THE WOMEN WHO PASSED AS MEN IN THE CIVIL WAR, WINSTON CHURCHILL: IF THE SOUTH HAD WON, PANORAMIC PICS OF BATTLEFIELDS!
Welcome to my unique exhibit of modern day images from battlefields of the American Civil War. Over 2500 individual snapshots were stitched together using Live Pictures Photovista to bring these 105 spinning 360 degree panoramic images here for your viewing pleasure. http://www.jatruck.com/stonewall/
Winston Churchill wrote about what would have happened if the South had won and forged an alliance with England! For one thing, he believed such an alliance would have stopped World War 1!
Welcome to The Civil War, the WEB's most extensive source of original Civil War resources. This site has over 7,000 pages of original Civil War content, and is full of incredible photographs, original illustrations, and eye-witness accounts of the defining moments of this Historic Struggle. Bookmark this site, as you will simply not find this information anywhere else!
What was it like for women in the Civil War? Is it true some women passed as men and joined the military? Well......
Another fairly well known story is that of Jennie Hodgers who served and fought for three years as Albert Cashier. Her identity wasn't revealed until 1913!
The trials and tribulations of Lt Harry T. Buford, Confederate Officer,later found to be Madam Loreta Velazquez, have also been recorded. Her book - "Loreta Janeta Velazquez The Woman in Battle: A Narrative of the Exploits, Adventures and Travels of Madame Loreta Janeta Velazquez, Otherwise Known as Lieutenant Harry T. Buford!
At the onset of the US civil war the existing doctrine of military warfare was about to become obsolete. The old lessons of warfare had to be re-written by the American Generals serving in the US Civil war. War took a new turn during the Civil war. Old world tactics and training were inefficient due to modern weaponry. The U.S. Civil war was an event that was unparalleled in the annals of military history. It was a revolution of warfare in itself.
For those looking for the LINCOLN: MAN VS MYTH speech the link is below, then on to the legal and moral issues of the Civil War:
The speech I gave that has sparked this blog you should keep in mind was written to be spoken, not read. I am swamped with film and play work and don't have time to make it a reading copy, perhaps I can later. Please keep in mind it is written for spoken emphasis, but so many people asked me to put it on the web I agreed to:
A Look at the Moral and Legal Elements Surrounding the Civil War
In the Orwellian tradition, he who controls the present, controls the past, and he who controls the past, controls the future. Every political system has a myth which is used to influence the beliefs of the citizens (or subjects) of that particular government. The myth of postbellum American government is simple and yet brilliantly effective: "In the American Civil War, the North fought to end slavery, and the South to preserve it." This statement contains one of the greatest fallacies of American history.
Unfortunately, the United States Government has applied its massive resources to propagate this myth. Schoolchildren study, some even memorize, Lincoln's speeches—and yet—probably, they have never heard of a man by the name of Jefferson Davis. The "Battle Hymn of the Republic" myth has been engrained in the conscience of the American polity. What has been forgotten, is that there are two sides to every story. Nevertheless, in his wisdom, Abraham Lincoln foretold the result of the propagation of this American myth: "You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time."
The major argument propagated by defenders of the North is that slavery was legal in the South and (for the most part) illegal in the North. The question demanded is, "How can anyone seriously defend the South, when such an evil existed within their states?" Perhaps an examination of the history surrounding the [first] War for Independence is in order. Consider Samuel Johnson's irritation at the American colonists who threatened secession from Britain: "[H]ow is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" The force of this argument is impossible not to feel. One must acknowledge that slavery was a dark moral stain on the seceding American colonies, all of which allowed slavery in 1776; similarly, it was a dark stain on the seceding Southern states, all of which allowed slavery in 1861. Nevertheless, immoral actions by a certain entity do not make other actions by that entity intrinsically immoral. If this were not so, mankind would be in a sad state indeed. If the American colonies and the Southern states had a moral right to secede, than, obviously, it would be morally wrong to attempt to prevent their secession through invasion. This holds even truer in the Southern case, than in the colonial case. First, the Southern states presented a moral and legal right to secede. Second, unlike the British, the North violated the civilized rules of warfare. Third, the North had no legal, moral, or precedential argument favoring their cause.
"No subject [slavery] has been more generally misunderstood or more persistently misrepresented." These words written by the President of the Confederate States of America ring ever so much truer today. Unbeknownst to many, Lincoln's (so-called) Emancipation Proclamation freed only those slaves he had no control over. The proclamation stated that the slaves were freed, "within any State or designated part of a State the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States." In other words, Lincoln freed those he had no control over and left those he had control over in bondage. Indeed, the proclamation specifically stipulated that those in slavery in the excepted areas (the areas that were not in rebellion) were to be, "left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued." This meant that slavery was still legal in the six parishes of Louisiana that were under Yankee control at the time and the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia. Moreover, ironic as it seems, the Northern General Ulysses S. Grant's wife held personal slaves during the war. In fact, these slaves were not freed under Lincoln's proclamation but rather under the Thirteenth Amendment passed after the end of the war. In an 1858 debate, Lincoln, made the following statement:
I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races – that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races…. I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
Indeed, a great deal of the Northern states and the Northern population agreed with Lincoln. The majority of Northern states passed laws prohibiting or harshly restricting
the entrance of "free blacks." New Jersey shut out blacks; Massachusetts prescribed flogging for black nonresidents who stayed longer than two months. Ohio, at one time, passed a law expelling the entire black population. A number of states erected constitutional barriers to the immigration of free blacks. Oregon's constitutional language was typical:
No free negro, or mulatto, not residing in this state at the time of the adoption of this constitution, shall ever come, reside, or be within this state, or hold any real estate, or make any contract, or maintain any suit therein; and the legislative assembly shall provide by penal laws for the removal by public officers of all such free negroes who shall bring them into the state, or employ or harbour them therein.
Northern hands were by no means clean when it came to the issue of slavery.
Of all the justifications for war, none is greater than the economic rationale. In the War for Southern Independence, the North's principal interest was to protect its economic well-being. Testifying to this, Thomas Cooper, president of South Carolina College stated, "We shall ere long be forced to calculate the value of our Union, to ask of what use is an unequal alliance by which the South has always been the loser and the North always the winner."
