Could be a hornet's nest I'm sticking my hand into...

[christof139]

Obama's Ancestors May Have Owned Slaves
By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer
Fri Mar 2, 9:39 PM
 
Democratic Presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., gestures
during ...
WASHINGTON - Democrat Barack Obama, who would be the first black
president, has white ancestors who owned slaves, according to a
genealogical researcher.
The researcher, William Addams Reitwiesner, says the discovery is
part of his first draft of research into Obama's roots. Obama's
father was from Kenya and his mother was a white woman from Kansas.
Obama wrote in his autobiography, "Dreams from My Father," that while
one of his great-great-grandfathers was a decorated Union soldier,
family rumors also say he is distantly related to Jefferson Davis,
president of the Confederacy.
Reitwiesner found in 1850 Census records from Kentucky that one of
Obama's great-great-great-great grandfathers, George Washington
Overall, owned a 15-year-old girl and a 25-year-old man. The same
records show that one of Obama's great-great-great-great-great-
grandmothers, Mary Duvall, also owned two black slaves _ a 60-year-
old man and a 58-year-old woman.
The Baltimore Sun first reported Reitwiesner's work and asked
genealogical experts to review it, but they would not confirm the
findings.
Obama spokesman Bill Burton said the senator's ancestors "are
representative of America."
"While a relative owned slaves, another fought for the Union in the
Civil War," Burton said. "And it is a true measure of progress that
the descendant of a slave owner would come to marry a student from
Kenya and produce a son who would grow up to be a candidate for
president of the United States."
Reitwiesner found that two other presidential candidates were
descendants of slave owners _ Republican John McCain and Democrat
John Edwards.
The New York Daily News reported recently that genealogists found
that relatives of former segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond appear to
have owned the ancestors of civil rights activist Al Sharpton.
___
Associated Press Writers Henry C. Jackson in Johnston, Iowa; Jim
Davenport in Columbia, S.C., and Garance Burke in Fresno, Calif.,
contributed to this report.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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[captskillet]

I fully think outside forces in world history (Europe, etc.) would have probably forced the 2 sides back together in the long run as a 'United States' proved to be a key from the late 19th century on................just my 2 cents anyway [;)]!

[General Quarters]

tc, valuable post. Lincoln said it in Gettysburg address as well: "that government of the people ... not perish from this earth ..." It may well have been right.

[Jonathan Palfrey]

ORIGINAL: tc237
"Our common country is in great peril, demanding the loftiest views, and boldest action to bring it speedy relief. Once relieved, its form of government is saved to the world; its beloved history, and cherished memories, are vindicated; and its happy future fully assured, and rendered inconceivably grand."
--From the July 12, 1862 Appeal to Border States Representatives

"We have, as all will agree, a free Government, where every man has a right to be equal with every other man. In this great struggle, this form of Government and every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed. There is more involved in this contest than is realized by every one. There is involved in this struggle the question whether your children and my children shall enjoy the privileges we have enjoyed."
--From the August 18, 1864 Remarks to the 164th Ohio Regiment

Looking at these quotes again, they seem the sort of patriotic hyperbole so common in wartime. Neither the USA nor its form of government was under attack; in fact, the CSA made its own constitution by copying the one it already knew.

"Every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed"? If Lincoln really believed what he was saying, he seems to be been suffering from paranoid delusions. More likely, he was just trying to maintain his weary country's fighting spirit by deliberately demonizing his opponents.

[Drex]

Its difficult to know what was in the minds of the common man at that time. Perhaps some might have felt that the CSA ,if militarily successful, would overrun all of the Eastern seaboard, rather than stop at Washington D.C.

[christof139]

If the Union was broken then there would not have been the United States, and perhaps Secession would have occurred again in both the new CSA and amongst the remaing States of the old USA, the Domino Theory occurring and recurring, and consequently reducing all the States of the Old Union into a multitude of independent but weaker and squabling political entities resulting in near anarchy.
 
Perhaps Lincoln and others were not paranoid, but rather realistic in their perception of the present and the future.
 
Chris
 

[General Quarters]

Lincoln was not paranoid. At the time of the founding -- four score and seven years earlier -- virtually every government was a monarchy and it was generally thought that democracies were too unstable to survive. By 1860, Britain was a parliamentary monarchy, but how many other countries at that time could be called democracies? If the U.S. experiment in democracy had come apart at the seems, that would have given both argument and impetus to authoritarian regimes.

