For academics, there is no greater sin than the alteration of a historic document. That is precisely what amateur historian Thomas P. Lowry is accused of doing in writing a “5” over a date of a pardon by Abraham Lincoln – immediately gaining fame for finding the last official act before Lincoln’s assassination on April 14, 1865.
Lowry, 78, now insists that he was coerced into signing a confession — which he did without the aid of an attorney. For its part, the Archive says that he cannot be prosecuted because of the passage of the five-year statute of limitations.
The pardon was for Pvt. Patrick Murphy and records show that it was signed exactly one year before Lincoln’s assassination. Lowry confessed that he brought a fountain pen into the research room in 1998 and wrote a 5 over the 4 in 1864.
Trevor Plante, an Archives official, was always suspicious about the darker ink on the 5. The pardon became part of Lincoln lore but Plante could not get beyond the shade of ink. He then consulted a Lincoln collection of documents edited by Roy P. Basler in the 1950s and found the reprinted pardon with the date of April 14, 1864.
Ironically, the confession itself is now being challenged but the inspector general insists that “we have a written confession in his own hand.” Are you sure about that?
Source: Washington Post
Jonathan Turley
My initial reactions to the posts defending Southern Treason and blaming Lincoln for the Civil War was to go through each false statement and show the ignorance of them. However, I’ve thought it over and come to see (at least for me) that to debate non-historical factoids, as if they represented a disputed issue is to give credence to nonsense. Besides there have been more than enough debunking posts to show the falsity of the pro-South, pro-Slavery and pro-Bigotry positions. Let’s take and overview of this whole issue.
Mildly asserted, yet at the heart of it all, is the belief that somehow whites (Northern Europeans) are losing their grip on power in this country. The premise is of course that they somehow deserve to be in the leadership position. Underlying that false premise is another which is the belief that this is a Christian, white country and all those who don’t fit that mold are usurping what isn’t theirs. This is purely nonsense and the historical facts don’t bear this out.
With the exception of Native Americans and many Latino’s this is a country of immigrants and the forces of wealth encouraged that immigration for economic gain. Not only did the South predominate in the importation of African slaves, against their will, but it also brought in European whites as indentured servants, who in fact were little more than slaves. The entire Southern economy was built upon exploitation for profit and this was heartily endorsed by the Southern Churches, who in fact put profit before Jesus. The South was therefore a collection of
corrupt and totalitarian States, where profit was their only true God, violating the First Commandment in which they purported to believe.
The belief that somehow the war was started by Lincoln and the North is not historical. Indeed, the opening shot of the war was Confederate Traitors firing on Fort Sumpter. Quotations from Southern Leaders were quoted above that in and of themselves prove that the South started and fought this war to preserve slavery. The notion that the Union acted unconstitutionally is in itself laughable, since by its traitorous rebellion the South showed not commitment or respect for the Constitution. The notion too that slavery would have somehow died out on its own is simply silly and its proponents are hypocrites enmeshed in their own un-Godly racism.
As to this being a “white nation” that is nonsense. One of the most important reasons this country became great was the building of the Trans Continental Railway System. Chinese and blacks played a major role in getting the work done. California and Texas were stolen from Mexico and the Mexicans who lived there were put into subservient positions, yet neither of these States would have prospered were it not for these groups doing the hard work.
As for the European culture discussed that specifically applies to Great Britain, France, Holland, Germany and Spain. Short shrift is given to Russians, Poles, Slovaks and Jews, etc. who were also encouraged to emigrate because of the voracious needs of the growing US economy.
The truth is that the Southern States are for the most part the most backward and bigoted areas in this country. Their educational systems rank at or near the bottom. Their wages are low. Their democratic processes are corrupted, their health care is poor, their unwanted pregnancy rate high, their STD rate leads the nation and their treatment of their citizens is medieval at times. The worst though is the hypocrisy which exists at the highest levels and the convincing of many of their citizens that their leader’s hypocrisy is valid.
The horrors of segregation after the war are well documented and I could see and experience it in my own lifetime. Blacks weren’t the only victims of widespread Southern prejudice, Jews, Catholics, Latino’s also suffered under that weight.
That some bigots choose to continue their bigotry and even to roll back the mild gains made towards equality is understandable since bigotry dies hard. It is so sad to see that bigotry, propaganda and treason is alive in the South today and the fact that those who defend and nurture it profess to be Christians.
So what about payment for the thefts of the Yankee’s intruders. Where is the Souths DUE Process. It was stolen by a piece of paper. Yankee Go Home.
