SwiftVets.com

[Harvuskong]

Imagine this… An unpopular Republican President. An evermore popular faction of the Democratic Party called "Peace" Democrats. A war that the Peace Democrats call a quagmire, and a population that more and more agrees. The Republican president is said by the opposition to have "lied" about the reasons given for war, and the public and the press more and more sides with this interpretation. The Republican President supports legislation that his detractors says attacks personal liberty and the constitution.

The Republican President depends upon the midwest to stay in power. The Democrats are rallying and it looks like he could lose. Claims of voter manipulation and voter harassment by Republicans abound, the result of which gives the Republican a razor thin margin. New York is already in strong opposition, and France wants the US to give up its war.

Today? Nope, this eerie Deja Vue moment was in 1863. The Republican President was Abraham Lincoln. The Civil War was not going very well. Many, maybe a majority, of Americans wanted peace as a severed Union. Lincoln uses the Emancipation Proclamation to turn Southern assets into Northern assets. Soldiers revolt and the press goes wild, saying they were not willing to fight for the (African American). Lincoln is called Abraham Africanus in scathing articles in the press... that Liberty for slaves was NOT what the war was based upon, rather, the preservation of the Union is what the boys in blue were dying for.

A group of politicians and generals sypathetic to the South in the midwest (then known as the Northwest Territories) were attempting to create a seperate breakaway union called the Northwest Confederacy. They had the votes, and it was thwarted by the Union Army who arrested its lawful leaders, warned voters (who then did not have secret balloting) that they could not guarantee their safety of they voted Democratic, and threatened with violence any gathering of Democrats. The Union Army picked up the ballot boxes and announced the winners... the Republicans... days later.

Pretty amazing isn't it? Our American values always take a beating in times of great crisis. Rather than becoming the dictatorship feared during the war, the US became a beacon of liberty and hope in the century and a half after as an undivided nation. Lincoln, despised as a despot and the "killer of the Constitution", is today considered one of our greatest Presidents. The citizens of the US, no matter how grave the danger to its existence, in a short time wanted Peace over Liberty or the Union itself. Political parties cared for power over the primacy of the Union itself (Peace Democrats) or the Constitution (Lincoln Republicans).

Some things never change, I guess.

This was posted by Open Choke in his blog in Drilling Info dot com's community web page.

Here is the information about Open Choke from the Drilling Info dot com's community page.

I did send him an e-mail about me posting it on web. I do not think that he minds it at all.

http://openchoke.blogs.com/

Url added by Admin (Lew) Please scroll down to the thread Musings on the Coast

[LewWaters]

Is there a link available to this? If so, please supply it.

As for the content, yes, isn't it amazing what history shows? It's too bad that historians have the ability to reach back in time and "correct" matters that happened long ago, such as this. This aspect of the Civil War isn't taught anywhere that I'm aware of, like Slaves freely fighting for the Southern Confederacy back then.
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Clark County Conservative

[blue9t3]

In a time of say anything-do anything, it makes me wonder what it would take to hang the enemy within?
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MOPAR-BUYER

[I B Squidly]

Lew,

This is American history. No, it's not taught in schools but few libraries can fail to sketch the details. READ! GO TO YOUR LIBRARY and READ! (don't take it personal...so much).

Switching to the didact here..harrumph:

The Constitutional convention was held hostage by Georgia and the Carolinas over slavery. They would not manumit them but insisted they counted for the state's census. This peculiar interpretation later overwhelmed the 10th Amendment as 'State's Rights'.

American political parties were founded by Aaron Burr in 1800. He organized paid voters into Tamany Hall and swung New York to support him and Thomas Jefferson as the 'Republican-Democrats'. They beat the 'Federalist' Adams and the strong central government indorsed by Washington. VP was not a designated office but the second highest vote count....they split the vote. Jefferson made a deal with congressional Federalists (Jefferson never failed to be duplicitous), blamed it on Burr and became Pres. Among other things he acted in repudiation of his openly advocated 'states right' for presidential dictat, carried on vendettas against Burr and John Marshall (for Marbury v. Madison), sought restrictions on publishing and generally refuted in deed his published avowals. One blaring difference from todays demo's is that the central government owed nobody nothing and you had to have intrinsic worth in deed or action to participate!

Jump ahead to 1828 when voting was extended to all citizens, the 'Jacksonian Revolution'. Organized by Martin Van Buren party owned publications of the new, steam, penny press spread party positions the long losing ' Whigs' (which meant progressive) were too arthritic to counter. Representing the frontier wes,t Jackson endorsed killing and expropriating indians and destroying the stranglehold of eastern bankers and faced down South Carolina over a secession bid. Jackson was the first 'Democrat' who'ld find nothing in common in today's party. Over-ruled by Marshall on indian removal he quipped, "let's see him enforce it!"

The Republican Party was founded in 1856. A collection of progressives, old Whigs and european refugees of the 1848 tumult. Their first presidential candidate, Fremont was something between a Kerry and a Forrest Gump. In 1860 they nominated the least abolitionist among them, Abe Lincoln. They didn't want to antagonize the majority. The country in 1860 was Democratic. Lincoln won because they split. They split between the southern Dem's who argued slavery now and forever and the Northerners, Stephen Douglas who asked for a limitation of slavery westward into the Louisiana and Mexican territories. Southern Senators assaulting northern Senators on the floor speaks volumes to the Democratic position now and then. Fort Sumner didn't start the Civil War. Half the southern states did not secede until Lincoln called up the militia to retake it.

By 1864 the war had progressed miserably. Napoleonic tactics did not work. Officers were too often political designates. The overwhelming force of northern manufacture, manpower and potential was not yet obvious. Northern Democrats still existed and the most repellant were 'Copperheads'. They advocated peaceful resolution, a cessation of hostilities and an acceptance of slavery. Their candidate was McClellan, a Commander of the Grand Army, president of the Illinois Central RR, master of the parade ground who invariably over estimated his enemy and derided his political overseers (if you're not using the army can I have it back? asked Lincoln).

The victories of Vicksburg and Gettysburg were lost on most of the northern electorate. Sherman's taking of Atlanta is creditted with putting spine back in the north. The war was all down hill from there. Lincoln enjoyed an unquestioned prerogative all presidents since have envied, he could jail without 'habeaus corpu' magistrates, congressmen, and publishers. Sherman and Grant extended the license to journalists and any citizen that really bothered them.

Through the end of 19th Century the Republicans were the majority with numerous abuses. What they did not abuse came from the resurgent Dem's, the Klu Klux Klan, Jim Crow etc.

Even the great god, Franklin Roosevelt paid Democratic obeisnce to lynching but that's another century and another story.

Hope I've provided enough key words to help your study. Hope I wasn't a disingenious bore!
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"KILL ALL THE LAWYERS!"

-Wlm Shakespeare