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Subject:   Why The British Had to Kill Abraham Lincoln: part 3
Status: RO

WHY THE BRITISH HAD TO KILL ABRAHAM LINCOLN Part III

by Rochelle Ascher

Richard Freeman, in his article ``The Economic Mobilization 
that Saved the Union, 1861-1865'' ({New Solidarity,} March 16, 
1984), described the measures Lincoln took, in the footsteps 
of Alexander Hamilton, to create a sound national banking system 
out of this anarchy. His steps were embodied in the Banking 
and Currency Acts of 1862, 1863, and 1864:
{Federal Supervision:} As a provision of the Banking Act of 
1863, commercial banks could be incorporated under federal charter, 
instead of the prevailing system of banks being incorporated 
under state charter. This meant the commercial banks would have 
to accept federal supervision exclusively. When many state banks 
refused to incorporate under federal charter, the Treasury Department 
under Lincoln's orders, announced a 10 percent tax on all bank 
notes issued by state banks. This forced the Associated Banks 
to join the national banking system, or pay a 10 percent tax 
on every transaction conducted outside the system. This made 
the issue of state bank notes so prohibitive in cost, and put 
these banks at such a disadvantage relative to federally chartered 
banks, that the number of state banks fell from 1,466 to 297, 
and the number of federally chartered banks rose to 1,634. Furthermore, 
the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency was established 
so that no national banking association could start business 
without his certification of authorization.
{Reserve Requirements and Capitalization:} Regulations were 
imposed covering minimum capitalization, reserve requirements, 
the definition of bad debts, reports on financial condition 
and identity of ownership, and other elements of safety to depositors. 
Under the Banking Act of 1863, a minimum capitalization of $5,000 
was fixed for institutions in communities with less than 6,000 
population; and of $100,000 for larger cities. Half the authorized 
capital had to be paid in before the bank could open its doors. 
Every bank director had to be an American citizen, and three-quarters 
of a bank's directors had to be residents of the state in which 
the bank did business.
Each bank was limited in the interest rate it could charge by 
the strictures of its state's usury laws; or, if none were in 
effect, then to 7 percent. If it were caught exceeding this 
limitation, it would forfeit the loan in question and would 
have to refund to the victimized borrower twice what he had 
paid in interest. Banks could not hold real estate for more 
than five years, with the exception of bank buildings.
{Currency and the Greenback:} There were to be two kinds of 
legal money: greenbacks and bank-issued notes.
{Bank-issued notes:} Banks could only issue notes against U.S. 
government bonds and notes could be issued up to only 90 percent 
of the value of the bonds. This meant that notes of banks, although 
individual in their issue, were secured uniformly against a 
measure of value:  U.S. government bonds. A national bank had 
to deposit with the Treasury bonds amounting to at least one-third 
of its capital. It would receive in return government-printed 
notes, which it could circulate as money. Thus, the banks {would 
have to lend the government} substantial sums for the war effort 
to qualify for federal charters, and a sound currency would 
be circulated to the public for an expanding economy.
In addition to the bond requirements, specie (gold) and lawful 
money reserves had to equal at least 15 percent of deposits 
and note issues for banks in most cities, and at least 25 percent 
of deposits and note issues for banks in the largest cities, 
which were called reserve cities. This meant that banks could 
not just issue bonds or take deposits freely, but had to secure 
them with reserves of 15 to 25 percent, guaranteeing the safety 
of the banking system.
{Greenbacks:} Under the Banking and Currency Acts of 1862 and 
1863, a national currency, supplemental to the private bank 
note issues, was created by Lincoln, called the ``greenback.'' 
During the war, $450 million in greenbacks were issued. These 
were Treasury obligations and notes that circulated as common 
currency. As claims against the U.S. government, they could 
be used in all transactions.  At the time of issue, greenbacks 
constituted almost one-half of the amount of currency in circulation. 
By creating $450 million worth, Lincoln increased government 
spending by 300 percent!
This massive infusion of credit was needed to feed, house, and 
arm the Union Army, and build the industrial infrastructure 
that would lead the Union to victory. The greenbacks became 
doubly necessary when speculators such as J.P. Morgan acted 
to undercut the value of U.S. currency and refused to help market 
government debt. (During the war, Morgan sold such huge quantities 
of U.S. gold abroad, in an attempt to wreck the value of the 
U.S.  currency, that several newspapers openly attacked him 
as a British-affiliated traitor.)
The greenbacks were attacked as needless instruments of inflation 
by the domestic and foreign enemies of the U.S. during the Civil 
War. This was ludicrous, especially since those who attacked 
the greenback, such as the House of Morgan, were the very people 
actively debauching the U.S. currency, (since interest payments 
on the greenbacks were still pegged to gold), and manipulating 
prices by 50-70 percent in an attempt to defeat the republic. 
The opponents of the greenback were really the opponents of 
the national banking system that Lincoln was in the process 
of building.
Lincoln went further. He set up a ``reserve requirement tree,'' 
in which smaller banks had to hold reserves in larger banks, 
and these larger banks had to hold reserves in still larger 
banks. By having the U.S. government regulate the nine or so 
largest banks which, through this process, held two-thirds of 
the national bank deposits, Lincoln hoped to regulate the national 
banking system. Had Lincoln lived, it is likely that he would 
have superseded this arrangement with the creation of a Third 
National Bank of the United States.
The legislation passed under Lincoln's direction between 1861 
and 1865, with the exception of that passed by the Washington 
administration of 1789-1795, was the most comprehensive package 
of laws emphasizing American System dirigistic economics ever 
to emerge from Congress.
In addition to national banking, Lincoln moved to implement 
the other key elements of the American System: a {protective 
tariff} and {internal improvements.}
In his last Annual Address to Congress, Lincoln reported on 
the status of the national banking system:  ``The national banking 
system is proving to be acceptable to capitalists and to the 
people. On the twenty-fifth day of November, 584 banks have 
been organized, a considerable number of which were conversions 
from State banks. Changes from State systems to the national 
system are rapidly taking place, and it is hoped that, very 
soon, there will be in the United States, no banks of issue 
not authorized by Congress, and no bank-note circulation not 
secured by the government. That the government and the people 
will derive great benefit from this change in the banking systems 
of the country can hardly be questioned. The national system 
will create a reliable and permanent influence in support of 
the national credit, and protect the people against losses in 
the use of paper money. Whether or not any further legislation 
is advisable for the suppression of State Bank issues, it will 
be for Congress to determine. It seems quite clear that the 
treasury cannot be satisfactorily conducted unless the government 
can exercise a restraining power over the bank-note circulation 
of the country.'' [Lincoln, {Collected Works,}]

