Remembering Mr. Lincoln

[Valin]

Power Line

Scott Johnson

Feb. 12 2018

Today is of course the anniversary of the birth of America’s greatest president, Abraham Lincoln. As a politician and as president, Lincoln was a profound student of the Constitution and constitutional history. Perhaps most important, Lincoln was America’s indispensable teacher of the moral ground of political freedom at the exact moment when the country was on the threshold of abandoning what he called its “ancient faith” that all men are created equal.

In 1858 Lincoln attained national prominence in the Republican Party as the result of the contest for the Senate seat held by Stephen Douglas. It was Lincoln’s losing campaign against Douglas that made him a figure of sufficient prominence that he could be the party’s 1860 presidential nominee.

At the convention of the Illinois Republican Party in June, Lincoln was the unanimous choice to run against Douglas. After declaring him their candidate late on the afternoon of June 16, the entire convention returned that evening to hear Lincoln speak. Accepting the convention’s nomination, Lincoln gave one of the most incendiary speeches in American history.

(Snip)

Thank you, Mr. Lincoln: “Let us stick to it then, let us stand firmly by it then.” (First posted on Lincoln’s birthday 2005.)

 

[Valin]

A genius for friendship

Scott Johnson

Feb. 12 2018

Abraham Lincoln stands not only as America’s greatest president but also as its greatest lawyer. At the time of his election to the presidency in 1860 he was the most prominent practicing lawyer in the state of Illinois. As a politician and as president, Lincoln was a profound student of the Constitution and constitutional history.

Perhaps most important, Lincoln was America’s indispensable teacher of the moral ground of political freedom at the exact moment when the country was on the threshold of abandoning what he called its “ancient faith” that all men are created equal. How can it be that lawyers know so little of the giant of their profession?

Former federal judge Herbert Stern is himself a prominent practicing attorney who has found much to learn from Lincoln’s legal career. As a teacher of practice skills to trial lawyers he frequently asks a rhetorical question: would you rather have an edge in the facts of a case, an edge in the law of a case, or Abraham Lincoln for your lawyer? In his view, the practitioner who can learn to emulate Lincoln as a lawyer holds the key to greatness in the profession.

But Lincoln is such an imposing figure that his stature obscures the man. As we view him historically, from the end of his life to the beginning of his career, he remains a figure whose greatness makes him difficult to know or understand. If we can follow him as a young man, as he finds his vocation and his calling, he may become a more familiar and accessible if no less admirable man.

(Snip)

[Valin]

 

The Comments are as always...* enlightening

 

 

*

[Draggingtree]

The Dark Side of Abraham Lincoln

By Thomas Landess on Dec 10, 2015

Is there another.....?

 

By way of prologue, let me say that all of us like the Lincoln whose face appears on the penny. He is the Lincoln of myth: kindly, hum­ble, a man of sorrows who believes in malice toward none and char­ity toward all, who simply wants to preserve the Union so that we can all live together as one people.

The Lincoln on the penny, had he lived, would have spared the South the ravages of Reconstruction and ushered in the Era of Good Feeling in 1865. The fact that this mythic Lincoln was killed is surely the ultimate tragedy in a tragic era. Indeed the most that any Southerner could say in behalf of the slayer of that Lincoln was what Sheldon Vanauken reported hearing from an old-fashioned Virginian: 

http://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/review/the-dark-side-of-abraham-lincoln/

[Draggingtree]

May 24, 2020 -  Aftermath: Despotism, America Transformed, Historical Accuracy, Myth of Saving the Union, Northern Resistance to Lincoln, Propaganda, Republican Party Jacobins    Comments Off on A Predetermined Military Trial

A Predetermined Military Trial

Though John Wilkes Booth’s assassination of Lincoln caused a virtual blockade of the entire Atlantic coast from Baltimore to Hampton Roads in Virginia, Secretary of War Stanton had not ordered closed the road to Port Tobacco which led to the Confederacy.  This was the route the alleged assassin was expected to take to escape pursuers.

A Predetermined Military Trial

“[Confederate foreign agent Harry] Hotze must have regretted his lack of caution in commenting two years previously on Lincoln’s fear of assassination. For it was immediately charged that the shooting was part of a plot hatched by the Confederate Government headed by Jefferson Davis. [The] Stabbing and wounding of Secretary of State Seward and an attempt on Vice President Andrew Johnson the same night provided evidence of a widespread plot, and a Confederate courier, Johnny Surratt, was accused of a part in these connected activities.

Surratt was not captured, but his mother and a number of other persons were taken into custody, tried by a military court, and hanged. Booth was shot and killed by a special detail of pursuers dispatched from Washington by the War Department. Orders were issued for the arrest of Jefferson Davis and other members of the Confederate cabinet on like charges.

By waiting over one hundred years to write this history, one has the virtue of hindsight, as well as the disclosure of secret papers of the Lincoln administration which had been kept sealed by request of his heirs until certain persons named therein were dead.

It is difficult to understand why Lincoln’s family wished to protect those at whom the finger of suspicion would have pointed by disclosure of these papers after his murder.

