[Deleted] Double posting.
Farkel
The Racist Roots of Georgia's Gun Laws
by Bendrr 58 Replies latest jw friends
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Farkel
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Farkel
snowbird,
I suggest you quit reading revisionist, racist trash by the likes of Lerone Bennett, Jr., and start reading objective history. By his own admission, Bennett took real history and made up a lot of shit about it. Here is one of many critical reviews of his book.
Here is the review:
Lerone Bennett, Jr.'s recent book, Forced Into Glory, reminds me of a line by the Latin poet Ovid: "Well skilled in cunning wiles, he could make white of black and black of white." In his latest book, Mr. Bennett has worked hard at making "white of black and black of white." He has made the "Great Emancipator" into the "Great Enslaver" while accusing him of "ethnic cleansing." According to Bennett, "If Lincoln had had his way, there would be no Blacks in America. None." Lincoln's real purpose as president was not to free the slaves, but to prolong slavery until he could put a plan in place to deport all Blacks to a foreign shore. Bennett's writes: "[Lincoln] did everything he could to deport Blacks and to make America a Great White Place."
Sound strange? It is. But, to his credit, Mr. Bennett does not claim his book as history. He does not even claim it is historical biography. He describes it as a "political" history, and indeed it is -- a "politically correct" history. By selecting Lincoln's words carefully and placing his own interpretation on their meaning, Mr. Bennett is able to weave an ugly view of Abraham Lincoln that turns history on its ear and furthers the latest revisionist theory that the slaves freed themselves.
Bennett begins his book with the notion that Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave and that Lincoln deliberately exempted slaves in those areas under Union control to keep slavery alive as long as possible. According to Bennett, Lincoln used his proclamation to forestall the liberating effects of the First and Second Confiscation Acts which Bennett believes would have freed the slaves before Lincoln interfered by issuing his ineffective proclamation. Behind this deliberate delay, is Lincoln's insidious scheme to deport Blacks.
Bennett is correct in concluding that the Emancipation Proclamation freed few if any slaves. But Bennett misses the point. The Declaration of Independence didn't free a single American. It took a war to do that. But the Declaration of Independence established the principle under which a war would be fought and freedom would be won. In a similar vein, the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery, but it established the principle under which the civil war would be fought and freedom would be won. The rows upon rows of white headstones throughout our National Cemeteries attest to this idea.
Bennett writes as if Abraham Lincoln held the power to abolish slavery at any time he chose. Bennett is wrong. Neither the President nor the Congress of the United States had the power to abolish slavery by executive order or by legislation. Slavery was protected by the Constitution and the only way to abolish the peculiar institution legally was by amending the Constitution. That, of course, happened in December 1865, and it happened because of Lincoln's political will.
As a prelude to amending the Constitution to abolish slavery, Lincoln decided to issue a proclamation declaring those slaves held within Confederate (enemy) territory "thenceforward and forever free." How could he do this if the Constitution protected slavery? He did it by turning to the war powers granted the President under the Constitution. These powers allow the Commander-in-Chief to take certain steps to hurt the enemy and lessen his ability to wage war.
Lincoln's proclamation did not free slaves in those areas under Union control because Lincoln had no Constitutional authority as president to free them. The Emancipation Proclamation's justification was as a military order designed to hurt the enemy, plain and simple. A careful reading of the Constitution as well as Lincoln's lengthy explanation of his action would have helped Mr. Bennett to understand this important point.
Lincoln's proclamation also called for the enlistment of Black men into the Union army, an enormous step toward lowering the bar on the road to equality. Bennett would have us believe that Lincoln did all of this against his will because he was "forced" to do so by idealistic abolitionists who came to control Lincoln. Thus Abraham Lincoln was "Forced Into Glory." Among such people were Thaddeus Stevens, Wendell Phillips and Charles Sumner.
These men, according to Bennett, had a greater ideal and higher moral force than Abraham Lincoln did when it came to ending slavery. Even if true, none of them were president and none of them stood the slightest chance of becoming president. Any one of the three could have issued a proclamation or declared slavery abolished and it wouldn't have amounted to a tinker's damn. Their political power was limited to whistling into the wind.