Protectionism and Infrastructure

The lame-duck session of Congress, with the southerners gone, 
in early 1861 passed the Morrill Tariff, first introduced by 
Vermont Senator Lot M.  Morrill during the 1859-60 session. 
The bill restored the highest protective tariff to date (that 
of 1842), and from 1861 to the middle of 1864, new tariff bills, 
pushing rates even higher, were introduced and passed. Iron, 
tool manufacturing, and woolen goods, were the most protected 
items. At the end of the Civil War, the average rate on goods 
subject to duty stood at about 47 percent, compared with the 
18.8 percent average at the start of the war. The high rates 
stayed in effect for the next several decades, and in the 1870s, 
during the height of railroad construction, the tariff rate 
on British rails was so high that they were virtually shut out 
of the American market.
The internal improvements during Lincoln's administration were 
led by the railroads. In 1862, the U.S. Congress chartered and 
pledged grants of land and subsidies to two federal corporations: 
the Union Pacific (empowered to build west from Omaha, Nebraska 
to the eastern boundary of California), and the Central Pacific 
(empowered to build eastward from the Pacific Coast).
Even before his election to the presidency, Lincoln had received 
from Francis Spinner, whom he later appointed treasurer of the 
United States, volumes of surveys for the Pacific Railroad. 
It was Lincoln personally who designated Omaha and Sacramento 
as the two terminals of the road. At one point, he proposed 
three separate lines to the West Coast.
Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act July 1, 1862, authorizing 
huge government land grants to finance the construction. Two 
years later, a second bill doubled the land grants and sweetened 
the other terms. Altogether, 45 million acres of land were given 
away, and the government laid out some $60 million in cash, 
compared to only $4 million in private capital. At one point, 
when the project seemed dead for lack of funds, Lincoln arbitrarily 
redefined the Rocky Mountains as starting in their foothills, 
so that more money could be paid under formula to the builders. 
It was said at the time that ``Abraham's faith moves mountains.''
Lincoln also recommended three other railroad bills to Congress--with 
the specific idea in mind of the post-war development of the 
South. One called for building a railroad from Kentucky into 
east Tennessee. Lincoln called it a ``military measure,'' but 
also ``a valuable permanent improvement, worth its cost in all 
of the future.'' Congress refused. He then proposed the extension 
of the Pacific Railroad into the guerrilla-infested region of 
Missouri. When it looked like he would have problems with Congress, 
Lincoln bypassed the legislature and procured funding through 
the War Department.
His last railroad improvement bill, to improve rail communication 
into the capital, was also defeated by Congress.
As for the Pacific Railroad, both lines were finished to constitute 
one transcontinental line at Promontory Point, Utah in May 1869. 
In the next 24 years, four more such lines were to be completed. 
The Civil War railroad construction sped up the development 
of the West by 25-50 years.
In addition, in 1864, Congress chartered the Northern Pacific 
to run from the head of Lake Superior to Puget Sound. After 
Lincoln's assassination, Congress continued to finance massive 
railroad construction. In 1866, it chartered the Atlantic and 
Pacific Railroads to run along the 35th parallel (this later 
became part of the Santa Fe system); and in 1871, it chartered 
the Texas Pacific, later absorbed by the Southern Pacific.
Vast amounts of public funds (mostly federal government, but 
some state funds), were provided to the railroads--over $27 
million to the Union Pacific and $28 million to the Central 
Pacific. Between 1850 and 1871, over 159 million acres of land 
were given by the federal government to the railroad corporations.
The effect of this on the nation's future was astounding. In 
the second half of the nineteenth century, the railroads, along 
with the steel industry, were the science drivers of the American 
economy. The technology of railroad production involved pneumatic 
brakes, blasting through and grading tracks on inclines through 
mountains, the making of durable bridges to ford rivers, and 
the abundant use of different grades of iron and steel. The 
connection of the country by rail increased traveling speed 
two to three times, allowing rapid development of the West. 
Railroad mileage went from 45,000 miles in 1865 to 167,000 in 
1890. By 1900, the U.S.A. had over 193,000 miles, more than 
all of Europe combined. The number of patents issued rose from 
883 in 1850 to 14,169 in 1876.

