KilroywasNOTHere
"BEEP!"
By that logic so is the Devil you don't see me rooting for him now do you?
Abraham Lincoln: American Dictator
- Thread starter f1onagher
- Start date
By that logic so is the Devil you don't see me rooting for him now do you?
Lord Sovereign
The resident Britbong
“War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”
posh-goofiness
Well-known member
Ah, okay. I'll just use this line every time anyone brings up the current Russia-Ukraine war. No need to worry about those pesky war crimes. They're actually a mercy for the Ukrainians because it'll make the war shorter. The double standard- perfection.
Agent23
Ни шагу назад!
Agent23
Ни шагу назад!
War is either acquisition of resources, or in the more modern form is an instrument to force the enemy army and political system to do our will, if we go by Clausewitz.
The best way to deal with something like the US civil war was to go after the Confederate Army, atrocities take time, cost money and create angry civilians, guerillas and martyrs.
We on the Balkans have pulled some tough shit, but even by that standard and the standard of the European armies of the time Lincoln's thugs were dumb, murderous, greedy maniacs.
There is a good reason why looting and brigandy are punishable by shooting squad.
StormEagle
Well-known member
“Let me prove I don’t support war crimes by quoting a literal war criminal and monster.” Lord Sovereign, maybe.
Anyone that quotes Sherman, and isn’t disgusted by the man that encouraged the mass rape, looting, and burning of the South should be rightfully ashamed of themselves.
I will be sure to bring up this quote anytime you complain about Russias crimes in Ukraine. Because if you complain about those and not about what Sherman tacitly supported, you are a hypocrite.
May him and Lincoln rot in hell for the crimes they perpetuated against people they supposedly considered their own citizens and countrymen.
KilroywasNOTHere
"BEEP!"
Aww, here ya go lil fella:
Just remember that the last dictator with global prominence would have sent your ancestors to the gas chambers after he was finished with the jews.
Agent23
Ни шагу назад!
Actually the last dictator though that my ancestors were Turkmen and basically forced our enemies to give us Macedonia back...
Now, trolling and counter trolling aside, do you have anything relevant to say, or are you gonna send me more bullshit PMs with concern trolling and "you are gonna get your jaw smashed" type of bullshit?
Yeah, and Nixon broke into the Watergate I don't think he was Mussolini either, Huey Long did increasingly shady shit but I wouldn't compare him to Hittler or Mussolini even if I do acknowledge the both of them as being even worse than Lincoln.
Lincoln had the excuse of fighting a civil war and that's why he got away with that shit, most of the people jailed weren't killed and even then, Lincoln was even at the time facing flak over it and some people even to this day theorize that he was under most circumstances going to face some form of inquiry over it after the war.
Does that forgive it? No. It had bad long term consequences for the presidentcy, but the true measure of a man is not how he acts in a time war for the sake of what he views as the common good, but in peace where you can see bared to all if that roots in self-interest over genuine good intentions and we never got that with Lincoln, so we may never know.
Lincoln did immoral and shady shit but comparing him to Mussolini is disingenuous because in a world where no civil war took place he probably would not have been anything more or less than any president who came before him, while Mussolini no matter socialist or fascist always loved the idea of absolute authoritarianism and wrote openly so on the issue.
That never stopped you from supporting the Russians in any capacity so who are you to judge?
It's clear to me everyone here is willing to ignore the vast legal gray area of the South being in rebellion an example being that one could argue in theory that because the Union professed all states in rebellion where still a part of the perpetual union layer down in the constitution which means anyone shot in rebellion was in theory executed without a trial for treason.
One could thus argue that Lincoln is a mass murderer just by fighting the war alone.
Cry me a river. (-Life Long Southerner to European while playing the world's smallest and saddest fiddle)
Again, what do you care? And what incident in particular are you talking about here? I have heard plenty enough about his understandably criticized censorship moves but I have no idea what you speak of in particular here.
Last edited:
KilroywasNOTHere
"BEEP!"
Considering my concerns went in one ear and out the other... nope.
As far as having anything relevant to say. Lincoln at the very least if nothing else, was the predecessor and planted the seeds of much of the crap that America has delt with so even you non-Americans who think he's based, just remember that everything you hate about America today actually started with him and fully bloomed with Woodrow Wilson.
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
KilroywasNOTHere
"BEEP!"
*Glances at it metastasizing even further under FDR.*
Yep.
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
Indeed.
In fact, while I recall Wilson's wife being the power behind the throne after his debilitating stroke, part of me honestly wonders if FDR came the closest to turning the United States into a genuine People's Republic lite. The fact he went a step further than Lincoln and Wilson both by breaking the two-term precedent and dying something of a "President for Life" in actual history doesn't help, either, so there's that.