In the founding document of our great American Nation, Thomas Jefferson eloquently made the case that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.Jefferson goes on to declare that the governed have a right to a government that disciplines itself to the will of the people. If the government does not do so, that government has no moral right to exist. Likewise, in ratifying its Constitution, Virginia clearly stated that it had the right to withdraw from the national union:
We, the delegates of the people of Virginia, duly elected,… in behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and make known, that the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them, whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression; and that every power not granted thereby, remains with them and at their will: that, therefore, no right, of any denomination, can be canceled, abridged, restrained, or modified.
In the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson again echo these thoughts:
Resolved, that the several States composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government….
The argument that the South was morally and legally justified in withdrawing from the union is best summed up in the ex post facto words of General Robert E Lee,
We could have pursued no other course without dishonor. And sad as the results have been, if it had all to be done over again, we should be compelled to act in precisely the same manner.
If the colonies had lost the war with England, would that have made England right? Simply the fact that the North defeated the South, does not justify the North's invasion. It is evident in the writings of John Locke that, "Might does not make right." An aggressor does not gain any legitimate legal right by a successful military adventure. That is not to say the victorious North did not equate might with right. In the words of Supreme Court Justice Salmon P. Chase, "State Sovereignty died at Appomattox."
Nearly all American historiography after 1865 is nationalist and based on the assumption that slavery was the root cause of the war between the states. This myth demands refutation. A new historical perspective holding that the prescription of secession in 1860 was morally and legally correct and that it was the only cogent and benevolent solution to all the troubles confronting the union at the time is imperative to the refutation of America's "Battle Hymn of the Republic" myth:
When two men are about to come to blows, it is best to separate them. To write history from the assumption that the peaceful dissolution of the Union in 1860 was a good thing—nationalists, after all, assume that the dissolution of the Union under the Articles of Confederation was a good thing—would bring to light a vast array of facts, moral possibilities, and spectacular moral losses hitherto hidden from view. And it would open up political possibilities that are today closed off because the limits of politics are, in large part, the limits of historical self-understanding.
The plot to kill Jefferson Davis shocked the South. In those days, killing a civilian head of government was considered monstrous under any circumstances. It would change many Southerners approach to dealing with Lincoln as well....
For those looking for the LINCOLN: MAN VS MYTH speech the link is below, then on to plot:
The speech I gave that has sparked this blog you should keep in mind was written to be spoken, not read. I am swamped with film and play work and don't have time to make it a reading copy, perhaps I can later. Please keep in mind it is written for spoken emphasis, but so many people asked me to put it on the web I agreed to:
The Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid of 1864: the Plot to Kill Jefferson Davis
Bruce Venter, PH.D. – leading authority on the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid on Richmond Presented by the North Carolina Civil War Round Table, co-sponsored by the Greensboro Historical Museum Saturday, March 15, 2008, 6 p.m. social, 6:30 p.m. dinner and program K & W Cafeteria, 143 off I-40/85, Burlington Cost: $20, includes buffet Reservations requested, call Tommy Cole at 336.725.8797 or email: ctommycole@yahoo.com One of the most controversial episodes of the Civil War unfolded in Central Virginia in February and March 1864. Two Union cavalry officers, Brigadier General Judson Kilpatrick and Colonel Ulric Dahlgren, led 3,500 troopers from their winter camps near Stevensburg in Culpeper County toward Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy. This daring raid was allegedly planned to free some 15,000 Yankee prisoners held in Richmond’s prisons, but it soon developed into something much more sinister. There is evidence to suggest that in addition to destroying enemy supply lines and liberating Union prisoners, Dahlgren’s orders included the burning of the city and the capture of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, or possibly even his assassination.
The mystery surrounding documents detailing a Union plan to murder Jefferson Davis is put to rest.
By Stephen W. Sears (Excerpts, for the entire story check the link!)
In the winter 1999 issue of Columbiad, James M. McPherson reviewed Duane Schultz's The Dahlgren Affair: Terror and Conspiracy in the Civil War and took note of an article of mine on the same subject that appeared more or less simultaneously in MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. In his review, McPherson pointed out that Duane Schultz and I "come down on opposite sides" regarding the authenticity of the so-called Dahlgren papers, the documents at the core of the "Dahlgren affair," as Schultz terms it. After balancing the two sides in the case, McPherson offered the Solomonic judgment that "the genuineness of the Dahlgren papers is contestable...."1
I will make a case for the genuineness of the Dahlgren papers--and make it strongly enough to remove that "contestable" label. First, however, it is necessary to sketch in the background and the details of what came to be called the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid. The raid itself was an utter failure and would merit nothing more than a footnote in Civil War history books except for the intrigue that occurred in its aftermath.
The story of the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren raid ought to have ended on that dismal note--a cavalry raiding force miserably managed by its co-leaders that came nowhere near achieving its purpose of rescuing the prisoners, cost substantially more in men and horses than any damage it inflicted on Confederate communications, and finally, saw one of its co-leaders shot dead and most of his men taken captive. Unfortunately, as matters turned out, that was not the end of the story.
Shortly after the ambush in which Dahlgren was killed, thirteen-year-old William Littlepage, a youthful member of a schoolboy company of home guards, came upon the colonel's body and searched it for valuables. What he found came to be called the Dahlgren papers--two folded documents and a pocket notebook containing several loose papers inserted between the leaves. Young Littlepage turned his find over to his teacher and company commander, Captain Edward W. Halbach. At daylight the next morning, March 3, Halbach examined the papers and was shocked and appalled by what he found.11
The first of the documents, written in ink on Union army stationery bearing the printed heading "Headquarters Third Division, Cavalry Corps," was obviously an address to the officers and men of Colonel Dahlgren's command. It covered two sheets, with the final six lines and the signature written on the back of the first sheet. It was signed, as best Halbach could make it out, "U. Dahlgren, Col. Comd." Among the inspiriting descriptions of their forthcoming mission was one riveting sentence: "We hope to release the prisoners from Belle Island first & having seen them fairly started we will cross the James River into Richmond, destroying the bridges after us & exhorting the released prisoners to destroy & burn the hateful City & do not allow the Rebel Leader Davis and his traitorous crew to escape."
