First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln
submitted by ghostsniper via Comments
MONDAY, MARCH 4, 1861
Fellow-Citizens of the United States: In compliance with a custom as old as the Government itself, I appear before you to address you briefly and to take in your presence the oath prescribed by the Constitution of the United States to be taken by the President before he enters on the execution of this office.”
I do not consider it necessary at present for me to discuss those matters of administration about which there is no special anxiety or excitement.
Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that–
I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
Three American Declarations – Two Of Independence, One Against
from LewRockwell.com, July 9, 2024
www dot lewrockwell dot com/2024/07/thomas-dilorenzo/three-american-declarations/
“Three of the most important American political declarations are the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson Davis’s inaugural address, and Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address. The first was a declaration of secession from the British empire. The second was a declaration of secession from the Washington, D.C empire. The third was a declaration of non-independence, ever, under any circumstances, from the D.C. empire – or else”
Y’all should read the full article … one reason Lincoln is not on my list of greatest Presidents.
Three Presidents that formed the highest trifecta of the destruction of the American republic are Lincoln, Wilson and FDR. The next who maintained the graveyard were LBJ, W, Obama and Biden.
We agree. But Nixon took the fall (not that Nixon was a saint)
It’s a political speech by L. A listener is able to hear what he wants to hear, and ignores the rest. Every listener or reader comes away with something they like. It’s a set of arguments that justifies a non-spoken policy.
Perhaps it would have been better to be a simple declaration of policy going forward.
I think by throwing in some red meat for everyone, he was trying to calm the passions for and against the new administration. It didn’t work.
Another thing. His statement “Suppose you go to war, you can not fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions, as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you.” That’s not what happened. The political question was decided by non-political means at the completion of the war.
It was a ghostsniper-submitted comment, I just converted his comment to a post.
However, I believe the Confederacy had the right to secede, the war had more to do with financial imbalance than slavery (which was beginning to fade out anyway), and that Lincoln converted the Republic from a union of States to a collection of political subdivisions within a centralized supreme power. Like most politicians, Lincoln talked out of both sides of his mouth (the Lincoln-Douglas debates make for interesting reading) and many of today’s problems can be traced back to policies established in the 1860s.
War is extreme politics and that one was unjustified; a rehash of the Revolutionary War and War of 1812 only the “other side” won that time.
I think of your “right to secede” in different words. First, definitional. People have rights (from the Creator), governments have powers. Governments don’t have rights. The power the government wields is (at least in the USA model) limited, enumerated, granted by the people, and the execution of those powers constrained by law. (We may differ on these definitions, that’s ok, this is how I think.)
L argues, the Constitution of 1789, nor any law afterwards, defined the power of secession. The Southern States had the “power” to secede, but such secession was “unlawful”, and apparently still is, and L argues that no government anywhere anytime defines the power of lawful secession. Unitary actions of a State unconstrained by law risks non-political responses by the Federal government. The risk was realized.
I thought that L had a good, i.e. well-argued, argument regarding secession. He argued it would be unlawful, but he claimed that all he would do is defend and protect Federal property, collect duties and imposts, forward the mail.
And look at this, take heed PrezT: “Where hostility to the United States in any interior locality shall be so great and universal as to prevent competent resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object. While the strict legal right may exist in the Government to enforce the exercise of these offices, the attempt to do so would be so irritating and so nearly impracticable withal that I deem it better to forego for the time the uses of such offices.” L was more pacifistic, deferential, obsequious and anxious to calm Southern anxieties and passions than T is now.
Again, look at these words that also speak to us: “That there are persons in one section or another who seek to destroy the Union at all events and are glad of any pretext to do it I will neither affirm nor deny; but if there be such, I need address no word to them. To those, however, who really love the Union may I not speak?“.
Well, we know the result. All those calming words and promises were abandoned once open hostilities commenced at Fort Sumter. That’s the supreme danger of war: events are in control, the enemy has a vote, escalation is the order of the day, and everyone does what they think they have to do to win.