Abe Lincoln is more of a let-down than Obama even - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Early modern era & beginning of the modern era. Exploration, enlightenment, industrialisation, colonisation & empire (1492 - 1914 CE).
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#13787837
Lincoln wrote:I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way 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 which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.

And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

Abraham Lincoln, Debate with Stephen Douglas, Sept. 18, 1858
...

This quote suggests that the "emancipation" of black slaves after the Civil War was really about throwing cheap labor at Northern industrialists. You know, the ones who could afford to buy any war they wanted.

Rich Americans, killing their own kind for profit.
#13788791
Wolfman wrote:If you didn't know the war was about economics, you weren't paying enough attention.

Yes, but the quote was from BEFORE the Civil War.

Most American Historians pretend like they only discovered the war was about acquiring cheap human resources after many decades of intense scouring of obscure historical texts.

Here, Abraham publicly vows to Americans that he's a racist.

there must be the position of superior and inferior


Does this sound like freedom is on its way?
#13788797
Yes, but the quote was from BEFORE the Civil War.


So? All he's really saying is that the existing system what he wants.

Here, Abraham publicly vows to Americans that he's a racist.


If Lincoln was a racist, then everyone in the US at the time with the exception of John Brown was a racist. You cannot measure past generations based off of current views.

Does this sound like freedom is on its way?


No. But then, what serious student of history said that Lincoln set out with the goal of bringing freedom? Fuck, the man himself basically said during his campaigns that his whole goal was to keep the union united, even if it meant not doing a thing about slavery. He only passed the Emancipation Proclamation because he wanted to punish the South and keep the UK out of the war.
#13788805
Wolfman wrote:If Lincoln was a racist, then everyone in the US at the time with the exception of John Brown was a racist.

The vast majority, yes.

It's hard to imagine any other way the continent could have been ethnic-cleansed so completely of all those other nationalities.

But the myth that the Civil War was about ending racism or slavery... is just that: another historical lie, crafted so Americans don't have to learn that their success was a product of extreme violence and complete racism.
#13788821
QatzelOk wrote:This quote suggests that the "emancipation" of black slaves after the Civil War was really about throwing cheap labor at Northern industrialists. You know, the ones who could afford to buy any war they wanted.

Rich Americans, killing their own kind for profit.


* sigh *

Illinois at the time of Lincoln was considered the west. He didn't represent the regional interests of the industrialized North East. (His Secretary of State William Seward did that, lol).

There is much wrong with the conclusion you and others (you're in the company of neo-confederates and southern racists by the way) draw from quotes like the above.

- Lincoln cannot be considered an abolitionist until about mid-1862 when he made the first draft of the emancipation proclamation.

- Until then Lincoln was a typical free-soiler. You are on to something concerning labor, but it hasn't anything to do with gaining cheap labor for industry (there was plenty of that already). The free-soiler position was to protect small farms from having to compete with slave labor and large plantations. It was Lincoln's goal at the time he took office (in regard to slavery) to stop the spread of slavery to the western territories, not to end it where it already existed in the south, and he said as much in his first inaugural address.

- Lincoln was being beat over the head politically with what would be considered very outrageous claims for the day. That he wanted the races to mix and that free blacks should be equal citizens with White people. 150+ years later, we have a very different perspective. But for Lincoln to not strongly counter these claims (which is what he was doing in the quote from the OP) would have been the end of him politically. Racism was the norm for the day in Illinois and all the other Northern states. In fact many of the Northern states had black laws limiting the rights of free black citizens. If Lincoln had expressed opinions even slightly atypical in regard to race in the late 1850's, he would be only a footnote in history today, if even that.


But the myth that the Civil War was about ending racism or slavery


It was absolutely 100% about slavery. It was never about ending "racism". I'm not sure on what basis you make the claim that anyone ever said it was. I think it is fair to say tha you assume to know what Americans are taught about the civil war in school, when actually you don't have the first clue.

Lincoln's goal in March of 1861 was simply preservation of the Union, but as I said before by 1862 it had become emancipation.
#13789384
dgun wrote:It was absolutely 100% about slavery. It was never about ending "racism".

Actually, it seems like the purpose of Mr. Lincoln and his ilk was to leverage the everyday racism of murderous American pioneers into creating a mass-scale wage slavery that would eventually envelope the vast majority of the USA.

It started with the creation of black wage slavery, which then normalized this kind of economic relationship.

Today's patriot is tomorrow's terrorist. Today's racist cross-burner is tomorrow's white wage slave.
#13789399
QatzelOk wrote:Actually, it seems like the purpose of Mr. Lincoln and his ilk was to leverage the everyday racism of murderous American pioneers into creating a mass-scale wage slavery that would eventually envelope the vast majority of the USA.

It started with the creation of black wage slavery, which then normalized this kind of economic relationship.


That's total bullshit and you know it.

I, dgun wrote:Illinois at the time of Lincoln was considered the west. He didn't represent the regional interests of the industrialized North East.


Qatz's conspiracy: 1) a couple of hundred years of slavery as a way of acclimating people to slavery 2) Fight a bloody civil war to do away with slavery 3) so that now we can have more slavery.

Throw Japan in there somewhere and I'm sure cherry will back you up.
#13789424
dgun wrote:Throw Japan in there somewhere and I'm sure cherry will back you up.