That savage injunction became even more explicit as Captain Halbach read on. The second document, unsigned but written in the same hand on both sides of a sheet of Cavalry Corps stationery, appeared to be a listing of instructions for a party of the raiders that was to operate in parallel with Dahlgren's contingent. Among the instructions was this admonishment: "The men must keep together & well in hand & once in the City it must be destroyed & Jeff. Davis and Cabinet killed."
The pocket notebook, which bore Dahlgren's signature and rank on the opening page, contained a draft of his address to the troops, with corrected passages and other marks of composition but including the same murderous instructions as the finished copy. There was also a set of notations referring to planning for the raid and for carrying it out, including the stark direction: "Jeff Davis and Cabinet must be killed on the spot." The loose papers in the notebook contained less deadly instructions and itineraries relating to Dahlgren's mission, plus an order of battle for the Confederate cavalry compiled by the Bureau of Military Information.12
The ultimate irony in this sordid tale of villainy and retribution is that it was all so senseless and unnecessary. The Kilpatrick-Dahlgren raid was a fiasco, its fate sealed from the beginning with the choice of co-leaders. Its bloody secret agenda need never have emerged, at least during the war, but for hot-blooded young Dahlgren's failure to destroy the incriminating papers he was carrying. Judson Kilpatrick, Ulric Dahlgren, and their probable patron Edwin Stanton set out to engineer the death of the Confederacy's president; the legacy spawned out of the utter failure of their effort may have included the death of their own president.
This blog has received a lot of attention and I thank those of you who have linked to this site. I have received questions I'll deal with tonight. One recurring one is, didn't Lincoln have to put the Constitution on hold because America was fighting on its own soil? This is a fascinating question to me for two reasons: first, what is the point of the Constitution that guarantees us the rights we are born with, if those rights can be taken away if we are under threat? If we accept the idea that the Constitution is a nuisance under hard times, then we have to ask ourselves why hasn't President Bush gone all the way with putting the Constitution on the back burner?
Birds of a feather.....
Clearly he hasn't tried to arrest the head of the Supreme Court, he hasn't shut down newspapers that disagree with him, he hasn't jailed reporters who disagree with him without trial, he has not had troops fire on unarmed protesters, he hasn't even jailed comedians who tell jokes about him. All of those things and far more, Lincoln did. Support Lincoln, you must support President Bush. After all, 911 happened on our soil!
Yet oddly, the same people who say Bush is our worst President ever often support Lincoln's actions! This is philosophically a contradiction, and when faced with a contradiction it must mean that one side of the argument is wrong. If you support Bush and Lincoln, you are at least sound in your beliefs, though you should be pressing for Bush to go much farther. If you don't support Bush, there is no logic in supporting Lincoln. It makes no sense. Second, shouldn't the Constitution and Bill Of Rights have the most importance during times of strife? If it is so fragile that it must be put away in times of war, civil rights, suffrage, peace movements then what good is it? Couldn't one argue that the initial government resistance to all those movements was a result of Lincoln and his crushing of protest during the war? Once you have put people in jail for disagreeing with the government, haven't you set precedent?
Over time we have come to believe that our rights are granted to us, and can be withdrawn in case of emergency. Our founding fathers believed we were BORN with those rights. The change in meaning happened because of Lincoln.
For those looking for the LINCOLN: MAN VS MYTH speech the link is below, then on to the questions:
The speech I gave that has sparked this blog you should keep in mind was written to be spoken, not read. I am swamped with film and play work and don't have time to make it a reading copy, perhaps I can later. Please keep in mind it is written for spoken emphasis, but so many people asked me to put it on the web I agreed to:
Excuse me, but you neglect to mention that the South fired on Northern troops at Fort Sumter, didn't it? That was what started the war!
ANSWER: Many historians believe that the sending of thousands of Northern troops into the South after it had left America was an act of war baiting. The troops were to re-supply the forts, supposedly, but that action is seen as an act of aggression. Unfortunately that act would lead to other Presidents mimicking Lincoln to get us into war: the sinking of the Maine without revealing to the American public that the passenger ship was carrying arms and money illegally- and the public wasn't told for almost 50 years! That led to our entry into World War 1. FDR also ran arms and money illegally to Europe for years before we entered World War 2- Japan was baited into attacking us with a blockade, but that was because Lincoln had set precedent. LBJ created an attack to justify his actions in Vietnam- don't believe me? Read this: http://www.lewrockwell.com/dieteman/dieteman24.html Those troops surrounding forts all over the South I believe were there to start a war. Lincoln's actions opened the door to allowing Presidents to set up situations to start wars. Support our actions in Vietnam, our treatment of protests during that war- it makes sense to support Lincoln. If you don't however.......
QUESTION:
Do you think Lincoln was gay?
ANSWER:
I don't care. I do, however, wonder if his problems with depression, suicidal tendencies and what is now called a bi-polar personality played a role in his drastic actions.
QUESTION:
My teacher says that if Lincoln had lost the war the South would have united with Germany in World War 2 and we'd still have slavery.
ANSWER:
The buying and selling of slaves was outlawed in the Southern Constitution.
Canada at one time was made up almost entirely of people who rejected our Revolution and were against the direction this country took. Did Canada fight with Germany or against it? They joined with us to fight, and I think if our continent was under attack the North and South would have united the same way.
Now, would the South have joined in all the wars the North would later get involved in from World War 1 to Vietnam? Some yes, some no.
QUESTION:
If the South had won and been allowed to go off on its own, wouldn't it still be segregated?
ANSWER:
Segregation, along with the banning of Blacks in industrialized states, originated in the North. Before the war!
Coming soon- the Northern plot to kill Jeff Davis, the assassination of Lincoln, President Grant and his reversal of the positive parts of Reconstruction, The Indian Wars.
QUESTION:
I always thought revisionist historians and buffs were racists and anti-Semites. It blows me away that you are looking at such a volatile period and I have yet to find one racist or religious hatred filled polemic of any kind. I wish we could look at history like this all the time!