As to the Confiscation Act of 1862, like the Emancipation Proclamation, it didn't free many slaves and it wasn't likely to. This Act declared that the slaves of any citizen who actively supported the rebellion could be confiscated and set free. The catch, however, required such "liberation" to be adjudicated in the Federal courts, case by case. Because private property is protected under the Constitution, "confiscating" slaves had to be sanctioned by a court after a hearing. There were over 380,000 slave owners in the South and if each had his or her day in court we would still be trying cases while all other court business stood still. The courts would be clogged until sometime into the next century.
Slavery would end only through force: political and physical force, and Lincoln commanded both. When the United States House of Representatives failed to pass the Thirteenth Amendment in the summer of 1864, Lincoln rolled up his sleeves and began twisting a few arms. He instructed the chairman of the Republican Party to make sure the amendment was part of the party's platform. The Democratic platform was silent on the issue.
The fall elections would produce a new House that would guarantee passage in the next Congress. Lincoln didn't wait. He used his persuasive powers to convince thirteen Democrats who had voted against the amendment to change their votes. They did and the amendment passed in the lame duck House, gaining the necessary two-thirds majority. This was not the action of a president who sought to delay emancipation until he could arrange to deport all Blacks.
Bennett correctly points out that Lincoln was a supporter of colonization. But supporting colonization is not the same as preferring it. Lincoln believed it was one small answer to the larger problem confronting Blacks in a racist society. What the readers of Forced Into Glory should know is that Lincoln advocated voluntary colonization. No Black was forced to leave the country against his or her free will. Only those who wanted to leave were offered the opportunity. The great majority declined, a few did not.
In one instance, Lincoln had approved a contract with an unscrupulous contractor to set up a colony on the Ile de Vache off the coast of Haiti. When Lincoln learned that several hundred Blacks had been abandoned without proper support, he ordered the United States Navy to bring the Blacks back to the United States. If Lincoln's plan was to rid the country of Blacks by deportation, he showed poor judgement in returning those Blacks who had already been deported.
Whatever Lincoln believed in his heart regarding social equality, he believed slavery was morally wrong, and he said so on numerous occasions: "If slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong." His views were well known to southern leaders, which is why they rejected his presidency. When Confederate peace commissioners met at Hampton Roads in 1865, Lincoln was willing to entertain terms of peace and reunion, but only on the condition that slavery was not a negotiating point. Lincoln insisted that any peace proposal include ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery.
To help facilitate acceptance of peace with abolition, Lincoln proposed compensating southern slaveholders to the tune of 400 million dollars to free their slaves. Lincoln had earlier expressed these same views in a letter to Horace Greeley concerning "The Niagara Peace Conference" held in 1864. Lincoln wrote that any peace agreement must embrace "the abandonment of slavery." This position belies Bennett's claim that Lincoln was a white supremacist whose every effort was to prolong slavery until such time as all Blacks could be deported leaving a "lily-White America" -- Bennett's words.
Mr. Bennett's distortion of Lincoln's "racial" policy is not restricted to Blacks. An excellent example of Bennett's style of making "white of black and black of white" is his account of Lincoln's actions regarding the Sioux Indian uprising in Minnesota. In August 1862, hostilities broke out between the Sioux nation in Minnesota and settlers of that state. When the fighting ended, over 400 white settlers were dead. The army captured over 1,500 Indian prisoners, including 1,000 women and children. A military commission was set up to try those Indians accused of atrocities. In the end, 303 Indians were sentenced to hang. Lincoln objected to what he viewed as wholesale slaughter. He wired the commanding officer to stay the executions and forward the "full and complete record of each conviction." He also ordered that any material which would discriminate the most guilty from the least guilty be included with the trial transcripts.
Lincoln then sat down with his Justice Department lawyers and reviewed every case. Lincoln was under tremendous pressure to approve the executions both to intimidate the Indians and to satisfy the white settlers' thirst for revenge. Both the military leaders and the politicians in Minnesota warned Lincoln that anything less than large-scale hangings would result in outrage and more violence against the Indians. Lincoln held firm and pardoned 265 of the 303 condemned Indians, approving a total of 38 cases.
