Bysilver dollar on December 28, 2010
In my humble opinion, Eric Foner is incapable of writing an unbiased book on Lincoln or the WBTS. He joins many others who praise Lincoln as the great emancipator and savior of the Union; neither of which are true. Lincoln did not free the first slave, the Thirteenth Amendment gets that credit. Neither did Lincoln preserve the Union. Instead Lincoln destroyed the Union of free and voluntarily joined states. In its place rest a Union of states bound by force of arms, murder and pillage.
Foner does make a stab at telling the truth about the real Lincoln, but falls way short of the complete truth. Foner comes on the scene after other more capable authors have covered the subject accurately and thoroughly.
For a better understanding of the real Lincoln, I recommend four (4) books, "The Real Lincoln" (2002) and "Lincoln Unmasked," (2006) by Thomas DiLorenzo and the third by John Avery Emison entitled, "Lincoln Uber Alles" (2009.) And the fourth "Red Republicans and Lincoln's Marxists: Marxism in the Civil War" Walter Kennedy & Al Benson. And to round off the truth about Lincoln, DiLorenzo explains the cause and effects of Abraham Lincoln's policies in "Hamilton's Curse." (2008)
The people deserve to know the whole truth about Lincoln from all sources. Foner's book, "The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery," is definitely NOT that source or book.
"Resolved: That this government was adopted the people of the several states of this union as common agent to carry into effect the which they had delegated by the constitution in fulfillment of this high and sacred trust this government is bound so to exercise its powers as not to interfere with the reserved rights of states over their own domestic institutions and is the duty of this government to refrain from attempt however remote to operate on the freedom of speech and the press as secured to the freedom of each state by the constitution and laws thereof That the United States are bound to secure to state a republican form of government and to protect each of them against invasion or domestic violence and for no other purpose can congress interfere with the internal police of a state." NILES NATIONAL REGISTER JAN 1838 MR FLETCHER'S ADDRESS
Abraham Lincoln betrayed the aforementioned trust not to interfere with the reserved rights of states over their own domestic institutions, and invaded a Sovereign state, by waging war against women and children. Lincoln is a murderer of women and children and for that we give him a national holiday.
A huge problem with Foner's book is what he doesn't say. Foner pays lip service to Lincoln's proposed thirteenth amendment (Corwin amendment) on two (2) pages (p.156, 158) of his book while devoting fourteen (14) pages to the thirteenth amendment that abolished slavery. Foner conveniently leaves out too much that proves the war was NOT fought over slavery.
Abraham Lincoln proposed a thirteenth amendment in March of 1861. It is the only proposed constitutional amendment that was signed by a sitting President. It bears Abraham Lincoln's signature. Here is Abraham Lincoln's proposed thirteenth amendment: "No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give Congress the power to abolish or interfere within any state with the domestic institutions thereof, including that a person's held to labor or service by laws of said State."
Lincoln's proposed thirteenth amendment said Congress shall not have the power to interfere with any institutions within any state including those held to labor or service by the laws of that State. In other words, what Abraham Lincoln was saying to the South, if you will accept this proposed thirteenth amendment, you may forever keep slaves. Beauregard did not fire on Fort Sumter until April 9. Lincoln's proposed thirteenth amendment was in March of 1861!
If the War had been about slavery and if the South wanted just to keep slaves and that was it, why fire a gun? Why fire a shot? Just simply accept his proposed thirteenth amendment and it would all be over. A resolution was passed unanimously by Congress on July 23, 1861. You may read it for yourself in the Congressional Record. Here is what this resolution says: "The War is waged by the government of the United States not in the spirit of conquest or subjugation, nor for the purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or institutions of the states, but to defend and protect the Union." Congress said the War is not about slavery! I will even give you a thirteenth amendment that will allow you to make slavery permanent.
Many in the "Lincoln Cult," qualify their praise for this book by saying the book won the Pulitzer Prize. The Lincoln Cult screams fowl when the truth of the Lincoln Cult and the Pulitzer Prize is uncovered. The fact that the book won the Pulitzer Prize discredits the book further. Hiding behind the Pulitzer Prize tells something of the "Lincoln Cult's" character and defines them as extremely biased. One has to look no further than the comments to this review to see the extreme bias in favor of the Yankee version of history. Joseph Pulitzer, the founder/inventor of the Pulitzer Prize, was a Union soldier. Today, no true southerner sits on the Pulitzer Selection Board. All are extremely biased in favor of the Union version of the war. The Pulitzer Prize organization has absolutely zero credibility in establishing favored status for history books.