ANSWER:
Thank you. Holocaust revisionists dirtied the word up, and they were wrong as well. Just months ago classified documents were finally released and even David Irving was forced to admit they proved the National Socialists and Hitler were actively killing Jews. We now know Hitler along with the Grand Mufti of the Middle East received monthly updates on the killings!
But sadly, the deniers destroyed the word "revisionist".
Napoleon once said that history was written by the winners. But that was before the internet!
In Europe former Kings and leaders are easily called insane, corrupt- perhaps because the United States is so young by comparison we don't like to do this. Nixon is praised for "opening up China", Hoover is cleared of starting the depression (he was cleared by Truman of all people), LBJ is cleared for Viet Nam with praise for his use of government to end poverty. Even though that plan didn't work. Even Hillary Clinton says George Bush should be praised for his carrying the nation through 911. Bill Clinton says Ronald Reagan is his hero and wrote a long article in VANITY FAIR praising him. Americans do not feel comfortable saying it ever had a bad leader. It is almost as if by saying it, the nation could collapse. This is as childish as wanting the world to love us. The following presents new views on Lincoln, and the last link is an eye opener- the libertarian view of the South's cause!
The speech I gave that has sparked this blog you should keep in mind was written to be spoken, not read. I am swamped with film and play work and don't have time to make it a reading copy, perhaps I can later. Please keep in mind it is written for spoken emphasis, but so many people asked me to put it on the web I agreed to:
James Gordon Bennett, was the founder, editor and publisher of the New York Herald from 1835 until 1866 when the reigns were handed to his son.
Though Bennett will tell you that his newspaper was officially independent, he made it well known that he opposed Abraham Lincoln.
Consider this excerpt from an 1864 Herald, editorial:
President Lincoln is a joke incarnated. His election was a very sorry joke. The idea that such a man as he should be President of such a country as this is a very ridiculous joke. . . His inaugural address was a joke, since it was full of promises which he has never performed. His Cabinet is and always has been a standing joke. All his State papers are jokes. . . His intrigues to secure a renomination and the hopes he appears to entertain of a re-election are, however, the most laughable jokes of all.
Surely, first amendment rights take precedent, but allowing this in the paper is hardly the act of an 'independent' newspaper.
To win the 1864 nomination, Lincoln needed to win New York and needed support from Bennett and the Herald in order to do that. So Lincoln did what any good politician would do... he asked Bennett to name his price. Bribery? From Lincoln? This can't be...
Bennett, a newspaper tycoon, didn't need the money and simply wanted "attention" and "recognition".
A newspaperman before anything else, Bennett agreed to give Lincoln's administration "a thorough exposition in the columns of the Herald," provided that Lincoln and his advisers "occasionally... make known to him [their] plans."
It's important to note that the Herald was known for lacking in morals and respectability and Bennett was barred from polite New York society because he was "too pitchy to touch".
Lincoln, needing the votes, appointed the totally unqualified Bennett as minister to France. Bennett, who wanted the social recognition, accepted the position.
The bargain was done. The Herald no longer criticized the President, and New York's 33 Electoral Votes went to Lincoln.
Bibliography: Donald, David. Lincoln Reconsidered. 2nd ed. New York: Alfred a. Knopf, Inc., 1956. 74-75.
Americans have been led to believe that when they celebrate Abraham Lincoln's birthday each year on February 12 they are celebrating freedom, the preservation of the union, and a reaffirmation of the principles of the Declaration of Independence. This belief is a testament to the notion that in war the victors get to write the history.
Lincoln will probably be forever known as the "Great Emancipator" because of the Emancipation Proclamation. But every Lincoln scholar knows something that few Americans are aware of: The Emancipation Proclamation freed no one, because it specifically exempted those areas of the southern states that were at the time under the control of the federal armies while allowing slavery to exist in the "loyal" border states of Maryland and Kentucky and in Washington, D.C. itself.
"The principle [of the Proclamation] is not that a human being cannot justly own another," the London Spectator observed on October 11, 1862, "but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States" government.
As Lincoln stated in a famous, August 22, 1862 letter to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."
The Emancipation Proclamation was a propaganda strategy designed to deter England from supporting the Confederacy. It came as a complete surprise to most
Northerners, who thought they were fighting and dying by the tens of thousands to preserve the union. As a result, there were draft riots in New York City; a desertion crisis was created in the U.S. army, with some 200,000 deserters, according to historian Gary Gallagher; and war bond sales plummeted. According to James McPherson, the "dean" of "Civil War" historians, Union soldiers "were willing to risk their lives for the Union, but not for black freedom . . . . They professed to feel betrayed."
Slavery was ended in 1866 with the Thirteenth Amendment, but at the cost of 620,000 lives; hundreds of thousands more that were crippled for life; and the near destruction of almost half the nation's economy. By contrast, dozens of other countries (including Argentina, Colombia, Chile, all of Central America, Mexico, Bolivia, Uruguay, the French and Danish colonies, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela) ended slavery peacefully during the first 60 years of the nineteenth century. Why not the U.S.?
Lincoln may have "saved" the Union in a geographic sense, but his war destroyed the union defined as a voluntary association of states. Forcing a state to remain in the union at gunpoint renders that state a conquered province, not a genuine partner. This was the overwhelming sentiment of Northern opinion makers at the outset of the war.
As Horace Greeley wrote on March 21, 1861: "The great principle embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration is that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." If southerners wanted to secede, "they have a clear right to do so." "Nine out of ten of the people of the North," Greeley wrote, were opposed to forcing South Carolina to remain in the Union.
As of 1857, writes Roy Basler, the editor of Lincoln's Collected Works, Lincoln had rarely ever mentioned the issue of slavery, and even then, "when he spoke of respecting the Negro as a human being, his words lacked effectiveness." What did preoccupy Lincoln's mind throughout his twenty-eight year political career prior to becoming president was the political agenda of the Whig Party and of the man whom he revered most in life, the Kentucky slaveowner Henry Clay, whom Lincoln eulogized in 1852 as "the great parent of Whig principles" and "the fount from which my own political views flowed."
