[Peace-discuss] The Lincoln cult

[E. Wayne Johnson]

> 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...

Reminds me of some clever sign in someone's office---

The Doctor is _IN_

Right Answers   $10.00

Wrong Answers $  5.00

Dumb Looks         FREE


------------------

*

Anyway, it seems to me that while we ought to be pressed by the demands 
of inner truth,
we are being jacked around by opinion shapers.




C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> "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.
>
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