A Wake-Up Call

“From the very outset the basis of the government’s war power was held to be the necessity of preserving the nation. The limit of its application was not the clear expressions of the organic law, but the forbearance of a distracted people.”

William A. Dunning

This should make you angry. A dispassionate Northern historian summarizes how the country devolved into tyranny because of an apathetic populace and we are supposed to ignore this truth because he was racist. We are to accept that Lincoln only violated the Constitution to save the Union. There is nothing to see here.

One should also ignore Benjamin R. Curtis the former Supreme Court justice, Northerner, and proponent of the war, who in 1862 wrote that if the Congress allows the President to violate one piece of the Constitution, what is the argument for stopping him if he chooses to violate another. Curtis also points out that any moral claim the government has is tenuous if it picks and chooses which parts of the Constitution to enforce.

Let us also ignore Senator James A. Bayard of Delaware and his July 1861 Senate speech where he challenged the President, the Senate, and the country to abide by the Constitution and that no one should have “such unlimited power, as a Cromwell or Bonaparte”.

We need to forget C.L. Vallandigham a Representative from Ohio who made a speech in the House in July 1861 where he highlighted the “forbearance of a distracted people” and lamented that his speech would not make a difference in the country, so he was speaking “to the world and to posterity”. He was later persecuted by the Federal government.

During the Civil War many in the North accepted the central government acting lawlessly so it should not be surprising that a large proportion of the US population tolerate it today. What should concern us all is that the Federal government’s reach and size is much greater than anyone fathomed in the 1860s.