Would Abraham Lincoln be classified as a Liberal or Conservative today?

[Toots]

When the Republican Party first formed what were it's goals and aspirations and how did Lincoln fit into that scheme of things. I know slavery was top on it's list but is there anything left in the Republican Party of today that was present in 1860? I guess what I am asking is what is the core value of the Republican Party and has it changed completely?

[lisby]

1. He would be lambasted as a raging liberal

by Hannity, O'Liely, Coulter, and the whole wrteched lot.

:eyes:

Lisby

[ashling]

2. The Rebublican revolution was

Abraham Lincoln spinning in his grave.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

3. Ultraconservative.

By modern standards, he was racist, mysogynistic, anti-abortion and anti gay rights; I'm not an expert on economic history but I'm fairly sure he'd have been horrified by ideas like social security and medical insurance.

By the standards of his own time he was arguably a liberal, but by today's he - and everyone else in politics at the time - was far, far right-wing.

[treestar]

6. So the whole world has moved left in 150 years

And that may be progress. But people like Lincoln put the engine behind that progress.

He had to deal with a different set of circumstances and should never be labled racist - he didn't live in the 21st century. By the terms he lived under, he was far less a racist than most of today's left.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

7. Besides, I think he would've liked FDR's economic ideas and applied them

for the Reconstruction. AND the economic integration of the just-freed slaves.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

9. But the question asked about "today".

Yes, Lincoln may well have been very much on the left by the standards of *his* day, and it's at least arguable that modern liberalism can be traced back to him, but by *today's* standards, which the OP was asking about, he was far-right.

The fact that he lived in a time where he couldn't be expected to know better is excellent grounds for excusing or forgiving his racism etc but not, I think, for denying it.

[treestar]

4. Definitely be treated as an extremist liberal

The Chimps and Kool-Aid drinkers of that time defended slavery. Just the very idea of slavery being wrong would have put Lincoln with those who now might say war in Iraq in wrong.

[Bluerthanblue]

11. he did claim that the Mexican American war was wrong- imperialist

and something that should not happen-

And that cost him his seat in congress.

He wasn't afraid to challenge the 'power' of the presidency- and said only Congress should have the power to declare war-

silly notion- :crazy:

[Selatius]

13. He was not in favor of abolishing slavery until after the war started, to be accurate.

He simply wanted to contain it and prevent it from spreading to territories. He was never in a position to say that the South should rid itself of slavery, and he never pushed that point. He only took the step of signing the Emancipation Proclamation as a necessity of economic war against the rebelling South. By signing the Proclamation, he helped to ensure the South could not rely on slave labor dependably during the course of the war. He was mainly concerned with preserving the Union.

If he couldn't keep the Union together without slavery, then he would rather have a Union with slavery for the sake of unity and peace, but it didn't turn out that way because the South left anyway, and they fired the first shot at Ft. Sumter.

[Katzenjammer]

28. He was also able not to take a position on slavery because of the structural limits

to slavery built into the Missouri Compromise. Slavery was on its way out, and the slaveowning elites knew that, whence their desire to break away.

[wisteria]

5. He would be a Democrat- no doubt. n/t

[PassingFair]

8. P-R-O-G-R-E-S-S-I-V-E

This is a VERY good essay if anyone is interested in the HUMANITY of
Abraham Lincoln (or as Wayne Campbell says, Babe-raham Lincoln).


http://www.virginia.edu/uvanewsmakers/newsmakers/miller_william.html


"If slavery isn't wrong, NOTHING is wrong."




snip>"In a society of hunters, Lincoln did not hunt. Where many males shot rifles, Lincoln did not shoot. Among fisherman, Lincoln did not fish. Among many who were cruel to animals, Lincoln was kind. Surrounded by farmers, Lincoln fled from farmers as fast as his long legs would take him. With a father who was a carpenter, Lincoln did not take up carpentry. In a frontier village preoccupied with physical tasks, Lincoln resisted manual labor. In a world in which men and some women smoked and chewed, Lincoln never used tobacco. In a rough, profane world, Lincoln did not swear. In a social world in which fighting was a regular male activity, Lincoln, though very strong and he could lick you if you did fight, was a peace maker. In a hard drinking society, Lincoln did not drink."

