Abraham Lincoln's National Bank

[Travlyr]

Lincoln never fought the civil war for slavery, it was about his tariff's and the desire to collect higher tariffs from southern ports. He actually said if he let them seceed "what will become of my tariff?"

Here's Abe in his own words:

"But what am I to do in the meantime with those men at Montgomery [meaning the Confederate constitutional convention]? Am I to let them go on... [a]nd open Charleston, etc., as ports of entry, with their ten-percent tariff. What, then, would become of my tariff?" ~ Lincoln to Colonel John B. Baldwin, deputized by the Virginian Commissioners to determine whether Lincoln would use force, April 4, 1861

The Southern Confederacy fought the war to nationalize slavery. The North fought the war to defend the principles set forth by the founders of the U.S. Constitution.

People don't understand what principles are. Lincoln was a principled man. Lincoln defended the Union against Southern invasion because he swore an oath on the Bible to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. He was going to have to answer to God for going against his word.

In his First Inaugural Address he made his stance vividly clear. Don't shoot at us and we will not invade you. We'll work this crisis out peacefully.

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it."

The Southern leaders knew full well that they were starting the war. They intended to invade Washington D.C. within three weeks after firing upon Fort Sumter.

The Siege of Washington

"Jefferson Davis planned to be living in the White House by May 1, according to the plans of his wife, Varina. On April 17th, New York insurance executive William Holdredge wrote Secretary of State William H. Seward in exasperation, informing him that the "wife of the Rebel President Davis has had the imprudence to send cards to her lady acquaintances at the Saint Nicholas" - a favorite New York hotel for visiting Southerners - "inviting them to attend her reception in the White House at Washington on the first of May."

"On April 12, 1861 only hours after Confederate guns opened fire on Fort Sumter in the Charleston harbor, Confederate Secretary of War Leroy P. Walker appeared before a jubilant crowd in Montgomery, Alabama. "No man can tell when the war this day commenced will end," Walker thundered from the balcony of the Exchange Hotel, at the heart of the Confederate capital, "but I will prophesy that the flag which now floats the breeze here will float over the dome of the old capital at Washington before the first of May."

[Travlyr]

My guess would be that Lincoln's ideas about central banking (no matter how well-intended) came straight from Marx. Some of the OWS people are currently advocating a similar solution.

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...coln-a-Marxist

Which is the best system? It's probably safe to say that the public/private monopoly we have now, run by debt dealers, is not the best. Of course a purely public central bank would be just as susceptible to inflating the currency as any system. Competeing currencies, with no legislated monpolies is probably best.

I don't think it had anything to do with Marx. Lincoln started advocating for the National bank in 1832 after Henry Clay gave his three day speech in congress on the "American System."

[itshappening]

The North seceeded because of the high tariffs Lincoln and the North was imposing or wanted to impose. They did so PEACEFULLY and in some states held referendums and conventions. How many times do you need to be told that before you believe it? Just because they mentioned slavery in their constitution, something Lincoln wanted to put in the U.S constitution to address ONE of their grievances does not mean they seceeded over it, which they felt, as Jefferson and others was their right as the Union was voluntary.



"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 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 the Union." ~ Letter to Horace Greeley, Editor of the New York Tribune, August 22 1862. This more than anything else demonstrates that Lincoln's centralist superstitions derived from Daniel Webster and Joseph Story about "the Union," rather than the immorality of slavery, were his motivations in plotting war. This letter also contradicts Lincoln's sentiment expressed in his first inaugural address, that he had neither the "lawful right," or the "inclination" to abolish slavery.

So no, it wasn't as you frequently claim "about slavery"

[itshappening]

And if Lincoln was so principled as you claim, why did he DEFEND secession then OPPOSE it?

Lincoln DEFENDING secession:

"Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with, or near about them, who may oppose their movements." ~ Lincoln January 12 1848, expressing the near-universally held Jeffersonian principle, before Lincoln unilaterally destroyed it, that no state could claim its inhabitants as its property.

Lincoln OPPOSING secession:

"...they [the South] commenced by an insidious debauching of the public mind. They invented an ingenious sophism which, if conceded, was followed by perfectly logical steps, through all the incidents, to the complete destruction of the Union. The sophism itself is that any State of the Union may consistently with the national Constitution, and therefore lawfully and peacefully, withdraw from the Union without the consent of the Union or of any other State." ~ Lincoln, in his Special Message to Congress July 4 1861.