Modernization of Agriculture

In 1862, Lincoln steered through Congress the Agricultural College 
Act, which gave every state establishing a public agricultural 
college, 30,000 acres of federal government land for each representative 
it had in Congress. Along with a classic academic curriculum, 
the agricultural colleges taught agronomy and the mechanical 
arts, and formed the basis for our current state college system.
In May of 1862, the Lincoln administration passed the Homestead 
Act. The act gave to heads of families or individuals 21 years 
of age or over, who were citizens or declarants, 160 acres of 
land. Final title could be entered after a five-year residence 
and the erection of an improvement on the land. A homesteader 
could buy his land before the five-year period for a knockdown 
price of $1.25 per acre. He could also buy an additional 160 
acres on the same terms. Between 1850 and 1871, the government 
gave away 134 million acres, with the states adding 49 million 
more.
Lincoln also saw to the creation of the Department of Agriculture, 
whose purpose, as he stated in his famous 1859 Wisconsin State 
Agricultural Society speech, was ``to make two blades of grass 
grow where one grew before.'' As a result, Lincoln revolutionized 
American agriculture. As a result of Lincoln's policies, wheat 
and corn production tripled in the three decades following the 
Civil War.
With such measures, and the passage of the Homestead Act opening 
up vast areas of the American West for settlement, and his Immigration 
Act, recruiting waves of new immigrants, Lincoln guaranteed 
development for decades to come.

