GDG- Abe Lincoln - pro-secessionist????

[Margaret D. Blough]

Greg,

Yes, it is legitimate, but it does not contradict Lincoln's position on secession.  It is from the  then Congressman Lincoln's speech on the Mexican War to the House of Representatives.  He is discussing how to determine the boundary between Texas and Mexico since, with Texas's admission to the Union, that boundary became part of the boundary between the United States and Mexico. It's interesting that, whoever initially selected the quote, omitted the sentence immediately preceding the quote. That sentence is, "The extent of our territory in that region depended, not on any  treaty-fixed boundary, (for no treaty had attempted it,) but on revolution."  (Emphasis in the original). The right of revolution of oppressed people is a natural right, accepted by the Founding Fathers and by Lincoln, and not one granted by legislation or constitution.  The corollary is that nations have the right of self-defense and are not obligated to commit suicide at the first resistance.  The Founding Fa
thers, while they hoped for a peaceful departure, realized that UK would and could resist violently. I have yet to hear any defender of secession point to a single act on the part of the government of the United States (of which the slave states' senators, representatives, and some very supportive presidents through Buchanan) that would qualify as oppression  The so-called right of secession is claimed as a constitutional right to which the national government has no legal right to oppose.  

Any defender of secession relying on that quote would have to excoriate the Confederacy for its attempt to regain control of the northwest counties of Virginia and its brutal suppression of the Unionist uprising in East Tennessee.

Regards,

Margaret
-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: Biggsk at aol.com 

> Esteemed GDG Member Contributes: 
> 
> 
> Folks, 
> 
> A friend of mine sent me this tidbit today and I wanted to share it with 
> this list. This certainly flies in the face of what Lincoln stated some years 
> later on. This was published in the Nashville Tennessean newspaper in 1981. 
> 
> >>>"Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the 
> right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that 
> suites them better. This is a most valuable and most sacred right - a right 
> which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined 
> to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to 
> exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can may revolutionize and make 
> their own of so many of the territory as they inhabit." 
> 
> Abraham Lincoln 
> January 12, 1848.>>>>> 
> 
> Greg Biggs 
> 
> 
> 
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