Abraham Lincoln

[Hondo]

Whats Presidents Day without a word from honest Abe?
Tough times, still admire the guy and now...

Illinois musician's CD salutes Abe Lincoln

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Music/02/18/lincoln.music.ap/index.html#cnnSTCText

 

[CharlesB]

when it comes to honest abe. not a fan

 

[Paisley]

I like Lincoln's quote that most folks are about as happy as they make their minds up to be.

 

[Hondo]

We'll Charles me guess thats why you moved to UK
but you are entitled to your opinion,
I like his quotes as well :eusa_clap

http://home.att.net/~rjnorton/Lincoln78.html

 

[CharlesB]

We Charles me guess thats why you moved to UK
but you are entitled to your opinion,
I like his quotes as well :eusa_clap

http://home.att.net/~rjnorton/Lincoln78.html

I will say that the man is one of history's great orators and that I agreed with his opinions on things...

that being said I belong to a very traditionalist school of thought on Constitutional theory and would say that the states that seceeded had every right to leave the union. There is nothing in the constitution saying that if a state joins of its own volition it can not leave. Beyond that, his suspension of habeas corpus was tyrannical and the supreme court was wholly in the right by ensuring it didnt happen again.

I didn't mean to go political but lincoln is a politician

 

[reetpleat]

I will say that the man is one of history's great orators and that I agreed with his opinions on things...

that being said I belong to a very traditionalist school of thought on Constitutional theory and would say that the states that seceeded had every right to leave the union. There is nothing in the constitution saying that if a state joins of its own volition it can not leave. Beyond that, his suspension of habeas corpus was tyrannical and the supreme court was wholly in the right by ensuring it didnt happen again.

I didn't mean to go political but lincoln is a politician

I have always felt the same way about cession of the states. I guess I am glad they didn't secceed and proceed to continue slavery. But that would have likely given way to what they ended up with anyway, freedowm with extreme racism and exploitation anyway.

I fould it interesting when the soviet union was trying to retain certain states such as Chechnya and the US of course supported their right to secceed if they wanted to. Yet most people would never consider that the south had a right to as well.

I don't blame Abe so much. It is hard to imagine him letting them go. Although the war was a terrible price to pay for a questionable outcome.

Not so crazy about the habius Corpus thing either.

I hope that was long enough ago that it is not considered politics.

I do like Abe though.

 

[CharlesB]

I have always felt the same way about cession of the states. I guess I am glad they didn't secceed and proceed to continue slavery. But that would have likely given way to what they ended up with anyway, freedowm with extreme racism and exploitation anyway.

I fould it interesting when the soviet union was trying to retain certain states such as Chechnya and the US of course supported their right to secceed if they wanted to. Yet most people would never consider that the south had a right to as well.

I don't blame Abe so much. It is hard to imagine him letting them go. Although the war was a terrible price to pay for a questionable outcome.

Not so crazy about the habius Corpus thing either.

I hope that was long enough ago that it is not considered politics.

I do like Abe though.

Well, like I said, he was a master orator and first class intellect. I've a lot of respect and admiration for him. When he was at his best he synthesized the classical thought of those like Cicero with the pressing matters of his day.

Brilliant all around. However theres a difference between holding someone in high esteem for their faculties and agreeing with their course of action at a given moment in time.

 

[dhermann1]

Without getting into the US case, I think the constitutional relationship of the Soviet Republics to Russia was different from the US constitutional set up. However Chechnya was an integral part of Russia, not a separate republic. Their rationale for rebellion, a very understandable one, was that they had been acquired through conquest by the Czarist regine, and felt they should have the right to reclaim their national identity. Moscow didn't see it that way. This whole nationalism thing is a terrible thing. Everybody wants to be a nation state, just when the nation state is becoming more and more irrelevant.
About Abe: You can call him a dictator, or whatever, but his policies reflected the very strong feelings of the majority of Americans at that time. He was elected specifically to stop the southern states from seceeding.
He was a very deep and complex man, much more to him than the simple minded myth that has been put out there.

 

[CharlesB]

Without getting into the US case, I think the constitutional relationship of the Soviet Republics to Russia was different from the US constitutional set up. However Chechnya was an integral part of Russia, not a separate republic. Their rationale for rebellion, a very understandable one, was that they had been acquired through conquest by the Czarist regine, and felt they should have the right to reclaim their national identity. Moscow didn't see it that way. This whole nationalism thing is a terrible thing. Everybody wants to be a nation state, just when the nation state is becoming more and more irrelevant.
About Abe: You can call him a dictator, or whatever, but his policies reflected the very strong feelings of the majority of Americans at that time. He was elected specifically to stop the southern states from seceeding.
He was a very deep and complex man, much more to him than the simple minded myth that has been put out there.

actually one of my fields of study over the years has been comparative federalism. If you ever run up against any questions or whatever please feel free to drop me a line

 

[Tomasso]

Not so crazy about the habius Corpus thing either.

Agreed, but desperate times call for desperate measures. [huh]

 

[Paisley]

Without getting into the US case, I think the constitutional relationship of the Soviet Republics to Russia was different from the US constitutional set up. However Chechnya was an integral part of Russia, not a separate republic. Their rationale for rebellion, a very understandable one, was that they had been acquired through conquest by the Czarist regine, and felt they should have the right to reclaim their national identity. Moscow didn't see it that way.

Chechnya is also full of oil, is it not?