When a temperance movement, spawned by the same evangelical protestant movement that spawned the anti-slavery movement, swept across the country and Lincoln is asked to speak, he does not join in their condemnation of drinking or do it the way they do.

"In an environment soaked with hostility toward Indians, Lincoln resisted it. In a time and place in which the great mass of common men in the west supported Andrew Jackson, Lincoln supported Henry Clay. Surrounded by Democrats, Lincoln became a Whig. In a political party with a strong nativist undercurrent--a period of spreading anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant notions, Lincoln rejected that prejudice. In a southern flavored setting soft on slavery, Lincoln opposed it--"I have always been opposed to slavery. I cannot remember anytime that I wasn't. If slavery isn't wrong, nothing is wrong," said Lincoln.

[Bluerthanblue]

10. check out his political career before presidency- I believe he'd

be an outspoken bleeding heart liberal.

He was willing to risk his 'political career' rather than compromise his gut beliefs- (the Mexican American War)- Which he vehemently opposed And refered to it as:

"a war unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President of the United States".

The Republican party morphed during reconstruction- to a degree where Clay- (Lincoln's political idol) renounced the republican party for the party that is now know as "The Democratic Party".

It was a 'sea-change'- for politics- instead of 'whigs' and 'dems' it became 'repubs' and the new "democratic party".

at least in my view-

[sandnsea]

12. He was labeled a loon at the time

Here's a cartoon from the time, with the White House labeled "Lunatic Asylum".

You can put this in your browser, the cartoon is too big for a thread.

img.photobucket.com/albums/v450/sandnsea/aberight.jpg

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

23. Wow! Who made that, Rush Limbaugh's great-grandfather? -nt

[jody]

14. Abe was an atheist who believed in separation of the races. n/t

[mdmc]

15. The union is worthy of protection

Gov. is good. Lincon is a liberal

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

16. What I recall is that the Republicans of 1854

were for abolition and for free land for farmers, which Lincoln delivered in the Homestead Act. They also were for affordable, local education, which gave rise to the Land Grant colleges, my alma mater (U of Illinois) being one of them. The one way that Lincoln, at least, was like modern Republicans was the cozy relationship he had with the Big Business of the day, namely the railroads. (I say Lincoln, because I'm talking of his time in the state legislature, which was before the creation of the Republican Party) He was for giving the railroads free land for their right of way, much of which the railroads sold off at a profit to farmers. He also got through a system of internal improvements for Illinois, to be paid by the supposed increased revenues the roads and canals would bring. This was a complete fiasco, with few projects completed, others stopping after creating huge deficits (and profits for the companies involved). In that way, I'd say Lincoln was very much like the Republicans of today.

[Peace Patriot]

20. I didn't know all that about Lincoln and the railroads, but it sounds like he

was doing what any populist of that time would do--development. And the railroads were not quite yet the "robber barons" that they became a bit later in the century. He possibly did it also for the sake of the jobs that it generated--as a public works project. Almost everything else that Lincoln did seems to have been from a populist--workers, family farmers, "the little guy"--perspective, although I just googled on this, and found that Lincoln was responsible for big giveaways of land to the railroads in the Pacific Northwest, which has led to checkerboard clear-cutting of national forests by the spawn of the railroad barons--the big timber companies. However, the Pacific northwest was a truly remote area in those days, with immense uncut virgin forests, and it probably seemed good national policy to make land grants to enterprising businesses; and environmentalism was not a word in those days. (Only the Indians knew of the importance and delicacy of forest ecosystems and their creatures.) Making land grants to American businessmen is a far cry from selling your country to Saudi Arabia and China, as the Bushites have done. Another thought: A lot of what was going on between the north and the south, in the civil war era, had to do with northern manufacturing vs. southern agriculture. The war would put Lincoln on the side of northern manufacturing, for the war effort if for nothing else. And I can't think of a single president of this country who hasn't been pro-business to some extent--with various degrees of mitigation in government regulation, labor laws, control of monopolies, etc. Just because he got tangled up, early in his career, in a public works project that went awry due to big business shenanigans, or acted to develop US resources, doesn't make him a Republican (current era). I mean, look at Boston and the "Big Dig"! FDR and all the war industries that became the global corporate predators of our era. And Clinton and NAFTA. All Democratic "big business" projects.