For the papers indicated that the Lincoln Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, had prior knowledge of the reported plot of John Wilkes Booth and others at Mrs. Surratt’s boarding house in Washington, but had failed to either warn Lincoln or give him special protection.

It was obvious even to observers at the time that the real beneficiary, should the plot have succeeded in killing the Vice President and Secretary of State, also would have been next in line for the Presidency. Moreover, the Radical Republicans had refused to support Lincoln at the 1864 [Republican] Convention, and this was the faction supported by and supporting Stanton in the disputes following Johnson’s accession.

Immediately following Lincoln’s assassination, Stanton was in full control of the government through martial law, and was in charge of the trials of the so-called conspirators. While the hanging of so many persons without a civil trial did not arouse much comment abroad, the execution of Mrs. Surratt, because Booth had lodged at her house, was the subject of considerable discussion.

But the War Secretary refused [to not hang Mrs. Surratt] on grounds that the executions were necessary to avoid panic among the populace. This would indicate, of course, that the outcome of the military trial was predetermined.”    

(Felix Senac: Sage of Felix Senac, Being the Legend and Biography of a Confederate Agent in Europe, Regina Rapier, 1972, excerpts pp. 182-183)   

http://circa1865.org/2020/05/24/a-predetermined-military-trial/

[Draggingtree]

The Legend of the Speech
 

Abraham Lincoln’s dedicatory speech of the memorial cemetery at Gettysburg “Gettysburg Address” has, like its author, achieved a kind of apotheosis. The soldiers,  about whom it was written and to whom the memorial itself was dedicated, are virtually forgotten.  Observers today consider the Gettysburg Address the American political creed, a “prose poem” of the triumph of freedom and equality.  Delivered in 1863 during the height of the Civil War, Lincoln’s dedicatory speech is only three paragraphs long.  Even today, schoolchildren often learn it by heart.  The content of this most rousing and triumphant of eulogies is bracingly simple.  Lincoln begins by reminding his audience of the Founding Fathers’ conviction of the undeniable truth that all men are created equal.  This undeniable truth, he claims, provides the Union its strength and assures it of victory in the present “struggle”.  From there he pivots, consoling the people of the Union and thanking them for their loyalty, steadfastness, and great sacrifice in the cause of preserving the Constitution against the rebellious South.  Despite the latter’s pretensions to “secession”, he offers an olive branch to the thoroughly defeated confederates, promising reunification and forgiveness for those prepared to free their slaves.  Meditating in fulsome detail upon the Union soldiers who had died, he praises both their deeds in battle and their self-conscious dedication to the goal of emancipating and enfranchising the African-Americans in bondage.  Closing with a flourish, he prophesies the inevitable victory of constitutional government and democracy in America, portending hope for harmonic relations between the races in a “new birth of freedom”.  This is the Gettysburg Address that court historians usually cherish as the creed of our national political theology.  

 

 More @ The Abbeville Institute

[Valin]

@Draggingtree

Quote

Even today, schoolchildren often learn it by heart. 

I have my doubts about that.

[Valin]

Quote

Lincoln inhumanly neither consoles nor praises the mothers and fathers of the soldiers for their efforts or sacrifice.  (Do they exist for him?)

Only an ignorant moron would say something like that. I have to question 1. Who is this clown? (with apologies to clowns), I find nothing on Google/Go Duck Go about a Christopher Kirk (well there's a golfer) 2. has he ever studied this speech?

The thing is 165 years after he was murdered we are still talking about him. This makes him one of the greatest Presidents/Politicians ever to serve. The reason groups like Abbeville Institute keep harping on him is (spoiler alert) The Confederacy (rightly) LOST...they got their asses handed to them. Get Over It!

/rant #927,771

 

 

[Draggingtree]

Legend and Lies at Gettysburg

By Christopher Kirk on Jul 21, 2020

The Legend of the Speech

Abraham Lincoln’s dedicatory speech of the memorial cemetery at Gettysburg “Gettysburg Address” has, like its author, achieved a kind of apotheosis. The soldiers,  about whom it was written and to whom the memorial itself was dedicated, are virtually forgotten.  Observers today consider the Gettysburg Address the American political creed, a “prose poem” of the triumph of freedom and equality.  Delivered in 1863 during the height of the Civil War, Lincoln’s dedicatory speech is only three paragraphs long.  Even today, schoolchildren often learn it by heart.  The content of this most rousing and triumphant of eulogies is bracingly simple.  Lincoln begins by reminding his audience of the Founding Fathers’ conviction of the undeniable truth that all men are created equal.  This undeniable truth, he claims, provides the Union its strength and assures it of victory in the present “struggle”.  From there he pivots, consoling the people of the Union and thanking them for their loyalty, steadfastness, and great sacrifice in the cause of preserving the Constitution against the rebellious South.  Despite the latter’s pretensions to “secession”, he offers an olive branch to the thoroughly defeated confederates, promising reunification and forgiveness for those prepared to free their slaves.       https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/legend-and-lies-at-gettysburg/