And those political views were clearly stated by Lincoln when he first ran for the Illinois legislature in 1832: "My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman's dance. I am in favor of a national bank . . . in favor of the internal improvements system and a high protective tariff." These three things -- protectionism, government subsidies to railroad and canal-building companies, and central banking -- were called the "American System" by Henry Clay. Economists have another word for them: "mercantilism."
Murray Rothbard accurately defined mercantilism as "a system of statism which employed economic fallacy to build up a structure of imperial state power, as well as special subsidy and monopolistic privilege to individuals or groups favored by the state." This is what Lincoln devoted his entire political career to achieving. He was a master politician who once told a friend that his career ambition was to be "the DeWitt Clinton of Illinois." DeWitt Clinton was the notoriously corrupt governor of New York who is credited with inventing the spoils system.
The so-called American System of mercantilism could only be implemented by a highly centralized government of the sort that the U.S. Constitution attempted to deter. That's why it could only be put into place by force of arms, which it was. As soon as Lincoln maneuvered the South Carolinians into firing the first shot (at a customs house, Fort Sumter) tariff rates were immediately raised to an average of 47 percent and higher, and remained historically high for decades after the war.
During the war Lincoln established a number of tyrannical precedents, including unconstitutionally conducting a war without the consent of Congress; suspending habeas corpus; conscripting railroads and censoring telegraph lines; imprisoning without trial some 30,000 northern citizens for merely voicing opposition to the war; deporting a member of Congress, Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio, for opposing Lincoln's income tax proposal at a Democratic Party political rally; shutting down hundreds of Northern newspapers and imprisoning their editors for questioning his war policies; ordering federal troops to intimidate voters into voting Republican; and intentionally waging war against civilians.
The second plank of the American System of mercantilism, central banking, was achieved with the National Currency Acts of 1863 and 1864, and there was a virtual explosion of government subsidies to railroads and other businesses that bankrolled the Republican Party. The inevitable consequence was the notorious corruption of the Grant administrations.
In 1861 Senator John Sherman, brother of General William Tecumseh Sherman and a major power in the Republican Party, announced that "Those who elected Mr. Lincoln expect him to secure to free labor its just right to the Territories of the United States; to protect . . . by wise revenue laws, the labor of our people; to secure the public lands to actual settlers . . . ; to develop the internal resources of the country by opening new means of communications between the Atlantic and Pacific."
Translating from the politician's idiom into plain English, this meant that Lincoln's main objective was always protectionism for Northern manufacturers; buying votes with cheap federal land sales; and the purchase of even more votes and campaign contributions through a massive spoils system created by government subsidies to the railroad industry. The corrupt political strategy of DeWitt Clinton writ large is Abraham Lincoln's true economic legacy.
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Thomas DiLorenzo is a professor of economics in the Sellinger School of Business and Management at Loyola College in Baltimore.
Before Lincoln, before Washington, the lost story of our first Black President
A "Black" Man, A Moor, John Hanson Was the First President of the United States! 1781-1782 A.D. George Washington was really the 8th President of the United States! George Washington was not the first President of the United States. In fact, the first President of the United States was one John Hanson. Don't go checking the encyclopedia for this guy's name - he is one of those great men that are lost to history. If you're extremely lucky, you may actually find a brief mention of his name. The new country was actually formed on March 1, 1781 with the adoption of The Articles of Confederation. This document was actually proposed on June 11, 1776, but not agreed upon by Congress until November 15, 1777. Maryland refused to sign this document until Virginia and New York ceded their western lands (Maryland was afraid that these states would gain too much power in the new government from such large amounts of land). Once the signing took place in 1781, a President was needed to run the country. John Hanson was chosen unanimously by Congress (which included George Washington)
Most historical accounts portray Southern blacks as anxiously awaiting President Abraham Lincoln's "liberty-dispensing troops" marching south in the War Between the States. But there's more to the story; let's look at it. Black Confederate military units, both as freemen and slaves, fought federal troops. Louisiana free blacks gave their reason for fighting in a letter written to New Orleans' Daily Delta: "The free colored population love their home, their property, their own slaves and recognize no other country than Louisiana, and are ready to shed their blood for her defense. They have no sympathy for Abolitionism; no love for the North, but they have plenty for Louisiana. They will fight for her in 1861 as they fought in 1814-15." As to bravery, one black scolded the commanding general of the state militia, saying, "Pardon me, general, but the only cowardly blood we have got in our veins is the white blood." Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest had slaves and freemen serving in units under his command. After the war, Forrest said of the black men who served under him, "These boys stayed with me.. - and better Confederates did not live." Articles in "Black Southerners in Gray," edited by Richard Rollins, gives numerous accounts of blacks serving as fighting men or servants in every battle from Gettysburg to Vicksburg. Professor Ed Smith, director of American Studies at American University, says Stonewall Jackson had 3,000 fully equipped black troops scattered throughout his corps at Antietam - the war's bloodiest battle. Mr. Smith calculates that between 60,000 and 93,000 blacks served the Confederacy in some capacity. They fought for the same reason they fought in previous wars and wars afterward: "to position themselves. They had to prove they were patriots in the hope the future would be better ... they hoped to be rewarded." Many knew Lincoln had little love for enslaved blacks and didn't wage war against the South for their benefit. Lincoln made that plain, saying, "I will say, then, that I am not, nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races ... I am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." The very words of his 1863 Emancipation Proclamation revealed his deceit and cunning; it freed those slaves held "within any State or designated part of a State the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States." It didn't apply to slaves in West Virginia and areas and states not in rebellion. Like Gen. Ulysses Grant's slaves, they had to wait for the 13th Amendment, Grant explained why he didn't free his slaves earlier, saying, "Good help is so hard to come by these days." Lincoln waged war to "preserve the Union". The 1783 peace agreement with England (Treaty of Paris] left 13 sovereign nations. They came together in 1787, as principals, to create a federal government, as their agent, giving it specific delegated authority -specified in our Constitution. Principals always retain the right to fire their agent. The South acted on that right when it seceded. Its firing on Fort Sumter, federal property, gave Lincoln the pretext needed for the war. The War Between the States, through force of arms, settled the question of secession, enabling the federal government to run roughshod over states' rights specified by the Constitution's 10th Amendment. Sons of Confederate Veterans is a group dedicated to giving a truer account of the War Between the States. I'd like to see it erect on Richmond's Monument Avenue a statue of one of the thousands of black Confederate soldiers.
