[Peace-discuss] The Lincoln cult

[C. G. Estabrook]

"Sensing" whether an "approach" is Marxist, rather than whether an account is
accurate, is the sort of thing that gives liberalism a bad name.

But perhaps you just mean that "an overly rigid Marxist approach" should be
avoided in favor of a properly rigid Marxist approach? And "an interpretation
overly based on class diferences and economics," in favor of an interpretation
properly based on class differences and economics?  If so, I agree.

And Lincoln of course was careful to separate himself from the abolitionists.

My model in these matters has always been Chomsky, red-baited as he was,
although as an anarchist he was always a critic of Marxism-Leninism -- from the
left. He's said, devastatingly, that when he did math, mathematicians wanted to
know if he got the right answer; when he did history, historians wanted to know
where he got his degree...

So as to Foner's being "a distinguished historian," I see no reason that a
Harvard Ph.D. in history should make one's views unassailable.  But perhaps it
should.  --CGE


Morton K.Brussel wrote:
> 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.