Review of Facts and Falsehoods – Part 1
Thomas Allen
Facts and Falsehoods Concerning the War on the South 1861-1865 (Memphis, Tennessee: A. R. Taylor & Co., 1904) by George Edmonds is an excellent book and worth reading. Edmonds reveals the real Abraham Lincoln before he was deified.
Before Lincoln’s deification, most Republicans, including his cabinet, did not respect him, and many despised him. Further, they perceived him as incompetent, opportunistic, and indecisive and as a political hack and a politician in the worst sense of the word. Fame was what Lincoln wanted. Assassination was the best thing to ever happen to him, for it brought him the fame for which he lusted and his deification.
Edmonds shows that the founding principles of the Republican Party were hatred of the Constitution and Southerners, disunion, and the concentration of political power in the federal government. Being a White man’s party, the Republican Party had little use for Blacks — free or slave.
He discusses the hatred of the South that many Republican leaders possessed from Lincoln’s War to 1904 when he published his book. This hatred of the South still exists today albeit in a milder form when conservatives, e.g., Beck and Coulter, express it. This hatred reveals itself in the left’s destruction of Southern culture, history, and memorials with the support of scalawags including most Southern Republican and Democratic governors, and the complacency of most conservatives.
The following are some excerpts from his book.
Comparison of Buchanan with Lincoln
Edmonds quotes the Lemars (Iowa) Sentinel, 1879, which fearlessly propounded Republican doctrines, “No reasonable man will say that President Buchanan was wrong when he said that the North had no constitutional right to coerce seceding States, but what of that? Up jumped Abraham Lincoln, the rail-splitter, and kicked the Constitution into the Capitol cellar, and called for 75,000 armed men to march down and conquer the South, and when the 75,000 proved not enough, the rail splitter called for more, and more, until he had over 2,000,000 armed men, and he sent ’em down to burn and pillage, to kill, conquer or annihilate traitors to our glorious Union, the Constitution all the while in the Capitol cellar." (pp. 23-24)
About Rebellion
Edmonds writes, “The history of man’s struggle for freedom shows that rebellions have won for mankind all the freedom they possess. Did ever any ruler on earth, of his own will, loosen his grip on the liberties of those he ruled? Every inch of liberty the English-speaking people now have was gained by rebellions. The colonies of ’76 won freedom by rebellion. Rebellion means resistance to lawful rule. George III was the lawful King of the Colonies. At no period in the existence of this Union has one State or group of States held lawful rule over any other State or group of States. The most stupendous falsehood ever told on this continent is the falsehood that the Southern people rebelled. There can be no rebellion except against lawful rulers. The Republican party of the 6o’s was guilty of the monstrous crime of usurping the power to rule the Southern States. Not only did Republicans pour out the virulence of hate on the South’s men, her women came in for a share, and a large share they received.” (p. 245)
Lincoln’s Response to Medill’s Protest to Lincoln’s Order for More Troops
About Lincoln rebuking Joseph Medill, editor of the Chicago Tribune and Republican politician, when he protested Lincoln ordering more troops from Chicago, Edmonds cites Ida Tarbell, who wrote a biography of Lincoln. Miss Tarbell relates what Medill told her about this incident, “In 1864 when the call for extra troops came, Chicago revolted. Chicago had sent 22,000 and was drained. There were no young men to go, no aliens except what was already bought. The citizens held a mass meeting and appointed three men, of whom I (Medill) was one, to go to Washington and ask Stanton (the War Secretary) to give Cook County a new enrollment. On reaching Washington we went to Stanton with our statement. He refused. Then we went to President Lincoln. ‘I cannot do it,’ said Lincoln, ‘but I will go with you to Stanton and hear the arguments of both sides.’ So we all went over to the War Department together. Stanton and General Frye were there, and they both contended that the quota should not be changed. The argument went on for some time, and was finally referred to Lincoln, who had been silently listening. When appealed to, Lincoln turned to us with a black and frowning face: ‘Gentlemen.’ he said, with a voice full of bitterness, ‘after Boston, Chicago has been the chief instrument in bringing this war on the country. The Northwest opposed the South, as New England opposed the South. It is you, Medill, who is largely responsible for making blood flow as it has. You called for war until you had it. I have given it to you. What you have asked for you have had. Now you come here begging to be let off from the call for more men, which I have made to carry on the war you demanded. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Go home and raise your 6,000 men. And you, Medill, you and your Tribune have had more influence than any other paper in the Northwest in making this war. Go home and send me those men I want.’