That doesn't sound very principled to me.

[itshappening]

"If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union... let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." ~ Thomas Jefferson, first Inaugural Address, 1801.

"If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation... to a continuance in union... I have no hesitation in saying, 'let us separate.'" ~ Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to W. Crawford, June 20, 1816

Lincoln called Thomas Jefferson "the most distinguished politician in our history."

So therefore we have a founding father, THE founding father and principal author of the Declaration of Independence, explicitly supporting SECESSION. So no, Lincoln wasn't defending the principles of the founders he was OPPOSING them.

[Travlyr]

The North seceeded because of the high tariffs Lincoln and the North was imposing or wanted to impose. They did so PEACEFULLY and in some states held referendums and conventions. How many times do you need to be told that before you believe it? Just because they mentioned slavery in their constitution, something Lincoln wanted to put in the U.S constitution to address ONE of their grievances does not mean they seceeded over it, which they felt, as Jefferson and others was their right as the Union was voluntary.



"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 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 the Union." ~ Letter to Horace Greeley, Editor of the New York Tribune, August 22 1862. This more than anything else demonstrates that Lincoln's centralist superstitions derived from Daniel Webster and Joseph Story about "the Union," rather than the immorality of slavery, were his motivations in plotting war. This letter also contradicts Lincoln's sentiment expressed in his first inaugural address, that he had neither the "lawful right," or the "inclination" to abolish slavery.

So no, it wasn't as you frequently claim "about slavery"

For the Southern Confederacy it was definitely about slavery. Read what the Southern states declare in their own secession statements. They claim to secede from the Union in order to "preserve the blessings of African slavery." Lincoln believed he only had the Constitutional authority to end slavery in Washington D.C. and he did free the slaves in D.C. in 1862. These are their words... not mine.

South Carolina,

[A]n increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding [i.e., northern] states to the institution of slavery has led to a disregard of their obligations. . . . [T]hey have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery. . . . They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes [through the Underground Railroad].

Mississippi,

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest of the world. . . . [A] blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

Alabama,

. . . the election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin to the offices of President and Vice-President of the United States of America by a sectional party [the Republicans], avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions [slavery] and to the peace and security of the people of the State of Alabama . .

Georgia,

A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the federal government has been committed [i.e., the Republican Party] will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia [in favor of secession]. The party of Lincoln, called the Republican Party under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. . . . The prohibition of slavery in the territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees in its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its [Republican] leaders and applauded by its followers. . . . [T]he abolitionists and their allies in the northern states have been engaged in constant efforts to subvert our institutions [i.e., slavery].

Louisiana,

Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern Confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery. . . . Louisiana and Texas have the same language, laws, and institutions. . . . and they are both so deeply interested in African slavery that it may be said to be absolutely necessary to their existence and is the keystone to the arch of their prosperity. . . . The people of Louisiana would consider it a most fatal blow to African slavery if Texas either did not secede or, having seceded, should not join her destinies to theirs in a Southern Confederacy.

Texas,

[Texas] was received as a commonwealth, holding, maintaining, and protecting the institution known as Negro slavery – the servitude of the African to the white race within [Texas] – a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race and which her people intended should exist in all future time.

Virginia,

On April 17, 1861, Virginia became the eighth state to secede. It, too, acknowledged that the “oppression of the southern slave-holding states” (among which it numbered itself) had motivated its decision.

Arkansas,

No concessions would now satisfy (and none ought now to satisfy) the South but such as would amount to a surrender of the distinctive principles by which the Republican Party coheres [exists], because none other or less would give the South peace and security. That Party would have to agree that in the view of the Constitution, slaves are property – that slavery might exist and should be legalized and protected in territory hereafter to be acquired to the southwest [e.g., New Mexico, Arizona, etc.], and that Negroes and mulattoes cannot be citizens of the United States nor vote at general elections in the states. . . . For that Party to make these concessions would simply be to commit suicide and therefore it is idle to expect from the North – so long as it [the Republican Party] rules there – a single concession of any value.

North Carolina and Tennessee,

North Carolina and Tennessee became the tenth and eleventh states to secede, thus finishing the formation of the new nation that titled itself the Slave-Holding Confederate States of America. Southern secession documents indisputably affirm that the South’s desire to preserve slavery was the driving force in its secession and thus a primary cause of the Civil War.

