[Peace-discuss] Lincoln revised
LAURIE SOLOMON
LAURIE at ADVANCENET.NET
Sat May 23 21:15:46 CDT 2009
I - for one - fail to see what is so damn important about who gets where
first. Does it really make a difference if poets or novelists or
journalists or historians or etc. get there first. All that really matters
is that someone gets there.
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Estabrook
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Subject: [Peace-discuss] Lincoln revised
[Illustrating the principle that the poets often get there first, the modern
discussion of Lincoln includes the publication of Gore Vidal's revisionist
novel
"Lincoln" in 1984. The following is from Jeff Riggenbach, "Why American
History
Is Not What They Say: An Introduction to Revisionism." --CGE]
...The 1804 duel with Hamilton is perhaps the most famous event in Burrs
life.
The second most famous is probably his arrest and trial, four years later,
on
charges of treason. As Burr tells Charlie the latter story, it reminds him
(unsurprisingly) of Jeffersons hypocrisy and lust for power. According to
Burr, Jefferson tried to suspend habeas corpus so he could continue to hold
two
of Burrs alleged associates in a military prison and beyond the reach of
the
Constitution. In his defense, Jefferson argued that [o]n great occasions,
every good officer must be ready to risk himself in going beyond the strict
line
of law, when the public preservation requires it. His political opponents,
Jefferson acknowledged, will try to make something of the infringement of
liberty by the military arrest and deportation of citizens, but if it does
not
go beyond such offenders as Swartwout, Bollman, Burr, Blennerhassett, etc.,
they
will be supported by the public approbation. Burrs summary of Jeffersons
view is succinct and unsparing. In other words, he tells Charlie, if
public
opinion is not unduly aroused one may safely set aside the Constitution and
illegally arrest ones enemies. [102]
In the next novel in Vidals series, Lincoln, another president employs the
same
tactics, and justifies his actions in a very similar way. It is now more
than
fifty years after Jeffersons abortive attempt to suspend habeas corpus.
Abraham Lincoln is making war against the Southern states that seceded from
the
Union at the beginning of his first term in the White House. In his attempt
to
ensure that Maryland does not join those seceded states, he imposes martial
law,
orders the arrest of anyone who takes up arms or incites others to take
up
arms, against the Federal government, and orders further that those
arrested be
held indefinitely without ever charging them with any offense. His
justification is reminiscent of the one Burr attributes to Jefferson, who
spoke
of the public preservation. [T]he most ancient of all our human
characteristics is survival, Lincoln tells his Secretary of State, William
H.
Seward. In order that this Union survive, I have found it necessary to
suspend
the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, but only in the military zone.
As
Lincoln sees it, he is merely exercising what he calls the inherent powers
of
the presidency when he takes actions of this kind. And, as he tells Seward,
An
inherent power [
] is just as much a power as one that has been spelled
out.
[103]
Lincoln is not narrated in the first person as Burr is. Rather it is
narrated
in the third person not an omniscient third person, but one whose point
of
view hops around among a short list of important characters: Lincolns
secretary, John Hay; Secretary of State Seward; Treasury Secretary Salmon P.
Chase; First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln; and David Herold, the pharmacists
clerk
and Southern sympathizer who was later convicted of conspiring successfully
with
John Wilkes Booth and others to assassinate Lincoln early in his second term
in
office.
The Lincoln thus presented might well be expected to resemble the proverbial
elephant as observed by several different blind men. But in fact Vidals
Lincoln is much more coherent than that, for his observers are not blind.
They
differ widely in their opinions and interpretations of what they see, but
what
they see is identifiably the same man. Harold Bloom looks at Vidals
Lincoln
and sees [a] minority President, elected with less than 40 percent of the
total
vote.