Mr. Bennett focuses only on the 38 and refers to Lincoln's decision as "hard-hearted," and as an example of Lincoln's "double standard" when it came to questions of race. Bennett writes that Lincoln "approved one of the largest mass executions in military history," suggesting that he was motivated to kill Indians because he never forgot that an Indian "sneaked up behind his grandfather and killed him while he was working in a field." Bennett stops short of calling Lincoln's act "ethnic cleansing." He saves that offensive term to describe Lincoln's colonization policy.
Mr. Bennett's revisionist approach to history is not new. What makes his latest work so sensational is not his revisionist approach, but his subject. Abraham Lincoln has become a universal symbol of human ideals. Toppling such an icon is not an easy task. Anyone who seeks to bring down Lincoln will have to do more than cry fraud. Putting dreams in Lincoln's head ("Lincoln dreamed of an all-White nation") or putting someone else's words in his mouth ("the n----- question") will not do the job. While it may titillate the few, it will not convince the many.
Throughout his 627 pages of text, Mr. Bennett does not seem to understand what Lincoln knew so well: Union victory meant the end to slavery. Lincoln didn't stop with abolition, however. In his speech from the White House balcony on April 11, 1865, Lincoln began moving the country forward in the only way that would insure success -- he advocated Negro suffrage in small, sure steps. No amount of drum beating by Mr. Bennett can diminish the revolutionary significance of this act.
While it is important to focus on what Abraham Lincoln did as opposed to what he said, it would do Mr. Bennett and the rest of us well to heed Lincoln's words to his young law partner, Billy Herndon: "History is not history unless it is the truth."
Farkel -
snowbird
Farkel, I described Lincoln as cunning, wily, and manipulative - I said nothing about evil.
When I was growing up, every little hut in our community boasted a picture of Jesus, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Abe Lincoln. That is how much Mr. Lincoln was esteemed in Black households.
I was taught in school that Lincoln had the best interest of the slaves at heart, that he was willing to sacrifice his presidency for their freedom. That was a lie.
Reading an unbiased history of Abe Lincoln suggests that he really didn't know what to do about the slave problem. He was caught between a rock and a hard place, and as is often done in those circumstances, he sought a soft landing.
You can become incensed all you want, but truth is truth. The picture I've been sold all my life that Abe Lincoln was the great benefactor of Black people is a myth.
Oh, a side question: What makes you think I haven't read any other historians' views of Mr. Lincoln?
Sylvia
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leavingwt
Lincoln shredded the Constitution. Below are some snippets from Lew Rockwell's review of "Consitution in Exile" by Judge Andrew Napolitano.
"The Abraham Lincoln of legend is an honest man who freed the slaves and saved the Union. Few things could be more misleading."
"In order to increase his federalist vision of centralized power, ‘Honest’ Abe misled the nation into an unnecessary war. He claimed that the war was about emancipating slaves, but he could have simply paid slave owners to free their slaves . . . . The bloodiest war in American history could have been avoided."
"...all the other countries of the world that ended slavery in the nineteenth century, including Britain, Spain, France, Denmark, the Dutch, did so without a war. This, by the way, included the Northern states in the U.S. There were no "civil wars" to free the slaves in Massachusetts, New York (where slavery existed for over 200 years), or Illinois.
Lincoln’s "actions were unconstitutional and he knew it," writes Napolitano, for "the rights of the states to secede from the Union . . . [are] clearly implicit in the Constitution, since it was the states that ratified the Constitution . . ." Lincoln’s view "was a far departure from the approach of Thomas Jefferson, who recognized states’ rights above those of the Union." Judge Napolitano also reminds his readers that the issue of using force to keep a state in the union was in fact debated – and rejected – at the Constitutional Convention as part of the "Virginia Plan."
He also discusses Lincoln’s Confiscation Act of 1862, under which "any slaves behind the Union lines were captives of war who were to be freed and transported to countries in the tropics.
