Gabor Boritt The Lincoln Enigma, The Changin

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Do celu tam się wysiada. Lec Stanisław Jerzy (pierw. de Tusch-Letz, 1909-1966)
A bogowie grają w kości i nie pytają wcale czy chcesz przyłączyć się do gry (. . . ) Bogowie kpią sobie z twojego poukładanego życia (. . . ) nie przejmują się zbytnio ani naszymi planami na przyszłość ani oczekiwaniami. Gdzieś we wszechświecie rzucają kości i przypadkiem wypada twoja kolej. I odtąd zwyciężyć lub przegrać - to tylko kwestia szczęścia. Borys Pasternak
Idąc po kurzych jajach nie podskakuj. Przysłowie szkockie
I Herkules nie poradzi przeciwko wielu.
Dialog półinteligentów równa się monologowi ćwierćinteligenta. Stanisław Jerzy Lec (pierw. de Tusch - Letz, 1909-1966)

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.And, of course, Davis made no move that rivaled the Emancipation Proclamation.It is easy to explain Davis’s failure to make a bold assertion of his war powers as commander-in-chief in terms of his personality.Certainly when compared to Lincoln, Davis seemed stiff and unimaginative, but on closer study he proves remarkably flexible and creative in facing the never-ending demands of the war.It is also true that Davis’s attitude toward the war powers stemmed to some degree from ideology; long a strict-constructionist, he for years had argued that the federal government had only the powers expressly granted in the Constitution.But Davis realized in assuming the presidency that old ideas had to give way to new necessities, and in the years that followed he often exhibited remarkable adaptability to changing reality.It is best to understand that Davis’s refusal to use his war powers as commander-in-chief stemmed from the situation in which he found himself.From the very beginning he and his fellow Confederates cast themselves not as revolutionists but as the true defenders of the traditional American faith, from which their Northern opponents had so sadly strayed.It was for this reason that, in drafting a Constitution for the new Confederate States of America, the framers deliberately made only the most minor changes in the Constitution of the United States, preserving both the language and the structure of the original.As Davis said when he took his oath as provisional president in February 1861:“We have changed the constituent parts, but not the system of government.The Constitution framed by our fathers is that of these Confederate States.” 37A b r a h a m L i n c o l n a n d J e f f e r s o n D a v i s 85Starting from this premise, Davis found his subsequent actions as president negatively defined by the steps that Lincoln took.For instance, when Lincoln first suspended the writ of habeas corpus in 1861, Davis immediately responded: “We may well rejoice that we have forever severed our connection with a government that thus tramples on all the principles of constitutional liberty.” 38That early exchange pretty clearly defined Davis’s subsequent reac-tions to the initiatives of the Lincoln administration.By 1862 he was lamenting “the disregard [that Lincoln and his administration] have recently exhibited for all the time-honored bulwarks of civil and religious liberty.” He went on to portray life in the North under the rule of the despot: “Bastiles filled with prisoners, arrested without civil process or indictment duly found; the writ of habeas corpus suspended by Executive mandate; a State Legislature [in Maryland] controlled by the imprisonment of members.; elections held under threats of military power; civil officers, peaceful citizens, and gentlewomen incarcerated for opinion’s sake.” 39Having so fiercely and publicly attacked Lincoln’s broad use of the war powers, Davis was, of course, estopped from using them himself.Because of that self-imposed constraint, dissent, desertion, and disloyalty grew rampant in the Confederacy.The armies disintegrated as uninhibited state judges liberated conscripts and deserters with writs of habeas corpus.Untrammeled, newspapers voiced criticisms of the administration that were almost treasonous.Local and state officials brazenly defied the orders of the Confederate government.With his hands tied, Davis could do nothing to check the disintegration of his nation.Herein lies one of the greatest ironies of the Civil War era: Lincoln invoked his war powers to curb disloyalty in the North, where it is not clear that these draconian measures were either necessary or effective.But their chief effect was to inhibit Davis from employing similar measures in the South, where they might have curbed more vigorously the dissent and disloyalty that signally contributed to the collapse of the Confederacy.Chapter 6Apple of Gold in a Picture of Silver:The Constitution and LibertyAllen C.GuelzoIIn the threatening winter of 1861, as the United States was being inched ever closer to the outbreak of civil war by the secession of the Southern states over the issue of black slavery, the newly elected president, Abraham Lincoln, opened up a confidential correspondence with a former Southern political colleague, Alexander Stephens of Georgia.Stephens had made headlines in November 1860, in a speech to the Georgia legislature, urging Georgia not to follow the South into secession.Lincoln sent him a friendly note, asking for a printed copy of the speech—and perhaps warming Stephens to an invitation to come into Lincoln’s cabinet as a gesture of mollification toward the South.Stephens wrote back, apologizing that the speech was not yet in print (apart from the newspaper reports of it that Lincoln had read), but taking the opportunity to urge Lincoln to make some kind of conciliatory promise to the South about staying within the bounds of the Constitution, as president, and not threatening to take federal action against slavery in the South, where slavery had enjoyed a kind of constitutional immunity since the beginnings of the Republic.This, Stephens believed, would deflate the secession fire-eaters better than anyA p p l e o f G o l d i n a P i c t u r e o f S i l v e r 87cabinet offer, adding (with a phrase borrowed from the Book of Proverbs), “A word fitly spoken by you now would be like ‘apple of gold in a picture of silver.’”Lincoln was disappointed that Stephens seemed to think that he intended some unconstitutional aggression against the South [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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