Though his election committed him only to barring the extension of
slavery
to the new states, and though he was a moderate Republican and not an
Abolitionist, Lincoln was violently feared by most of the South. Vidals
opening irony, never stated but effectively implied, is that the South
beheld
the true Lincoln long before Lincolns own cabinet [
] The South feared an
American Cromwell, and in Vidals vision, the South actually helped produce
an
American Bismarck. [104]
Vidals Lincoln, says Donald E. Pease, is interested mostly in
self-aggrandizement, though his interest in sex was sufficient in his
younger
years that he contracted syphilis from a prostitute and communicated this
disease to his wife and children. [105] To Fred Kaplan, Vidals Lincoln
is a
pragmatic and manipulative politician with one overriding vision: to save
the
Union and by saving it to transform it into a modern, industrialized,
national
state so powerfully and tightly coherent that nothing can tear it apart
again.
[106]
This mania for saving the Union cannot be overestimated as a central
factor in
the motivations and behavior of Vidals Lincoln. As Bloom notes, Vidals
Lincoln is a respecter of neither the states, nor the Congress, nor the
Court,
nor the parties, nor even the Constitution itself. [107] Pease makes the
same
point when he writes that Vidals Lincoln is a political heretic who
believes
in none of the political instruments supportive of union (the Congress, the
Courts, the Constitution) except insofar as they can supplement his will to
absolute executive power. [108]
Vidals Lincoln is also no Great Emancipator. Vidals Lincoln, as Pease
points
out, believes the emancipation of slaves entails their exportation to the
West
Indies or Liberia. [109] For, as Kaplan notes, though he is [o]pposed to
slavery, Lincoln does not believe slavery an issue worth fighting about.
[110]
Vidals Lincoln tells the assembled delegates of the Southern Peace
Conference that met with him shortly after his election that I will do what
I
can to give assurance and reassurance to the Southern states that we mean
them
no harm. It is true that I was elected to prevent the extension of slavery
to
the new territories of the Union. But what is now the status quo in the
Southern states is beyond my power or desire ever to alter. I have
never
been an abolitionist, he tells his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton. To a
delegation of black freemen that comes to meet him at the White House,
Vidals
Lincoln declares that your race is suffering, in my judgment, the greatest
wrong inflicted on any people. But even when you cease to be slaves you are
still a long way from being placed on an equality with the white race. His
secretary, John Hay, sitting in on the meeting, reflects that the president
was
unshaken in his belief that the colored race was inferior to the white.
The fact that Lincoln had always found it difficult to accept any sort
of
natural equality between the races stemmed, Hay thought, from his own
experience
as a man born with no advantage of any kind, who had then gone to the top of
the
world. Lincoln had no great sympathy for those who felt that external
circumstances had held them back.
Early in his second term, Vidals Lincoln informs Congressman Elihu
Washburne
(R-Illinois) of his intention to reimburse the slave-owners for their
freed
slaves. This, he tells Washburne, will [
] be a quick way of getting money
into the South for reconstruction. In addition to the money hell need for
that plan, he adds, well need money to colonize as many Negroes as we can
in
Central America. Washburne is somewhat astonished that the president still
favors such a plan. When you get hold of an idea, he says to Lincoln,
you
dont ever let it go, do you? Lincoln replies: Not until I find a better
one.
Can you imagine what life in the South will be like if the Negroes stay?
[111]
Vidals Lincoln is firm in his belief that slave-owners should be
compensated
for their loss and that the freed slaves should be deported. He is also
firm in
his belief that both these issues are merely tangential to the war raging
between the United States and the Confederate States. Late in 1861, when
the
rogue Union general John C. Frémont declares martial law in Missouri (a
border
state) and announces that he will confiscate the property of all
secessionists,
including their slaves, who were to be freed, Vidals Lincoln declares
with
anguish, to Seward, This is a war for a great national idea, the Union, and
now
Frémont has tried to drag the Negro into it! As Vidal sees it, this
understanding of the war was not only Lincolns, but also that of other
prominent Americans of the time. Early in 1863, for example, not long after
the
president has delivered his annual message to Congress, Vidals John Hay
finds
himself in conversation with the lawyer, diplomat, and newspaperman Charles
Eames (1812-1867), who assures him that what the war is about is the
principle that the Union cannot be dissolved, ever. Later that year, when
Union forces under General George G. Meade finally won a decisive victory
over
Robert E. Lees Army of Northern Virginia at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Meade
telegraphed the White House, according to Vidals account, that he now
looked
to the army for greater efforts to drive from our soil every vestige of the
presence of the invader. Vidals Lincoln does not like Meades choice of
words. Of course, Pennsylvania is our soil, he tells Hay. But so is
Virginia. So are the Carolinas. So is Texas. They are forever our soil.