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
I think any estimate that the South would abandon slavery soon after fighting a war (or, 'best' case scenario, peacefully seceding) in an attempt to maintain it is extremely optimistic. We have to keep in mind that slavocratic ideology did not exist in a vacuum but had been evolving over the decades before the outbreak of the ACW - and that by 1860 it was well on the way to taking on a truly nightmarish form indeed. By the time of Lincoln's election the Jeffersonian concept of slavery as a necessary evil which would be phased out over time was stone dead in the soon-to-be Confederate states, replaced pretty much entirely by the Calhounian concept of slavery as a positive good. At their 'kindest' pro-slavery ideologues of the late 1850s and early 1860s were arguing that hey, every society needed 'mudsills' - a lower class that must be compelled to work for their betters and kept in fetters for the sake of both social productivity and stability - and that it was better to be a slave to them than a 'free' industrial laborer who had but the freedom to starve; at their worst they simply took this line of thinking to its logical conclusion, as George Fitzhugh did, and argued that poor whites (North and South alike) should share in the 'benefit' of slavery also.
Sure 'Fitzhughism' wasn't the norm in 1859, but then, neither was the idea of slavery as a positive good in 1829. The advocates of slavery also started out pretty violent and only got worse with time, they were already lynching abolitionists and banning discussion of slavery where possible in the 1830s (Elijah Lovejoy and the Congressional gag rule). By the 1850s they were openly invading Kansas from Missouri every time there was an election with the express purpose of stealing said elections (Border Ruffians), sacking abolitionist-founded settlements and continuing to destroy their presses (the first sack of Lawrence), and famously beating abolitionists in the Capitol to within an inch of their life (Preston Brooks' attack on Charles Sumner - BTW, Brooks challenged Northern representative Anson Burlingame to a duel for calling him a coward immediately after the attack, and then like the bold and true paragon of Southern chivalry he was celebrated as, he...pussied out upon learning that Burlingame was a crack shot and wanted to duel with rifles).
Furthermore, the US was electing Civil War veterans as late as 1900 (McKinley). A surviving CSA would have done the same, and so each of their presidents would have emerged from a war in which they proved their innate superiority not only to blacks, but also the Damnyankees who were but the latter-day reincarnation of the weak and uncivilized Anglo-Saxons, fit only to be subjugated and directed by their superior Norman-blooded selves. To ask such men to then abolish slavery - the institution whose natural supremacy they will think they have just demonstrated, and for which they have literally just killed and died in the hundreds of thousands for - is to ask of them the impossible. And the generation of Southern populists who came of age & took power after the Civil War generation, men like Benjamin Tillman and James Vardaman, were even more racist - these were maniacs who enthusiastically embraced the idea of upholding white supremacy to its greatest extent possible (Jim Crow IRL, slavery in case of a Confederate victory) by ultraviolence.
When Brazil finally abolished slavery in 1888, slavocratic interests toppled their government immediately afterward; in a victorious CSA I doubt they'd even get that far. Ben 'Teddy Roosevelt dined with Booker T. Washington? Damn, we're gonna have to kill a thousand blacks just to remind the rest of their place now' Tillman would sooner depose whatever government tries and put their heads on his pitchfork than concede the point, and I have no doubt whatsoever that he wouldn't be alone since abolition would basically mean admitting that every single Southern casualty of the ACW died for nothing. The counterfactual game is a difficult one to play because obviously we can only ever really guess at what could have happened, but considering the broader historical context and trajectory of the slavocratic ideology, I feel confident in stating that they'd sooner nationalize black slaves in their nightmarish mirror of Southern populism (the aforementioned Tillman was historically down with exploiting black chain gangs to build up Southern industry, for example) than even countenance the idea of abolition no matter who's telling them to do it.
As to Lincoln's dictatorial ways, I already knew that and accepted it as the price of victory over an ideology so vile, anti-human and demonstrably destructive that virtually any means would be justified to combat it from my perspective. I was born in Indonesia, a country where over a million people were killed during the Cold War with the result of permanently eliminating any risk of a Communist (specifically Maoist) takeover even to this day, whereas less thorough purges in places like Chile clearly have failed in the long term. I see no logically consistent way in which to square acceptance of the former as a necessary evil to thwart an even worse evil with opposition to Lincoln's frankly vastly milder crackdowns on opposition during a civil war against slavocrats, who would have enslaved basically everyone except themselves if given the chance & a couple more decades.