“Medill says that he and his companions, feeling guilty, left without further argument. They returned to Chicago, and 6,000 more men from the working classes were dragged from their homes, their families, forced into the ranks to risk limbs and lives in a war they had no part in making, while the men that forced that war on an unwilling people remained at home in comfort and safety, and made enormous fortunes by the war.” (p. 162)
To this, Edmonds adds, “Is it any wonder educated workingmen often become anarchists and hate all governments?” (p. 163)
Lincoln on Courts
About Lincoln’s preference for using military courts instead of civil courts, Edmonds writes, “Daniel Webster objected to military courts because, as he said, ‘military courts are organized to convict.’ The so-called humane Lincoln objected to civil courts because one member of the jury might be more ready to hang the panel than to hang the man! Lincoln seems to assume that men arrested by military officials must be guilty, therefore should have no chance of escaping conviction by trial in a Civil court. Lincoln also objects to civil courts because they only convict on charges of crime well defined by law. Military courts convict on the most frivolous pretexts, or no pretext at all. The chief thing necessary to military conviction is that some man in high place should desire the man to be convicted and put out of his way. In the Albany address reference was made to the suspension of the habeas corpus. To this Mr. Lincoln replied as follows: ‘The suspension of the habeas corpus was for the purpose that men may be arrested and held in prison who cannot be proved guilty of any defined crime.’” (p. 212)
Continuing, Edmonds writes that the above declaration is not Lincoln's worst. Then, he quotes Lincoln’s comment to the Albany committee of Democrats, “Arrests are not made so much for what has been done as for what possibly might be done. The man who stands by and says nothing when the peril of his Government is discussed cannot be misunderstood. If not hindered (by arrest, imprisonment, or death) he is sure to help the enemy.” (p. 212).
Then, Edmonds writes, “Is it any wonder under rulings like this that 38,000 arbitrary arrests threw 38,000 innocent men and women into American bastiles [sic] to languish for months or years, and many therein to die?” (p. 212.)
Moreover, Edmonds writes, “Under Lincoln’s definition silence became an act of treason. A man with a sore throat, unable to talk aloud, if he happened to be present when the Lincoln Government was discussed, was liable to arrest and imprisonment in the most distant fortress in the land.” (p. 212).
Next, Edmonds quotes Lincoln writing, “Much more if a man talks ambiguously, talks with ‘buts’ and ‘ifs’ and ‘ands’ he cannot be misunderstood. If not hindered (by imprisonment or death) this man will actively commit treason. Arbitrary arrests are not made for the treason defined in the Constitution, but to prevent treason.” About this quotation, Edmonds comments, “That is to prevent the sort of treason never before known on earth — the treason of ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ and ‘ands’ — the treason made and invented by Abraham Lincoln, the first President of the Republican party.” (pp. 212-213.)
Seward’s Character
To describe the character of William H. Seward, Lincoln’s Secretary of State, Edmonds quotes General Piatt, a personal friend and great admirer of Seward, “Seward began life as a school teacher in the South. He had been treated with condescending indifference by the unenlightened masters, which treatment he never forgot. Seward looked down on the white men of the South in the same cynical way that he did upon the slaves. He had no pity for the slaves, and no dislike for the master. He was a great favorite with the last named. He had contempt for them, which he concealed as carefully as he did his contempt for the United States Constitution. Seward had trained himself to believe that worldly wickedness indicated ability. He thought to be bad was to be clever. He thought that devotion to wine, women and infidelity gave proof of superior intelligence. He affected a wickedness he did not feel, because such wickedness, in his estimation, was good form.” To this description, Edmonds asks, “Was it spite that made Seward so vindictive toward the Southern people?” (p. 158)
Copyright © 2022 by Thomas Coley Allen.
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