[Peace-discuss] The Lincoln cult

Sat Feb 14 11:12:06 CST 2009

Ideological: I sensed an overly rigid Marxist approach in his article,  
an interpretation overly based on class diferences and economics,  
forgetting/omitting, for example, the importance of the abolitionist  
movement in affecting events, and nationalist sentiments.  Foner, a  
distinguished historian of the Civil War (or if you prefer "the battle  
between the states"), perhaps would comment more knowledgeably than I  
can. He comes to different, more trustworthy and balanced ,  
conclusions IMHO.
--mkb


On Feb 14, 2009, at 12:40 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> Explain "ideological."
>
> In fact, slavery was abolished in the federal city (Washington DC)  
> and slaveowners were compensated at the rate of $300 per slave --  
> i.e., their freedom was purchased.
>
> Although there were of course many citizens of the Confederacy who  
> didn't own slaves, you're right that "the economy of the south was  
> totally dependent on slavery" in that the elite lived on the surplus  
> value extracted from workers whom they owned; in the North, the  
> elite lived on the surplus value extracted from workers whom they  
> rented.
>
> The civil war was a clash between two competing systems for the  
> exploitation of labor.  Lincoln was the front man for the rental  
> system, which wanted no competition.
>
> It's not hard to see why.  Which do you take better care of, the car  
> you own or the car you rent?  --CGE
>
>
> Morton K. Brussel wrote:
>> Another evaluation of Lincoln, less ideological and more balanced  
>> in my view,
>> can be found written by Eric Foner in /The Nation/:
>> http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/59455.html
>> Also, consider looking at the Moyers interview with Foner:
>> http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/02062009/profile2.html#sites
>> The author of the piece below says
>> /Slavery was phased out in every other country of the world. It  
>> should have
>> been done as the British empire did -- buy the slaves and release  
>> them. How
>> much would that cost compared to killing 600,000 Americans?/ .
>> Given that the economy of the south was totally dependent on  
>> slavery, I wonder how long this would have taken --- and how much  
>> it would have cost.
>> I find the statement glib.
>> --mkb
>> On Feb 13, 2009, at 3:30 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>> The Lincoln birthday celebrations seem to have included little  
>>> attempt to
>>> learn from the past. Lincoln is celebrated -- by few more than the  
>>> current
>>> president, who insists upon a resemblance -- but there's little  
>>> critique
>>> of the devastation over which Lincoln presided.  The end of  
>>> chattel slavery
>>> is taken to be a retrospective justification of his launching of  
>>> the war.
>>> (The actual economic and social position of American slaves and  
>>> their
>>> families in the years after the Civil War is less attended to.)
>>> I can find only one statement of a contrary view by a present-day  
>>> American politician:
>>> "Lincoln should never have gone to war; there were better ways of  
>>> getting
>>> rid of slavery. Six hundred thousand Americans died in a senseless  
>>> civil
>>> war. Slavery was phased out in every other country of the world.  
>>> It should
>>> have been done as the British empire did -- buy the slaves and  
>>> release
>>> them. How much would that cost compared to killing 600,000  
>>> Americans?  And
>>> the hatred  lingered for 100 years.  Every other major country in  
>>> the world
>>> got rid of slavery without a civil war."
>>> Lincoln was not a principled opponent of slavery (altho' he may  
>>> have become
>>> so). His position before secession was that the federal government  
>>> did not
>>> possess the constitutional power to end slavery in states where it  
>>> already
>>> existed; he supported the Corwin Amendment, which would have  
>>> explicitly
>>> prohibited Congress from interfering with slavery in states where it
>>> existed.
>>> In the midst of the war, Lincoln wrote (to Horace Greeley), "My  
>>> paramount
>>> object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to  
>>> save or
>>> to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any  
>>> slave I
>>> would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves 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; and what I forbear, I forbear  
>>> because I
>>> do not believe it would help to save the Union."
>>> And what was "saving the Union" about?  All would admit today that  
