Mighty loud words from a guy who didn't have to pick up a rifle and try to kill his "brother"…..all for political expediency.

I'd like to talk to old Abe today though and just see how smart and high minded that SOB would be as he surveyed the U.S. of Negro that this country has become. I would hope that he would choke on his own slick tongue with apology for his cause de' guerre that has ultimately destroyed his beloved union.

Also from Lincoln's First Inaugural Address...

Open, unequivocal support for the statutory protection of the institution of slavery, in perpetuity, via the Corwin Amendment:

I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution—which amendment, however, I have not seen—has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.

Direct threat of military invasion for those States refusing to pay the Morrill Tariff:

The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere.

By the time of that speech, Lincoln's head had swelled to the point where he was confusing himself with Jehovah.

Elvis is alive, the CIA killed JFK, 9-11 was an inside job, and Lincoln was a tyrant. The fringe will always be with us.

THOSE of little or less learning are always the most eager to share.

Don't want to start a fight Van, I love this site and I've read with agreement much of what you have to say, but I'm a Southerner with deep roots and I come from a long line of educated men and women who know the truth.

Lincoln was a tyrant, and his perpetuation of war against those who disagreed with him and who wanted to be free of Washington or any other tyrannical organization, essentially murdered a nation.

Today, we are free men and women, not subservient to Washington or any other group that decides to consider itself our masters. And when the day comes that push comes to shove and our backs are against the wall we will take them out.

No offense taken. Especially from any son of the South.

Indeed, I am much more interested in how those quotations apply to today's turmoil than to a war long gone down to dust. The Earth, after all, belongs to the living.

True, the earth does belong to the living but it was given them by those with the understanding that free men and women paid for it. Otherwise, it would not belong to them.

I can see how a southerner might dislike Lincoln. However, the punitive post war reconstruction policies were not Lincoln's doing.
They were the doing of a vengeful congress bent on punishing the south for the war and enacted after Lincoln's death.
Another quote from Lincoln's second inaugural address should be remembered, "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds,.."
For my money, the greatest president, after Washington that this nation has ever had.
Had not Lincoln been president, I suspect the United States, as we have known it this past 150 years would have not existed.
I suspect slavery would have lingered far longer, if not still be in existence today.
I believe the history of this country and the world, would be vastly different and the world a much grimmer place, had Lincoln not been in that pivotal place in history.

@Jack - I'm not a Southerner. My ancestors came to America long after the "Civil" War. I have no dog in the economic fight that occurred between the Northern banksters and the Southern slaveholders of the 1800s, though I note with mild disgust the fact that the "great emancipator" was the ONLY world leader of his time so incompetent in leadership that he couldn't bring slavery to an end in his country without rendering a million of his countrymen either dead or wounded.

I feel for the South, as a matter of principle, but what I'm really interested in is identifying what made overreach of the sort we see in TODAY's federal government possible.

Problem is...

[w]e have become a delusional state dependent upon fallacies to convince ourselves our foolhardy beliefs, ludicrous economic policies, corrupt captured political system, and preposterously fraudulent financial system are actually based on sound logic and reason. Some fallacies have been perpetrated intentionally by the ruling class to manipulate, sway and deceive the populace ...

... but out of those fallacies, the ONE THING of which we are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN, the ONE THING that we are never allowed to question - the ONE DOGMATIC TRUTH that remains unassailable despite the torrent of lies that is otherwise flushing this nation down the toilet - is the airbrushed, alternative version of history written by the victors of the "Civil" War, as preserved, protected and wielded by their nationalist, statist heirs: the contemporary left.

To understand why the federal government is out-of-control today, one must understand how the balance of authority between it and the States was destroyed. That destruction occurred on the day that the federal government granted itself the authority to wage war on its own people: April 6, 1861. On that day the Republic underwent a fundamental transformation - from a voluntary union of sovereign States into an empire ruled by threat of military force.

@goy, Sadly, that is probably the saddest thing anyone will read today and it is true. I lived to be well into my 40's believing Lincoln was as the revisionists described and it wasn't until I read writings by an author on Lew Rockwell's site that the truth was revealed. I was, and am, disgusted beyond belief.