Other Initiatives

Other Lincoln administration intiatives that were to change 
the face of America included:
The {Bureau of Mines:} By the time of his last Annual Address 
to Congress, on December 6, 1864, Lincoln was able to state: 
``Numerous discoveries of gold, silver and cinnabar mines have 
been added to the many heretofore known and the country occupied 
by the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains, and the subordinate 
ranges, now teems with enterprising labor, which is wildly remunerative. 
It is believed that the product of the mines of precious metals 
in that region, has, during the year, reached, if not exceeded, 
one hundred millions in value.'' [Lincoln, {Collected Works.}]
On the very evening of his assassination, April 14, 1865, Lincoln 
wrote to Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax, ``I have very 
large ideas of the mineral wealth of our nation. I believe it 
practically inexhaustible. I am going to encourage that in every 
possible way.''
The {telegraph}: In June of 1864, Lincoln stated to Congress:  
``I recommend to your favorable consideration the subject of 
an international telegraph across the Atlantic Ocean; and also 
of a telegraph between this capital and the national forts along 
the Atlantic seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico.'' [Lincoln, {Collected 
Works.}]
The act was approved and signed into law by Lincoln on June 
15, 1864, including Army appropriations which provided $275,000 
for construction, extension and operation of the telegraph. 
A second act, approved July 1, 1864 ``to facilitate telegraphic 
communications between the East and Western continents'' gave 
to a Perry M.  Collins of California the right to construct 
lines north to Canada, and authorized the Army and Navy to aid 
Collins's concern, the Russian and American Telegraph Company, 
chartered to construct a line from the Amir River in eastern 
Russia, across the Bering Sea to San Francisco.
The {Freedman's Bureau:} The legislation establishing the Freedman's 
Bureau was signed into law by Lincoln in March of 1865, shortly 
before his death. In 1866, Gen. Ulysses Grant recommended Union 
Gen. Oliver O.  Howard (the founder of Howard University in 
Washington, D.C.) to become its head.
With the end of the Civil War, 4 million black slaves were freed.  
At the same time that questions of economic policy toward the 
South were being debated, the care of freedmen, who were by 
and large destitute, was also being debated in the Congress. 
In March of 1865, Congress established the Bureau of Refugees, 
Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, designed to be an institution 
to guarantee the rights of the freedmen. After all, the Civil 
War had been fought not just to preserve the Union, but to free 
the slaves.
Although Howard was harassed by his enemies, many of them former 
Confederates, the bureau he headed laid the basis for the true 
liberty of the freedmen, setting up a system of universities 
and colleges which trained African-American scientists, doctors, 
and teachers. The bureau also helped enforce the rights of blacks 
and pro-Union southerners, making it an object of hatred by 
President Andrew Johnson, as well as the Ku Klux Klan and the 
southern Freemasons.
How well Howard succeeded can be seen in even these few statistics: 
In 1865, some 1,405 trained educators were teaching 90,778 children; 
by 1870, the Tenth Semiannual Report on Schools for Freedmen, 
in its ``Statistical Summary,'' reported that there were 4,239 
``schools of all kinds,'' 9,307 teachers, and 247,333 pupils. 
J.W.  Alvord, Howard's General Superintendent of Schools, reported 
total expenditures, including those of benevolent societies, 
to be about $1 million.
Behind the statistics lay Howard's optimistic view that education 
would guarantee for the freedmen ``both privileges and rights 
that we now have difficulty to guarantee.''
{Science: The National Academy of Sciences; U.S. Coastal Survey:} 
On March 3, 1863, Lincoln signed into law a bill incorporating 
the National Academy of Sciences, to ``investigate, examine, 
experiment and to report upon any subject of science or art.'' 
The first president of the academy chosen by Lincoln was Alexander 
Dallas Bache, the grandson of Benjamin Franklin.  Bache had 
assembled a tiny leadership of American scientists who jovially 
named themselves ``The Lazzaroni'' (Italian for ``beggars''). 
Bache was ``chief'' of this science and intelligence group, 
which worked for the single purpose of American System economic 
development together with the economists grouped around Henry 
Carey and the industrial leaders associated with the Pennsylvania 
Railroad. Bache chose the 50 incorporating founders of the academy 
for Lincoln--all of whom shared his approach. He built the first 
observatory in the United States, did work in terrestrial magnetism 
and meteorology, and worked on a government program to determine 
the cause of explosions in steam boilers.
Bache was also the head of the U.S. Coastal Survey, the largest 
federal scientific establishment in the United States, organized 
in 1843. During Lincoln's administration, he made the Coastal 
Survey the largest employer of physical scientists in the nation, 
with the largest budget ever allocated a scientific bureau connected 
with the government.
As chief science adviser to Lincoln, Bache organized the ``electromagnetic 
revolution'' and the ``second industrial revolution.'' He was 
the founder and architect of the U.S. public education system, 
traveling to Germany, where he lived and worked with Alexander 
von Humboldt and Carl Friedrich Gauss, and then returned to 
the United States to set up the Philadelphia public school system 
based on Humboldt and Gauss's approach.
A new Bureau of Navigation was organized by Lincoln in 1862. 
Bache, Joseph Henry, and Rear Admiral Charles
H.	Davis were appointed sole members of a Permanent Commission 
of the Navy Department, enjoined to advise the Navy on questions 
of ``science and art.'' Beyond advising the President and his 
administration, Bache's circle contributed significantly to 
the military victory of the Union through their research.
Bache's U.S. Coastal Survey mapped the entire national shoreline, 
and by teaching higher mathematics to Navy personnel, gave the 
Navy the ability to amaze, surprise, and depress the enemy.  
These were also the scientists who provided crucial backup to 
the inventor of the armored turret ship, John Ericson. The deployment 
of the ironclad {Monitor} in 1862 made all wooden ships, both 
Confederate and those supplied to the Confederacy by the British, 
obsolete.
The new national banking system, the war mobilization, and the 
American System legislation unleashed technological growth the 
likes of which the world had never seen.  Standardization and 
mass production were introduced for production of war materials, 
starting with uniforms and coats. This was the first time clothing 
had ever been produced outside of cottage industries. Steel 
production grew by leaps and bounds. Tolerance of machine tools 
increased from 0.1 inches to .001 inches over the next 30 years.
A Bureau of Labor report of 1886 said that in the previous 20 
years, productivity had increased 50-70 percent in agricultural 
implements, 80 percent in boots and shoes, 65 percent in carriages, 
40 percent in machines and machinery, and 50 percent in silk 
manufactures.
The U.S. population almost tripled between 1860 and 1902: from 
31 million to 92 million. Immigrants flocked into the country 
and and were welcomed. In fact, Carey had proposed to Lincoln 
the payment of $1,000 to every immigrant--man, woman, and child. 
The fertility rate of women of child-bearing age was more than 
double what it is today. Finally, the U.S.  shifted from a rural 
to an urban society. Philadelphia became the leading industrial 
city in the U.S.A.  and possibly in the world. Chicago was transformed 
from a small city into a major regional urban center in a few 
decades.