>>> the *effect* of Lincoln's policy was to establish a much more  
>>> powerful central
>>> government in the United States.  (Hence the old line that the  
>>> Civil War
>>> was about a verb: "the United States is" vs. "the United States  
>>> are.")  But
>>> the *cause* of the war was the conflict between two ruling groups  
>>> who
>>> exploited labor differently -- by slavery in the South, by the
>>> wage-contract in the North. They came into conflict after the  
>>> Mexican War
>>> and the vast increase of US territory that followed it.
>>> "Both groups wanted to control the western half of the continent,  
>>> and the Northern agrarians became increasingly anti-slavery as  
>>> they faced the prospect of competing against a forced-labor  
>>> system.  But favoring free
>>> soil did not mean agitating to free the black man.  The majority  
>>> of Western
>>> farmers were not abolitionists ... Their objective was to exclude  
>>> both the
>>> white planter and the black [workers] from the trans-Mississippi
>>> marketplace.  That goal, and the attitude which produced it, gave  
>>> Abraham
>>> Lincoln his victory over the abolitionist element in the newly  
>>> rising
>>> Republican party." (W. A. Williams)
>>> The Radical Republicans (and Lincoln) were not necessarily  
>>> abolitionist and
>>> only adventitiously democratic. They just wanted the trans- 
>>> Mississippi empire farmed with wage-labor, not slave-labor.   
>>> (Hence the central
>>> Republican party plank was "no extension of slavery.")
>>> Options other than war were available to Lincoln, and he was aware  
>>> of them.
>>> Advice came from the most distinguished American military figure  
>>> of the
>>> day, Gen. Winfield Scott (1786-1866). He served on active duty as  
>>> a general
>>> longer than any other man in American history and may have been  
>>> the ablest
>>> American commander of his time; he devised the Anaconda Plan that  
>>> would be
>>> used to defeat the Confederacy. In a letter addressed to  Governor  
>>> Seward
>>> on the day preceding Lincoln's inauguration (March 3, 1861), he  
>>> suggested
>>> that the president had four possible courses of action: --adopt the
>>> Crittenden Compromise (which restored the Missouri Compromise  
>>> line: slavery
>>> would be prohibited north of the 36° 30′ parallel and guaranteed  
>>> south of
>>> it); --collect duties outside the ports of seceding States or  
>>> blockade
>>> them; --conquer those States at the end of a long, expensive, and  
>>> desolating war, and to no good purpose; or, --say to the seceded  
>>> States,
>>> "Wayward sisters, depart in peace!" (Scott was retired from the  
>>> service
>>> Nov. 1, 1861, and was succeeded by General McClellan.)
>>> I think a true democrat (therefore necessarily a socialist) would  
>>> have opposed the war in 1860 -- but obviously not because s/he  
>>> would have
>>> supported slavery. When Karl Marx wrote on behalf of the  
>>> International
>>> Working Men's Association to congratulate Lincoln on his re-election
>>> (1864), he gave as his principal reason that, with the distraction  
>>> of
>>> slavery removed, the struggle between capital and labor was clearer:
>>> slavery had been the reason Northern workers "were unable to  
>>> attain the
>>> true freedom of labor, or to support their European brethren in  
>>> their
>>> struggle for emancipation; but this barrier to progress has been  
>>> swept off
>>> by the red sea of civil war."
>>> One of the few recent scholarly studies not to observe the Lincoln  
>>> cult is William Marley's "Mr. Lincoln Goes to War" (2006).  From a  
>>> review:
>>> "Focusing on the North's road to war in 1861, he argues that  
>>> Abraham Lincoln made armed force a first choice, rather than a  
>>> last resort, in addressing the Union's breakup ... Marvel  
>>> describes the president's course
>>> of action as 'destructive and unimaginative.' The confrontation at  
>>> Fort
>>> Sumter ended any chance of avoiding conflict, he writes ...  
>>> Lincoln's early
>>> and comprehensive infringement of such constitutional rights as  
>>> habeas
>>> corpus set dangerous precedents for future autocratic executives."
>>> Illustrating the important principle that the poets often get  
>>> there first, Gore Vidal's "Lincoln: A Novel" (1984) made a similar  
>>> argument a generation
>>> ago. But the theme was absent from this week's celebrations.
>>> --CGE _______________________________________________ Peace- 
>>> discuss mailing
>>> list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
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