Tootoe said “I am discussing the right and wrong of murdering to prevent slavery (it is wrong).”
Well, we on the white southern side did like to murder the treasonous slaves, 180,000 of them, who were our lawful, God-given property, just as much as our farms, plows, horses and steers, but who still took up arms against the masters appointed over them by God and fought against us in their unlawful slave rebellion.
We never treated them as soldiers, and we massacred them at Fort Pillow under Gen. Forrest.
And I, as a loyal white southerner, do say that you lie when you say that slavery is wrong.
Cain’t you read my speech at all?
“All the north had to do was buy the slaves and free them (that is how others were doing it elsewhere in the world at the time). Instead, Lincoln murdered people and became a dictator to do so.”
Tootie, that statement is so ignorant. Do you not know that Lincoln, as President, offered a plan to the bporder state slaveowners still in the Union for compensated emancipation. He was turned down flatly. If the border states refused, how do you think we would have reacted in the secessionist states? Do not be willfully ignorant. We never, ever said or did anything in favor of any kind of emancipation.
The historical fact is that Lincoln offered to buy the slaves, and was refused.
Please take a look at the historical realities.
One question. Before my post, had you ever read my speech?
Very likely not.
Tootie,
So I guess the question is: How do you feel about the American Revolution? Quite frankly, the Founding Fathers were much more free under British Rule than any slave ever was in the South. So, as I see it, unless you also think they were wrong in committing murder of British troops to secure their freedom, you have a pretty obvious double standard. One that at first blush seems to place a higher value on people of European descent than those from other continents.
Gyges, excellent video, I really like the poem AND Ben Kingsley; you finding them together and posting them has really improved the quality of my evening. Thanks.
I am not discussing the right or wrong of slavery (it is wrong). I am discussing the right and wrong of murdering to prevent slavery (it is wrong).
This is a difficult concept for simpletons to grasp.
mespo,
yep … but I wanted to pull it out … and tag it with the God’s will line … I have a thing about Lee … and it ain’t reverence. 😉
Well Blouise, Lee was on the winning side of the theological argument if not the moral one. The Bible is full of approval for slavery.
BTW Great minds do think alike. See I quoted your verse above!!
And then, of course, we have the words of Robert E Lee:
“The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery Controversy. … Although the Abolitionist must know this, & must See that he has neither the right or power of operating except by moral means & suasion, & if he means well to the slave, he must not Create angry feelings in the Master; that although he may not approve the mode which it pleases Providence to accomplish its purposes” (REL’s letter to wife 1856)
i.e. slavery was ordained by God and abolitionists were acting contrary to God’s will
Gyges:
I like the way you think!
Useless Simpleton Grant:
“One never knows the breath and brevity of ones own life. We are successes and failures in our own minds.”
******************
Oh, I’d call this a real success, wouldn’t you?
http://www.army.mil/-images/2008/01/06/10793/army.mil-2007-12-12-085425.jpg
How about a little input from that champion of states rights ol’ Jeff Davis himself:
“Mr. Davis: Several southern Senators around have spoken to me to the effect that in each of their States the protection is secured, and a suit may be instituted at common law for assault and battery, to protect a negro as well as a white man. The condition of slavery with us is, in a word, Mr. President, nothing but the form of civil government instituted for a class of people not fit to govern themselves. It is exactly what in every State exists in some form or other. It is just that kind of control which is extended in every northern State over its convicts, its lunatics, its minors, its apprentices. It is but a form of civil government for those who by their nature are not fit to govern themselves. We recognize the fact of the inferiority stamped upon that race of men by the Creator, and from the cradle to the grave, our Government, as a civil institution, marks that inferiority. In their subject and dependent state, they are not the objects of cruelty as they would be if left to the commission of crime, for which they should be incarcerated in penitentiaries and work-houses, and put under hired overseers, having no interest in them and no relation to them, no affiliation, growing out of the associations of childhood and the tender care of age. Is there nothing of the balm needed in the Senator’s own State, that he must needs go abroad to seek objects for his charity and philanthropy? What will be say of those masses in New York now memorializing for something very like an agrarian law? What will he say to the throngs of beggars who crowd the streets of his great commercial emporium? What will he say to the multitudes collected in the penitentiaries and prisons of his own State? I seek not, sir, to inquire into the policy and propriety of the institutions of other States; I assume not to judge of their fitness; it belongs to the community to judge, and I know not under what difficulties they may have been driven to what I cannot approve; but never, sir, in all my life, have I seen anything that so appealed to every feeling of humanity and manliness, as the suffering of the poor children imprisoned in your juvenile penitentiaries–imprisoned before they were old enough to know the nature of crime–there held to such punishment as we never inflict save upon those of mature years. I arraign you not for this: I know not what your crowded population and increasing wants may demand; I know not how far it may be the necessary result of crime which follows in the footsteps of misery; I know not how far the parents have become degraded, and how far the children have become outcast, and how far it may have devolved on the State to take charge of them; but, I thank my God, that in the state of society where I reside, we have no scenes so revolting as these.
