Out My Window

After some raised eye brows about my post on Obama's fascination with Lincoln and how Lincoln is hailed as the one to free the slaves, I thought I would qualify some of my statements.

First: I stand by the fact that he DID NOT free any slaves. He did make a proclamation that the slaves of the states that were in arms against the Union, were to be considered free. It should be noted that he did not free any slaves in the Union and he did not have the legal authority to enforce his proclamation in the South.
Lincoln had always said, even after the war, that if he could have saved the Union without freeing the slaves, he would have done so.

Secondly: His administration could more so be compared to Bush's when it comes to some of his policies and tactics than to anything Obama has promised.
Like Bush , Lincoln also bent the Constitution and suspended the writ of habeas corpus. He had Federal troops arrest over 1,300 citizens in the Northern States including hundreds of newspaper editors that were critical of his administration. Civilians arrested by military authorities. No trials... no due process. Lincoln’s military became quite proficient at torturing Northern civilians who had been arbitrarily arrested without a warrant.

"Handcuffs and hanging by the wrists were rare, but in the summer of 1863, the army had developed a water torture that came to be used routinely."

Of course the modern history books depict this not as unconstitutional but merely "out of keeping with the normal tenor of American law." The arrest ordered by Lincoln was "with the best of motives."

I am sure he had best of intentions when he arrested 300 Santee Sioux Indian bystanders after a skirmish with a war party and had them prosecuted and sentenced to death in a trial that lasted ten minutes. Lincoln feared that the mass deaths of three hundred civilians would tend to sway foreign countries to be sympathetic to the South, so he commuted the deaths down to just 39. Still the largest mass execution ever held. (and as an added note, there were no weapons of mass destruction found on any of them)

So what did started the Civil War? Tariffs. Taxation, without representation.
South Carolina had already foiled the 1828 "Tariff of Abominations" and had vowed to leave the Union if the Senate passed the 1861 Morrill tariff.
The bill immediately raised the average tariff rate from about 15 percent to 37.5 percent, but with a greatly expanded list of covered items. The tax burden would about triple. Soon thereafter, a second tariff increase would increase the average rate to 47.06 percent. The slap in the face was that 80% of the import tariffs were being paid by the South and revenues were mostly going to the Northern industries.
Lincoln literally promised in his first inaugural address a military invasion if the new, tripled tariff rate was not collected.
What this meant was, the South could not sell their goods to other countries at a world price.

If you doubt any of this, research for yourself. Go to books that were printed in the late 1800's. Read what people of the era was saying about the times and the war. There are too many good resources out there that sheds true light on the "federal/state readjustment" to take my word for it.