[christof139]

"Every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed"? If Lincoln really believed what he was saying, he seems to be been suffering from paranoid delusions. More likely, he was just trying to maintain his weary country's fighting spirit by deliberately demonizing his opponents.

< Message edited by Jonathan Palfrey -- 3/3/2007 3:01:01 PM >

If the Union was broken then there would not have been the United States, and perhaps Secession would have occurred again in both the new CSA and amongst the remaing States of the old USA, the Domino Theory occurring and recurring, and consequently reducing all the States of the Old Union into a multitude of independent but weaker and squabling political entities resulting in near anarchy.

Perhaps Lincoln and others were not paranoid, but rather realistic in their perception of the present and the future.

Chris

Lincoln was not paranoid. At the time of the founding -- four score and seven years earlier -- virtually every government was a monarchy and it was generally thought that democracies were too unstable to survive. By 1860, Britain was a parliamentary monarchy, but how many other countries at that time could be called democracies? If the U.S. experiment in democracy had come apart at the seems, that would have given both argument and impetus to authoritarian regimes.

(in reply to christof139)

I know. Perhaps it is Jonathan Palfrey's post you might want t reply to.

Chris

[Jonathan Palfrey]

ORIGINAL: General Quarters
Lincoln was not paranoid. At the time of the founding -- four score and seven years earlier -- virtually every government was a monarchy and it was generally thought that democracies were too unstable to survive. By 1860, Britain was a parliamentary monarchy, but how many other countries at that time could be called democracies? If the U.S. experiment in democracy had come apart at the seems, that would have given both argument and impetus to authoritarian regimes.

Probably that was the way Lincoln saw things, but I think it was too dramatic.

The departure of some states didn't threaten the existence of the USA or of its form of government. All states remained more or less as democratic as they had been before secession.

My comment about paranoia was specifically in response to Lincoln's assertion that "every human right is endangered". I think that's way over the top. But, as I also said, such assertions are often made in wartime and perhaps shouldn't be taken seriously.

[Jonathan Palfrey]

(I wrote another message here and then deleted it because I thought it went outside the scope of this forum.)

[General Quarters]

Jonathan, I'm not sure we differ all that much. Obviously, Lincoln put it in a way that was "dramatic." He had a great flair for words and the nation needed to hear things put dramatically. Whether it was "too dramatic" depends on your preferences in political rhetoric. As FDR was preparing his "one-third of a nation, ill-housed, ill-fed, ill-clad" speech, his economic advisor complained that it was really more like 23 percent. Wouldn't that have been a great speech? "23 percent ill-housed, 19 percent ill-fed, 21 percent ill-clad ..." FDR stuck to "one-third." Over the top? If I were advising FDR on this line and Lincoln on "testing whether this nation or any nation so conceived could long endure," I would say go for it.

You are right that the statement about human rights goes farther, but to the extent that the only reliable protection for human rights is a democracy, and proposition that democracies could long endure was still being tested, it seems like an acceptably dramatic formulation to me. (Unlike, say, Wilson's "the war to end all wars," which is difficult to relate to any concrete reality.)

[Jonathan Palfrey]

ORIGINAL: General Quarters
Jonathan, I'm not sure we differ all that much.

Thank you, I'll go with that.

Lincoln was a war leader and he needed to enthuse his people to carry on the struggle. Otherwise he would have been a failure. So some hyperbole is understandable.

As long as people almost 150 years later don't take it too seriously, that's OK.

I don't believe myself that the future of democracy was endangered by Southern secession, but if he professed to believe so in the trying times that he was experiencing, that's somewhat understandable.

I rather doubt that he believed himself in all the things he was saying.

I disagree with you somewhat when you say that "the only reliable protection for human rights is a democracy". A democracy is a dictatorship of the majority: if the majority decides to ignore human rights, human rights will be ignored by that democracy. For instance, a perfect German democracy in the 1940s would surely have done the Jews no good; and a perfect Serbian democracy in more recent times would surely have done the Bosnian Muslims and Kosovan Albanians no good.

Furthermore, a perfect Confederate democracy in the 1860s would have done the black slaves no good...