Source: This article appeared in the Washington Times some years back. It was written by Walter Williams, an economics professor at George Mason University, a nationally syndicated columnist, an African-American
Ever wonder why the Indians chose to fight for the South? Take a look at the parts in red......you will be surprised!
Declaration by the People of the Cherokee Nation of the Causes Which Have Impelled Them to Unite Their Fortunes With Those of the Confederate States of America.
When circumstances beyond their control compel one people to sever the ties which have long existed between them and another state or confederacy, and to contract new alliances and establish new relations for the security of their rights and liberties, it is fit that they should publicly declare the reasons by which their action is justified.
The Cherokee people had its origin in the South; its institutions are similar to those of the Southern States, and their interests identical with theirs. Long since it accepted the protection of the United States of America, contracted with them treaties of alliance and friendship, and allowed themselves to be to a great extent governed by their laws.
In peace and war they have been faithful to their engagements with the United States. With much of hardship and injustice to complain of, they resorted to no other means than solicitation and argument to obtain redress. Loyal and obedient to the laws and the stipulations of their treaties, they served under the flag of the United States, shared the common dangers, and were entitled to a share in the common glory, to gain which their blood was freely shed on the battlefield.
When the dissensions between the Southern and Northern States culminated in a separation of State after State from the Union they watched the progress of events with anxiety and consternation. While their institutions and the contiguity of their territory to the States of Arkansas, Texas, and Missouri made the cause of the seceding States necessarily their own cause, their treaties had been made with the United States, and they felt the utmost reluctance even in appearance to violate their engagements or set at naught the obligations of good faith.
Conscious that they were a people few in numbers compared with either of the contending parties, and that their country might with no considerable force be easily overrun and devastated and desolation and ruin be the result if they took up arms for either side, their authorities determined that no other course was consistent with the dictates of prudence or could secure the safety of their people and immunity from the horrors of a war waged by an invading enemy than a strict neutrality, and in this decision they were sustained by a majority of the nation.
That policy was accordingly adopted and faithfully adhered to. Early in the month of June of the present year the authorities of the nation declined to enter into negotiations for an alliance with the Confederate States, and protested against the occupation of the Cherokee country by their troops, or any other violation of their neutrality. No act was allowed that could be construed by the United States to be a violation of the faith of treaties.
But Providence rules the destinies of nations, and events, by inexorable necessity, overrule human resolutions. The number of the Confederate States has increased to eleven, and their Government is firmly established and consolidated. Maintaining in the field an army of 200,000 men, the war became for them but a succession of victories. Disclaiming any intention to invade the Northern States, they sought only to repel invaders from their own soil and to secure the right of governing themselves. They claimed only the privilege asserted by the Declaration of American Independence, and on which the right of the Northern States themselves to self-government is founded, of altering their form of government when it became no longer tolerable and establishing new forms for the security of their liberties.
Throughout the Confederate States we saw this great revolution effected without violence or the suspension of the laws or the closing of the courts. The military power was nowhere placed above the civil authorities. None were seized and imprisoned at the mandate of arbitrary power. All division among the people disappeared, and the determination became unanimous that there should never again be any union with the Northern States. Almost as one man all who were able to bear arms rushed to the defense of an invaded country, and nowhere has it been found necessary to compel men to serve or to enlist mercenaries by the offer of extraordinary bounties.
But in the Northern States the Cherokee people saw with alarm a violated Constitution, all civil liberty put in peril, and all the rules of civilized warfare and the dictates of common humanity and decency unhesitatingly disregarded. In States which still adhered to the Union a military despotism has displaced the civil power and the laws became silent amid arms. Free speech and almost free thought became a crime. The right to the writ of habeas corpus, guaranteed by the Constitution, disappeared at the nod of a Secretary of State or a general of the lowest grade. The mandate of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was set at naught by the military power, and this outrage on common right approved by a President sworn to support the Constitution. War on the largest scale was waged, and the immense bodies of troops called into the field in the absence of any law warranting it under the pretense of suppressing unlawful combination of men. The humanities of war, which even barbarians respect, were no longer thought worthy to be observed. Foreign mercenaries and the scum of cities and the inmates of prisons were enlisted and organized into regiments and brigades and sent into Southern States to aid in subjugating a people struggling for freedom, to burn, to plunder, and to commit the basest of outrages on women; while the heels of armed tyranny trod upon the necks of Maryland and Missouri, and men of the highest character and position were incarcerated upon suspicion and without process of law in jails, in forts, and in prison-ships, and even women were imprisoned by the arbitrary order of a President and Cabinet ministers; while the press ceased to be free, the publication of newspapers was suspended and their issues seized and destroyed; the officers and men taken prisoners in battle were allowed to remain in captivity by the refusal of their Government to consent to an exchange of prisoners; as they had left their dead on more than one field of battle that had witnessed their defeat to be buried and their wounded to be cared for by Southern hands.
Whatever causes the Cherokee people may have had in the past, to complain of some of the Southern States, they cannot but feel that their interests and their destiny are inseparably connected with those of the South. The war now raging is a war of Northern cupidity and fanaticism against the institution of African servitude; against the commercial freedom of the South, and against the political freedom of the States, and its objects are to annihilate the sovereignty of those States and utterly change the nature of the General Government.
The Cherokee people and their neighbors were warned before the war commenced that the first object of the party which now holds the powers of government of the United States would be to annul the institution of slavery in the whole Indian country, and make it what they term free territory and after a time a free State; and they have been also warned by the fate which has befallen those of their race in Kansas, Nebraska, and Oregon that at no distant day they too would be compelled to surrender their country at the demand of Northern rapacity, and be content with an extinct nationality, and with reserves of limited extent for individuals, of which their people would soon be despoiled by speculators, if not plundered unscrupulously by the State.
Urged by these considerations, the Cherokees, long divided in opinion, became unanimous, and like their brethren, the Creeks, Seminoles, Choctaws, and Chickasaws, determined, by the undivided voice of a General Convention of all the people, held at Tahlequah, on the 21st day of August, in the present year, to make common cause with the South and share its fortunes.