The British Push for Free Trade

There is no doubt that Lincoln's efforts represented the greatest 
accomplishment in U.S. and possibly human history, in a four-year 
period of time. On the other hand, the British-allied northern 
bankers and their congressional spokesmen forced several compromises, 
while the British government itself organized every possible 
opposition.
Frantic over the American System
financial policy, the British began a massive organizing drive 
in support of free trade, especially when their earlier plans 
for military intervention on behalf of the Confederacy were 
blocked by the Russian czar. John Stuart Mill and Chancellor 
of the Exchequer William Gladstone controlled the Cobden Clubs--Britain's 
worldwide agitators for free trade.  These clubs were heavily 
deployed into the free-trade wing of the Republican Party and 
the abolitionist movement.
There was speculation on Wall Street to depreciate the greenbacks--the 
problem being the compromise that Lincoln and Congress had been 
forced to make of linking interest payments on the greenbacks 
to specie.
Carey's associates fought back.  Elder and Wilkerson circulated 
pamphlets and circulars, produced for the government loan office, 
to educate the population and the world on the national banking 
system. A report by Elder written in 1863, titled {The Debt 
and Resources of the United States,} makes clear the position 
of Lincoln and his allies on the connection between slavery 
and free trade: ``... The very best and healthiest of all the 
causes of this prosperity is that one which has given us our 
work to do--the congressional legislation of 1860-1862 upon 
import duties aided by the high rate of foreign exchange. For 
more than a year, we have had the competing industry of Europe 
under a tolerable commercial blockade, and the policy which 
saves a nation's work for its own hands has had a demonstration 
of its wonder working power among us, which will not be lost 
when gold falls to par and peace puts in practice the wisdom 
that war has taught.... Someone may turn upon us with impatience 
and ask whether we mean to prove that war is a blessing? No, 
alas! War, pestilence and famine are a leash of evils, usually 
associated, but happily separated in our case, sparing us the 
most terrible, and so far modifying the fury of the leader of 
the train, and with further mitigation, {that for the first 
time it has broken up a wretched system of commercial policy, 
greatly more destructive to the industrial interests of the 
nation than all the usual waste of war. It has managed the two 
bloodhounds that always hunt in couples, slavery and free trade, 
slavery ever crying for free foreign trade and free trade meaning 
nothing but slave men.} Even a national debt may be lighter 
than a paralyzed industry and may indirectly give the strength 
to bear its burden, by protecting labor itself from foreign 
invasion and keeping it free to build up a nation's wealth.''

Coup d'Etat

Lincoln's assassination signaled a virtual coup d'etat within 
the Executive Branch. The British had succeeded in wiping out 
with a single bullet the greatest hope of the world.
Lincoln's successor, Andrew
Johnson, in his inaugural address, signaled a total reversal 
of Lincoln's economic policy. He actually called the present 
tariff a ``clearly recognized outrage.'' He concluded his address 
with the statement: ``Free trade with all the markets of the 
world is the true theory of government.''
Virtually every member of the Johnson cabinet was either an 
outright British agent or corrupted by British ideology. In 
late 1865, Hugh McCullough officially announced his intention 
of reversing the American System and all that Lincoln had fought 
for. McCullough had been appointed comptroller of the currency 
in 1863, and one month before the end of the Civil War, in March 
1865, had been named secretary of the treasury.
The Civil War, perhaps more than any other war in history, was 
a direct combat between the two fundamental opposing views of 
man and nature characterized by the great republican poet Friedrich 
Schiller: the republican ideas of Solon of Athens, and the slave-state 
policies of Lycurgus of Sparta. The republican system views 
man as created in the living image of God, while the oligarchic 
holds helotry (slavery) to be the natural order for most of 
the Earth's population.
The South was a feudal system par excellence. At the start of 
the Civil War, 90 percent of the nation's manufacturing was 
in the North, as well as two-thirds of its railroads. The South's 
biggest ``industry'' was {the breeding, buying, and selling 
of slaves,} representing $3 billion as compared to only $200 
million invested in other ``industry.'' Less than 10 percent 
of the southern population lived in towns or cities of more 
than 2,500 people. Unlike the ``melting pot'' of the North, 
only 3 percent of the South's population was born outside the 
U.S.A. (not counting the slaves). Of a population of only 9 
million in an area three times the size of France, 4 million 
were slaves.
Abraham Lincoln, more than any American leader before or since 
(with the exception of political prisoner Lyndon LaRouche) embodied 
from the highest standpoint the understanding of man made in 
the image of the living God. Lincoln's commitment to the American 
System of economics, and his freeing of 4 million slaves, are 
totally coherent. As Henry Carey pointed out again and again, 
there never was, and never would be, a system of British free 
trade that did not rest on human slavery--and no American System 
republic could exist were it based on human bondage.
In his {Letters to the Honorable Henry Wilson} on Reconstruction 
in 1867, Henry Carey made clear that the nation could not achieve 
political freedom without economic freedom. He wrote: ``British 
policy looks to the arrest of the circulation of the world by 
means of compelling all raw materials produced to pass through 
its little workshop. It is a monopoly system, and therefore 
it is that poverty, disease and famine, all of which unite for 
the production of slavery, are chronic diseases in every country 
wholly subjected to British influence.
``Therefore, too, has it been that British agents have always 
been in such close alliance with the slaveholding aristocracy 
of the South; and that, throughout the late war, British public 
opinion has been so nearly universally on the side of the men 
who have publicly proclaimed that slavery was to be regarded 
as the proper cornerstone of all free institutions.
``British free trade, industrial monopoly and human slavery 
travel together....
``The end in view is {trading despotism,} of all despotisms 
the most degrading to the unfortunate beings subjected to it. 
The name by which it is generally known is that of {British 
free trade}--a freedom that carries with it slavery in the various 
forms of war, poverty, famine, and pestilence, and for emancipation 
from which, as has so well been proved in Ireland, its unfortunate 
subjects can find but a single road--the one which terminates 
at the grave.''
In a later letter to Senator Wilson, Carey makes clear that 
it is {impossible} to be {both} anti-slavery and pro-free trade: 
``Slavery {did not} make the rebellion. British Free trade gave 
us sectionalism, and promoted the growth of slavery, and thus 
led to rebellion.  Had Mr. Clay been elected in 1844, all the 
horrors of the past few years would have been avoided. Why was 
he not?  Because free-trade stump orators of New York and Massachusetts, 
professing to be opposed to slavery, could not believe him radical 
enough to suit their purposes. They, therefore, gave us Messrs. 
Polk and Dallas, and by so doing precipitated the rebellion, 
for the horrors and waste of which, North and South, they are 
largely responsible before both God and man. Judging, however, 
from recent letters and speeches, they are now willing to take 
the responsibility of the next secession movement, giving us 
at one moment the extremist anti-slavery doctrines, while at 
the next advocating that British free trade policy which had 
always commanded the approbation of southern slaveholders, and 
which has reduced, or is reducing, to a condition closely akin 
to slavery, the people of every community that has been, or 
is subjected to it. Unable to see that any system based on the 
idea of cheapening the raw materials of manufactures, the rude 
products of agriculture and mining labors, tends necessarily 
to slavery, they make of themselves the pro-slavery men {par 
excellence}, of the world.''

