Today in History: U.S. President held in contempt for "intentionally lying"

A new feature that will appear occasionally on this blog is "Today in History." Two items for today

1. Another example of the pathetic quality of people we put in the White House. According to Wikipedia, on this day in 1999, U.S. federal district Judge Susan Weber "Wright found {Pres. Bill]Clinton in contempt of court for "intentionally false" testimony in Jones v. Clinton, fined him $90,000, and referred the case to the Arkansas Supreme Court's Committee on Professional Conduct, as Clinton still possessed a law license in Arkansas.[1]



The Arkansas Supreme Court suspended Clinton's Arkansas law license in April 2000. On January 19, 2001, Clinton agreed to a five-year suspension and a $25,000 fine in order to avoid disbarment and to end the investigation of Independent Counsel Robert Ray (Starr's successor). On October 1, 2001, Clinton's U.S. Supreme Court law license was suspended, with 40 days to contest his disbarment. On November 9, 2001, the last day for Clinton to contest the disbarment, he opted to resign from the Supreme Court Bar, surrendering his license, rather than facing penalties related to disbarment." Clinton later defeated an attempt to impeach and remove him from the Presidency



2. The Civil War arguably began on this day in 1861, when Confederate forces fired on Union Forces at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

Thoughts on parts of Lincoln's Second Inaugural speech. OT (off-topic)

At the risk of identifying myself as a "Yankee," and demonstrating that I am a "scatter brain," I must confess that Lincoln is, IMHO, our greatest President and greatest presidential orator. (Notice, I said greatest, not perfect). I occasionally like to turn to other topics than CL&J. I have been re-reading some of his addresses and have begun to focus on some new parts of these. Lincoln's 2nd Inaugural address (Mar. 1864) is one of his greatest. I am always trying to see things the way contemporaries of events saw them. I am not a conventionally religious person, and my interest in the Bible is primarily academic. Back then, most people and Presidents were much more seriously religious than today, and were more into the Old Testament than most of today's Christians. In the Old Testament God's wrath and vengeance are common themes along with horrible plagues, massacres, bloody wars and other tragedies. I see this reflected in the following dark but lyrical segment of that speech. Is Lincoln saying that the Civil War a reflection of God's anger at American for it's slavery?

"Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." How do you interpret this? Is this "as ye reap, so shall ye sow?"

Suggested Reading about the Civil War.

If you are like me, you are constantly looking for good non-fiction reading. I'd like to occasionally share some suggestions. As you know, we are currently in the sesquicentennial of the Civil War. Few events have had such an impact on our political and legal institutions. I have been doing some reading to try to get a better understanding of this horrendous tragedy.

If you would like a short, readable paperback on the war try Batty and Parish's The Divided Union: A Concise History of the American Civil War. A few of the things I was not aware of were (1) that the timidity of the Union's early Generals may have been in part, a reaction to wildly exaggerated "intelligence" reports on Confederate strength. (2)One key figure who has not gotten his historical due is Union Adm. David G. Farragut who, defying long odds, captured the largest city in the Confederacy--New Orleans, and then later took the key Gulf port of Mobile, Alabama.

As you probably know, James Buchanan was President before Lincoln. He is consistently rated by historians and political scientists as being among the worst of U.S. Presidents. Being curious about why Buchanan couldn't or wouldn't do more to prevent war, I decided to read up on him. I'd recommend Jean H. Baker's, short and very readable paperback "James Buchanan." (Part of the American Presidents Series of books). I was also interested in why the British stayed out of the war. Their involvement could have changed the course of history. On this topic I'd recommend Amanda Foreman's "A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the Civil War." This is a long book and not easy reading, but worth it. For better or worse it spends a lot of time on the personalities involved and highlights problems in Lincoln's cabinet. Finally, there are oodles of books on Lincoln, who seems to be the consensus #1 President in numerous surveys of historians and political scientists. If you are interested in more on Lincoln and delving into the ideology, political, philosophical, constitutional and religious dimensions of slavery, the Union, secession etc., a long and sometimes difficult read is Jaffa's "A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War."

I learned a lot. If you are a Lincoln-hater, this is not a book for you. If anyone out there would like to recommend a book on any of these topics, please share it with us.