In now carrying this resolution into effect and consummating a treaty of alliance and friendship with the Confederate States of America the Cherokee people declares that it has been faithful and loyal to is engagements with the United States until, by placing its safety and even its national existence in imminent peril, those States have released them from those engagements.
Menaced by a great danger, they exercise the inalienable right of self-defense, and declare themselves a free people, independent of the Northern States of America, and at war with them by their own act. Obeying the dictates of prudence and providing for the general safety and welfare, confident of the rectitude of their intentions and true to the obligations of duty and honor, they accept the issue thus forced upon them, unite their fortunes now and forever with those of the Confederate States, and take up arms for the common cause, and with entire confidence in the justice of that cause and with a firm reliance upon Divine Providence, will resolutely abide the consequences.
While barge traveling down the Mississippi this Spring, we stopped at Vicksburg to tour the historic Civil War (or as it is variously termed in the South, the War Between the States, the War for Southern Independence, or the War of Northern Aggression) battlefield marking the city's siege and surrender, which gave the Union final control over the river and divided the Confederacy. Like so many, I've always been fascinated and puzzled by this tragic war in which some 630,000 Union and Confederate soldiers lost their lives. I had always learned and believed that the South's "peculiar institution" of slavery was the cause of that conflict, but in discussions with the local tour guide, he opined that the real cause of the war was Union tariff policy. This was a novel idea which piqued my curiosity. Fortuitously, a day or two later in the museum at Natchez, I found a book entitled War for What, by Francis Springer, which purported to give "the real cause of the war between the states."
Springer points out, amid a good deal of apologia for slavery, that in 1860, the 15 Southern states had 8 million whites and 4 ½ million black slaves, compared to 19 million whites and ¼ million blacks in the North's 19 states. The vast areas of undeveloped western territory were rapidly being settled by people whose economic interests were not with the South. It found itself continually outvoted in both the Congress and Senate, especially on commercial regulations, with the prospect of an increasing majority against it. The nub of the problem was that the North wanted high tariffs on imported goods to protect its own manufactured products, while the South wanted low tariffs on imports and exports since it exported cotton and tobacco to Europe and imported manufactured goods in exchange. High tariffs in effect depressed the price for the South's agricultural exports; the South paid high prices for what it bought and got low prices for what it sold because of the federal tariff policy which the South was powerless to change. Southerners viewed themselves as being dominated by the mercantile interests of the North who profited from these high tariffs.
At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Virginia had proposed a requirement for a 2/3 majority to enact laws regulating commerce and levying tariffs, which were the chief revenue of the federal government. George Mason of Virginia stated "The effect of a provision to pass commercial laws by a simple majority would be to deliver the south bound hand and foot to the eastern states". Virginia withdrew its amendment at the Convention in the interest of securing adoption of the Constitution, but ratification was with the proviso that it could be rescinded whenever the powers granted to the Union were used to oppress, and Virginia could then withdraw from the Union. True to George Mason's prediction, the high tariff of 1828 did bring the South to the verge of rebellion, leading Senator John C. Calhoun to unsuccessfully champion the concept of Nullification and the doctrine of the Concurrent Majority in 1833 to ensure that the South could have a veto power over commercial acts passed by a simple majority in Congress and the Senate.
Springer's book had certainly raised a host of questions, when I was informed of a new book entitled When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Succession, by Charles Adams, a noted scholar and writer on the history of taxation. It is a fascinating and somewhat disturbing revisionist history, for it posits the Civil War as but a continuation of the tariff controversy from 1828, ignoring the issues of slavery and the admission of new non-slave states from the territories as reasons for the South's secession and the resultant conflict.
Adams takes the skeleton which Springer had sketched and fills out its flesh with statistics, facts, and timely and instructive details from the newspapers of both the US and England. Consider, for example, a quote by author Charles Dickens in a London periodical in December 1861, "Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this as of many other evils....The quarrel between the North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel". As Adams notes, the South paid an undue proportion of federal revenues derived from tariffs, and these were expended by the federal government more in the North than the South: in 1840, the South paid 84% of the tariffs, rising to 87% in 1860. They paid 83% of the $13 million federal fishing bounties paid to New England fishermen, and also paid $35 million to Northern shipping interests which had a monopoly on shipping from Southern ports. The South, in effect, was paying tribute to the North. The address of Texas Congressman Reagan on 15 January 1861 summarizes this discontent: "You are not content with the vast millions of tribute we pay you annually under the operation of our revenue law, our navigation laws, your fishing bounties, and by making your people our manufacturers, our merchants, our shippers. You are not satisfied with the vast tribute we pay you to build up your great cities, your railroads, your canals. You are not satisfied with the millions of tribute we have been paying you on account of the balance of exchange which you hold against us. You are not satisfied that we of the South are almost reduced to the condition of overseers of northern capitalists. You are not satisfied with all this; but you must wage a relentless crusade against our rights and institutions." As the London Times of 7 Nov 1861 stated: "The contest is really for empire on the side of the North and for independence on that of the South....".
If the South did not secede to protect slavery, why was that prominently stated as the principal reason in the secession resolutions of the various Confederate states? Adams claims that slavery was never in danger, pointing out that Lincoln pledged to enforce the fugitive slave law, declared he had no right or intention to interfere with slavery, and supported a new irrevocable constitutional amendment to protect slavery forever. The South's proclamation that slavery was in danger was a political ploy full of political cant to stir up secessionist fever. As the North American Review (Boston October 1862) put it: "Slavery is not the cause of the rebellion ....Slavery is the pretext on which the leaders of the rebellion rely, 'to fire the Southern Heart' and through which the greatest degree of unanimity can be produced....Mr. Calhoun, after finding that the South could not be brought into sufficient unanimity by a clamor about the tariff, selected slavery as the better subject for agitation". An editorial in the Charleston Mercury 2 days before the November 1860 election stated: "The real causes of dissatisfaction in the South with the North, are in the unjust taxation and expenditure of the taxes by the Government of the United States, and in the revolution the North has effected in this government from a confederated republic, to a national sectional despotism." And on 21 January 1861, five days before Louisiana seceded, the New Orleans Daily Crescent editorialized: "They [the South] know that it is their import trade that draws from the people's pockets sixty or seventy millions of dollars per annum, in the shape of duties, to be expended mainly in the North, and in the protection and encouragement of Northern interests....These are the reasons why these people [the North] do not wish the South to secede from the Union."