At the age of seventeen Pulitzer decided to become a soldier and tried in turn to enlist in the Austrian Army, Napoleon's Foreign Legion for duty in Mexico, and the British Army for service in India. He was rebuffed because of weak eyesight and frail health. However, in Hamburg, Germany, he encountered a bounty recruiter for the U.S. Union Army and contracted to enlist as a substitute for a draftee, a procedure permitted under the WBTS draft system.
At Boston he jumped ship and, swam to shore, determined to keep the enlistment bounty for himself rather than leave it to the agent. This act makes Joseph Pulitzer a thief, a liar and untrustworthy. Joseph Pulitzer collected the bounty by enlisting for a year in the Lincoln Cavalry, which suited him since there were many Germans in the unit.
Joseph Pulitzer was a thief, liar, and an untrustworthy Union mercenary paid to kill Southern women and children. There is no reason to love unquestioningly, uncritically, and venerate Joseph Pulitzer and his ilk as an idol and authority on history or any other subject. Joseph Pulitzer was nothing but a murdering, thieving, lying, untrustworthy, questionable Union mercenary with too much money and nothing to do with it except pat himself and other Lincoln Cult members on the back.
Racist, both black and white, often use the Western expansion to prove their bias against the southern states. The following is an excerpt from "THE BLACK WEST" BY WILLIAM LAUREN KATZ. Here he discusses the way white Yankee settlers in the early west who were firmly against spreading slavery to the western territories actually felt about black people. You were probably taught that during the pre-Civil War period, northern and southern whites battled each other in Kansas (so-called "bleeding Kansas") and Nebraska over the slavery issue. Read this to understand better why they wanted it that way. This may give you a better understanding of some white and black Yankee attitudes you encounter from lilly-white and black suburban areas today. Now my sons and daughters of Africa, you should never lose focus on reality. Know well your friends and your enemies.
To expect so fundamental an American ideology to remain behind when families collected their belongings and headed west, is to expect too much. The racial antipathies and myths of those moving toward the frontier was further inflamed by their fear of Indians, whom they also classified as "primitive" before they seized their land and burned their villages. Whether whites silently or loudly proclaimed their racism was a personal matter. But that they not only promoted it north, south, east and west, but cloaked it with the majesty of law, has been a historical development of the highest consequence for the nation. At the very moment in history when slavery was becoming localized in the South, racism was becoming national in scope.
The frontier experience furnishes ample proof of the nationalization of racial hostility. The intrepid pioneers who crossed the western plains carried the virus of racism with them, as much a part of their psyche as their heralded courage and their fears. Once settled in frontier communities, these hearty souls erected the racial barriers their forefathers had created back east. As these pioneers cleared the land, built homes, schools, churches and planted crops, they transplanted their bigotry into western frontier life. Even after the death of slavery, their belief in black inferiority would remain. The pioneers and their children would hold tenaciously to the creed of their ancestors. Documentation abounds with the Yankee hatred of blacks.
The black migrant to the frontier soon found he had no hiding place from traditional American attitudes. Even the West's vaunted antislavery position was largely based not on moral repulsion to an evil institution, or even calculated white self-interest -- rather it stemmed from hatred and fear of blacks as neighbors. Repeatedly and by overwhelming majorities, former Yankee white settlers, who moved further and further west, voted to keep black people from entering their land, voting in their elections, testifying in their courts, serving in their militia, or attending their schools and churches. If any substantial number felt regret for the black prospector who could not protect his claim, the black woman who was raped, the black merchant who was robbed in broad daylight before witnesses, or the black children kept from entering the schoolhouse door, they made no tangible show of their feelings and left no record of their distress. The Yankee pioneers who were moving west in unprecedented numbers wanted, along with their own land and liberty, what Lincoln and the Republican party had promised them -- a white West, unsullied by black people, slave or free.
Update: Other books exposing Abraham Lincoln's hyprocrisy towards slavery are: 1) the well documented book by Lerone Bennett Jr., "Forced Into Glory, Abraham Lincoln's White Dream." (2000); "Colonization After Emancipation, Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement," by Phillip Magness and Sebastian Page. (2011); and "North of Slavery, The Negro in the Free States." (1961) |