Mike Church on the Greatest Abraham Lincoln Myth
Trying to wrap one’s mind around the current administration arbitrarily decreeing the power to assassinate Americans, or how the Obama and Bush administrations both managed to suspend the writ of Habeas Corpus, one must first look back to the greatest trampling of the Constitution, i.e. the Civil War.
With the secession of South Carolina, its government issued a proclamation to Union forces garrisoned at Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay, ordering their evacuation. With the federal military stationed at Fort Sumter failing to abide the order, the newly formed confederate government then sent envoys to Washington D.C. with an offer to purchase the fort outright and enter into a peace treaty with the U.S. government. However, with Abraham Lincoln’s ascension to the office of the President, his views and defense towards the right to secession and the 10th Amendment completely vanished; replaced by the precept that the Union must and would be persevered at any cost. Therefore, he refused the confederate delegation on grounds it would be equivalent to recognizing their government, a move that would contradict his newly minted nationalist doctrine.
Instead, on April 4th, President Lincoln sent a small supply vessel shadowed by U.S. naval warships with orders to resupply the fort and to land the artillery and troops in tow should the supply vessel be met with resistance.
One last attempt was made in vain to reach a peaceful surrender of Fort Sumter via confederate Brigadier General P.G.T. Beauregard on April 11. Thus with federal troops still refusing to evacuate or surrender, the battle of Fort Sumter began, one-hundred and fifty years ago today.
By the war’s end, over 600,000 Americans had lost their lives, many of whom were civilians. After nearly two-years of war with the Union army, fighting to a stalemate, Lincoln, Union Generals Grant and Sherman contrived that the only hope of forcing the southern states back into the union would be accomplished by waging a “total war” on the confederacy in order to drive a stake into the southerner’s morale. With Lincoln’s blessing, Generals Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan set out to decimate civilian towns, burning buildings and farms, killing civilians, with General Sherman going so far as to let his subordinated conscript “freed” slaved into the union army at their discretion.
As New York Senator, William Marcy once quipped in response to the election of President Andrew Jackson, “to the victor goes the spoils.” Thus with Lincoln as their precedent, reinforced by the god-like portrayal both in school and popular culture, subsequent Presidents have incrementally transformed the office into that of an Imperial Executive. For a time, their power limited only by revenue coming into federal confers. Unfortunately, with the removal on any state check via the eradication of a federalist constructed Senate and passage of the FEDERAL RESERVE Act both in 1913, this last stop-gap has too fallen to the never-ending lust for additional power and control, the U.S. Constitution be damned. Therefore, when we wonder just how Presidents can send troops to die supporting United Nations resolutions in Iraq or Libya without a Declaration of War, or how the Fourth Amendment can be completely ignored via the PATRIOT Act, look to Lincoln. When we are repulsed by how our government can and does unlawfully detain and torture American and non-Americans alike despite Constitutional prohibitions via the Eighth Amendment and properly ratified treaties, look to Lincoln.
Emancipating the slaves, don’t look to Lincoln, because despite what the nationalist government schoolbooks teach, this perhaps is the greatest Lincoln myth of them all.
