missouri compromise: Mondoweissa

At 48, Lincoln would abandon his ambition if the 'oppressed of my species' could not share in it

Jack Ross:
The point I was trying to make in large part was that Lincoln was never a sincere abolitionist, he campaigned explicitly on simply limiting slavery to the territories and on a Constitutional amendment that would have enshrined slavery within the South. And as for the franchise, he was notoriously quoted at the end of the war saying "maybe the New Orleans creoles".


There may in fact be interesting parallels to Obama here. Maybe he did cynically use the Iraq War and related issues to galvanize a base to him the same way Lincoln did with slavery. As for emancipation, I frankly consider the Gettysburg Address to have been perfectly analogous to the speech(es) by which Bush cynically changed the subject in Iraq to democracy and proclaimed a "global democratic revolution".

Still, Lincoln did clearly want a conciliatory reconstruction policy, and indeed I believe had he lived he would have fallen victim to a perhaps less successful version of the fate of Andrew Johnson. And as for the changes that the war ultimately wrought, it is already well nigh conceivable how in a contradiction worthy of Lincoln the ultimate internationalist Obama may by force of events usher in an era of isolationism.

Weiss. Jack: I differ with you on the pre war period. Of course he wasn't an abolitionist. He was an ambitious pol, and there was almost no room in the mainstream debate for abolitionists. Abolitionists were the far left. I would have been one; but Lincoln was becoming a candidate for national office. He hated slavery. That comes thru in the speeches and in this private reflection by Lincoln, at age 48, on the younger Stephen Douglas's far outstripping him in achievement:
Twenty-two years ago Judge Douglas and I first became acquainted. We were both young then; he a trifle younger than I. Even then, we were both ambitious; I, perhaps, quite as much so as he. With me, the race of ambition has been a failure--a flat failure; with him it has been one of splendid success. His name fills the nation; and is not unknown, even, in foreign lands. I affect no contempt for the high eminence he has reached. [Following emphasis Weiss's] So reached, that the oppressed of my species, might have shared with me in the elevation, I would rather stand on that eminence, than wear the richest crown that ever pressed a monarch's brow.

Lincoln was a man of ambition and principle. His adherence to principle-- hatred of slavery, of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise--fired his ambition. The analogy to Obama, which I'm about to write about, is that Obama knows that Israel/Palestine is everything in the Middle East, and must be resolved, with justice to the Palestinians, in order for the U.S. to cool off the fervor in the Islamic world. He learned that at Rashid and Mona Khalidi's dinner table, as Lincoln learned his lessons about slavery from seeing slaves in chains.

Ross responds (and I'm giving him the last word here cause I'm going to return to this some other day):

There is scant evidence to suggest that Lincoln was morally moved by slavery, what he was really committed to was the historic party program of economic nationalism. Though I suppose his view on slavery itself may have been exactly that expressed by Jefferson in Notes on the State of Virginia, that slavery must be ended but that the two races could never live together, thus favoring colonization.

Talk about "transfer"!!! To say nothing of what the idea led to in the black community, the vogue of Herzl's uncanny doppleganger Marcus Garvey, whose absurdly grandiose parades and costumes eerily mimicked Herzl's demands in Basel that the unwashed Poale Zion delegates attend wearing the season's finest evening wear - A. Philip Randolph unsparingly mocked Garvey as a "negro with a hat".

Sorry, couldn't resist that swipe. Anyway, I don't know what Obama is truly committed to and thus I'm a bit lost. He may well be a closet black nationalist who wants to bring the mother (empire) down, but that doesn't mean he wants to do so out of principle or even intervene in any particular third world dispute - be it Darfur or Israel/Palestine - out of principle.

Or maybe, on a less macabre note and more likely, he just wants to vindicate the honor of the American left, in which case he would also be indifferent in terms of principle to the empire, but knew it was the issue with which to galvanize, getting back to my original point, as did Lincoln with slavery.


Source: philipweiss.org