Destruction of American Symbols of History is Grounded in Ignorance

We are being assaulted on all sides today by people ignorant of our history, which is actually their history as well. They seek to remove all symbols of “hate” and “oppression” from our landscape without truly knowing what those symbols actually stood for. Maybe it is time for a little history lesson.

The man revered as the freer of slaves, may not have been quite the hero of the Black man so many think he was, although he will always be considered a great president, perhaps because all the facts are not always declared openly.

In The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, we see a side of Lincoln that is never shown us, his human side, and his racist side, if we were allowed to use todays vernacular to be applied to yesterday. It bears acknowledgement in today’s climate.

He wrote, for instance: “Free them [i.e. the slaves] and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this . . . . We cannot then make them equals.” (vol. II, p. 256)

And: “What I would most desire would be the separation of the white and black races.” (vol. II, p. 521)

And there is this: “I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races . . . . I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary.” (vol. III, p, 16)

And this: “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 . . . . 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.” (vol. III, pp. 145-146)

And this: “I will to the very last stand by the law of this state [Illinois], which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes.” (vol. III, p. 146)

And this: “Senator Douglas remarked . . . that . . . this government was made for the white people and not for the negroes. Why, in point of mere fact, I think so too.” (vol. II, p. 281)

Today Lincoln would be slammed as a racist of the utmost degree.

The Civil War, with Abraham Lincoln as Commander-in-Chief of the Union Army, was certainly not fought to free slaves, as we are told by so many today ignorant of their own history.

He supported the Illinois Constitution, which in 1848 was amended to prohibit the immigration of black people into the state.

In a speech he once said, “Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and . . . favorable to . . . our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime.” (vol. II, p. 409) He wanted Blacks to be deported back to Africa, not given rights or citizenship.

In Lincoln’s first inaugural address of March 4, 1861, Lincoln probably made the most powerful defense of slavery ever made by an American politician. In it, Lincoln denies having any intention to interfere with Southern slavery. He also declared his support for the federal Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution which compelled citizens of non-slave states to capture runaway slaves. He also supported the Corwin Amendment, a constitutional amendment that would have prohibited the federal government from interfering in Southern slavery trade or practice forever.

At the end of his inaugural address Lincoln said, “I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution . . . has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service [slaves]. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”

Lincoln’s purpose was not to abolish slavery but to merely not allow its expansion into new territories where it was not yet practiced. The three reasons were that 1 (Keeping slaves out would have kept Blacks out, which was the goal. 2) Whites did not want to compete for jobs with Blacks, and 3) Blacks might shift the balance and disrupt the political system giving Democrats, who owned the salves, more power during elections because although a Black was not considered a whole person, he stated that five slaves would count as three persons in the census.

The Emancipation Proclamation we all remember but know so little about, was considered a “wartime measure” and was to be considered valid only during wartime. It also only applied to “rebel territory” and specifically exempted certain areas of the South by name that were under already under control of the Union Army, such as most of Louisiana and entire states like West Virginia, the last slave state to enter the union. Some historians actually believe that it “actually freed no one”.

            The Proclamation was designed to incite the slaves in Southern states to rise up but it did not have that effect. Slavery was finally put to an end in 1866 by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, a provision that Lincoln refused to raise support for.

There was great concern about collecting tariffs and tax money however and some states threatened to secede of it. There were lines being draw between the North and the South over sales taxes for clothing, shoes, farm tools and manufacturing parts the South bought from the North. This almost caused a war of secession in the late 1820s. When the civil War actually begun, the U.S. Senate issued a War Aims Resolution that said: “[T]his war is not waged . . . in any spirit of oppression, or for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, or purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those [Southern] states, but to defend . . . the Constitution, and to preserve the Union . . .” By “established institutions” of the Southern states the Senate meant slavery.

The Civil War was waged for economic reasons, and not over slavery at all. People who today want to destroy Confederate statues because they think they represent oppression of the Blacks which brought about our country’s civil war, are buying into the Liberal lie that is designed to further disrupt and divide America. They have attached themselves to a cause that does not exist except in their own imagination.

But that seems good enough for them. After all, it takes time to study and understand history. It takes time and effort they do not want to spend and destroying things is so much easier than working to erase the prejudices and laziness that permeates the Liberal mind today.

Our history IS our history, good or bad, and it is a lesson to learn from if we take the opportunity to expand beyond the meager amount of knowledge that has satisfied us thus far.

This time in our history saw blood flow and it saw the writ of Habeas Corpus (the regulation that forbids use of federal soldiers on our land against our countries own people) violated by the Union Army. According to one historian over 300 newspapers that opposed Lincoln were shuttered. Sounds like a violation of the First Amendment to me.

So, in fairness, the Civil War was not about Southern slavery at all. States like Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York, used slaves to build slave ships that sailed from New York Harbor, as well as Hartford, Providence, and Boston harbors. There were slaves in New York City as late as 1853.

Someone needs to inform the ignorant destructionists that seek to destroy symbols of our history, that they are misguided and they need to go back home and behave themselves.

Maybe there are a few coloring books to color and puppies to pet to soothe their angst left over from the Hillary Clinton election loss that they can make good use of. And getting a hold of a good used school book from a decade when the truth was still taught in our schools, might help too.