When South Carolina seceded in December 1860, followed by the other Confederate states, all the powerful moneyed interests in the North were in favor of appeasing the South over slavery in order to preserve the Union. If the South were to be a sovereign nation with low tariffs, it could undermine Northern business and trade. The South believed that it did not need the North, since it could buy the goods it needed from Europe, but the North needed the South as a market for Northern goods.
The Republican platform of 1860 called for higher tariffs; that was implemented by the new Congress in the Morill tariff of March 1861, signed by President Buchanan before Lincoln took the oath of office. It imposed the highest tariffs in US history, with over a 50% duty on iron products and 25% on clothing; rates averaged 47%. The nascent Confederacy followed with a low tariff, essentially creating a free-trade zone in the South. Prior to this "war of the tariffs", most Northern newspapers had called for peace through conciliation, but many now cried for war. The Philadelphia Press on 18 March 1861 demanded a blockade of Southern ports, because, if not, "a series of customs houses will be required on the vast inland border from the Atlantic to West Texas. Worse still, with no protective tariff, European goods will under-price Northern goods in Southern markets. Cotton for Northern mills will be charged an export tax. This will cripple the clothing industries and make British mills prosper. Finally, the great inland waterways, the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Ohio Rivers, will be subject to Southern tolls."
Earlier, in December 1860, before any secession, the Chicago Daily Times foretold the disaster that Southern free ports would bring to Northern commerce: "In one single blow our foreign commerce must be reduced to less than one-half what it now is. Our coastwise trade would pass into other hands. One-half of our shipping would lie idle at our wharves. We should lose our trade with the South, with all of its immense profits. Our manufactories would be in utter ruins. Let the South adopt the free-trade system, or that of a tariff for revenue, and these results would likely follow."
Similarly, the economic editor of the NY Times, who had maintained for months that secession would not injure Northern commerce or prosperity, changed his mind on 22 March 1861: "At once shut down every Southern port, destroy its commerce and bring utter ruin on the Confederate States." On 18 March, the Boston Transcript noted that while the Southern states had claimed to secede over the slavery issue, now "the mask has been thrown off and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centres of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports....by a revenue system verging on free trade...."
In late March 1861, over a hundred leading commercial importers in New York, and a similar group in Boston, informed the collector of customs that they would not pay duties on imported goods unless these same duties were collected at Southern ports. This was followed by a threat from New York to withdraw from the Union and establish a free-trade zone. Prior to these events, Lincoln's plan was to evacuate Fort Sumter and not precipitate a war, but he now determined to reinforce it rather than suffer prolonged economic disaster in a losing trade war. That reinforcement effort was met with force by the South, and the dreadful conflict was upon us.
Adams attacks the opposing views of those like Horace Greeley and John Stuart Mill, who held that slavery was the one cause of the secession and the War, as uninformed and based on inadequate research. Mill's article of February 1862, reprinted in Harper's magazine, was a welcome shot in the arm for the Northern cause, giving it an undeserved moral virtue.
As part of this revisionist history, Adams discusses Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, his order for arrest of Chief Justice Taney after the Justice's opinion holding such suspension to be unconstitutional, the military courts martial which replaced civilian courts and imprisoned some 14,000 dissidents or Copperheads for varied opposition to the war, the closure of some 300 newspapers for opposition to the war, Reconstruction, the rise of the Klan, the planned trial of Jefferson Davis, and the legality of secession. He also provides a critical examination of the Gettysburg Address, of which one reader stated, as quoted on the bookjacket, "Having read this book, I can no longer, with ease, recite the 'Gettysburg Address' or sing the 'Battle Hymn of the Republic'."
What then are we to make of the case Adams sets forth? Was Karl Marx correct when he wrote in 1861: "The war between the North and the South is a tariff war. The war is, further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery, and in fact turns on the Northern lust for sovereignty." While historians may differ, Adams makes a convincing case. But one fact is clear: without its "peculiar institution" of slavery, the South would have never developed its agricultural might so dependent on masses of black laborers. Without slavery and the resultant plantation economy, the cultural divide and fierce sectional rivalry between North and South over tariff policy would not have developed. So, in that sense, slavery was at the root of the entire conflict between the North and the South, though tariffs may well have been the immediate precipitating factor, just as Adams contends. Whatever the cause, it is hard to quarrel with Adams' conclusion that "... the Civil war was not just a great national American tragedy, but even more so, a tragedy for civilization .... In 1861, the world's first great democracy, which was going to show the world what great benefits and virtue this new form of government could bring, failed miserably, tragically, and horribly."
Carl Pearlston is an attorney specializing in alternate dispute resolution (arbitrations and mediations) in Southern California, a member of the board of Los Angeles Toward Tradition and ADL, a conservative activist, and an inveterate writer of letters and articles of social and political commentary.
OUR NEW TAKE ON SUCCESSION: GREAT AROUND THE WORLD- NO WAY HERE.
Just a note that Kosovo has, with the blessing of the U.S. and against the wishes of the Serbian people, declared itself independent. I won't go into details here, but Kosovo is close to Al Qaeda and is backed by Iran. Yet it's ok for them to break away, and we are hailing it. We are hailing something that Lincoln and all subsequent President's have said we cannot do.
Rioting has begun. The entire region will be in civil war soon. It will truly be strange to hear our politicians declare it is right for Kosovo to leave its union. Our troops may be called in to support their right. It is democratic.Makes you wonder what our civil war was for, doesn't it?
Fierce rioting has broken out in Belgrade, Serbia as protesters opposed to Kosovo independence clash with police, attack U.S. embassy (photos)
Another fairly well known story is that
Americans have been led to believe that when they celebrate Abraham Lincoln's birthday each year on February 12 they are celebrating freedom, the preservation of the union, and a reaffirmation of the principles of the Declaration of Independence. This belief is a testament to the notion that in war the victors get to write the history.