 

[CharlesB]

Agreed, but desperate times call for desperate measures. [huh]

except that he used the suspension clause allocated to him in the Constitution in an area not in an area of "insurrection or invasion"

 

[dhermann1]

My vague recollection of this from a high school term paper I did (shortly after the Civil War), while Lincoln had few qualms about suspending habeus corpus, he also frequently had to restrain people like William Seward who wanted to suspend it on a more widespread and draconian basis. He had a very narrow razor blade to balance himself on.

 

[Dagwood]

Keeping this discussion in the context of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, the Supreme Court in Ex Parte Milligan (1866) found that President Lincoln, with Congressional approval, improperly suspended Milligan’s habeas corpus rights. However, in a 2004 Supreme Court opinion, the Supreme Court noted: “…Milligan was not a prisoner of war, but a resident of Indiana arrested while at home there…Had Milligan been captured while he was assisting Confederate soldiers by carrying a rifle against Union troops on a Confederate battlefield, the holding of the Court might well have been different.”

 

[CharlesB]

Keeping this discussion in the context of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, the Supreme Court in Ex Parte Milligan (1866) found that President Lincoln, with Congressional approval, improperly suspended Milligan’s habeas corpus rights. However, in a 2004 Supreme Court opinion, the Supreme Court noted: “…Milligan was not a prisoner of war, but a resident of Indiana arrested while at home there…Had Milligan been captured while he was assisting Confederate soldiers by carrying a rifle against Union troops on a Confederate battlefield, the holding of the Court might well have been different.”

Agreed. That being said, for him to have been doing that he would have been engaging in either

A: assisting an invasionary force or

B: acting within a theater of insurrection

or

C: engaging in treason and sedition

A and B would have already been provided for within the frame work of the COnstitution already

and if it had been B occurring within either would have made him a foreign spy essentially and subject to hanging anyway. They not so much broke legal ground as uttered a truism.

 

[reetpleat]

Without getting into the US case, I think the constitutional relationship of the Soviet Republics to Russia was different from the US constitutional set up. However Chechnya was an integral part of Russia, not a separate republic. Their rationale for rebellion, a very understandable one, was that they had been acquired through conquest by the Czarist regine, and felt they should have the right to reclaim their national identity. Moscow didn't see it that way. This whole nationalism thing is a terrible thing. Everybody wants to be a nation state, just when the nation state is becoming more and more irrelevant.
About Abe: You can call him a dictator, or whatever, but his policies reflected the very strong feelings of the majority of Americans at that time. He was elected specifically to stop the southern states from seceeding.
He was a very deep and complex man, much more to him than the simple minded myth that has been put out there.

I do agree. Much of the soviet union was either soviet conquest or czarist conquest. So like the Irish and Scottish etc and the Chechnyans, and the American patriots, they had a certain right to assert independance. Of course, in the case of the Americans, they came to land opened to them by the crown, then decided to leave it so that is kind of questionable. The crown could have said they were free to leave.

In the case of the colonies, the south had joined the union voluntarily, so leaving was maybe a little different. On the other hand, Lincoln's feelings did not reflect the feelings of the whole country, mainly the north.

I will also give Lincoln a bit of credit for coming from a rural working class background, educating himself and then persevering when he was not initially successful in politics. Also credit for nto being in league with big money concerns as far as I know, and not corrupt or owned by special interests.

 

[reetpleat]

Agreed, but desperate times call for desperate measures. [huh]

I don't agree. Iu believe the constitution should be above all. That is why it was written. Not for the good times.

Besides that, who is to decide what are desparate times? It is a slippery slope my friend. Read a comment on modern application into that or not as you choose.

 

[Dagwood]

Good discussion all around.

Article I, Section 9, Clause 2 of the US Constitution notes: "The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."

The issue for Lincoln, at the outset, was not so much that he suspended the writ but, rather, that he originally did so without Congressional approval. In the case of Ex Parte Merryman (1861), Chief Justice Roger B. Taney held that the suspension was improper because Congress did not approve the suspension. However, once Congress approved same, the Constitution would appear to support the suspension as the Civil War was deemed a "Rebellion or Invasion." See Habeas corpus Act of March 3, 1863.

In 1949, Justice Jackson noted: ""The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact." This is, essentially, what Lincoln was saying when he noted: "[T]he whole of the laws which I was sworn to [execute] were being resisted...in nearly one-third of the states. Must I have allowed them to finally fail of execution?... Are all the laws but one [the right to habeas corpus] to go unexecuted, and the government itself...go to pieces, lest that one be violated?"

 

[Atterbury Dodd]

I don't agree. I believe the constitution should be above all. That is why it was written. Not for the good times.

:eusa_clap Absolutely.

Besides that, who is to decide what are desperate times? It is a slippery slope my friend. Read a comment on modern application into that or not as you choose.

Yes, that can lead down a horrible road. Everybody really should study the rise and fall of The Third Rich. How could a great people become so changed? It is very easy to look back at the Germans know and point fingers. One must understand how incredibly persuasive and good at lying and deceiving Hitler AND his regime was. Hitler appear wonderful at first. If you don't believe that read Inside the third Rich by Albert Speer(Albert Speer was Hitler's Minister of Armaments).

Having spoken of Hitler, I don't want people to think I am likening Lincoln to Hitler . I truly admire certain traits of Lincoln's, although I believe the South had the right to succeed. It's in the constitution. I can't hate or intensely dislike Lincoln though. I was just reading about his assassination, and it's heart rending--his last hours before death. He probably would have gone easier on the south then his replacement.

 

[AlanC]

...the Civil War was deemed a "Rebellion or Invasion."

No doubt it was an invasion...