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Obama and Lincoln

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

A post by Leonard Pitts Jr includes the text:

Of course, Lincoln freed no slaves. That's the myth. His Emancipation Proclamation was a military measure to demoralize and destabilize the rebellious South; it covered states he did not govern but did not apply in slaveholding states that remained under his jurisdiction.

One commenter wrote:

Lincoln never recognized secession as legitimate and claimed until the end that the Union endured and that he was President of all the united states.

IPBiz notes that even Lincoln had formalisms to "re-admit" the states of the Confederacy. While more generous to those states than what would come after Lincoln's death, such plans are not consistent with the position that there was "no secession." How can one re-admit a state that never left? Further, if there was "no secession," why were not all Confederates convicted of treason? "How" the former Confederate states (and people therein) were treated was nuanced, and not necessarily self-consistent.

Pitts referenced an 1858 speech of Lincoln. One can also find interesting text in the speech better known to patent lawyers as the "fire of genius" speech.

Full post as published by IPBiz on January 19, 2009 (boomark / email).