The Corporate Roots of the Republican Party -- The Original Astroturf People

[steven johnson]

Abraham Lincoln was one of the most prominent railroad lawyers in Ilinois in the 1800's. The Illinois Central Railroad was one of the largest corporations in the world and formed the basis for Lincoln's political springboard. Northern bankers, industrialists, and railroad barons supported Lindoln because he was a prominent patronage politician in the Illinois state legislature who supported their interests.

Lincoln was going to leave slavery alone when he entered office. He said abolishing slavery was unconstitutional and proposed a measure in the Seanate to forbid the federal government from ever interfering with Southern slavery.

The Republican party was coalesced from splinter parties under the platform of the nonexpansion of slavery, a strong central government, high tariffs, federally funded internal improvements, and other measures repugnant to Southerners.


During the war Lincoln unconstitutionally acted in a number of ways: conducting a war without the consent of Congress; suspending habeas corpus; conscripting railroads and censoring telegraph lines; imprisoning without trial some 30,000 northern citizens for merely voicing opposition to the war; deporting a member of Congress, Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio, for opposing Lincoln’s income tax proposal at a Democratic Party political rally; shutting down hundreds of Northern newspapers and imprisoning their editors for questioning his war policies; ordering federal troops to intimidate voters into voting Republican; and intentionally waging war against civilians.

Lincoln’s main objective was always protectionism for Northern manufacturers; buying votes with cheap federal land sales; and the purchase of even more votes and campaign contributions through a massive spoils system created by government subsidies to the railroad industry.

Lincoln's Economic Legacy

The financial powers behind the Republican Party in 1860 were the Northern railroad barons, Northern manufacturers who wanted protectionist tariffs to protect them from competition, and Northern bankers and investors like Jay Cooke who wanted to use their political connections to make a killing financing a transcontinental railroad (among other schemes, such as central banking). They decided at the Chicago Republican National Convention of 1860 that Abraham Lincoln was the perfect political front man for their corrupt, mercantilist agenda.

Lincoln’s "internal improvements" fiasco in Illinois promised to build "a railroad from Galena in the extreme northwestern part of the state." Above St. Louis, in Alton, "three roads were to radiate"; "There was also a road to run from Quincy . . . through Springfield"; another one "from Warsaw . . . to Peoria"; and yet another "from Pekin . . . to Bloomington" (Starr, pp. 25–26). The first road mentioned was to become the Illinois Central, which would later employ Lincoln for more than a decade as one its top lawyers.

By 1860 the Illinois Central Railroad was one of the largest corporations in the world. In a company history, J. G. Drennan noted that "Mr. Lincoln was continuously one of the attorneys for the Illinois Central Railroad Company from its organization until he was elected President" (Starr, p. 58). He was called on by the company’s general counsel to litigate dozens of cases. He was such a railroad industry "insider" that he often rode in private cars and carried a free railroad pass, courtesy of the Illinois Central.

By ignoring this true history of how a modestly successful trial lawyer from Illinois came to be the nominee of the moneyed elite that ran the Republican Party in 1860, America’s court historians have railroaded the public into believing a fairy tale version of their own history. The popular notion that the Republican Party’s early leaders were Selfless Humanitarians is as big a lie as has ever been told.
Why the Republican Party Elected Lincoln

[The Magistrate]

1. Neo-Confederate Swill, Sir

"You're not even wrong...."

[steven johnson]

3. Lincoln hagiography is as thin as Reagan's

The USA Today had an article at Lincoln's 200th anniversary discussing Lincoln's 'complicated' personality.

This new Lincoln is more nuanced and complex than the one to whom the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in 1922 and whom Americans have encountered in school, on television and at the movies.
Lincoln the dictator: Did he abuse his wartime powers?
Southerners weren't the only ones who viewed Lincoln as a tyrant. He cracked down on the press, proclaimed a trade and military blockade of the Confederacy, spent without congressional authorization and summarily imprisoned thousands of suspected Confederate sympathizers. Union interrogators even employed an early form of waterboarding, trying to get suspects to talk by forcing their heads underwater.
As a result, some critics see "a straight line from Abraham Lincoln to John Ashcroft," Mark Neely, a Penn State historian, said at a recent Lincoln conference at Columbia University. Ashcroft was the Bush administration's attorney general when the White House approved holding foreign terror suspects without charges.


200 years later, a more complex view of Lincoln

[The Magistrate]

4. Not Interested In Devoting My Saturday To Educating You, Sir

Nothing at that link is new, despite the NEW!!! on the package, and my tolerance for the sort of Neo-Confederate tripe you opened with is at an all-time low....

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there always is a difference."

[steven johnson]

6. You would do well to read 'Honor's Voice"

'Honor's Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln ' is a revealing look at the transformation of Abraham Lincoln from a bipolar, baudy, anti-religious illegitimate son of Nancy Hanks to Saint Lincoln on Mt Rushmore.

"Not Interested In Devoting My Saturday To Educating You, Sir" -- I would guess that is where we differ. I have more belief in education than you do.

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/05/wilson.htm

http://tppserver.mit.edu/esd801/readings/TrueLincoln.pdf.

[wilt the stilt]

2. LONG LIVE SLAVERY

THIS GUY IS A WHACK JOB

[bemildred]

5. Astroturf is as old as the Republic, older really, not a corporate invention.

Not that I want to defend corporations.

And Lincoln did not need permission from Congress to put down a domestic rebellion, it was his plain Constitutional duty to do exactly that. The Confederates hate him because he kicked their asses, and they would think well of him only if he had lost.