Abraham Lincoln would approve of how you used everyday racism to make your point.

And the normalization of wage slavery happened very soon after Lincoln's goons threw ex-slaves at capitalists.
#13789462
QatzelOk wrote:And the normalization of wage slavery happened very soon after Lincoln's goons threw ex-slaves at .


lol. Whatever Qatz. I'm sure you have sources and so forth to defend your argument.

And what did the Capitalists need ex-slaves for? They already had the Irish. Workers in mills and sweatshops in NE prior to the Civil War were already dealing with conditions not much better than slavery.

As far as I know, there was no plan to relocate mass numbers of ex-slaves to the North for the purpose of cheap labor. In fact, there was serious plans about sending blacks away to form colonies elsewhere. And Lincoln had supported this idea for sometime:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Li ... lonization

And this had been tried before, as I think you know:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberia
#13789678
And what did the Capitalists need ex-slaves for? They already had the Irish.

The Irish were poor and racist as hell.

Throwing black wage-slaves in with them was the perfect way of destroying working class solidarity.

The Civil War was all about hope and change.
#13789809
Qatz wrote:The Irish were poor and racist as hell.


The latter part isn't true for the Irish immigrants, though the Scotch-Irish were notoriously racist and those that had been competing for jobs tended to become racist.

In Ireland itself, and for the first few generations, there was a feeling of unity with Africans.

Daniel O'Connell wrote:It may, perhaps, be fairly questioned, whether any other portion of the population of the earth could have endured the privations, sufferings and horrors of slavery, without having become more degraded in the scale of humanity than the slaves of African descent. Nothing has been left undone to cripple their intellects, darken their minds, debase their moral nature, obliterate all traces of their relationship to mankind; and yet how wonderfully they have sustained the mighty load of a most frightful bondage, under which they have been groaning for centuries! To illustrate the effect of slavery on the white man,—to show that he has no powers of endurance, in such a condition, superior to those of his black brother


Frederick Douglas, recalling his first interaction with Irish-Americans, wrote:I went one day down on the wharf of Mr. Waters; and seeing two Irishmen unloading a scow of stone, I went, unasked, and helped them. When we had finished, one of them came to me and asked me if I were a slave. I told him I was. He asked, "Are ye a slave for life?" I told him that I was. The good Irishman seemed to be deeply affected by the statement. He said to the other that it was a pity so fine a little fellow as myself should be a slave for life. He said it was a shame to hold me. They both advised me to run away to the north; that I should find friends there, and that I should be free.


He went on a tour of Ireland later, and is still pretty well known as a hero amongst the Irish there - a monument is being built to him near my old university.

When the Irish Party used to come to the US they were always horrified by the treatment of blacks. William O'Brien, in particular, wrote something about how ashamed it made him feel to think that anyone originally of Irish origin had ever participated in such a thing.

This isn't to say that there was no racism - that wouldn't be true at all. But the Irish didn't exactly have the same kind of white supremacy and venom behind their racism - it tended to be more fear and ignorance when it was there at all.
#13790096
QatzelOk wrote:Actually, it seems like the purpose of Mr. Lincoln and his ilk was to leverage the everyday racism of murderous American pioneers into creating a mass-scale wage slavery that would eventually envelope the vast majority of the USA.

You've yet to provide a shred of support for this, despite it being the first question asked of you. You've also failed to explain why opposition to slavery could only be explained by opposition to racism (Qatz applying modern narratives to the past... AGAIN!) rather than say, fear of the "slave power".

This image you've created of industrial fat cats is almost anachronistic. The big cotton planatation would have been closer to 'fat cat' status in this era, given how much capital they made in exports. If it were all about money and influence one would have thought the major plantation owners would have been the ones directing the war... which given the first shot of the war was fired by the South, might actually be closer to the truth.

Your explanation also ignores how slavery had been consistently limited prior to the election of Lincoln, in terms of the trade in slaves and its expansion to new states. This is contrary to your thesis, where we would expect the industrialists to want slavery to expand, spreading the future labour pool into the new territories and ensuring a larger labour pool, prior to its end.
#13790659
Smilin' Dave wrote:we would expect the industrialists to want slavery to expand

No we wouldn't.

It's impossible to skim money off of live-in servants.

You have to live among them and work among them.

The industrialists knew that a lot more money could be skimmed from much larger pools of wage slaves.

And the indebtedness of a wage slave is bottomless. As opposed to a slave who can only give his present-tense submission, wage slaves may "owe" their masters years and years of their future revenues as well as their present tense submission.
#13790697
QatzelOk wrote:It's impossible to skim money off of live-in servants.

This doesn't respond to the point that I made at all, which is clear when you read the whole sentence your quote came from. And you are still yet to provide a shred of proof for your thesis. So your claims don't make logical sense, outside of the vacuum you create, and have no factual basis.
#13790862
Responding to Smilin' Dave's point, I wrote:It's impossible to skim money off of live-in servants.

Insatiable capitalists figured out that they could make a lot more money from black wage slaves than they could without them.

End of slavery.

All that mattered was maximizing their own personal wealth, and wage slavery does this better than slavery. Abe Lincoln - like Obama - was a smooth-talking friend of money.

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