Letters to the Editor
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Unprofessional and not necessary.
This is a very unprofessional article, and not a good piece of journalism or editorial. "Goober peas in a pod"? There is nothing objective about this article, this is name-calling. No wonder we on the left always get accused of just being Bush-bashers.
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Lincoln
For a riveting discussion of the Civil War period and Lincoln's leadership qualities, read "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln," by Doris Kearns Goodwin (2005).
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slavery and the civil war
The southern slavocracy wanted to expand slavery, even to the extent of taking the rest of Mexico, Central America, Cuba and various other Carribean islands for the purpose of creating more slave states. Southern "compromisers" wanted the North to accede to passing an amendment to the Constitution that would make Slavery permanent and Chief Justce Taney's aside in the Dred Scott Decision that blacks had no rights at all was a further attempt to make slavery permanent, as was the compromise of 1854 requiring authorities in free states to capture and return runaway slaves to bondage. Sure, there were other issues that led to the Civil War, but the only divisive issue that really made the blood of both sides boil was slavery. South Carolina had previously threatened to secede, during Andrew Jackson's Presidency, but no other southern state was interested and Jackson, a southerner himself, born in South Carolina, threatened to invade the state if it did secede and personally hang all traitors to the union. Certainly the mini-civil war in Kansas in the late 1850s was solely based on differences over slavery, aggravated by Stephen Douglas's misguided attempt to defuse the debate over slavery in the territories by allowing settlers to decide for themselves. Naturally, extremists from both sides flooded the territory on a mission to boost their side. Slavery was the only issue over which disagreements were so profound and feelings so intense that civil war was inevitable.
Lincoln actually hoped to avoid war by working solely to contain slavery where it was and hope it would eventually die out. But even that was too much for the slavocracy. Further, they recognized that the days of southern domination of the Federal government were over. Notice that between 1789 and 1848, slave-owning southerners won 12 out of 16 Presidential elections, and of the other 4, in 1924 Andrew Jackson won the popular vote although John Quincy Adams won the electoral vote and hence became President, and in 1840 the election was won by William Henry Harrison, born to slave-owning family in Virginia though his military exploits led him to the northern mid-west, and after his death he was succeeded by yet another slave-owning southerner, John Tyler. Of those unquestionably northern Presidents prior to Lincoln (himself born in the south, though raised mainly in the northern mid-west), none spoke out against slavery before or during their presidencies, and the last two, Pierce and Buchanon had deep southern sympathies and saw no moral wrong in slavery at all; of course, that was part of what made them "good" candidates though both turned out to be terrible Presidents. In any case, by the 1850s national demographics had changed so radically due that the free states had a tremendous population and thus political advantage over the slave states, and the leaders of the latter saw little opportunity to change that within the union itself, hence the desire to either expand at the expense of the hispanic nations forther south or to create a separate nation altogether; of course, if the Confederacy had succeeded in gaining independence, it would not have been long before it invaded Mexico and Cuba, etc.
One other aspect that made civil war inevitable was that while many northerners were actually rather indifferent to the plight of slaves, they had a deeply romantic attachment to the idea of the union and felt aghast at the notion of anyone trying to rupture it. Lincoln was both opposed to slavery on moral grounds and romantically attached to the idea of the union, which was why he felt inclined to try to do anything to preserve the union, though the one thing he would not acqueisce to was the expansion of slavery and constitutional guarantees to the permanence of slavery, which were the very conditions "moderate" leaders of the seccession movement demanded.
Oh, and any notion that slavery was dying and wouldn't have lasted much longer anyhow is completely at odds with the history and economic realities of the states of the deep south. If the Confederacy had won, slavery would likely have continued far into the twentieth century, maybe even to the present. Even if international pressure could have somehow made the CSA free the slaves, it would likely have been a mockery worse than the historical reality. When I was in high school, I was taught about how horrible the Radical Republicans of the Reconstruction period were, but in reality they pushed through the amendments that ended slavery and gave citizenship to all former slaves.
The shame was that eventually the "radicals" who championed the rights of a long oppressed minority were eventually pushed aside by greedy pragmatists, who dismantled Reconstruction and left the former slaves to fend for themselves against embittered, vengeful racist whites simply so they could win an election. The union was secured, all threats of secession eliminated, so most northern whites yawned and went back to ignoring the plight of the negroes in the southern states. And so it goes.
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Jefferson Davis
The closest parallel to Bushit is the Confederate presidency of Jefferson Davis. He abrogated the constitution at every opportunity, too. And his base was, ideologically, most the same folks, just a few generations earliers. Subtract the confederacy from Commander Codpiece, and he never could have come close to election (or close enough to steal it, at least once, and very possibly twice). Widdle Georgie, the human fart joke.