[christof139]

It may be obvious to some and not to others that when Lincoln was referring to 'the end of democracy' it was in reference to his and our nation, which at the time he said that was engaged in a terrible civil war, so he may just have been being subjective and referrimg to just the USA and not other democracies that were extant at the time, but he was without a doubt sincere. His family too, was torn asunder by the ACW, and I believe the relative that fought for the CSA was killed, not sure off the top of my head.

Words such as Lincoln spoke during those most terrible times came from his heart and soul, as did many other words spoken by many other people on both sides of the conflict.

You better believe that Lincoln believed what he was saying. Look at his picture before the war started and then look at a picture 3-years into the war and then at the end of the war, and you will see the effects of that war upon his features. Usually when he wrote he wrote in solitude, to be alone with his own feelings.

I imagine some people can't understand somethings because maybe they have not themselves experienced anyhting of terrible and deep magnitude in their lives, and/or they may be simply somewhat shallow betwixt the ears perhaps.

Davis wrote some equally sincere thoughts, as did many, many others, from Privates and Civilians and Diplomats to commanding Generals.

In times with events such as civil war occurring, and for those personally involved in such a war, what they write is sincere, from their heart and soul, and it matters not what side they fight on or ideas they believe in.

And peoples' views and feelings do change over time as can also be discerned in their writings.

Chris

[Viewing]

Consider this what-if: the Confederacy fights the Union to a bloody draw (outright victory was never very likely), and an armistice is concluded.

My question is this: could the Confederacy expect to survive as a political entity? Its components were fanatical about states' rights, and equally fanatical in their opposition to a central government. Without inspirational leadership (Davis doesn't strike me as having been much of an inspiration), wouldn't the Confederacy have disintegrated from within, led by such likely candidates for further secession as Texas and Georgia?

Doubtful. First, the whole Arcadian Ideal inherited by the South from the French was based on self-sufficiency in an agricultural base. The Confederacy loathed and mocked industrial culture, and many citizens even disliked the concept of mercantile businesses. Although Southerners complained vigorously and with some reason that their raw materials were providing greater income to Northern maunfacturies who changed them into finished goods for shipping overseas, they took no steps to build industries for processing their own raw materials.

Second, while the Confederacy was busily repeating its King Cotton mantra, Britain was setting up its own cotton-producing plantations with slave labor--in third world nations where it was called manual labor under enlightened, Christian leadership. So that had the Confederacy survived, they would still have had to deal with the loss of their cotton hegemony on the world markets.

For what my opinion's worth, I think that to survive the Confederacy would have had to become the North, all the while stoutly maintaining some national myth based on its misty past. Much like every other nation I can think of.

[christof139]

The South was beginning to become industrialized, and there were firms such as Tredagar etc. in the South, but on a smaller scale than the North. The South also processed large amounts of its raw materials such as making turpentine and molasses, and lumber and iron-ore and coal were being processed, and it would have taken some time to enlarge these industries and the South ws well on its way to doing that because of the war. Could be that if the South had become independent that the trend of industrialization would have continued out of necessity and the realization that profits could be made from this.
&nbsp;
Despite the North's industrialization, it was still Agraian but much more so was the South.
&nbsp;
Chris
&nbsp;

[General Quarters]

ORIGINAL: Jonathan Palfrey

I disagree with you somewhat when you say that "the only reliable protection for human rights is a democracy". A democracy is a dictatorship of the majority: if the majority decides to ignore human rights, human rights will be ignored by that democracy. For instance, a perfect German democracy in the 1940s would surely have done the Jews no good; and a perfect Serbian democracy in more recent times would surely have done the Bosnian Muslims and Kosovan Albanians no good.

Furthermore, a perfect Confederate democracy in the 1860s would have done the black slaves no good...

These are interesting points. Majorities can be in favor of terrible things. But it is interesting that your examples are hypotheticals. It is hard to name an actual democracy that has engaged in anything like the Holocaust or ethnic cleansing. For the CSA to be a perfect democracy, it would have had to free the slaves and let them vote.

Nevertheless, your basic point is valid. Tyranny of the majority is always a danger. I should have said democracy was "the most reliable," so as not to suggest that it was a totally reliable guarantor of human rights. And I probably should say something like "a constitutional democracy." The American Founders well knew that you need checks and balances, an independent judiciary, a bill of rights, separation of powers, federalism, senators with long terms, and so forth, to avoid tyranny of the majority. The Brits have long had similar checks on parliamentary sovereignty and other countries do as well.