Emancipation

Many historians have argued that Lincoln changed his views on 
slavery This is absolutely not true: He {always} passionately 
opposed slavery; Lincoln's commitment to the dignity and sanctity 
of {all} human life never changed. In 1836, when Lincoln was 
27 years old, the U.S. Congress passed a gag rule under which 
they refused to consider any petition regarding the subject 
of slavery (which was not reversed for eight years). Another 
bill, which did not pass, would have prevented the Post Office 
from delivering mail advocating abolition; however, Postmaster 
General Kendall's extralegal policy allowing local Post Offices 
to refuse to deliver such mail was condoned. The Illinois legislature 
followed with a bill condemning the radicalism of the abolitionists.  
Lincoln alone refused, saying he would not support such a bill 
unless slavery itself were condemned by the legislature.
In a letter to Joshua Speed in 1855, Lincoln recounts: ``In 
1841, you and I had together a tedious low-water trip, on a 
steam boat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as 
I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there 
were, on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with 
irons.  That sight was a continued torment to me; and I see 
something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other 
slave-border.'' [Lincoln, {Collected Works.}]
As well, in a letter to Albert G.  Hodges in 1864, Lincoln wrote: 
``I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing 
is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think, and feel.'' 
[Lincoln, {Collected Works.}]
Several historians, including Garry Wills in his latest book 
on the Gettysburg Address, {Lincoln at Gettysburg}, argue that 
Lincoln {changed} Jefferson's meaning in the Declaration of 
Independence that ``all men are created equal.'' While there 
can be no argument that the Founding Fathers made a horrible 
compromise by not {absolutely} outlawing slavery, there is no 
doubt that their intention {was} to end slavery.
Lincoln reviewed the history of the Founding Fathers to {prove} 
that they fully intended to place slavery on a path ``to ultimate 
extinction'': ``At the framing and adoption of the Constitution, 
they forbore to so much as mention the word `Slave' or `Slavery' 
in the whole instrument. In the provision for the recovery of 
fugitives, the Slave is spoken of as a `{person held to service 
or labor}.' In that [provision] prohibiting the abolition of 
the African slave trade for twenty years, that trade is spoken 
of as `The migration or importation of such persons as any of 
the States {now existing}, shall think, proper to admit,' etc. 
These are the only provisions alluding to Slavery. Thus, the 
thing is hid away, in the Constitution, just as an afflicted 
man hides away a wen or a cancer, which he dare not cut out 
at once, lest he bleed to death; with the promise, nevertheless, 
that the cutting may begin at the end of a given time. Less 
than this our fathers {could} not do; and {more} they {would} 
not do. But this is not all. The earliest Congress, under the 
Constitution, took the same view of Slavery. They hedged and 
hemmed it into the narrowest limits of necessity.
``In 1794, they prohibited an out-going Slave trade--that is, 
the taking of Slaves {from} the United States to sell.
``In 1798, they prohibited the bringing of slaves from Africa, 
{into} the Mississippi Territory--this territory then comprising 
what are now the States of Mississippi and Alabama. This was 
{ten years} before they had the authority to do the same thing 
as to the States existing at the adoption of the Constitution.
``In 1800, they prohibited {American citizens} from trading 
in slaves between foreign countries--as, for instance, from 
Africa to Brazil.
``In 1803, they passed a law in aid of one or two State laws, 
in restraint of the internal slave trade.
``In 1807, in apparent hot haste, they passed the law, nearly 
a year in advance, to take effect the first day of 1808--the 
very day the Constitution would permit--prohibiting the African 
Slave trade by heavy pecuniary and corporal penalties.
``In 1820, finding these provisions ineffectual, they declared 
the trade piracy, and annexed to it the extreme penalty of death. 
While all this was passing in the general government, five or 
six of the original Slave States had adopted systems of gradual 
emancipation; and by which the institution was rapidly becoming 
extinct within these limits.
``Thus we see, the plain unmistakable spirit of that age, towards 
slavery, was hostility in the {principle}, and toleration {only 
by necessity}.'' [Abraham Lincoln, {Speeches and Writings.}]
During the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Senator Douglas insisted:  
``This government was made by white men, for the benefit of 
white men and their posterity for ever and should never be administered 
by any except white men.
``The signers of the Declaration had no reference to the negro 
