalism. States no longer had the ultimate right to secede and this made their rights granted by the 9th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution irrelevant. Since the war, these two amendments have rarely been evoked. The federal government regularly abuses its powers citing the Commerce Clause of Article 1 Section 8 and the states have no recourse. You would think that since these two amendments were in the Bill of Rights (which followed the Articles), would supersede Article 1. But they no longer do.

The second most damaging legacy was the income tax. The Income Tax changed the relationship between the citizen and the federal government. By making us surrender our personal information and taking our income to provide services which we should be doing for ourselves, the government has taken our liberty and freedom by and used the money to create a culture of dependency. It is essentially economic slavery. We are forced to hand over part of our labor to the government. We serve the government, it does not serve us. And if you have a dispute over the collection of these taxes, this is the only part of our criminal justice system where you are considered guilty before innocent.

Many of Lincoln's policies, when looked at objectively, were not for the benefit of the country or for slaves. They were meant to consolidate power for the new Republican Party. This is the same criticism that many of today's conservatives level on FDR and his New Deal policies, and I do not understand why they do not see the parallels. If Lincoln had survived his presidency I believe that historians would have would have taken a more even handed look at his presidency and probably judged it among the also-rans. I believe that his 1865 assassination on Good Friday, oddly enough, helped his presidential image. Much of the country at the time made the connection between Lincoln and Jesus Christ. This underserved reputation stuck.

American Reaction thru the Years

In 1867 Congress authorized the building of the Lincoln Memorial. Construction did not begin until 1914 and it was completed in 1922. Lincoln sits in his Greek Temple with his hands upon fasces, the symbol of Roman power. Hail Cesar.

In 1909, the centennial year of Lincoln's birth, the US Mint produced the first Lincoln penny. This was the first US coin to include the likeness of a president. The Founding Fathers had eschewed the practice of putting American heads of state on our coinage because of the legacy of English and other European kings and their currency. Render unto Cesar.

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