Tide Fans Opinions about Abraham Lincoln

[CrimsonNan]

Bill O'Reilly, who makes me furious, has written a book about Lincoln entitled "Killing Lincoln". The last few days he's been hawking it on his show, which I watch only because I like his guests, not him. He keeps saying that Lincoln was our country's greatest president. And I yell at the TV and say, IN YOUR OPINION !!!

I realize that he's trying to sell yet another one of his books, but to constantly say he was our greatest president IS indeed only his opinion. He read an e-mail tonight from someone who disagreed with him, however I can't remember what she said. (I think it was a woman).

Hey Bill - come on down South and you'd probably get a different opinion. And you might get tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail.

I'm not a history teacher like he claims to have been, but I know enough about the Civil War not to like Lincoln.

 

[Bama Reb]

Look at it like this, Nan. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion - even O'Reilly.

 

[Tide1986]

I'm doubtful of Lincoln's sincerity regarding race equality. In an interview on NPR, O'Reilly stated that Lincoln would be proud to see Obama elected President. Regardless of Obama's politics, I'm again doubtful. Maybe I'm just a cynic, but I think the slavery issue was a convenient way for Lincoln to seemingly legitimize his attack on the Southern states. Just one man's cynical opinion...

 

[Tidewater]

Bill O'Reilly, who makes me furious, has written a book about Lincoln entitled "Killing Lincoln". The last few days he's been hawking it on his show, which I watch only because I like his guests, not him. He keeps saying that Lincoln was our country's greatest president. And I yell at the TV and say, IN YOUR OPINION !!!

I realize that he's trying to sell yet another one of his books, but to constantly say he was our greatest president IS indeed only his opinion. He read an e-mail tonight from someone who disagreed with him, however I can't remember what she said. (I think it was a woman).

Hey Bill - come on down South and you'd probably get a different opinion. And you might get tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail.

I'm not a history teacher like he claims to have been, but I know enough about the Civil War not to like Lincoln.

There is not a topic in American history in which the location of one's birth has a greater influence on how one sees the past. There are exceptions on both sides, but being born north or south of the Mason-Dixon tends to determine how one views that conflict, and thus, its progenitor, Abraham Lincoln.

As dispassionately as I can say, Lincoln was a great politician, but not a great statesman. He looked after the interests of his party, above and beyond the interests of his country. He was one of America's greatest rhetoricians, but not its greatest political philosopher. The man could turn a phrase.

On the other hand, he launched the war which killed more Americans than all others put together. He ran roughshod over the limits the Constitution placed on the Federal government. One of his leading motivations, in his own words, was to protect Federal revenues and northern Republican business interests. He ordered the arrest of members of a state legislature before they could even commit the crime of voting the wrong way. He ordered the arrest and banishment of a (northern, US) political opponent for what he said. He ordered the closing of newspapers because of what they printed. He committed these acts in order to preserve the Union, which is not a bad thing, but his means do not justify his ends. I tend to agree with John Randolph of Roanoke, who said "It was always my opinion that Union was the means of securing the safety, liberty, and welfare of the confederacy, and not in itself an end to which these should be sacrificed."

The bottom line is that Lincoln's legacy in not an unmixed one.

 

[SavannahDare]

I'm disappointed that a Southerner would email a national tv broadcast and basically reaffirm the stereotype of a Southerner.

I think a presidency is best judged by the results it achieves and how they hold up over time. Lincoln had to make incredibly difficult decisions, many of which were horribly unpopular, that ultimately resulted in this nation remaining one country. The Southern states certainly suffered the brunt of the suffering, but that is what was necessary to ultimately achieve what I consider to be a good thing - United States that became the greatest nation on the planet. So, I can certainly understand the opinion that Lincoln was our greatest president so far.

 

[tidehawk]

I'm disappointed that a Southerner would email a national tv broadcast and basically reaffirm the stereotype of a Southerner.

I think a presidency is best judged by the results it achieves and how they hold up over time. Lincoln had to make incredibly difficult decisions, many of which were horribly unpopular, that ultimately resulted in this nation remaining one country. The Southern states certainly suffered the brunt of the suffering, but that is what was necessary to ultimately achieve what I consider to be a good thing - United States that became the greatest nation on the planet. So, I can certainly understand the opinion that Lincoln was our greatest president so far.

This, and one needs to remember that Reconstruction, which led to the South being pushed down economically enough to take a century to recover from, came after the assassination of Lincoln. I don't think Lincoln would have approved the harsh penalties served upon the South by Congress - this was sheer retaliation of the assassination.

 

[It's On A Slab]

I'm disappointed that a Southerner would email a national tv broadcast and basically reaffirm the stereotype of a Southerner.