I don't believe it's very fair to compare him to Woodrow Wilson either (considering that Wilson 1) was not fighting a civil war and 2) was a Southern sympathizer himself), and that drawing a straight line from him to the latter or to FDR is akin to saying the Gracchi brothers were evil because Augustus ended the Republic. The latter could not have been foreseen in the time of the former, does nothing to invalidate the former's originally positive ideas ('land reform good'/'slavery bad' respectively - yes I'm aware Lincoln didn't have 21st century views on race and prioritized the Union over ending slavery immediately, he's still the only candidate in the 1860 election who discussed even limiting slavery), and all the bad precedents set by the former wouldn't even have happened if their enemies had reacted to their gaining power legitimately like sane people instead of spazzing out and starting a civil war. (No, I don't think losing the 1860 election justifies secession - recall that the Southern Democrats had also threatened to secede if John Fremont, the previous Republican candidate, had won in 1856, while the North accepted his defeat and continued to work in the system until they won four years & a bunch of slavocratic outrages later; is secession in case you're defeated through the democratic process a holy right only for Southern slavers?)
Sure 'Fitzhughism' wasn't the norm in 1859, but then, neither was the idea of slavery as a positive good in 1829. The advocates of slavery also started out pretty violent and only got worse with time, they were already lynching abolitionists and banning discussion of slavery where possible in the 1830s (Elijah Lovejoy and the Congressional gag rule). By the 1850s they were openly invading Kansas from Missouri every time there was an election with the express purpose of stealing said elections (Border Ruffians), sacking abolitionist-founded settlements and continuing to destroy their presses (the first sack of Lawrence), and famously beating abolitionists in the Capitol to within an inch of their life (Preston Brooks' attack on Charles Sumner - BTW, Brooks challenged Northern representative Anson Burlingame to a duel for calling him a coward immediately after the attack, and then like the bold and true paragon of Southern chivalry he was celebrated as, he...pussied out upon learning that Burlingame was a crack shot and wanted to duel with rifles).
Furthermore, the US was electing Civil War veterans as late as 1900 (McKinley). A surviving CSA would have done the same, and so each of their presidents would have emerged from a war in which they proved their innate superiority not only to blacks, but also the Damnyankees who were but the latter-day reincarnation of the weak and uncivilized Anglo-Saxons, fit only to be subjugated and directed by their superior Norman-blooded selves. To ask such men to then abolish slavery - the institution whose natural supremacy they will think they have just demonstrated, and for which they have literally just killed and died in the hundreds of thousands for - is to ask of them the impossible. And the generation of Southern populists who came of age & took power after the Civil War generation, men like Benjamin Tillman and James Vardaman, were even more racist - these were maniacs who enthusiastically embraced the idea of upholding white supremacy to its greatest extent possible (Jim Crow IRL, slavery in case of a Confederate victory) by ultraviolence.
When Brazil finally abolished slavery in 1888, slavocratic interests toppled their government immediately afterward; in a victorious CSA I doubt they'd even get that far. Ben 'Teddy Roosevelt dined with Booker T. Washington? Damn, we're gonna have to kill a thousand blacks just to remind the rest of their place now' Tillman would sooner depose whatever government tries and put their heads on his pitchfork than concede the point, and I have no doubt whatsoever that he wouldn't be alone since abolition would basically mean admitting that every single Southern casualty of the ACW died for nothing. The counterfactual game is a difficult one to play because obviously we can only ever really guess at what could have happened, but considering the broader historical context and trajectory of the slavocratic ideology, I feel confident in stating that they'd sooner nationalize black slaves in their nightmarish mirror of Southern populism (the aforementioned Tillman was historically down with exploiting black chain gangs to build up Southern industry, for example) than even countenance the idea of abolition no matter who's telling them to do it.
As to Lincoln's dictatorial ways, I already knew that and accepted it as the price of victory over an ideology so vile, anti-human and demonstrably destructive that virtually any means would be justified to combat it from my perspective. I was born in Indonesia, a country where over a million people were killed during the Cold War with the result of permanently eliminating any risk of a Communist (specifically Maoist) takeover even to this day, whereas less thorough purges in places like Chile clearly have failed in the long term. I see no logically consistent way in which to square acceptance of the former as a necessary evil to thwart an even worse evil with opposition to Lincoln's frankly vastly milder crackdowns on opposition during a civil war against slavocrats, who would have enslaved basically everyone except themselves if given the chance & a couple more decades.
I don't believe it's very fair to compare him to Woodrow Wilson either (considering that Wilson 1) was not fighting a civil war and 2) was a Southern sympathizer himself), and that drawing a straight line from him to the latter or to FDR is akin to saying the Gracchi brothers were evil because Augustus ended the Republic. The latter could not have been foreseen in the time of the former, does nothing to invalidate the former's originally positive ideas ('land reform good'/'slavery bad' respectively - yes I'm aware Lincoln didn't have 21st century views on race and prioritized the Union over ending slavery immediately, he's still the only candidate in the 1860 election who discussed even limiting slavery), and all the bad precedents set by the former wouldn't even have happened if their enemies had reacted to their gaining power legitimately like sane people instead of spazzing out and starting a civil war. (No, I don't think losing the 1860 election justifies secession - recall that the Southern Democrats had also threatened to secede if John Fremont, the previous Republican candidate, had won in 1856, while the North accepted his defeat and continued to work in the system until they won four years & a bunch of slavocratic outrages later; is secession in case you're defeated through the democratic process a holy right only for Southern slavers?)