Would Lincoln have tolerated a Halliburton? An Enron? An Exxon-Mobile? A Maxxam? A Diebold/ES&S? I think he would be appalled at these monstrous and anti-democratic entities. And the USA in debt to the tune of $10 TRILLION, to foreign nations? Lincoln and all generations of previous Americans must be rolling over in their graves! Enterprise is one thing--even including "robber barons." But treason and fascism are quite another.

--------------------------------

Lincoln and the Suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus.....

"Suspension during the Civil War and Reconstruction

"Habeas corpus was suspended on April 27, 1861, during the American Civil War by President Lincoln in Maryland and parts of midwestern states, including southern Indiana. He did so in response to riots, local militia actions, and the threat that the border slave state of Maryland would secede from the Union, leaving the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., surrounded by hostile territory. He was also motivated by requests by generals to set up military courts to rein in "Copperheads" or Peace Democrats, and those in the Union who supported the Confederate cause. His action was challenged in court and overturned by the U.S. Circuit Court in Maryland (led by Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney) in Ex Parte Merryman, 17 F. Cas. 144 (C.C.D. Md. 1861). Lincoln ignored Taney's order. In the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis also suspended habeas corpus and imposed martial law. This was in part to maintain order and spur industrial growth in the South to compensate for the economic loss inflicted by its secession.

"In 1864, Lambdin P. Milligan and four others were accused of planning to steal Union weapons and invade Union prisoner-of-war camps and were sentenced to hang by a military court. However, their execution was not set until May 1865, so they were able to argue the case after the Civil War. In Ex Parte Milligan 71 U.S. 2 1866 the Supreme Court of the United States decided that the suspension of the writ did not empower the President to try and convict citizens before military tribunals. The trial of civilians by military tribunals is allowed only if civilian courts are closed. This was one of the key Supreme Court Cases of the American Civil War that dealt with wartime civil liberties and martial law."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus

--------------------------------------

This is an edit to my remarks above about the Bushites and the Suspension of the Right of Habeas Corpus--that they have no understanding of, or respect for, the rule of law.

The US is not at the beginning of a civil war with Washington DC surrounded by hostile armies! --to defend Lincoln in suspending this right. If Lincoln had NOT suspended habeas corpus and had permitted Maryland, a slave state, to join the forces against the US, we might not have a country now. Certainly slavery might have lasted another 50 to 60 years, greatly retarding the progress of black civil rights, and/or, would have ended in a big and bloody slave revolt. The country was truly in a state of emergency--not a fake one, such as Bush has created.

Bush's arbitrary designation of certain persons as "enemy combatants," thus depriving them of Prisoner of War status and human rights under the Geneva Conventions, and his detaining them, some as much as 4 years, without any kind hearing, let alone a real trial, is far different from what Lincoln did in order to hold the union together. Bush had no excuse--no such emergency existed. And even if you grant something of an emergency just after 9/11, what is the emergency now? Many of the US "enemy combatants" whose governments have negotiated their release have turned out to be innocent bystanders. Yet many REMAIN in prison, without a hearing, without a trial, without a lawyer, and with no human rights status--four years later. This is unconscionable! And what of the tortured innocents at Abu Ghraib? And what of the hundreds of thousands of slaughtered innocents in Iraq? These are heinous and entirely UNNECESSARY crimes. Lincoln was acting to preserve the union. The US has never, at any time during Bush's term, been under any threat of destruction or dissolution of our country, and the greatest threats to our country have been caused by the Bush regime's gross negligence, unjust military action, lawlessness, greed, and stupidity born of ideological extremism. Abe Lincoln would not recognize this as Republicanism, or "conservatism," or Americanism. He would think our country had gone mad.

[Peace Patriot]

17. "Government of the people, by the people, for the people"--that's Lincoln.

"Government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich."--that's the modern Republican Party.

It's strayed 180 from Lincoln.