That
is what the war is about and these damned fools cannot grasp it; or will not
grasp it. The whole country is our soil. I cannot fathom such men. [112]
Fully in keeping with this understanding of what the war is all about is
Lincolns view of how reconstruction should be handled once the war is won.
The
Radical Republicans take the formation of the Confederate States of America
at
face value: the states in rebellion were out of the Union and should be
treated
as an enemy nations conquered provinces.
But Lincolns line was unwavering. The Union was absolutely
indivisible.
No state could ever leave it; therefore no state had ever left it. Certain
rebellious elements had seen fit to make war against the central government,
but
when those elements were put down all would be as it was and the Southern
states
would send representatives to Congress, exactly as they had done in the
past. [113]
But, of course, after the war, nothing was as it was before the war. Not
only
had 600,000 Americans lost their lives in the conflict, but another 400,000
were
wounded, many of whom were crippled for life. Altogether, nearly 1,000,000
Americans were casualties of the war, out of a total population of a little
more
than 31,000,000. If three percent of the current U.S. population were to be
killed or wounded in a war, we would be looking at nearly 9,000,000
casualties.
There was also extensive property damage, particularly in the South
damage
so extensive it would be many decades before anything resembling a full
economic
recovery could be said to have taken place there. Perhaps most important of
all, in Vidals version of the years 1861-1865, a series of precedents was
laid
down by the Lincoln administration which, in the years ahead, would justify
the
steady erosion of individual liberty in the United States.
For Vidals Lincoln does not limit his assault on the Constitution to the
suspension of habeas corpus. He tells Seward not long after his first
inauguration, Yesterday, at three in the afternoon, I ordered every U.S.
marshal in the country to seize the original of every telegram that has been
sent and a copy of every telegram that has been received in the last twelve
months. Seward wonders aloud about [t]he legal basis for this seizure,
and
Lincoln answers, The broader powers inherent in the Constitution. Vidals
Lincoln censors the press, locking up editors who oppose his policies.
Vidals
Baron Gerolt, the Prussian minister to Washington, tells Seward that his own
boss, Otto von Bismarck, very much admires the way that you arrest editors
but
he dares not do the same in Prussia because he says that, unlike you, he is
devoted to freedom of speech. That Vidals Lincoln is not in fact devoted
to
freedom of speech is made evident by his action against the former Ohio
Congressman Clement Vallandigham, who held that Lincolns war measures were
illegal and unConstitutional [sic] and so far worse than the defection of
the
Southern States. Vidals Lincoln has Vallandigham arrested and forcibly
exiled
to the Confederacy. Vidals Lincoln threatens to place New York City under
martial law to suppress opposition to the nations first military
conscription
law. Vidals Seward reflects in 1864 that there is now a single-minded
dictator in the White House, a Lord Protector of the Union by whose will
alone
the war had been prosecuted and that Lincoln had been able to make himself
absolute dictator without ever letting anyone suspect that he was anything
more
than a joking, timid backwoods lawyer. Charlie Schuyler, the narrator of
Burr,
reappears briefly in a couple of scenes in Lincoln, and, in the novels
closing
pages, observes to John Hay that Bismarck has now done the same thing to
Germany that you tell us Mr. Lincoln did to our country. [114]
http://lewrockwell.com/riggenbach/riggenbach3-2.html
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