Spooner/lincoln Discussion
- Thread starter Kurt75
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His beef with Lincoln was he saw Lincoln as tyrannical in that he treated individuals and states as one unit rather than as free. While Spooner was no supporter of the Confederacy for obvious reasons, he did believe the South has every right to secede. He was extremely against taxation and believe the tariffs Lincoln threw on the southern ports was criminal. But when Lincoln waged war on his own country, he saw that as the final nail in the coffin for him.
Spooner was a supporter of the Christian Just War principle and saw that Lincoln violated it. He was upset with Lincoln for saying that he was indifferent to slavery but would use any force necessary to collect taxes. He was also angry with Lincoln for sending combat troops from the battlefield to bombard and occupy NYC. Spooner wrote about Lincoln treating soldiers as cannon fodder (especially black soldiers) and that he refused medical care and food to his own soldiers held by the enemy country. He also wrote about Lincoln's occupying forces engaging in imprisonment, torture, and execution of civilians and seizing them as hostages.
Lincoln had the least affiliation with Christianity of any American president, and BLAMED GOD for starting the war over which he presided. Since Spooner was an abolitionist and supporter of the natural law, he was angry with Lincoln when he voted for and praised a law that forbade black people from settling in his state, and further said that all blacks should be expelled from the US because they could never be full-fledged citizens. Lincoln sent the army to arrest, in the middle of the night, thousands of private citizens for expressing their opinions and held them incommunicado in military prisons with total denial of due process. Then he had his soldiers destroy newspaper plants.
Spooners commentary on the era in which he lived is one of the more unique ones as it came from neither a pro-north nor pro-south position. Spooner was from Massachusetts and had no connection to the south, but was very opposed to the operations of the north on Lincoln's behalf.
It's not common to find someone in history like him. That's why he's so fascinating to me.
I sure hope I'm not opening up a can of worms here 
I guess I'm getting my information about Lincoln from all the wrong sources. Because that's the not the Lincoln I've learned about.
Nobody is perfect. I'm not going to defend Lincoln here. I stoppped endorsing men a long time ago, but you may want to balance out your reading material a bit. There might be a reason why this Lysander guy was "written out of the history books."
Nobody is perfect. I'm not going to defend Lincoln here. I stoppped endorsing men a long time ago, but you may want to balance out your reading material a bit. There might be a reason why this Lysander guy was "written out of the history books."
Kurt, I think everything that could be said positive about Lincoln has already been said about a million times. Most of us learned about Lincoln the same way in grade school.
Lincoln is much more morally ambiguous and complex than we were taught in the 4th grade. To suggest I hold this position because my reading material is imbalanced is not only arrogant and ignorant, it's also judgmental. This public information didn't come strictly from Spooner, it came from multiple sources -- I just credit him as being the most fascinating.
Perhaps Spooner was written out of history books and Lincoln's history was re-written because the establishment relies on it. How often do we hear people say "Even Lincoln imprisoned people without a fair trial" or "Even Lincoln said the Constitution had to be violated in order to save it." It's no wonder perhaps they would want you to hold Lincoln on such a high regard. Hitler praising Lincoln for the effort to dissolving rights of the states in Mein Kampf seems to be no red flag.
Again, my only position is that Lincoln is a much more ambiguous figure. You are free to feel however you wish, but please leave the condescending statements aside.
Okay well I guess I'm ignorant, arrogant, and judgmental then. In fact, for all further disagreements with anyone else in the forum, I'll go ahead and concede right now that I am ignorant, arrogant, AND judgmental since those seem to be the labels often slung around here... just so we can get that out of the way.
Again, I'm not defending the man. EVERYONE has faults, including Lincoln. The scope of my knowledge of Lincoln extends past the 4th grade... enough to know that the challenges of being the President of the United States are vast, especially when the country is about to implode during your watch. I also know that the Spooner's beef with Lincoln (at least what you described in post #6) does not reflect the whole truth of Lincoln. But then again, I'm ignorant, and so are all the other historians that record Lincoln's positive actions and attributes apparently, so what do I know?
Kurt, don't put yourself up as a martyr. I didn't say you were arrogant, ignorant, and judgmental. However, to come to a conclusion the way you did based on my simply giving an answer to your question was ignorant, arrogant, and was judgmental as you concluded something not only false, but unfair. You're a better person than that.
It makes no difference to me whether you defend Lincoln, criticize him, or remain indifferent -- that's not the point. The 4th grade remark is toungue-in-cheek as most of our educations regarding Lincoln doesn't seem move too far from his deification, even into college education. The historians you generally mentioned are much of the sources from where I got this information from. From Harold Holzer, to Thomas DiLorenzo, to Karen De Coster, to Joseph Stromberg. Some of them are very supportive of Lincoln, some are indifferent, and some believe he was indeed a tyrant.
This thread asked a simple question. I answered. You wanted to know why this person had beef with Lincoln. I answered. To follow it with a conclusion that I must only read one source of material and end it there snidely is an insult. If you didn't mean to be insulting, then all is forgiven and I truly mean that -- I'd hate to be at odds with you or anyone else -- but I felt I should've at least addressed it.