I think a presidency is best judged by the results it achieves and how they hold up over time. Lincoln had to make incredibly difficult decisions, many of which were horribly unpopular, that ultimately resulted in this nation remaining one country. The Southern states certainly suffered the brunt of the suffering, but that is what was necessary to ultimately achieve what I consider to be a good thing - United States that became the greatest nation on the planet. So, I can certainly understand the opinion that Lincoln was our greatest president so far.

I wish we could dig up and reanimate Teddy Roosevelt. I think only someone with his gravitas could halt the lurch toward oligarchy we seem doomed to be headed.

 

[SavannahDare]

I wish we could dig up and reanimate Teddy Roosevelt. I think only someone with his gravitas could halt the lurch toward oligarchy we seem doomed to be headed.

Keifer Sutherland's and my favorite word. :biggrin2:

 

[DiamondDust]

Bill O'Reilly, who makes me furious, has written a book about Lincoln entitled "Killing Lincoln". The last few days he's been hawking it on his show, which I watch only because I like his guests, not him. He keeps saying that Lincoln was our country's greatest president. And I yell at the TV and say, IN YOUR OPINION !!!

I realize that he's trying to sell yet another one of his books, but to constantly say he was our greatest president IS indeed only his opinion. He read an e-mail tonight from someone who disagreed with him, however I can't remember what she said. (I think it was a woman).

Hey Bill - come on down South and you'd probably get a different opinion. And you might get tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail.

I'm not a history teacher like he claims to have been, but I know enough about the Civil War not to like Lincoln.

Imagine that... the whole concept of "who was the best President" being based on opinion. How dare O'Reilly do something like that.

Lincoln has a mixed legacy, no doubt, but, quite frankly, I'll take him and what he did over what the Confederacy was preaching any day of the week.

 

[Cleburne]

Glad Ole Abe is dead, can't stand him and to me he is the worst president ever.

 

[It's On A Slab]

Imagine that... the whole concept of "who was the best President" being based on opinion. How dare O'Reilly do something like that.

Lincoln has a mixed legacy, no doubt, but, quite frankly, I'll take him and what he did over what the Confederacy was preaching any day of the week.

I suppose it is one of the ironies, or better instances of Southern gothic that a region like the South harbors so much resistance to Lincolin/The Union, yet it is probably the most patriotic regions of this country, and has borne the brunt of far more casualties in US wars since the Civil War.

 

[Tidewater]

I'm doubtful of Lincoln's sincerity regarding race equality. In an interview on NPR, O'Reilly stated that Lincoln would be proud to see Obama elected President. Regardless of Obama's politics, I'm again doubtful. Maybe I'm just a cynic, but I think the slavery issue was a convenient way for Lincoln to seemingly legitimize his attack on the Southern states. Just one man's cynical opinion...

You are probably right to be skeptical of O'Reilly's pronunicamento.

"I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, -that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people."

"I will say then, that I am not nor never have been in favor of bringing about in any way, the social and political equality of the white and black races; that I am not nor never have been in favor of making voters of the free negroes, or jurors, or qualifying them to hold office, or having them to marry with white people. I will say in addition, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which, I suppose, will forever forbid the two races living together upon terms of social and political equality, and inasmuch as they cannot so live, that while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, that I as much as any other white man am in favor of the superior position being assigned to the white man."

"I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races--that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, or intermarry with white people."

 

[RedStar]

Nan, I don't get it. You're upset at him for claiming he's the greatest president? Is it really worth getting so upset that you scream at the tv? Of course it's his opinion, he's an opinionated guy. You really can't get to mad at him for having an opinion. He's allowed to be wrong.

He's a political Paul Finebaum. He's knowledgeable yes, and he is connected, but his show is out there so people will tune in and get upset about what they hear.

IMHO, the greatest president is Washington and it's not even close. Not by a mile.

 

[Bodhisattva]

I'm disappointed that a Southerner would email a national tv broadcast and basically reaffirm the stereotype of a Southerner.

I think a presidency is best judged by the results it achieves and how they hold up over time. Lincoln had to make incredibly difficult decisions, many of which were horribly unpopular, that ultimately resulted in this nation remaining one country. The Southern states certainly suffered the brunt of the suffering, but that is what was necessary to ultimately achieve what I consider to be a good thing - United States that became the greatest nation on the planet. So, I can certainly understand the opinion that Lincoln was our greatest president so far.

I understand what you are saying, but I'd be cautious about viewing Lincoln with a backward-looking lense. And if ends justify the means, how long a timeframe do you give the ends? To make an over-the-top analogy to make a point, should Hitler be given credit because Germany eventually recovered and became an economic power? Same with Hiro Hito and Japan? Who knows what greatness would have been achieved had we had presidents who were faithful to the Constitution?

What is certain is that Lincoln repeatedly violated the Constitution and engaged in a war that killed 600,000 Americans for dubious reasons. Since then the encroachment of incompetent federal power has been relentless. And we know get artificial recessions every few years that destroy the wealth and lives of millions of Americans regularly.