Another excellent, and readable article on the Civil War

Excerpts from "Opening Salvo" from the Smithsonian, vol. 42, #1, Apr. 2011, pp. 76-99. (This is a one of the best magazines in the country if you enjoy human and natural history, science, etc. It is very readable for the average reader)
"Generations of historians have argued over the cause of the war. "Everyone knew at the time that the war was ultimately about slavery" says Orville Vernon Burton, a native South Carolinian and author of" The Age of Lincoln. 'After the war, some began saying that it was really about states' rights, or a clash of two different cultures, or about the tariff, or about the industrializing North versus the agrarian South. All these interpretations came together to portray the Civil War as a collision of two noble civilizations from which black slaves had been airbrushed out." African-American historians from W.E.B. Du Bois to John Hope Franklin begged to differ with the revisionist view, but they were overwhelmed by white historians, both Southern and Northern, who, during the long era of Jim Crow, largely ignored the importance of slavery in shaping the politics of secession.

Fifty years ago, the question of slavery was so loaded, says Harold Holzer, author of Lincoln President-Elect and other works on the 16th president, that the issue virtually paralyzed the federal commission charged with organizing events commemorating the war's centennial in 1961, from which African-Americans were virtually excluded. (Arrangements for the sesquicentennial have been left to individual states.) At the time, some Southern members reacted with hostility to any emphasis on slavery, for fear that it would embolden the then-burgeoning civil rights movement. Only later were African-American views of the war and its origins finally heard, and scholarly opinion began to shift. Says Holzer, "Only in recent years have we returned to the obvious--that it was about slavery"

As Emory Thomas, author of The Confederate Nation 1861-1865 and a retired professor of history at the University of Georgia, puts it, "The heart and soul of the secession argument was slavery and race. Most white Southerners favored racial subordination, and they wanted to protect the status quo. They were concerned that the Lincoln administration would restrict slavery, and they were right."

[Lincoln} . . .declared explicitly that he would not tamper with slavery where it already existed. (He did make clear that he would oppose the expansion of slavery into new territories.)

However, the so-called Fire-eaters, the most radical Southern nationalists who dominated Southern politics, were no longer interested in compromise. "South Carolina will secede from the Union as surely as that night succeeds the day, and nothing can now prevent or delay it but a revolution at the North," South Carolinian William Trenholm wrote to a friend. "The ... Republican party, inflamed by fanaticism and blinded by arrogance, have leapt into the pit which a just Providence prepared for them." In Charleston, cannon were fired, martial music was played, flags were waved in every street. Men young and old flocked to join militia companies. Even children delivered "resistance speeches" to their playmates and strutted the lanes with homemade banners. . . .According to historian Douglas R. Egerton, author of Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War, "To win over the yeoman farmers--who would wind up doing nearly all the fighting--the Fire-eaters relentlessly played on race, warning them that, unless they supported secession, within ten years or less their children would be the slaves of Negroes." . . .In December 1860, a little more than a month after Lincoln's election, South Carolina's secession convention, held in Charleston, called on the South to join "a great Slaveholding Confederacy, stretching its arms over a territory larger than any power in Europe possesses." While most Southerners did not own slaves, slave owners wielded power far beyond their numbers: more than 90 percent of the secessionist conventioneers were slaveholders."

The forgotten Corwin Amendment.

In a last ditch effort to prevent the Civil War, Congress proposed the Corwin Amendment:

“The Corwin Amendment was a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution passed by the United States Congress on March 2, 1861. Ohio Representative Thomas Corwin offered the amendment during the closing days of the Second Session of the 36th Congress in the form of House (Joint) Resolution No. 80. The proposed amendment would have forbidden attempts to subsequently amend the Constitution to empower the Congress to "abolish or interfere" with the "domestic institutions" of the states, including "persons held to labor or service" (a reference to slavery).
Corwin's resolution emerged as the House of Representatives's version of an earlier, identical proposal in the Senate offered by Senator William H. Seward of New York. However, the newly formed Confederate States of America was totally committed to independence, and so it ignored the proposed Corwin Amendment.
This proposed amendment is technically still before the states for ratification, because it was submitted to the states without a time limit. Since the Thirteenth Amendment (which abolished slavery) was adopted, the Corwin Amendment has had no realistic chance of being adopted.
Text
No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.[1]
Proposal by the Congress
On February 28, 1861, the House of Representatives approved the resolution by a vote of 133–65.[2] On March 2, the United States Senate also adopted it, 24–12.[3] Since proposed constitutional amendments require a two-thirds majority, 132 votes were required in the House and 24 in the Senate. As seven slave states had already decided to secede from the Union, those states chose not to vote on the Corwin Amendment.
Outgoing President James Buchanan endorsed the Corwin Amendment by taking the unusual step of signing it. Abraham Lincoln, in his first inaugural address, supported the Corwin Amendment: "[H]olding such a provision to now be implied Constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable."[4][5] Just weeks prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, Lincoln penned a letter to each governor asking for them to support the Corwin Amendment.[6] However, Presidents play no formal role in the amendment process.[7]
Ratifications
Pursuant to Article V of the Constitution, consideration of the Corwin Amendment then shifted to the state legislatures. On May 13, 1861, the Ohio General Assembly became the first to ratify the amendment. The next to ratify was the Maryland General Assembly in January 1862. Later that year, Illinois lawmakers approved the amendment while they were sitting in session as a state constitutional convention rather than as a legislature, thus causing some to see this particular ratification as possibly invalid.[4]
Technically, the Corwin Amendment is still pending.”
Excerpts from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corwin_amendment

It is not clear if the amendment would have covered territories. Arguably not. The federal government controlled territories. However, arguably a territory could have voted to become a slave state, and then slavery would have in that new state would have been protected by the amendment. Arguably, too many in the South were already committed to secession, and war if necessary. This amendment was arguably too little and too late. Perhaps an amendment similar to the one proposed in the post below might have worked if proposed early enough.

More on the Civil War

As we remember the beginning of the Civil War/War between the States/ I offer a few more historical comments. Sections of Lincoln’s Mar. 4, 1861, First Inaugural Address are presented below. The address states that the issue dividing the country is, for him, not slavery per se, but extension of slavery into new U.S. territories. Certainly there were abolitionists who wanted slavery abolished everywhere (e.g. John Brown). However, such abolitionists were probably in a minority in the North. Lincoln promised to enforce the fugitive slave act. Protection of then-existing slavery and/or expansion of slavery into new territories were the primary motive for secession. Lincoln did not challenge the former. Lincoln declares that unilateral secession was unlawful. Why not call a constitutional convention to deal with this issue? I doubt that most northerners, most of whom also embraced white supremacy, wanted war to end slavery. More on this later, but there is a good chance that this amendment would have been approved, the country and territories divided, and perhaps a new federal government limited to issues of national defense created. We will never know! Lincoln stated:

“I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this, and many similar declarations, and had never recanted them. And more than this, they placed in the platform, for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves, and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read:
"Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes."
I now reiterate these sentiments: and in doing so, I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible, that the property, peace and security of no section are to be in anywise endangered by the now incoming Administration. I add too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can be given, will be cheerfully given to all the States when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause — as cheerfully to one section, as to another.
There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions:
"No person held to service or labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it, for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the intention of the law-giver is the law. All members of Congress swear their support to the whole constitution — to this provision as much as to any other. To the proposition then, that slaves whose cases come within the terms of this clause, "shall be delivered up," their oaths are unanimous. Now, if they would make the effort in good temper, could they not, with nearly equal unanimity, frame and pass a law, by means of which to keep good that unanimous oath?
It follows from these views that no State, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union, — that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void; and that acts of violence, within any State or States, against the authority of the United States, are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances.
One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute.”

Civl War Anniversary--some thoughts

As we start the 150th anniversary of American’s greatest tragedy, some straight-talking quotes from a self-described southerner and historian.


“Today, a new battle for history is being waged, with political conservatives casting the Civil War as a struggle against Big Government, with only tangential connections to slavery. These neo-Confederates contend that one can honor the South’s heritage without condoning its institutionalized racism. But as a historian and as a Southerner, I believe that is a losing cause. Without what our seventh vice president, John C. Calhoun, called the South’s “peculiar domestic institution,” there would have been no Civil War. There can be no revision of this inescapable reality. . . .

At such a charged moment, we must remember our nation’s history fully, not selectively. If we truly want to be faithful stewards of the past, Americans need to recall what the war was about: slavery and the definition of human liberty. And the Civil War’s true legacy is not about Big Government or today’s political skirmishing—it’s about a nation’s obligation to live up to the best part of itself. Slavery was an evil, and it had to be defeated.”