[heavenlyboy34]

Damn, y'all are getting trolled HARD by Trav. lulz.

[Brian4Liberty]

I don't think it had anything to do with Marx. Lincoln started advocating for the National bank in 1832 after Henry Clay gave his three day speech in congress on the "American System."

It could be that Clay influenced Marx, and both Marx and Clay influenced Lincoln.

A timeline with Henry Clay's speech added (Marx was 14, Lincoln was 23):

- Lincoln born: February 12, 1809
- Marx born: May 5, 1818
- Henry Clay's American System Speech: 1832
- Marx publishes a book about Emancipation: 1843
- Marx expelled from France as a radical: 1845
- Lincoln elected to US House: 1846
- Marx publishes the Communist Manifesto: February 1848
- Marx is a contributor to the New York Tribune (Lincoln's favorite newspaper), 1851-1861
- Lincoln runs for U.S. Senate vs. Douglas, famous Lincoln-Douglas debates occur: 1858
- Lincoln becomes US President: 1860
- Civil War Starts: 1861
- Emancipation Proclamation: January 1, 1863

Some interesting history about the Whigs, Clay, Marx and Lincoln:

On Saturday morning, October 25, 1851, Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune , entrenched after a decade of existence as America’s leading Whig daily, appeared with twelve pages rather than its usual eight. The occasion was too noteworthy to be passed over without comment by the paper itself. So a special editorial was written—probably by Greeley’s young managing editor, the brisk, golden-whiskered Charles A. Dana—to point it out.

Besides a “press of advertisements.” the editorial ran, this morning’s enlarged paper contained “articles from some foreign contributors that are especially worthy of attention.” Among these were “a letter from Madame Belgioioso, upon the daily and domestic life of the Turks, and another upon Germany by one of the clearest and most vigorous writers that country has produced—no matter what may be the judgment of the critical upon his public opinions in the sphere of political and social philosophy.”

Turning the pages to see who this most clear and vigorous German might be, readers ... reached a long article entitled “Revolution and Counter-Revolution,” over the by-line, Karl Marx.

“The first act of the revolutionary drama on the Continent of Europe has closed,” it began upon a somber organ tone; ”“The ‘powers that were’ before the hurricane of 1848, are again the ‘powers that be.’ ” But, contributor Marx went on, swelling to his theme, the second act of the movement was soon to come, and the interval before the storm was a good time to study the “general social state … of the convulsed nations” that led inevitably to such upheavals.

He went on to speak of “bourgeoisie” and “proletariat”—strange new words to a readership absorbed at the moment with the Whig state convention, the late gale off Nova Scotia and with editor Greeley’s strictures against Tammany and Locofocoism. “The man goes deep—very deep for me,” remarked one of Greeley’s closest friends, editor Beman Brockway of upstate Watertown, New York. “Who is he?”

Karl Marx, a native of the Rhineland, had been for a short time the editor ol a leftist agitational newspaper in Cologne until the Prussian police closed it down and drove him out. At thirty, exiled in Paris, he had composed as his own extremist contribution to the uprisings of 1848 an obscure tract called the Communist Manifesto . At least at this moment it was still obscure, having been overtaken by events and forgotten in the general tide of reaction that followed the surge of 1848 abroad. Thrown out of France in turn as a subversive character, he had settled in London, tried unsuccessfully to launch another left-wing journal there, spent the last of his small savings, and now was on his uppers with his wife and small children in a two-room hovel in Soho, desperately in need of work.

The following week Karl Marx was in the Tribune again, continuing his study of the making of revolutions. And again the week after that. “It may perhaps give you pleasure to know,” managing editor Dana wrote him as his series of pieces on the late events in Germany went on, “that they are read with satisfaction by a considerable number of persons and are widely reproduced.” Whatever his views might be, evidently the man could write. Next he branched out and wrote for Greeley and Dana on current political developments in England, France, Spain, the Middle East, the Orient—the whole world, in fact, as seen from his Soho garret. News reports, foreign press summaries, polemics, and prophecies poured from his desk in a continuous, intermixed flow, sometimes weekly, often twice-weekly, to catch the next fast packet to New York and so to earn from Greeley five dollars per installment.

