Prattville Dragoon's Charlie Graham Editorial Response Regarding Lincoln and His Motives

From the Montgomery Advertiser, pg 6A, October 15, 2015:

Input from readers appreciated, but disputed

It’s genuinely gratifying to hear from Daniel Haulman, Barry Schneider, Win Johnson, and Joel Sanders.

Haulman said, “I don’t understand why Charlie Graham demonizes Abraham Lincoln, who did more than anyone else to save the Union and end slavery. Only one who thinks secession and slavery are good things would demonize Lincoln.”

1860 was an excellent time for secession. Religious and social pressures would have ended slavery by 1890, as happened elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere. Lincoln was indeed a nefarious political demon and an extremely outspoken racist. He killed nearly a million people to commandeer the South back into the Union to maintain tariff collections from Southern states. Only a bought and paid for federal propagandist who considers a million people justifiable collateral damage would appreciate this.

Barry Schneider says the war was started by the South by firing on Fort Sumter and there would have been no war had slavery not existed.

There would have been no war had Lincoln and his radical Republican cohorts not existed. The South broke no laws. Lincoln planned and provoked the war by inciting the Fort Sumter battery. Fort Sumter was unoccupied when South Carolina seceded. To infuriate Confederates, Union Maj. Robert Anderson (who was a slave owner himself) received orders from Washington to move his garrison, under the cover of night on Dec. 26, 1860, from nearby Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter.

Confederate President Jefferson Davis sent commissioners to Washington to negotiate vacating Fort Sumter. Lincoln refused to meet with them.

Lincoln promised South Carolina Gov. Pickens that he would not send additional men or ammunition if he were allowed to provision Fort Sumter. This same promise was broken previously by President Buchanan. No word from Washington could be trusted. Lincoln had the Navy send several ships. These ships were loaded with all of the final reasons for the war, soldiers and ammunition. The South discovered this and fired on Fort Sumter April 12, 1861. Major Anderson surrendered in three days and was evacuated. There was no blood shed in this skirmish.

The firing on Fort Sumter was the political excuse that Lincoln solicited to cleanse his motives, fortify his sanctimony, and initiate the duel between the North and the South.

Lincoln’s brigade of military ships exited the area without any engagement in the Fort Sumter incident. Lincoln’s mission had been accomplished. He had started the War and would blame the South.

Win Johnson says that my positions are devoid of religious doctrine. Johnson says that the churches of the South endorsed slavery.

There were ongoing abolitionist movements in the South, but when it came down to grinding the axe most of them supported the Confederacy. While Johnson admonishes the Southern churches, I beckon him to recall that the 1790 census reported 5,000 slaves in Connecticut. Most prosperous merchants owned at least one slave, as did 50 percent of the clergy. Such examples were common in the Northern states.

After the smoke had cleared at Fort Sumter, Lincoln wrote a letter on May 1, 1861, to Gustavus V. Fox, assistant secretary of the Navy, who orchestrated the supply ships. Lincoln stated, “You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it should fail; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result.”