whatsoever when they declared all men to be created equal. They 
.. [meant] white men, men of European birth and European descent 
and had no reference either to the negro, the savage Indians, 
the Fejee, the Malay, or any other inferior and degraded race.'' 
[Lincoln, {Collected Works.}]
Lincoln argued in 1855: ``Our progress in degeneracy appears 
to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring 
`all men are created equal.' We now practically read it `all 
men are created equal, except negroes'! When the Know-Nothings 
get control, it will read `all men are created equal except 
negroes and foreigners and Catholics.' When it comes to this 
I should prefer emigrating to some other country where they 
make no pretense of loving liberty--to Russia, for instance, 
where despotism can be taken pure, without the base alloy of 
hypocrisy.'' [Lincoln, {Collected Works.}]
And again at Peoria in 1854:  ``Near eighty years ago we began 
by declaring that all men are created equal, but now from that 
beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for 
sure men to enslave others is `a sacred right of self-government.'...  
That perfect liberty they sign for [is] the liberty of making 
slaves of other people. Our republican robe is soiled and trailed 
in the dust. Let us repurify it.... Let us re-adopt the Declaration 
of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which 
harmonize with it.... If we do this, we shall not only have 
saved the Union, but we shall have so saved it as to make, and 
keep it, forever worthy of the saving. We shall have so saved 
it that the succeeding millions of free happy people the world 
over shall rise up and call us blessed, to the latest generation....'' 
[Lincoln, {Collected Works.}]
Lincoln repeatedly cited the Declaration of Independence as 
the foundation of his political philosophy.  In 1861, Lincoln 
said ``I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring 
from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration.'' On his way 
to the White House in February of 1861, he stopped in Trenton, 
New Jersey to speak to the state senate. He recounted that, 
as a young boy, reading Weems's {Life of Washington,} nothing 
fixed itself more vividly in his mind than the story of the 
Revolutionary Army crossing the Delaware in the middle of winter, 
Christmas Day 1776, and attacking the British garrison at Trenton, 
outnumbered five to one: ``The crossing of the river; the contest 
with the Hessians; the great hardships endured at that time, 
all fixed themselves on my memory more than any single revolutionary 
event; and you all know, for you have all been boys, how these 
early impressions last longer than any others. I recollect thinking 
then, boy even though I was, that there must have been something 
more than common that those men struggled for. I am exceedingly 
anxious that that thing which they struggled for; that something 
even more than National Independence; that something that held 
out a great promise to all the people in the world for all time 
to come; I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution, 
and the liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in accordance 
with the original idea for which that struggle was made, and 
I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be an humble instrument 
in the hands of the Almighty, and of this, his almost chosen 
people, for perpetuating the object of that great struggle....'' 
[Lincoln, {Collected Works.}]
And the next day at Independence Hall in Philadelphia: ``This 
it was which gave promise that in due time the weights should 
be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that {all} should 
have an equal chance.'' [Lincoln, {Collected Works. }]
It should be remembered that the majority of white Americans, 
including most southerners and many northerners, opposed emancipation 
to the bitter end.  Northern morale dropped to its lowest point 
in August of 1864. Northern Democrats were calling the war a 
failure and preparing to nominate Gen.  George McClellan on 
a platform demanding an armistice and peace negotiations: the 
permanent division of the Union. The traitors in the Democratic 
Party had convinced their party faithful, and a good many Republicans 
as well, that Lincoln's insistence on coupling emancipation 
with Union was the only stumbling block to peace negotiations.
For Lincoln, even though he was convinced that he would not 
be re-elected, to give the appearance of backing down on emancipation 
``would be worse than losing the presidential contest.'' [Lincoln, 
{Collected Works.}] Lincoln said: ``More than 100,000 black 
soldiers were fighting for the Union, and their efforts were 
crucial to northern victory. They would not continue fighting 
if they thought the North intended to betray them....  If they 
stake their lives for us they must be prompted by the stronger 
motive ... the promise of freedom. And the promise being made 