This singular collaboration continued for over ten years. During this period Europe’s extremest radical, proscribed by the Prussian police and watched over by its agents abroad as a potential assassin of kings, sent in well over 500 separate contributions to the great New York family newspaper dedicated to the support of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, temperance, dietary reform, Going West, and, ultimately, Abraham Lincoln. Even at his low rate of pay—so low that his revolutionary friend and patron, Friedrich Engels, agreed with him that it was “the lousiest petty-bourgeois cheating”—what Marx earned from the Tribune during that decade constituted his chief means of support, apart from handouts from Engels. The organ of respectable American Whigs and of their successors, the new Republican party, sustained Karl Marx over the years when he was mapping out his crowning tract of overthrow, Das Kapital .

http://www.americanheritage.com/cont...horace-greeley

[jmdrake]

Ah Jimminy Crickets! YAPCWT. (Yet another pointless civil war thread). It's pointless because each side is so freaking hell bent on proving their side "right" that few, if any, are willing to see that both sides were wrong. As an African American I'm tickled pink that my forebears where able to chose to leave the plantation and sell their labor to whoever they wished, start their own businesses and hire blacks and whites, or even leave the U.S. if that was their desire. (I LOL when some in this debate point to Lincoln offering to pay those who wished to leave as some kind of negative thing and mischarecterize that as "deportation"). On the flip side, Sherman did commit war crimes marching through Georgia and the whole thing could have been settled without bloodshed if there had been cooler heads on one side or the other. (South Carolina stood down a bellicose Andrew Jackson by themselves.) I also laugh at the "My forefathers weren't fighting for slavery as they didn't own slaves" argument. Some of those forefathers were forced to fight because of a draft. Some aspired to be rich enough to be slaver owners someday. Some just got pissed when they saw people like Sherman burning up everything. (19th century version of "blowback"). I doubt your average illiterate cannon fodder southerner understood or cared about the tariff system. And I doubt your average illiterate cannon fodder yankee understood or cared about tariffs as well, and I bet most of them didn't give a flip about what happened to blacks in the south. Some were drafted. Some were pissed when they saw southern troops invade the north. (It's irrelevant as to who the real aggressor was because in times of war the media generally rallies around the government and paints the other side as the bad guy).

The truth is, the power elites in both regions didn't give a flip about the poor whites or blacks who went off to fight their war. And poor whites ultimately benefited from the south losing the civil war. Prior to the war some of them were treated less than dirt and even worse than black slaves. You want a good laugh? Read about the trial of Negro Will. The link I gave doesn't give it full justice. Will was a slave who had invented a new ho. (No jokes please) His white overseer wanted to force Will to let another slave use the ho. (Again, no jokes). Will got mad and broke it in half. The angry overseer went after Will. A fight ensued and the overseer shot Will, but Will killed the overseer. Will won his case when the state court declared that even slaves have a right to self defense. Now here's the funny part. Will's master paid for his defense. Why do you think he did that? For the same reason that someone who owns a prize pit bull might pay to defend it from being put to sleep even if it seriously hurt or killed someone. Will was property and property costs money. Ironically years later Will was put to death....for killing another black slave. Property destroying "white trash" wasn't important. "White trash" didn't cost anything to replace.

After the war there was no more property so the status of poor whites improved at least a little bit. And after the war the south stopped stubbornly sticking to an agricultural model and instead industrialized. (The south's dearth of industry is really what caused it to lose the war.) Whites had the opportunity to become foremen of steel mills and textile factories. Yeah some southern planters had to adjust their way of life. Some took to the adjustment better than others. And nowadays you'll find as much support for protective tariffs in the south as you do in the north. Which brings me to the point of what could and should have happened. Someone, on either side, should have proposed this deal. Protective tariffs should have been raised for a limited amount of time and the entire proceeds should have been given to the south. During this period the money should have been used for compensated emancipation, to fund integration of the newly freed slaves into society, or their emigration if they so chose, and to provide funds for industrialization of the south. Once both sides achieved economic and industrial parity, those tariffs should have been abolished. And before someone says "Well why didn't Lincoln try that", he did try compensated emancipation, but not under the model I've proposed. Now we can live in the past and hash over how good or bad Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis was, or we can consider alternative ways both sides could have reached a "win/win" and see if such a lesson can be applied to our modern political dynamic.

That out of the way, I leave you to your regularly scheduled Lincoln admires vs Lincoln haters slugfest.

[Travlyr]

"Yet another pointless civil war thread"

What does this National Bank thread have to do with the Civil War?