For Southern Rights Hurrah

I’m just sixteen pages from finishing a biography of Lincoln that I’ve commented on before. Its not a book for the beginner but it has given me new insights on Lincoln that compliment the history of his Cooper Union Speech that I so appreciated.

Lincoln is often beaten up by libertarians for his short lived suspension of habeus corpus. The author says doing so during an insurrection is constitutionally protected which could be true. Whether it is or not I’ve always given Lincoln a pass on this because he did face an insurrection and because he so lightly abused the lifting of this protection. In the famous case of Vandlandingham Lincoln seems to have been eager for his critic released to the South and get him out of his hair than to injure the Copperhead.

I love the Amazon search function that allows one to search for passages within books. If this link works it will take you to the general pages where I left off. [note: the link only takes you to the book’s Amazon page. If you type in “libertarian” into the search box it will take you to the page in question] The author points out how it was in the libertarian South that real civil liberties were suppressed not Lincoln’s North. They even forbade opposition political parties. Lincoln wasn’t even on the ballot in most Southern states. In some ways their violation of their own philosophy of state’s rights was simply a matter of self preservation. However, I find it ironic that the current GOP which has become a place of refuge for Southern “conservatives” sounds a lot like the South depicted in these pages around the 332 mark.

Once I finish this and Anne Frank’s diary I may jump into the Goodwin book Team of Rivals although if I read it at the same pace that I’ve read these books it may be two years before I complete it.

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