 

[Bodhisattva]

Given that the country wouldn't exist anymore without Lincoln, it is hard to argue with his status as one of the country's greatest presidents.

Why was it so important for the country not to split into two? Should no region in any country be allowed to go their own way? Was it worth all the death and destruction? Would you have made that trade?

 

[cbi1972]

The Forgotten Slaves: Whites in Servitude in Early America and Industrial Britain

When White servitude is acknowledged as having existed in America, it is almost always termed as temporary "indentured servitude" or part of the convict trade, which, after the Revolution of 1776, centered on Australia instead of America. The "convicts" transported to America under the 1723 Waltham Act, perhaps numbered 100,000.

The indentured servants who served a tidy little period of 4 to 7 years polishing the master's silver and china and then taking their place in colonial high society, were a minuscule fraction of the great unsung hundreds of thousands of White slaves who were worked to death in this country from the early 17th century onward.

Up to one-half of all the arrivals in the American colonies were Whites slaves and they were America's first slaves. These Whites were slaves for life, long before Blacks ever were. This slavery was even hereditary. White children born to White slaves were enslaved too.

Whites were auctioned on the block with children sold and separated from their parents and wives sold and separated from their husbands. Free Black property owners strutted the streets of northern and southern American cities while White slaves were worked to death in the sugar mills of Barbados and Jamaica and the plantations of Virginia.

The Establishment has created the misnomer of "indentured servitude" to explain away and minimize the fact of White slavery. But bound Whites in early America called themselves slaves. Nine-tenths of the White slavery in America was conducted without indentures of any kind but according to the so-called "custom of the country," as it was known, which was lifetime slavery administered by the White slave merchants themselves.

In 1855, Frederic Law Olmsted, the landscape architect who designed New York's Central Park, was in Alabama on a pleasure trip and saw bales of cotton being thrown from a considerable height into a cargo ship's hold. The men tossing the bales somewhat recklessly into the hold were Negroes, the men in the hold were Irish.

Olmsted inquired about this to a shipworker. "Oh," said the worker, "the n****s are worth too much to be risked here; if the Paddies are knocked overboard or get their backs broke, nobody loses anything."

"Press gangs in the hire of local merchants roamed the streets, seizing 'by force such boys as seemed proper subjects for the slave trade.' Children were driven in flocks through the town and confined for shipment in barns...So flagrant was the practice that people in the countryside about Aberdeen avoided bringing children into the city for fear they might be stolen; and so widespread was the collusion of merchants, shippers, suppliers and even magistrates that the man who exposed it was forced to recant and run out of town." (Van der Zee, Bound Over, p. 210).

White slaves transported to the colonies suffered a staggering loss of life in the 17th and 18th century. During the voyage to America it was customary to keep the White slaves below deck for the entire nine to twelve week journey. A White slave would be confined to a hole not more than sixteen feet long, chained with 50 other men to a board, with padlocked collars around their necks. The weeks of confinement below deck in the ship's stifling hold often resulted in outbreaks of contagious disease which would sweep through the "cargo" of White "freight" chained in the bowels of the ship.

The chronicle of White slavery in America comprises the dustiest shelf in the darkest corner of suppressed American history. Should the truth about that epoch ever emerge into the public consciousness of Americans, the whole basis for the swindle of "Affirmative action," "minority set-asides" and proposed "Reparations to African-Americans" will be swept away. The fact is, the White working people of this country owe no one. They are themselves the descendants, as Congressman Wilmot so aptly said, of "the sons of toil."

There will only be racial peace when knowledge of radical historical truths are widespread and both sides negotiate from positions of strength and not from fantasies of White working class guilt and the uniqueness of Black suffering.

 

[It's On A Slab]

Why was it so important for the country not to split into two? Should no region in any country be allowed to go their own way? Was it worth all the death and destruction? Would you have made that trade?

Monday-morning quarterbacking.

 

[Bodhisattva]

Monday-morning quarterbacking.

No, I'm pretty sure the war occurred at the time the decision was made not to allow the South to leave.

 

[It's On A Slab]

No, I'm pretty sure the war occurred at the time the decision was made not to allow the South to leave.

But, it's easy to look back, see the number of casualties wrought, damage done, and then blame him for the original decision. That was my point.

 

[CrimsonNan]

Nan, I don't get it. You're upset at him for claiming he's the greatest president? Is it really worth getting so upset that you scream at the tv? Of course it's his opinion, he's an opinionated guy. You really can't get to mad at him for having an opinion. He's allowed to be wrong.

He's a political Paul Finebaum. He's knowledgeable yes, and he is connected, but his show is out there so people will tune in and get upset about what they hear.

IMHO, the greatest president is Washington and it's not even close. Not by a mile.

Now...now...RedStar...don't tell me that YOU'VE never yelled at the TV, especially during a Bama game, especially when we were playing Auburn?