I guess we do disagree on whether democracy was vulnerable in the 1860s. I do not understand why you assume that it was already so established a success that the coming apart of the world's most notable (and almost only) experiment in democracy would not undermine it. The past always looks inevitable in retrospect. But it can usually go either way.

[christof139]

The Greeks, the popular Tyrant. So intellectual.
&nbsp;
Chris
&nbsp;

[christof139]

ORIGINAL: Jonathan Palfrey

I disagree with you somewhat when you say that "the only reliable protection for human rights is a democracy". A democracy is a dictatorship of the majority: if the majority decides to ignore human rights, human rights will be ignored by that democracy. For instance, a perfect German democracy in the 1940s would surely have done the Jews no good; and a perfect Serbian democracy in more recent times would surely have done the Bosnian Muslims and Kosovan Albanians no good.

Furthermore, a perfect Confederate democracy in the 1860s would have done the black slaves no good...

If there was a 'perfect' democracy in Germany in the 1940's there would have been no persecution of them by the totalitarian Nazi Party because the Nazi Party would not have been in power in a democracy, and did not come to power by a majority vote of the German people anyway. So, Germany under the Nazis was not a democracy in any sense of the word ancient or or modern.

If there wa a 'perfect' democracy in either the USA or CSA then slavery wouldn't have existed, so there was not a 'perfect' democracy here, except for Caucasians and those Africans lucky enough to be set free and to a similar and much lessened degree some Native Americans or Indians or the First nations as the Canadian Government terms the Indians. So, we had only a limited, partial democracy in the modern sense of the word for only a certain racial group of people, the Caucasians.

Chris

[Berkut]

ORIGINAL: Jonathan Palfrey

ORIGINAL: tc237
He truly believed that if the North lost the war, the idea of Freedom would vanish from the Earth.

Although I recognize Lincoln's point of view (which you express well), and I agree there was some risk of bad consequences following from a permanent split in the Union, nevertheless there is something odd about defending freedom by imposing an unwanted government on people who have rejected it.

The right and the ability of a population to determine its own government is a valid and useful freedom, and to destroy that freedom with much violence in the name of some other freedom must be a somewhat controversial exercise.

It was an odd war in that at least three different kinds of freedom were at issue in it: the individual freedom of the slaves, the freedom of American states to withdraw from the Union, and whatever sort of freedom Lincoln was fighting for (perhaps he had a clear picture of it in his own mind, but it's not clear to me from what I've read).

Well, the thing to remember is that it isn't like the Southern states were all particulary gung ho even about secession. West Virginia split off from Virginia over the issue, and Eastern Tenessee was strongly pro-Union as well. Certainly the CSA had no qualms about using force to put down pro-Union sentiment in those locations.

The secession movement within the South was driven by economics. "States rights" were a convenient rallying cry to get the masses riled up and enlisting.

The question in regards to self-determination is problematic. Where does it end? Can a single household self determine that they do not wish to pay taxes? A city? State?

The classic issue of self determination is usually raised when there is a minority that is not receiving political representation within the body politic that they exist under. That is where we see the legitimate demand for self-determination - where there is a need for it due to some intractable inability for some government to fairly represent the interests of some group.

The South, of course, fails that case. They had fair an equal representation within the North, and the political structure they existed under represented them using the same rules as the Northern states. So a claim that they might need the right to self-determination fails under any kind of practical restraining principal.

I think what would have happened in the South with regards to slavery is that it would have ended, but only in name. "Slavery" would be gone, but the enslavement of blacks would have continued for a long, long time. Perhaps they would be paid some token wage, or some such thing, in order to placate the Europeans and their own abolitionists, but the blacks would always be third-class citizens who would be kept as a cheap and exploitable labor force. Talk about a group needed the right to self-determination!

[Berkut]

One thing to realize, in Lincolns favor, was that the US at the time was still something of an experiment, in the international view. England was still a monarchy (albeit one with declinign powers of the crown and increasing powers of Parliament).

This idea of a completely democratic nation, where there was no inherited head of state, where the people had semi-direct (at least theoretically) ability to select their own leadership, was not taken for granted in the manner it is today. A defeat for this great experiment could have had serious repurcussions in the continued political evolution of the West towards more liberal, democratic institutions, and I think that, in great part, is what Lincoln was talking about.