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
Jill Chavez,
Your post is very strange.
Stam:
You were the one who misread my sentence. So don’t get all snippy at me.
Tootie,
Are you going to bite them without knowing if he has had his shots. They might give you something. Maybe even money. Tootie do you care if they are a boy or girl? I am getting tired. I must lay down now.
“This implies there are people in the north and east who are not snobs and elists. These would be called the non-leftist, non-elitist, non-snobs from the north east. I wasn’t talking about those good folks.”
As a leftist, non-elitist, non-snob who is a good “folk” from the Northeast, allow me to convey my many thanks to you for displaying your ignorance. Again. Therefore here’s a little saying we have here:
Bite me. I mean that.
Bob:
Well, I think we can quarrel about the terms without being in much disagreement with how things panned out.
Observer:
You don’t like science?
Oh wait. I’m a neanderthal fundie Christian. I’m the one who eschews science.
“…whites (including southern ones) have an overall higher IQ than blacks…”
Glad we got that out in the open, so that we know where Tootie is coming from.
“They surrendered their rights over the colonialists by their own previous crimes. Unwilling to let go of what they no longer had moral or legal title to, we simply wrenched out of their hands.”
Exactly right; but subject to victory in a revolution.
KOOK
Read carefully. Then comprehend. I didn’t say or write that all from the north east was leftist, elitist snobs. I said the ones from the north east who were leftist, elitist, and snobbish. Specifically like the ones Seema was referring to who had made bigoted remarks to her (from Manhattan, and so forth).
This implies there are people in the north and east who are not snobs and elists. These would be called the non-leftist, non-elitist, non-snobs from the north east. I wasn’t talking about those good folks.
Especially the good folks from New Hampshire. Live free of die!
Bob,
The reason I also don’t call it a revolt is because the British government itself was partially in revolt of its own form of government. It had broken promise with the colonialists and denied them the very rights it was supposed to guarantee. It was a rogue government itself at the time.
Edmund Burke indicated as much (and I think proved it well in the prosecution of William Hastings) with India. Burke believed the British were so guilty of crimes against India he accepted losing the American colonies as a righteous verdict on behalf of justice.
It was the rebellion of the British government that caused problems in the American colonies. Indeed, once we threw off the tyrants, we basically reestablished the Rights of Englishmen here on our soil. We adopted them and expanded them and made them our own. We kept a similar form of government (except mainly for the Monarchy–until Obama came along). We kept a very similar justice system. We even added federalism and republicanism.
What we replaced the despotism with was what the British promise had always been and then some. We separated ourselves from them because they lost the title deed by their criminal activity. Just like anyone who breaks a contract loses that which was agreed to.
They surrendered their rights over the colonialists by their own previous crimes. Unwilling to let go of what they no longer had moral or legal title to, we simply wrenched out of their hands.
This shed light on why several states at the founding demanded the promise to secede. They wanted to be assured that it was, like with their own generation, a moral right and duty to break away from a government which first breeches its promise to a people
Only after the right to secede (as they had done from Britain) was guaranteed, did the several states who held back ratify.
As so I don’t call what the founders did a revolution. It fits other descriptions much better. Secession. Founding. A Declaration of Independence.
And a war for it.
Tootie: …leftist, elitist, snobs from the north east…
Tootie: Shame on you. In your effort to slander a whole region of the country, you outed your own backward beliefs.
Tootie meet kettle
Mike Spindell:
From Seema Jilani at the Guardian.
“I am tired of apologising. I apologised for being Muslim, post-9/11 and more recently for my Pakistani origins. Now, I apologise for being a southerner too. When an environmental catastrophe erupted in my backyard, I looked to the media to tell our stories and instead, found quotes from experts ruminating on energy policy. Where are the restaurant owners in the French Quarter who still haven’t caught their breath after Katrina swallowed their lives? What about the fishermen? While recently rubbing elbows with fellow liberals from the east and west coasts, I felt that their disdain for the lives of the south was palpable”
Seema wonders where this animus against southerners comes from. So she asks:
“It must be southern racism then. During my medical school interview, I was asked if I would wear a burqa and told I belonged in hell. This humiliation occurred in Chicago, not the deep south. During my Manhattan interview, I was unwelcome because I had done medical work in Gaza. Bigotry traverses the Mason-Dixon line, you see.”
Nope, she doesn’t think its just about southern racism.
So she wonders if the northern libs think the southern folks are just slackers when it comes to laying it on the line for America and maybe that is why they are looked at with contempt.
And she writes:
“This scorn must be because we don’t contribute to the country’s greater good then. But 35% of active-duty military come from the south. Of the US troop casualties in Afghanistan, 47% were from the south, and from Iraq, 38%.”
