Why did Lincoln care so much about preserving the union?

TheYoungPretender

BELFAST said:
I think Lincoln's concern with preserving the Union was that, unless America became a powerful united country the great powers in Europe would see America as weak and sooner or later would invade America and make it part of their expanding empires.
With America back under European control Democracy and Republican government would be seen as a failed experiment.
The only solution Lincoln saw to this problem was to preserve the union and expand the power of the Federal government and make America a nation from sea to shining sea.
A nation of this size with a powerful central government would be able to defend it self and its republican government against the aggressive empire building nations in Europe.
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I'm afraid that this runs afoul of the fact that Lincoln wasn't always the biggest fan of Manifest Destiny or the power of the state outside of wartime. There's very little in Lincoln's writings to support the idea of him as Bismarck-of-North-America, as much as a the view of the conniving, power-hungry North trampling over the principled men of the South is entrenched in some quarters.
 
BELFAST

BELFAST

TheYoungPretender said:
I'm afraid that this runs afoul of the fact that Lincoln wasn't always the biggest fan of Manifest Destiny or the power of the state outside of wartime. There's very little in Lincoln's writings to support the idea of him as Bismarck-of-North-America, as much as a the view of the conniving, power-hungry North trampling over the principled men of the South is entrenched in some quarters.
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I never said that he was conniving, power-hungry. I said he had genuine concerns about America being over run by the European powers if it did not remain united and with powerful central government.
I did not compare him to Bismark.
 

usertron2020

Donor
Sheer lack of population dictates the Native American cannot engage the Whites for any length of time. At the Battle of the Little Big Horn it is estimated that the Souix, Cheyenne, and Arapaho braves lost as many men as the 7th Cavalry did, about 300 (mostly because the braves did not fight military style (1)). That's not even a pinprick to the USA. That's a horrific slaughter to the Natives on a scale of every battle in the US Civil War for those three tribes.:eek:

1) Uniquely, the Nez Perce tribe DID fight military style thanks to what they were taught by Lewis and Clark. Which explains why they were such a problem to the US military.
 
Clandango

Clandango

BELFAST said:
It is a shame that civil war was fought to free slaves and then the nation that freed them continued the genocide against the Indians.
Indians only become US citizens in 1924.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Citizenship_Act
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There had been issues about certain reservations at first being treated with some sovereignty so perhaps some thought that forcing citizenship on certain tribes would get a bad reaction. It is good that they finally did give blanket citizenship though. American culture and history would have been much deprived if the reconciliation hadn't happened. As for the genocide claim, I do not think that was entirely true. I will however agree to claims that they may have been partial ethnic cleansing by removing tribes from land that the federal government or settlers may have wanted.
 
BELFAST

BELFAST

Clandango said:
There had been issues about certain reservations at first being treated with some sovereignty so perhaps some thought that forcing citizenship on certain tribes would get a bad reaction. It is good that they finally did give blanket citizenship though. American culture and history would have been much deprived if the reconciliation hadn't happened. As for the genocide claim, I do not think that was entirely true. I will however agree to claims that they may have been partial ethnic cleansing by removing tribes from land that the federal government or settlers may have wanted.
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Genocide

Lemkin defined genocide as follows: "Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups." The preamble to the CPPCG states that instances of genocide have taken place throughout history,[4] but it was not until Raphael Lemkin coined the term and the prosecution of perpetrators of the Holocaust at the Nuremberg trials that the United Nations agreed to the CPPCG which defined the crime of genocide under international law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide
 
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Dave Howery

BELFAST said:
Genocide

Lemkin defined genocide as follows: "Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups." The preamble to the CPPCG states that instances of genocide have taken place throughout history,[4] but it was not until Raphael Lemkin coined the term and the prosecution of perpetrators of the Holocaust at the Nuremberg trials that the United Nations agreed to the CPPCG which defined the crime of genocide under international law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide
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a lot of that does apply to the American treatment of NAs... except for the 'coordinated plan' part. US policy towards the natives was varied and conflicting. Some wanted them confined to reservations and generally ignored, some wanted to convert them completely to the American way of life and make them all proper citizens, some wanted them all dead, some wanted to preserve their cultures intact, some wanted to convert them all to Christianity... etc, etc. There were people in the BIA who treated them fairly, and others who were absolutely corrupt and managed to steal a lot of the funds set aside to feed them. In the end, whether it was technically genocide or not, the end results were about the same...
 

Johnrankins

Dave Howery said:
a lot of that does apply to the American treatment of NAs... except for the 'coordinated plan' part. US policy towards the natives was varied and conflicting. Some wanted them confined to reservations and generally ignored, some wanted to convert them completely to the American way of life and make them all proper citizens, some wanted them all dead, some wanted to preserve their cultures intact, some wanted to convert them all to Christianity... etc, etc. There were people in the BIA who treated them fairly, and others who were absolutely corrupt and managed to steal a lot of the funds set aside to feed them. In the end, whether it was technically genocide or not, the end results were about the same...
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Partly as a result of a weak central government with no one really in charge of it all.
 

usertron2020

Donor
BELFAST said:
Genocide

Lemkin defined genocide as follows: "Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups." The preamble to the CPPCG states that instances of genocide have taken place throughout history,[4] but it was not until Raphael Lemkin coined the term and the prosecution of perpetrators of the Holocaust at the Nuremberg trials that the United Nations agreed to the CPPCG which defined the crime of genocide under international law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide
Click to expand...

I'm with you.:( We tend to have a skewed definition of what constitutes "genocide" thanks to Hitler's unprecedented Industrial Scale genocide, where Nazis and their minions went to work each day to kill their quota of men, women, and children. But in the end, the result is the same.
 
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