Unlike all those hopelessly miseducated neocon pundits who sneered at Ron Paul’s statements regarding how Lincoln did tremendous damage to the principles of the American founders, Judge Napolitano is well schooled in constitutional history. He writes of Lincoln’s complete trashing of the Constitution by "murdering civilians, declaring martial law, suspending habeas corpus, seizing . . . private property without compensation (including railroads and telegraphs), conducting a war without the consent of Congress, imprisoning nearly thirty thousand Northern citizens without trial, shutting down . . . newspapers, and even deporting a congressman (Clement L. Vallandigham from Ohio) because he objected to the imposition of an income tax."
"Saying that Lincoln abolished slavery and calling him the ‘Great Emancipator’ are grossly inadequate mischaracterizations," writes the judge. "Lincoln was interested in promoting his political agenda of centralizing government power, and freeing the slaves was only a means of advancement of that end."
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Farkel
snowbird,
:The picture I've been sold all my life that Abe Lincoln was the great benefactor of Black people is a myth.
No it isn't. Even if he was the biggest bumbler in the Universe and a total moron, freeing the Black people from 300 years of slavery on his Watch is a fact. Do you know what the Lincoln-Douglas debates were about? They were about whether slavery should be allowed in the newly expanding territories of the United States, or not. Lincoln was against allowing slavery in newly formed States. The South rebelled even before his election. I wonder why....... Only 1 1/2 years after his election, he declared that abolishing slavery was the goal of the Civil War. That was in his Emancipation Proclamation that some say didn't mean squat, yet it was clear to Lincoln it meant a whole bunch. More American people died in that Civil War than in both WWI and WWII put together so that blacks could be free, yet some racists still say Lincoln was not a great benefactor for black people. Name just ONE man in US History who did more for black people than Lincoln, and you'd better be prepared to defend your answer.
Oh, by the way, Mr. Lincoln paid with his very life for his role in freeing you and your racist author friends. But I suppose you don't even care about that, do you?
:Oh, a side question: What makes you think I haven't read any other historians' views of Mr. Lincoln?
I didn't say you hadn't. I merely suggested you read Sandburg's biography, since most scholars agree it is the best and most accurate. On the other hand, you haven't mentioned that you've read any other histories of Lincoln. If you had read some serious biographies, other than the crap they provide in school textbooks, you would have easily been able to trash that opinionated bile published by your racist friend Mr. Lenore.
Farkel -
undercover
Even if he was the biggest bumbler in the Universe and a total moron, freeing the Black people from 300 years of slavery on his Watch is a fact.
But Fark, I must protest. You said earlier:
I believe you might be thinking of the Emancipation Proclamation, which was not the law of the land, but merely a pronouncement. The Emancipation Proclamation freed no one. The Civil War was still going on.
You're right, the EP freed no one. It was a war time proclomation that freed no one. One, he didn't free the Northern slaves and two, he wasn't president over the Confederacy so he had no power to enact it over them.
Lincoln died before the Amendments to the Constitution, so therefore, slavery did not end on his watch, as he was dead. That's not to say that he didn't set into motion the means for slavery to be abolished, though an argument can be made that it could have been handled in a much better way than it was.
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snowbird
I see His Eminence Farkel has gone completely off the deep end, so I will apologize to Bendrr for veering off course and conclude by stating that there's so much in the history of the USA that is less than savory.
We know it; the whole world knows it; no good is accomplished by grinding our teeth and baring our fangs over the sins of the past. It is up to us, here and now, to acknowledge that fact and move onward.
Sylvia
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avishai
deleted, double post
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avishai
>>>>Now, more than ever blacks, especially in inner cities need to arm themselves and arm themselves well. It is the only way they can protect themselves for the scum criminals who prey in their neighborhoods.<<<<<
Ironically, the inner city is the very place Obama want's Gun bans. Pretty damn racist if you ask me. My honky ass in the country can protect myself, but a law abiding citizen in a neighborhood cops take their own sweet time getting too (if at all) can't? -
dinah
Our young brothers killing each other in the inner cities will not be deterred by gun control. When I watch the news from Birmingham (and I lived there) most of the homicides are gang/drug related. You can't disarm the drug cartels, they don't give a flying flip about guns laws.