Nope. That cannot be it either.
I think she is too kind to the liberal leftist elites. She only calls it bigotry. I think hate might be a better word (but its hard to prove without a declaration of it).
You write:
“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.”
Who the heck do you think populates those schools? And which leftist union thugs run them? And which left-wing teachers colleges educated those teachers?
And so you want to talk about the poorly educated people living in the south? Do you really want to go down that road? Because of the top five or ten states with the highest black populations, half of them are in the south. And THESE are the people you are also talking about.
And of the top ten northern states with the highest concentrations of blacks: Michigan, Illinois, and New York rank the same as Texas in IQ. It just happens that IQ has every bearing on education outcome. And northern school districts with the highest concentrator of blacks (like Detroit and Washington D.C.) have as much a failure rate as any of the southern states you might delight in condemning in your flagrant charges against them.
IQ has a direct relation to education ability and thus the state rankings you wish to bludgeon the south with, has everything to do with those rankings. And this is the pile of crap you stepped in with what some might assume to be a backwards mode of thinking typical to folks from the south.
And since whites (including southern ones) have an overall higher IQ than blacks, what and who you are essentially demeaning, is not so much the south for being backwards, but BLACKS. Whites in the south do just as well academically as whites in the north given the same curricula. This is because of IQ. And the south’s education problems are not one of money either.
Lack of money in education is no where to be found as a cause of mis-education anywhere in America. And it is not teaching standards either because all teachers colleges (north and south) receive accreditation by similar accreditation organization or teachers could not be certified. They all basically have the same standards (and standards often set by leftist, elitist, snobs from the north east)
Nothing but sack cloth and ashes will save you from yourself this time.
Shame on you. In your effort to slander a whole region of the country, you outed your own backward beliefs.
Leftists don’t think their dung stinks. It does.
To blame a whole swath of a population for what their predecessor may or may not have done, and lay a charge of guilty on all of today for it, would really be something a dumb-ass redneck of any latitude might be guilty of.
Don’t be a hick.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/may/13/us-southerners-discrimination
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/061022_iq.htm
Tootie,
I am now being attacked. I am Jill I am the victim of this abuse. Tell Mr. Limbaugh, I need his help. Please send the dittoheads to the rescue.
Tootie: “But your bringing up the British does lead to an interesting discussion about slavery in the American colonies BEFORE the War of Independence (it wasn’t technically a revolt). The founders did not replace the British government as is done in a true revolt. The British government still existed after the War Of Independence. So Revolutionary War is a misnomer.”
Tootie,
It was in fact a revolution. The Declaration, Preliminary Articles of Peace, Treaty of Paris and Constitution clearly shows the chain of sovereign title ceding from the Brits to the 13 original colonies.
Sovereignty runs with the land and has since 900 A.D. The Treaty of Paris confirmed the non-existence of British government on all land more particularly described within Article II of the Preliminary Articles of Peace —
To wit:
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/prel1782.asp#art2
Adjust your notes regarding “The American Revolution” accordingly.
Tootie,
Don’t let these pigs, sexist as they are get you down. Stay strong.
Jill Chavez: aww geez, no one is attacking Tootie, it was a pun, no no not a pun, no what’s the other thing where it reads the same backwards as forwards?
Thanks, Raf.
Observer,
Great review of the Dred Scott case!
Tootie has referred to the individual opinion of one Spooner in 1860. She says that that “the Constitution allowed for slavery to fall away legally (even when it was maintained unlawfully by the slaveholders and states).”
That may be Spooners’ and her opinion, but that is all it is. It has no basis in fact or law or history. It had no legal standing at all. It was not the law. Spooner misconstrued the Kings Bench case.
The law of the United States, which had superseded all the colonial charters, was set out in the Dred Scott case of 1857. Taney held that property rights in slaves were “expressly” preserved in the Constitution, and especially in the Fifth Amendment. No one could be deprived of his property in a slave because of the Constitution. The Supreme Court held that slavery was lawful and that the Congress could not constitutionally ban it in any federal territory. The implication of the case was that slavery might even be protected by the Constitution in the north.
There was nothing unlawful about states or slaveowners maintaining slaves under the Constitution as it was written and interpreted by the courts in 1860.
As Lincoln and others responded, Taney was wrong on the law and the facts, and they took steps to amend the Constitution to abolish slavery and to preserve the equal protection of the laws.
The southerners rejected all efforts at compensated emancipation.
Tootie,
You are being attacked. I don’t know what to say. You are a victim of the sexist pigs. Tell them. Stand up for yourself just like you did for Mr. Limbaugh. We don’t have to be victims anymore. I am Jill and I know what it’s like to be the victim of these verbal assaults. Do you ditto that.