must be kept....  There have been men who proposed to me to 
return to slavery the black warriors.... I should be damned 
in time and in eternity for so doing. The world shall know that 
I will keep my faith to friends and enemies, come what will.'' 
[Lincoln, {Collected Works.}]
Abraham Lincoln knew that by demhumanizing the black man, all 
human beings were dehumanized. He gave 175 speeches attacking 
slavery between 1854 and 1860--and he ultimately gave his life.
In his 1862 address before Congress he said: ``Fellow-citizens, 
{we} cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, 
will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, 
or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery 
trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or 
dishonor, to the last generation. We {say} we are for the Union. 
The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save 
the Union. The world knows we know how to save it. We--even 
{we here}--hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving 
{freedom} to the {slave,} we {assure} freedom to the free--honorable 
alike in what we give, and what we preserve, we shall nobly 
save, or meanly lose, the last, best hope of earth. Other means 
may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, 
generous, just--a way which if followed, the world will forever 
applaud, and God must forever bless.'' [Lincoln, {Collected 
Works.}]
And again: ``Our reliance must be in the {love of liberty} ...  
the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage 
of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and 
you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors. 
Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage, and you are 
preparing your own limbs to wear them.... He who would {be} 
no slave, must consent to {have} no slave. Those who deny freedom 
to others deserve it not for themselves.... Accustomed to trample 
on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius 
of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the 
first cunning tyrant who rises.'' [Lincoln, {Collected Works.}]
While the northern Democrats screamed about emancipation, the 
radical abolitionists attacked Lincoln for not moving quickly 
enough. They also attacked the Emancipation Proclamation as 
a ``mere military measure.''It is a vile slander to argue that 
Lincoln's concern for emancipation was expressed only in his 
military measures directed at the South. As politician and President, 
Lincoln was involved in many both covert and overt measures 
to stop slavery:
@sb^In 1861, Lincoln secretly helped draft emancipation plans 
for Delaware.
@sb^In March of 1862, he submitted to Congress his plan for 
gradual manumission, after working on it ``all by himself, no 
conference with his cabinet.'' He told Wendell Phillips this 
message was meant to lead to slavery's death, as a ``drop of 
the erathur [creature] leads an Irishman back to drunkenness.''
@sb^In July of 1862, Lincoln submitted a bill for compensation 
of states that would emancipate their slaves.
@sb^In December, his annual message encouraged Congress to draft 
an amendment to accomplish that end.
@sb^Early in 1863, Lincoln collaborated with those trying to 
bring Louisiana back into the Union on the basis of emancipation.
@sb^As part of the Louisiana effort, he issued his Amnesty and 
Reconstruction Proclamation.
@sb^Meanwhile, Lincoln collaborated with Gen. Frederick Steele 
to bring Arkansas back by way of emancipation. These efforts 
made it harder to strike any deals for reunion without emancipation, 
in case Lincoln had not been re-elected in 1864.
@sb^When Congress stalled its consideration of what became the 
Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution to receive a southern 
commission, Lincoln indulged in one of his ``economies'' with 
the truth, telling Congress that no such commission was coming 
to Washington.  (It was coming to Fortress Monroe, far outside 
the District.)
The irony of my writing this article about this great struggle 
for freedom from behind prison bars has struck me often.
The fact that the Abraham Lincoln of 1992--Lyndon LaRouche--also 
sits in a jail cell, makes clear the nature of our job. We must 
free Lyndon LaRouche to bring back to this dying nation {and 
world,} that for which Lincoln and so many others gave their 
lives. We must, in the words of our nation's greatest President, 
from the battlefield at Gettysburg: ``...|highly resolve that 
those dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under 
God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government 
of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish 
from the earth.''
{The author, a collaborator of Lyndon H. LaRouche, began in 
June to serve a 10-year sentence in Virginia state prison on 
charges trumped up by LaRouche's political enemies in the Justice 
Department's Get LaRouche Task Force.}
-- 
         John Covici
          covici@ccs.covici.com