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Lincoln's Surveillance State
An anonymous reader writes "The N.S.A.'s program is indeed alarming — but not, from a historical perspective, unprecedented. And history suggests that we should worry less about the surveillance itself and more about when the war in whose name the surveillance is being conducted will end. In 1862, after President Abraham Lincoln appointed him secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton penned a letter to the president requesting sweeping powers, which would include total control of the telegraph lines. By rerouting those lines through his office, Stanton would keep tabs on vast amounts of communication, journalistic, governmental and personal. On the back of Stanton's letter Lincoln scribbled his approval: 'The Secretary of War has my authority to exercise his discretion in the matter within mentioned.'"
Just a nit.
For the north, the war wasn't about slavery and the north certainly wasn't fighting to free four million slaves. The north was fighting to prevent the south from leaving. That's all. For the north, the war wasn't some moral crusade to free slaves - it was simply to prevent the south from leaving. (For the south, on the other hand, the notion to leave the union was driven by slavery although nearly everyone who fought in the war was not a slave owner - less than 2% of southern soldiers were part of families that owned slaves). There were a number of northern states that continued to support and allow slavery during and after the civil war until the 14th amendment was passed.
Lincoln essentially weaponized abolitionism. He used abolitionism as a strategic tool to help defeat the south by depriving them of their economic and logistical infrastructure. Painting the Union as moral crusaders freeing the slaves is revisionism at its best, and it's every bit as wrong-headed and dishonest as painting the southern motivation as purely states rights.
In the case of that war, yes, it was okay.
No, it wasn't.
It was a temporary and partial loss of freedom in order to help win a far more fundamental freedom for others.
Don't harm innocent people (in this case, by taking away their freedoms) in order to defeat the bad guys; cowards do that.
"Gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mail."
Henry L. Stimson, U.S. Secretary of War during the Pearl Harbor attack and the former U.S. Secretary of State who in 1929 shut down the office in the U.S. State Department responsible for breaking codes to read messages sent between embassies of other countries and their capitals.
Stimson's naivety seems alive and well.
and about 106 times the (human) population of earth.
The simple fact is that, had the North lost, or not fought, millions of people would have been doomed to a life of slavery.
Complete and utter propaganda, entirely contradicted by the facts. The facts are that slavery was being abolished all over the world before the Civil War as mechanism replaced slaves, and economists have determined that slaves would have been unprofitable by 1890 without a war. Slavery ended in the rest of the world for that reason, not because they had bloody civil wars all over the world. Lincoln himself said that he would keep slavery if it would hold the Union together - his only concern was of keeping the economy of the North going by forcing the South to provide it with raw materials for its factories.
And those million people did die - the old estimates of 600,000 war casualties have been revised up over 900,000 based on recently discovered data.
And that's not counting the additional millions killed in subsequent wars by the all-power central government that arose from the end of the Republic of Republics and the beginning of the Corporate Empire.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The simple fact is that, had the North lost, or not fought, millions of people would have been doomed to a life of slavery.
Complete and utter propaganda, entirely contradicted by the facts.
Err, what? The seceding states publicly declared that they were fighting to defend slavery. South Carolina goes on at length complaining about the northern states exercising their states rights and basically not enforcing fugitive slave laws. Jefferson Davis and his VP Alexander Stephens were very clear that slavery was the most important part of the Confederacy. Slaves in 1860 were the largest form of wealth in the US. And slave-based agriculture was extremely profitable.
Slavery ended in the rest of the world for that reason, not because they had bloody civil wars all over the world.
Nonsense. Slavery ended in the rest of the world for 4 major reasons:
1. Many religious groups had declared slavery to be morally evil. Right or wrong, that was a big influence.
2. Wage earners and their employers didn't want to have to compete with slaves and their slaveholders. Slaves have always been cheaper than wages.
3. Slaves revolted and/or escaped. Sometimes they won (e.g. Haiti), but even if they didn't win they raised the cost of holding slaves.
4. Governments who's ideology promoted equality (which the US kinda did, but Revolutionary France is a better example) banned slavery in order to be consistent.
I am officially gone from