Random Political comments...

Where can I buy one of these hats? China?
I think it will go well with my still dickin bimbos shirt.

 

Which Lincoln? The same one who would have gladly kept blacks as slaves?

 

What do you think voting your conscience will get you? An I told you so?
I'd rather not have someone who will definitely make the lives of minorites and women objectively far worst than it is right now just say well hey at least I voted for the "right" candidate.
Your frustration is misplaced, I blame the electorate. We get the leaders we deserve, too many people in this country are anti-intellectual, anti-facts, pro-dogmatic religion, pro-xenophobia, and pro-racism. To the point where they elect people who have never had their best interest at heart on any level. So instead of getting compassionate people who will work for them we are left having to vote for people who we think can win and navigate the political gridlock. People like Paul Ryan should have no place in congress but dummies keep voting him, they identify with party politics that does nothing for them or their families but hey at least they echo my deepest feelings of hate and paranoia.
The American people would rather feel good about losing than win with people they don't identify with on the most superficial levels.

 

Whatever you believe Lincoln's personal motivations may have been, the man has to be given much credit for ending the institution of slavery and his willingness to fight a civil war to do so.

You talk as if Lincoln owned slaves.lol

 

Only did it to win the war. You could say the same about Britain in the revolutionary war. They offered the same deal to black people.

 

The Civil War from the perspective of the Union was about ending the expansion of slave states based on the premise that slavery was incompatible with the Union.

People love to say the Civil Was was about state's rights.

Right to do.....what???

Own slaves.

Lincoln may not have been perfect, but for the 1860s he was a man generations ahead of his time.

Lincoln chose the more difficult road to deal with the slavery problem.
He could have provided a special exemption for the Southern States to own slaves.

He could have allowed the South to form a separate confederacy of states a part of and separate from the rest of the Union.

However, Lincoln knew there was only one option to end slavery nationwide and going forward into the future, and that required war.

Some of you don't realize how HATED Lincoln was during that time by so many White people in this country.

He was considered a race traitor.
That was the main reason John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln dead.

 

He was only out to save the union. Why do you think it wasn't his first mission the free the slaves? He had to be convinced

It just so happen that ending slavery would help end the war. Because of that he was shot. If he could have won the war without ending slavery, he would have.

http://www.nytimes.com/1862/08/24/n...-greeley-slavery-union-restoration-union.html



DEAR SIR: I have just read yours of the 19th, addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements or assumptions of fact which I may know to be erroneous, I do not now and here controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here argue against them. If there be perceptible in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.

As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing," as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save Slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy Slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy Slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union, and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free. Yours,

A. LINCOLN.

 

The root cause of the Civil War was still slavery.

If the Union defeated the Confederacy, by association slavery would also be ended.

Lincoln had to dance around the issue of slavery, states rights and the Civil War because he couldn't conscript White soldiers across the country to defeat the confederacy and tell them they were going to give up their lives to basically defeat slavery.


If there was no slavery, there is no Civil War.

If Lincoln was really ambivalent about slavery, there never would have been a civil war and he would have negotiated a settlement between the slave holding states and new states entering the Union.

 

Economics played a heavier roll than slavery in being the root cause. Remember black people were free in the north to some degree but in the south there was free labor(slavery). You can imagine who is making more when people are doing the work for free.

If Lincoln was so against slavery, he would have handled it on DAY 1. He knew how much problems it would cause and chose not to. :|
As a man once said decades after him


Lincoln chose against that while many suffered.
Unacceptable as far as I can see. People see him as trans-formative but he passed on that role. Any one can offer freedom when it is convenient for you. It is a whole other thing to do on day 1 when you know half the nation may not like it.

 

How could Lincoln have 'dealt with' slavery as soon as he was elected POTUS in 1860??
Slavery existed at the time for over 250-300 years and the ENTIRE economy of the South was built on slave labor.

Despite your suggesting Lincoln had supernatural presidential powers, given the man credit that after being elected POTUS, Lincoln ended.....SLAVERY....in FIVE YEARS.

You remind me of a professor I used to have.

He would list all the reasons the Civil War was fought and was loathe to ever say the foundation of it all was the subjugation and oppression of the Black man in America.

If you ever get a chance, you should read the articles of the Confederation and look at the reasons why ALL the Confederate states left the Union to form their own alliance.

