Opinion of the Republican Party (1854-1874) (user search)

Besides Lincoln, good

Why would someone think that Lincoln is worse than any other Republican of this era?

It's possible.

The conservative Republicans were very wary of racial equality and harmony and only reluctantly backed the Emancipation Proclamation and other ideas out of the notion that Lincoln was using those to help end the war.

The radicals, by contrast, wanted total equality of blacks with whites and at the same time wanted to use the war and Reconstruction to basically destroy the South.

Lincoln I believe was probably in the middle of these two but leaned conservative. I think what many "libertarian" posters dislike about Lincoln is this perception that he was truly not committed to the idea of racial equality (let me point out that this was the mid 19th century, I doubt even some of the people we like to proclaim as "radicals" were fully committed to the idea) and still got us into the Civil War on very dubious circumstances (ie a Confederate attack on a Union fort located just outside of Charleston, South Carolina) without abolition as the main goal for several years.

In other words, they are being very choosy and dare I even say "politically correct" with the "anybody but Lincoln!" approach. Grant, the president who would later strongly endorse the 15th Amendment, at one point in the war said something to the effect of "if I found out the war was being waged over slavery, I'd give my sword to the other side." Unlike Lincoln though, Grant had quite a bit of time to develop more into a supporter of racial equality, whereas Lincoln only had the last few years of his life. It thus becomes easier for libertarians and others to judge Lincoln because his record on abolitionism was kind of mediocre and he tried to avoid the slavery issue for about half of his first term. You could probably find a few other Republicans of the time (especially those who were in the more conservative wing) who were very skeptical about racial equality and whose abolitionist views on the matter were "move them to Liberia". Call it a great reluctance to accept that the early GOP was a very wide tent so they lay the burden of blame on Lincoln who if anything had the unenviable task of balancing the interests of arguably radically different ideologues in his own party before having to deal with the incensed Democratic outrage against the entire war happening in the first place.

Call it the "he got us into a war and he wasn't even a devout anti-racist!!!!" logic. That, and there is a certain libertarian impulse to take down presidents (except for Jefferson) who are universally loved by historians. I certainly do not believe that there is racism or anti-black feelings among many libertarians like some have suggested, just that they do not truly understand racism or how devout the South was in keeping their slaves. This goes back to their whole ideology about the "invisible hand" or how people don't do things if there is an inherent disadvantage or cost associated with it. Well, slavery wasn't actually very efficient at all (many of the slaves goofed off at work whenever the whipping boys were away and many decided to occasionally walk off the plantation for weeks on end if they grew tired of it, etc. etc.) but Southern governments, landowners, and others still strongly defended it out of white supremacy. This is the result of a revisionist narrative that casts the South as some sort of free trading libertarian minded paradise instead of the very authoritarian tyrannical area that it really was at the time. That the Confederates fired the first shot should be telling to many anti-war libertarians, but they seem too fixated on the location of Fort Sumter for some reason. Basically "Lincoln didn't even like black people and he invaded the South! He did it to protect the Northern Manufacturing base because he's an extreme corporatist fascist!"

My historical rants about White Anglo-Saxon Protestant privilege and the outright corporatist policies of the parties like the Federalists, the Whigs, and later the Republican Party are well known. I find "liberals" who defend ideas like protectionism which had always had a very conservative motive behind some of the most hilarious people out there. Then again, when you have "liberals" who defend tyrannical autocrats like Alex Hamilton, John Jay, John Adams, and the whole host of early nationalists, this should be no surprise. Which is basically my way of saying, in more than a few sentences, that I feel little to no admiration for the heavy tariff system that greedy robber barons and proto-fascist nativists and supremacist protestant moralists fully supported. That the GOP welcomed these people should tell you how "radical" the party truly was and how doomed any left wing movement in that party would inevitably become when their opponents had a vastly larger pool of resources to drown them out.
But sh*t, enough about that!

Anyway, even with all of the obvious and very real wrongs about economic nationalism that was promoted by Republicanism, it is an extreme historical dishonesty for many libertarians to try to tie it as more of a cause of the American Civil War than it actually was. After all, when the administration of John Q Adams pushed the "Tariff of Abominations" there were very few Southern politicians crying out for secession. Crippling tariffs, contrary to what many think, were not something that the American public highly approved of at the time. Congress had actually signed in some pretty historically low tariffs at the time and the trend didn't seem like it was suddenly going to reverse because a party with a mainly economically nationalist agenda was elected. The Morrill Tariff was as steep as it was and was passed with as much approval as it was mostly because there weren't enough Southern legislators to protest. This arguably helped leave the entire tariff debate squarely in the hands of protectionists until about the time of Grover Cleveland. Especially when the right to hold slaves was stated as a reason for seceded IN THE BLOODY CONSTITUTION OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA.

But enough for now. I got to get ready for work.

I'm imagining we agree on very little (except our understanding of early political history, apparently!), especially fiscally, but I just want to say that I LOVE to read your posts.

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