Why then not address yourselves to the evils which you have at home? Why not confine your inquiries to the remedial measures which will relieve the suffering of and stop the progress of crime among your own people? Very intent in looking into the distance for the mote in your brother’s eye, is it to be wondered that we turn back and point to the beam in your own?”
~From The Papers of Jefferson Davis, Volume 6, pp. 277-84. Transcribed from the Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 916-18.
Now we know Jeff Davis is the true expert on the Civil War. Here’s his stated sentiments before the Senate in 1860 as contained in his famous resolutions:
Jefferson Davis’ Resolutions on
the Relations of States
Senate Chamber, U.S. Capitol, February 2, 1860
Mr. DAVIS submitted the following resolutions:
1. Resolved, That in the adoption of the Federal Constitution, the States adopting the same acted severally as free and independent sovereignties, delegating a portion of their powers to be exercised by the Federal Government for the increased security of each, against dangers domestic as well as foreign; and that any intermeddling by any one or more States, or by a combination of their citizens, with the domestic institutions of the others, on any pretext, whether political, moral, or religious, with the view to their disturbance or subversion, is in violation of the Constitution, insulting to the States so interfered with, endangers their domestic peace and tranquillity–objects for which the Constitution was formed–and, by necessary consequence, serves to weaken and destroy the Union itself.
2. Resolved, That negro slavery, as it exists in fifteen States of this Union, composes an important portion of their domestic institutions, inherited from their ancestors, and existing at the adoption of the Constitution, by which it is recognized as constituting an important element of the apportionment of powers among the States; and that no change of opinion or feeling on the part of the non-slaveholding States of the Union in relation to this institution can justify them or their citizens in open and systematic attacks thereon, with a view to its overthrow; and that all such attacks are in manifest violation of the mutual and solemn pledges to protect and defend each other, given by the States, respectively, on entering into the constitutional compact which formed the Union, and are a manifest breach of faith and a violation of the most solemn obligations.
3. Resolved, That the union of these States rests on the equality of rights and privileges among its members, and that it is especially the duty of the Senate, which represents the States in their sovereign capacity, to resist all attempts to discriminate either in relation to person or property, so as, in the Territories–which are the common possession of the United States–to give advantages to the citizens of one State which are not equally secured to those of every other State.
4. Resolved, That neither Congress, nor a Territorial Legislature, whether by direct legislation or legislation of an indirect and unfriendly nature, possess the power to annul or impair the constitutional right of any citizen of the United States to take his slaver property into the common Territories; but it is the duty of the Federal Government there to afford for that, as for other species of property, the needful protection; and if experience should at any time prove that the judiciary does not possess power to insure adequate protection, it will then become the duty of Congress to supply such deficiency.
5. Resolved, That the inhabitants of an organized Territory of the United States, when they rightfully form a constitution to be admitted as a State into the Union, may then, for the first time, like the people of a State when forming a new constitution, decide for themselves whether slavery, as a domestic institution, shall be maintained or prohibited within their jurisdiction; and if Congress shall admit them as a State, “they shall be received into the Union with or without slavery, as their constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission.
6. Resolved, That the provision of the Constitution for the rendition of fugitives from service or labor, “without the adoption of which the Union could not have been formed,” and the laws of 1793 and 1850, which were enacted to secure its execution, and the main features of which, being similar, bear the impress of nearly seventy years of sanction by the highest judicial authority, have unquestionable claim to the respect and observance of all who enjoy the benefits of our compact of Union; and that the acts of State Legislatures to defeat the purpose, or nullify the requirements of that provision, and the laws made in pursuance of it, are hostile in character, subversive of the Constitution, revolutionary in their effect, and if persisted in, must sooner or later lead the States injured by such breach of the compact to exercise their judgment as to the proper mode and measure of redress.”
Slavery the issue? Pis-shaw. It’s all about states rights, see!