To a state, they had a written expressed belief that the Black man was inherently inferior and it was the White man's right to keep them in bondage in perpetuity.

If the base reason the Confederacy was formed was to preserve the institution of slavery, it's hard to argue the Civil War was fought more for economic reasons.

Yeah it was economic, the South's right to use free slave labor to work their plantations and cultivate and harvest cash crops.

I know it's trendy now to argue Lincoln was a pragmatist and not an ideological visionary, but if you really study in total what he accomplished in 5 years, he was by far this nation's greatest POTUS.

No one else is even close.

Think about it, at the height of the Civil War, Lincoln could have chosen a truce and allowed the South to secede from the Union and form their own country.

The American experiment at that moment would have been a failure after less than a century.

England or one of the European powers probably would have invaded us and made us a colony again.

Instead Lincoln not only defeated the Confederate army, he ended the original sin of slavery.

Southerners in the hundreds of thousands were ready to die to defend their 'state's rights' and economic 'way of life', (the right to own slaves).

That's some deep shit if you think a minute on it.

I'm not deifying Lincoln or making hm out to be more than he was.
But his record speaks for itself.

We couldn't win the Vietnam or Iraq war with a stable peace in 5 years.

It took us six years to win WW2.

And Lincoln had the political skill to press a conservative Congress to back him every step of the way, despite the infighting.

No, Lincoln was a boss.
IMO doing the right thing even when it may not be your first instinct is harder than being ideologically pure from the beginning.

 

I wasn't suggesting that he was anything close to a great leader. He was pragmatic. He didn't want to rock the boat. It wasn't until it was convenient that he went for freeing the slave.

The rest of this agrees with what I state though it conflicts at time(excluding the Lincoln is a boss.)
I just want to point out that I'm not arguing that slavery wasn't a cause like your professor but that Lincoln didn't give a hoot about slavery. That is why I do not think he is a boss. That's what burns me. I don't care for people who don't do the right thing while people are suffering. I care even less about the congress you speak of.

 

It's a process. Even more difficult for a White man born in the 19th century to reach the level of awareness that slavery must be abolished.

When Lincoln was born, slavery in America had already existed for more than two centuries. In that environment think how difficult it is to take a step back and say, this is wrong and I want to change it.
Even though it doesn't affect my life. nonetheless it still weighs heavy on my conscience.

Throughout his political career, Lincoln was always against the expansion of slavery.

IMO this purity test for Lincoln without considerations for the times the man lived in is too high a standard for anyone.

Have you read the Emancipation Proclamation??

IMO maybe the greatest document and speech ever given by a U.S. President.

If you study Lincoln's evolution on slavery, he always had a clear through line that slavery on some level was wrong and needed to be abolished.

This is a great link to read to get a fuller idea about Lincoln's views on slavery before and after he was elected POTUS.

The subject was always at the forefront of his mind and not something he decided on a whim.

https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/slavery.htm

 

Are you saying that he had to be pragmatic given that time?

 

I'm saying Lincoln needed a strategy to end slavery in the 1860s.
It's not like he could run his presidential campaign exclusively on it and get to the WH.

However once Lincoln was elected, most of his political life was geared towards preventing the spread of slavery, and when it was decided that war was necessary to prevent the expansion of slavery and to break the Confederacy, Lincoln wasted no time.

I still don't understand why you think Lincoln's decision to end slavery was 'pragmatic'.

Essentially, Lincoln was willing to tear the country apart to end slavery, although it was sold to the American people as a Constitutional struggle.

When Lincoln basically said the South no longer had the right to own slaves, it was a wrap.

 

It is because he did things when it was good for him. He essentially acted like a politician not a leader. I say the same about Obama and the gay issue though I believe obama was pro gay before getting to the white house. Abe has so many bad comments that in this time he would be seen as a racist.
example...

"
I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]—that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied every thing."


http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-lincoln-douglas-debates-4th-debate-part-i/

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=369

He isn't what I would see as a good leader or president given how offensive some of his stuff is.

 

I'm calling it. Clinton unless something big happens between now and Nov. 7

 

Yes, unless Julian Assange bitch ass drops a bomb between now and then.

 

So now that you know POTUS-nom Hillary hates you and Donald hates women...who ya gonna vote for?? :smt048

Haha just playin l already know with you.

 

So someone says it so it must be true