The Roves and Limbaughs of this disgusting Junta would mock his tall stature, they would mock his ugly long face, they would mock his odd clothes, they would heap abuse on him after he lost his son, they would feign hysteria to satirize his mourning wife, they would falsely accuse him of fathering black babies, they would gleefully jump in with war profiteers to cheat soldiers of food and equipment, and they would cheer when he was shot and turn John Wilkes Booth into a hero. They are scum, in service to global corporate predators, and a man like Lincoln would deeply threaten their venal, lying, chickenhawk souls. They would totally hate him, as they hate everything about this revolutionary country, including our Constitution and our profoundly progressive ideals.

Also, I think the categories "liberal" and "conservative" don't translate very well. Our "conservatives" today are fascists. Was Lincoln a fascist? Certainly not. He may have had some old-fashioned views, but he was living in 1860, for godssakes--and he was a man in transition, willing to learn and change. His ending of the slave trade was one of the most important premises of our modern era. It defined who we are as a nation. It doesn't matter that it happened in war, and for various reasons. The American Revolution PARTLY happened because colonial landowners and the rich wanted more of the profits (vs. Great Britain). But look what Thomas Jefferson and James Madison turned it into! The gold standard of human freedom of that time! Similarly, Abe Lincoln set us on our present course--to full citizenship for black Americans, one of our finest achievements as a people. The work isn't finished yet, obviously. We still have the legacy of slavery--in prejudice and black poverty. But we're a hell of a long way from 1965, I can tell you, when I had to argue with the owner of a laundromat in Alabama about mixing white peoples' and "colored" peoples' clothes together in her machine, and when only about 10% of black citizens were permitted to vote, and only then if they could pay a poll tax. Yeah, Bush and his creepy Republicans have set us back. Lincoln, if he were alive today, would be mortified by them. He wouldn't be in the same party with them. And it is because of Lincoln, and all that he set in motion, that we know what needs to be done next, to correct Bush fascism.

Opposed to these fascists who are now running things, we have "liberals," the MAJORITY, who still believe in the Constitution, the rule of laws not men, and human liberty and human rights. The American Revolution was an expression of LIBERALISM. Those who are opposed to liberalism are opposed to the American Revolution, and everything this country stands for. They recently suspended the right of habeas corpus--one of the chief rights at issue in the Revolutionary War. These ignorant sods and greedbags don't even seem to know what the American Revolution was about! They are a small faction of monarchists--Tories--allied with monstrous international corporations and war profiteers, who sneer at "liberalism." The Bushites. And they hardly resemble true conservatism, which has always held reverence for the Constitution and the rule of law, and for CONSERVING things--including the environment and poor peoples' savings. You think the looting of the S&L's under Reagan was "conservatism"? It was radical fascism. Piracy! You think polluting air and water are "conservative"? These are acts of criminals and psychopaths, who have no belief in the common good or the common will.

So I'm saying that the so-called "conservatives" of today don't belong here. They do not support our form of government. They are traitors--who take their orders from the King of Saudi Arabia and international consortiums. They are extreme radical fascists--and those who have gone along with them for the ride, the merely greedy, need to be drummed out of politics.

Lincoln would be shocked. He would most certainly align himself with liberals and progressives, if he were alive today. He would applaud our achievements, and descry the miserable state into which our government has fallen, and would no doubt be leading the charge to impeach it.

[C_eh_N_eh_D_eh]

18. Like most sensible people,

he'd probably resent being classified as either.

[Minnesota_Lib]

19. Lincoln on labor.....

"Labor is prior to, and independent of capital. Capital is only the
fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first
existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher
consideration." ---Abraham Lincoln

"It was easy to understand Lincoln's appeal to social radicals, said Ghent, for he held very advanced views of the rights of labor. As early as 1847 he had written, "To secure to each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government," which was remarkable for a prarie lawyer of that time. Speaking in New England in 1860, he praised the right to strike, as then being exercised by the shoemakers of Lynn. His clear assertion of the labor theory of value in the 1861 message — "Labor is prior to, and . . . superior to capital" — and his answers to the addresses of workingmen abroad and at home gave a color of Marxism to his thinking. He was, surely, the best friend labor ever had in the White House." --Historian Merrill Peterson

[Peace Patriot]

21. There's one to throw in the Bushites' faces....

"To secure to each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government"--Abe Lincoln, founder of the Republican Party

What do THEY know of "good government"? To Bushite Republicans, government is just something that patsies pay taxes to, that they can royally rip off.