@ghostsniper - But remember, we're the "fringe" for educating ourselves outside the Hegelian box our "betters" in academia and popular culture have defined for this particular topic... just like the "fringe voices" who support "federalism and States' rights and things of that nature...".

If you want to look at it that way, the war for independence was a war on the two thirds of Americans who were either loyalists or indifferent to the cause.

@Tim P - "Had not Lincoln been president, I suspect the United States, as we have known it this past 150 years would have not existed."

Yes, of course, that's the default setting all genetically modified Americans are programmed with from birth. It takes much more intellectual curiosity to overcome that modification than it does to achieve the transition from "liberal" to "conservative" which many of us have experienced.

But the reality is that, as Lincoln's election was the event that triggered the initial wave of secession (Lincoln's view of the South as a revenue source for Northern interests was well-known), if he'd just remained a slick corporate lawyer for the railroads, and never been elected, the secession would not have been necessary AND (more importantly) he wouldn't have been in a position to provoke a war that killed or maimed one million Americans.

Slavery - the one and ONLY issue genetically modified Americans are allowed to see or discuss from today's vantage point - would have petered out, just as it did in the NORTHERN States, or been legislated away peacefully, just as it was in every OTHER civilized nation (and their colonies).

You're right though - the United States as we have known it would not have existed. More's the pity. Instead, we'd have had something much closer to the Founders' vision, as Whig / faux "Republican" dominance might not have ensued. The balance of authority between the States and the federal government, which was destroyed by Lincoln's deceitful, serial abuse of executive authority, would have remained intact. The Free Marketplace of Ideas and the Republican Form of Government guaranteed by the Constitution would have both survived. Inflatable fiat currency and the de-stabilizing central bank might never have existed. The ongoing demonization of Southerners as Dumb, Ignorant, Redneck Hicks would be unknown. And perhaps most importantly, the racial animosity that is leveraged and exploited by the left today would probably have been far less acute.

Some day Americans may stop mindlessly quoting Lincoln's florid rhetoric and start examining his actions and the devastation those actions wrought on this nation. But I think the odds of that happening are slim. More likely - if the deification and ongoing worship of Lincoln is any indication of Americans' pervasive inability to think outside the Hegelian box - one hundred years from now, our descendants in the USSA will be making pilgrimages to the Obama Memorial, mindlessly quoting Obama's "fundamental transformation" rhetoric and recounting how he emancipated the Workers from their One-Percenter slavemasters.

goy,

There's an old saying among lawyers,"when the facts are strong, argue the facts, when the facts are weak argue the law, when you have no facts, smear your opponent"

So here you are sprung out of your 'Hegelian box' and genetically unmodified (curious you would side with the eco-Luddites on that one).

You impugn anyone who fails to agree with you.

No differing opinions, your way or the hi-way.

De-humanize anyone who hasn't seen 'the truth' as you define it.

The tone of your arguments, would suggest that perhaps your ideological outlook contains more of Trotsky & Che, than Jefferson & Jackson.

@Tim P. - "You impugn anyone who fails to agree with you."

Eh... whom have I "impugned", exactly? I've made no assertions whatsoever regarding anyone who agrees with me, or doesn't. In fact, no one has yet expressed disagreement at all. In much the same way that I understand what motivates many "progressives", as someone who spent most of his life suffering from it, I'm absolutely sympathetic to those who are still trapped in a state of federally-induced lincolnesia. That doesn't change the historic, documented facts, however.

You rattled off a lot of straw man ad hominem there, but I notice you didn't actually address a single one of the points I raised.

Huh.

Over 600,000 dead, entire regions of the country destroyed for 80 years, and I'd say that John Wilkes Booth acted as an instrument of God.

Yes Lincoln got responded and judged your sins.

Again I must remind myself not to get into silly arguments with people who fail to understand the ways and means by which history and the will of God is worked out in this world.

""The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

And not all your piety and wit can call them back or cancel half a word of them.

And.... "That's the fact..... Jack!"