Even a blind bigot like Davis knew better.
One never knows the breath and brevity of ones own life. We are successes and failures in our own minds.
Mike Appleton:
All the north had to do was buy the slaves and free them (that is how others were doing it elsewhere in the world at the time). Instead, Lincoln murdered people and became a dictator to do so.
Now, I understand that this murderous rampage appeals to left wingers very much, mainly because they are evil bloodthirsty monsters. Republicans, on the other hand, love Lincoln because they are stupid semi-illiterates.
The record speaks for itself (when the pro-Lincoln types are not trying to shout people down or fraudulently changing the record a hundred years later).
Let the record speak for itself. The truth then emerges.
Secession was about money. Period. Lincoln even “allowed” any state that stayed in the union to have slavery. It wasn’t about slavery, it was about money, and the blockade. He permitted slavery. He didn’t mind it, at all. He felt blacks were inferior. Of course he did.
Lincoln violated the Constitution by suspending habeas corpus and creating West Virginia. It was one unconstitutional act after another that deserved the response of secession; which was a thing our founding fathers knew they too had the right to do when tyrants violated their obligations to the people they served.
Lincoln did not let the south do what the founders had done. He was worse than King George.
This discussion has nothing to do with what I think of plantation slavery, which is an evil wickedness.
But this is why I cannot believe the Democrats pretending to dislike slavery. The are the Neo-Slavery movement in America today. Their Marxist welfare state is vehicle for their Neo-slavery movement.
So, I don’t believe that Democrats and leftists hate slavery. They are all a pack of liars. They love slavery and beg for it with their Marxism and welfare slavery to the state.
I, on the other hand, loathe all forms of slavery: the slavery of the south and the Marxist slavery of the Democratic Party.
I am consistent, they are not.
Lotta and Mespo,
Seems appropriate:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krbX-9ugbI4&w=480&h=390]
Quite possibly my favorite poem, and a fantastic name for a Jazz Fusion band.
mespo:
Lincoln wasn’t a Christian. He pretended to be one in order to manipulate and murder people, and make money.
I imagine that appeals to the simple-minded folks, especially those intellects on the left who hate real Christians.
Lincoln’s arrogant statement “He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war …” is blasphemy.
God didn’t will for innocent southerners to be murdered by Lincoln. Lincoln was trying to blame God for Lincoln’s bloodlust.
He was a coward.
Mespo: “Somehow though having your face carved in granite on a mountain top inspires in me some sense of credibility, however small.”
—
Thanks, I love the quote you quoted. I agree, that whole ‘carved in granite on a mountaintop’ thing tends to be a pretty good rebuttal to an otherwise dismissive audience.
Mr. Moore is here thanks to a key word search bot I suspect. Still, the marvelous quotes and arguments that have been brought forth in response to ‘his’ posting are inspiring and enlightening. Thank you all, specially Vice President Stephens, I am honored to ‘hear’ the truth from your own mouth.
Mr. Moore is a leader of the Patriot Network. “Club Leader: R.W. Moore of Toccoa, Georgia” from their ‘leader’ page. Its a tax resistor and Constitutional originalist group. Here’s their mission statement:
“Our Purpose
Learn effective, proven methods for fending off the lying, thieving, tax-collecting bureaucrats!
The purpose of The Patriot Network is THE RETURN TO CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT.
Our mission is to Protect, Preserve and Defend the US Constitution.
This is a POLITICAL Purpose and we are a POLITICAL organization. The Return to Constitutional Government means that the people in power are required to obey the law, i.e. the US Constitution…. and that means every word, exactly as it was written.
So many people, both our enemies and even our dedicated members, often do not realize the reason for our existence. The Network is a political organization, not a “tax group.” H&R Block is a tax organization — the IRS is a tax group. We are not a legal organization – the ACLU and Department of Justice are legal groups.
The goal of our association and our local affiliates is to return the US Constitution to its rightful place in our nation’s legal-governmental structure…not just to stop paying the taxes that we do not owe. Not submitting to IRS tyranny is one of our many programs; not a final objective or an end in itself. Our goals are explained in more detail in the Clarkson video, “The Return To Constitutional Government.” “
I also found this obscure passage from a long forgotten speech by a politician of mean repute who had this to say:
“The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
~Abraham Lincoln (Second Inaugural Address).
“Typical politician,” both Tootie and DiLorenzo are sure to say. Somehow though having your face carved in granite on a mountain top inspires in me some sense of credibility, however small.