Letters to the Editor
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I think you're wrong, cynsherp
If Texas had been left to secede along with the rest of the South, George W. Bush would have QUALIFIED for American citizenship by being born in Connecticut..... But at some point, either he or his dad would have had to choose between their U.S. passports and their political careers. Both built those careers in Texas, with W. going so far as to cultivate an image as a faux Texas rancher. He also served as governor of that state, probably a post that Texas and the Confederate States of America would have limited to their own citizens. Thus, he would long since have renounced his U.S. citizenship -- OR he would be a forgotten New England rich kid who never got any closer to the presidency than a White House tour during prep school, and we wouldn't be talking about him and how he's wrecked the country.
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Kentuckian, you misunderstood me
You quoted me saying:
>> Mr. Epps makes a fine point when he notes that Lincoln's being an attorney made him above all else a man who respected the rule of law.<<
To which you responded:
No, being an attorney confers only an awareness of the law, not necessarily respect.
I think you missed the fine point of my writing "Lincoln's" in the sentence. See, without it, your rebuttal makes sense. (True, being an attorney does not, ipso facto, make you someone who respects the rule of law.) But by writing Lincoln's name I concurred with Mr. Epps in that it did indeed make President Lincoln an attorney who respected the rule of law. You rebutted a generalization, while I wrote of a specific instance.
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Hey Kentuckian
In case you missed it, the South started the Civil War, not Lincoln.
What do they teach you people down there anyway?
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Well, let me make it clearer..
Lincoln did not repect the law. Someone who respected the law would not abrogate habeas corpus or the civil rights of legal and loyal U.S. citizens. Lincoln lied when he promised to uphold the Constitution of the United States.
The firing on Fort Sumter, like 9/11, could have been handled in many different ways. Lincoln chose to make it war.
Lincoln's policies killed over 600,000 men, 100 years before Vietnam and nearly 12 times the U.S. slain. His soldiers ravished one region of the nation, inflicting incalculable cruelties on its citizenry.
Had Lincoln not been assassinated-- and the myth created-- his name would likely be a hissing and a byword.
Then you would see the likeness between Lincoln and Bush.
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Lincoln's Compromise Options?
It seems like his options were pretty much let the seceding states go, institutionalize slavery, or fight to keep the union together.
Are you thinking of one of those two other options or is there some other compromise I'm missing?
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The Civil War
There were many causes of the Civil War-- slavery was just one of them Tariffs were another. Too, the fact that wealthy New Englanders could finance John Brown's terroristic raid on the town and federal armory at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, and go unarrested and untried by any northern state or by the federal government, proved to many southerners how little they mattered in this union.
The Constitution did not forbid the states from separating. New Englanders talked openly of secession themselves. Lincoln just could have let the southern states go.
Oh, but that would have allowed slavery to linger on. Well, for how long? The 19th century was the great century for ending slavery/serfdom in Christian lands. Check the stats. Then consider that most white southerners did not own any slaves, that most whites who did own slaves owned fewer than five, and that the fewest owned the most. Slavery devalued the work of mechanics and small farmers; it was already doomed as an institution.
Lincoln could have tried to negotiate with the South. He could have brought in a European power as a broker. He could have brought the Brown conspirators to justice. As England successfully did in the Islands, he could have offered slaveowners reparation for slaves. Mostly he could have avoided the Bush "if you're not with us, you're against us" doctrine, which forced states like North Carolina out of the Union.
Instead Lincoln was responsible for the deaths of 600,000 men. Makes George W. look like a piker.
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The Southerners
...left the Union, stole Union property, and left Union loyalists in the South stranded without recourse to their rights as American citizens. NO way could Lincoln simply let the Southerners leave.
They were also fighting for slavery and it would have lasted there for another 100 years had they won. Christian, my ass. These were people who kept little boys sleeping under their beds at night in order to push out the chamber pots.
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The South
The South deserved all of the death and destruction it reaped during the Civil War - Southerners were a backwards, morally bankrupt people and it took four years of Civil War - and then the Civil Rights movement 100 years later - to finally set them straight.
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So, nerdnam, you are saying...
600,000 Americans had to die because of some stranded yankees in Charleston? You're not a George W. Bush adviser, are you?
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360,000 of those deaths were Northern boys
...so the South did more than half the killing. And they did it because they couldn't abide by the results of an election and because they couldn't stand the thought of black folks being free.
http://www.civilwarhome.com/casualties.htm
There were loyalists all throughout the South. But their opinion wasn't taken into account.
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You got the wrong Andrew
While Bush is comparable to Andrew Johnson, I much prefer comparing him to the tyranical, militaristic Andrew Jackson. He thought the presidency was a monarchy--detractors called him "King Andrew"--and strung out the military on such pointless missions as broadscale "Indian removal". He gave himself the same blank check as Bush in the Force Bill of 1833, allowing him to use unlimited force for anything he deemed necessary. Jackson even introduced the spoils system into modern American politics...Do we sense GOP tactics here? The main difference between Jackson and Bush? Jackson managed to eliminate the nation's debt. And Jackson actually served his country as a war hero.
I see Johnson as a victim of circumstance. Johnson, a southern Democrat, was added to the Lincoln ballot as vice president to attract votes from the northern pro-slavery "moderates"(the Republican party was not even listed on Southern ballots). His views were as Democratic (for that period) as a Republican candidate could get. When Lincoln was killed, the country was in ruins from a civil war. Any successor was doomed to failure--especially one who never held the same views as his predecessor. How can anyone be expected to put together a country that was just ravaged by the bloodiest war in history?
Bush however...he created all of his problems, and the country's for that matter, all by himself. And Johnson was impeached. Bush? Well, we can have dreams.
(By KF, age 17)