Last edited:
Agent23
Ни шагу назад!
I don't think he is based, I think that he could have been a very useful self-aggrandizing, racist prick megalomaniac if only the stupid French and British would have given more aid to the confederacy and sent troops to the USA's undefended flanks.
The Confederate secession would have been followed by more states doing the same and ultimately balkanizing the USA while draining the British's resources, meaning that their power projection on the Continent and in places like central Asia would have been diminished.
The wider world's economic development would have eventually forced the Confederates and the other leftover northern states to abolish slavery, possibly in a less destructive way that did not create massive animosity.
Frankly, serfdom should have been implemented in the USA and the slaves transitioned to it, that would have given them more rights, made them more productive and eventually led to their emancipation, since the Serf is connected to the land but not individually property, that would have nullified the mortgages, but something like that would have pissed off the NY bankers and Boston slaver owners and the various other northern businessmen vacationing in the south for fun and profit that racked in the real dough.
The Southerner Planter Aristocracy would have gotten a kick out of it, since a lot of them were second sons of nobility and the like, and they basically wanted the British social structure transplanted to the American South.
Last edited:
Agent23
Ни шагу назад!
Nixon didn't do anything that the Kennedy brothers did not do before, or that Obama did not do after, see IRS going after the tea party and the like.
Hoover was actually well known for pulling similar and far worse stunts, only reason why some rando "plumbers" were involved was that he had decided to disregard Nixon's request to dig into the Whitehouse leaks because of increasing public scrutiny for the FBI.
The guy had tons of blackmail gathered, which incriminated all sorts of celeberties, business people and politicians.
And the FBI was running black bag operations since the 1940s.
I am sure that the Confederacy would love to byte the hand that fed them and to alienate their biggest export partner, especially after a huge war where they would be winning by a thread and with potential revanchist neighbors that would love to propagandize and arm that slave population.
I think that the South not ditching slavery is highly unlikely given the geopolitical situation.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
Be more specific. The 'geopolitical situation' is basically meaningless as a statement without specification.
Agent23
Ни шагу назад!
France, the UK and a number of other enlightened industrialized European powers giving anyone who still liked slavery a chainmail glove fisting.
And Europe being the South's primary export market, and Britain and France being the main market for Confederate exports.
Agent23
Ни шагу назад!
As a libertarian, I despise big government.
As an European I despise colonials mucking up global affairs.
As an Eastern European I despise the Anglos, and the USA is basically an Anglo country that pushes the same puritanical utopian bullshit that ope particular group of colonist zealots, basically unipolar globalist megalomania, which I also despise because I am a multipolarist and a fan of realpolitik.
Since you are an American, what do you care about the goings on in Europe?
Just harvest your corn and potatoes and watch your capeshit garbage and fuck off from the rest of the world.
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
Southern serfdom was already done IRL with sharecropping, it sucked for both the freedmen and poor whites and its awfulness drove the blacks to go on their 'Great Migration' into America's inner cities. In an independent CSA this lack of a release valve and the further entrenchment of plantocratic domination will likely result in slave/peasant uprisings and a white-populist backlash along the lines of 'kill the planters and nationalize their slaves' instead.
I think you greatly overestimate just how grounded in reality the people who wanted to conquer everything down to Panama & the Venezuelan coast to form a slaving empire were. Davis himself at minimum wanted to take Cuba from Spain, whether by way of purchase or conquest, as made clear from his time as Franklin Pierce's Secretary of War. Also the Confederate Constitution expressly legalized slavery forever, forbade state governments from interfering with the movement of slaveowners with their slaves across state lines, and re-legalized the import of slaves from US soil despite the US (whose Constitution they were cloning in most regards, except to take a maximally pro-slavery position wherever possible) having banned the slave trade, period, in 1808 and Britain having made no secret of their taking an extremely dim view on said trade for decades as well. And it was designed to be even harder than the US Constitution to amend, quite possibly precisely to make it impossible to strike slavery down - their Congress couldn't propose amendments, state constitutional conventions had to do it.
To put it bluntly, realism wasn't exactly a high priority for these guys either in domestic or foreign politics and if Britain demands that they abolish slavery after they've just won a war (and lost thousands upon thousands of their own people's lives) in defense of said Peculiar Institution™, I think the chance of them telling London to go fuck itself and damn the consequences is extremely high. As well they would apparently have been vindicated in their antebellum belief that 1 Stronk Norman-Blooded Southron Paladin can in fact whip 100 Weak Pseudo-Saxon Yankee Mudsills (and presumably 100,000 black slaves) in victory, even more reason for them not to be too concerned with a second round with the Damnyankees.