[NashVegas]

30. Lincoln's Just Impossible to Pin Down

Take that quote about labor and try to apply it to slavery, which he claimed to be ambivalent about.

The only thing (I think) we can safely say about him is: he had strong convictions and was willing to compromise on at least some of them.

[Jennicut]

22. I watched a History Channel show about the presidents not too long ago

and Lincoln came to dislike slavery immensely after fighting against the South. He became more of a progressive because of all he went through and saw during the war. Many historians believe that if he carrying out his second term instead of Andrew Johnson taking over than the Reconstruction would have been on a much better track. Johnson was racist but also hated the South and opposed any real efforts to help the South get back on its feet and help the former slaves. Lincoln was way ahead of his time. He would be considered progressive today.

[sandnsea]

26. Well that's just wrong

Lincoln put saving the Union ahead of ending slavery. It wasn't because he didn't find anything wrong with slavery, as early as 1854 he said, "I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself".

Rather, he felt the country had to survive, first and foremost, as was stated in his 1862 letter to Horace Greeley, which ended with "I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free."

http://www.civilwarhome.com/lincolngreeley.htm

In 1856 he joined the Republican Party which was against the expansion of slavery into new territories. Seems pretty stupid to join a Party that campaigns against slavery if you don't care one way or the other.

He may not have believed all races were equal, but he did not believe anyone should be enslaved. He hoped to fight it through the law, rather than sending the nation into a horrific war.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

27. He might disapprove of today's Republicans, but he'd fight to the death against today's Democrats.

He - like everyone else in his day - would regard abortion rights, women's rights, gay rights, racial equality, etc as very bad things indeed; he'd almost certainly be closer to the Republicans than the Democrats on social security too. He might well disapprove of the moral character of today's Republicans, but he'd definately side with them and against us on the issues.

By the standards of his day, he was a liberal, but not by today's, and we shouldn't delude ourselves that he wouldn't despise us if he were to travel forwards in time.

[sandnsea]

32. See #12

Click that link and read the blurbs that were part of the attack on Lincoln. He may well have been more progressive than anybody today has given him credit for. In any event, you can't judge the past by today's standards as new data informs thought. We may never have had abortion if people had known the fetus developed as early as it does, that's new data that has changed people's thought on the subject. As gay people have spoken out about their experience, that new data has changed people's thought. You can't expect someone who didn't have the same information that is available today to come to the same progressive conclusions.

You also are probably way off on social security, Lincoln is the one who opposed taxing labor, he was a champion of workers. He established the Dept of Ag and passed the Homestead Act. He established a land grant act that gave land to states for colleges. How can you think he wouldn't have supported social security?

Lincoln would have been a Democrat today, a pragmatic get-things-done Democrat, but a Democrat all the same and quite proud of it.

[lynne]

24. 600,000 + men died on his watch doing his bidding -

- sounds like a republican to me.

[Paladin]

29. Yeah, Like The Civil War Was All Lincoln's Fault

n/t

[Beelzebud]

25. In his day he was a liberal. There were conservative republicans back then, and he wasn't one.

[Spider Jerusalem]

31. He'd probably be a conservative.

He was a railroad corporation lawyer, remember; the famously attributed quote about the troubling increase of corporate power is something he never said and never would have. He didn't approve of slavery, but he wasn't a fierce abolitionist, either; for him the issue was the South's secession and preservation of the Union, and slavery was a secondary or even tertiary concern (the Emancipation Proclamation had no real force, and its only real purpose was to throw a spanner into Confederate negotiations for recognition by Britain and France). He'd probably wholeheartedly approve of the Patriot Act, since his government did similar (and from a civil liberties perspective, even worse) things during the Civil War, including jailing Northern newspaper editors who were sympathetic to either the South or the Democrats, deploying Federal troops to border states to make sure that elections came out the "right" way, suspension of habeas corpus, and so on.

[ComerPerro]

33. Conservative

he would be terrified of all the changes around him, and would be anxious to get back to the way things used to be, in simpler times.

Of course, time traveling 140 years will do that...