Stephen A. Douglas and Slavery.

It is a default presumption amongst historical scholars that Lincoln's Illinois rival was at heart anti-slavery.

However, while conceding that it is a complex issue, this essay from 2005 makes a strong case that the Little Giant was actually moderately pro-slavery:

Consider what might be called the various "types" or "categories" of antislavery. One could be antislavery in the abstract, possessing what might be called antislavery sentiment, for a wide variety of not necessarily congruent reasons. The most prominent abolitionist argument was that slavery was a sin against God, and conjoined to that indictment was the claim that slavery brutalized black people. 

In addition to these explicitly moralistic abolitionist rationales, political critiques of slavery also proved potent, such as the idea that slaveholders were a class of aristocrats who leveraged their antidemocratic control of southern society and politics to dominate the federal government at the expense of northern free men. Many northerners, such as Lincoln, also expressed alarm that slavery violated the nation's creed of freedom and made a mockery out of national ideas. Significantly, advocates of these political antislavery arguments did not need to subscribe to northern evangelical tenets, consider blacks equal, or even have sympathy for the plight of slaves. They simply had to desire that the idea of freedom and the interests of free states predominate in the national government. 

Economic concerns also generated antislavery sentiment, as illustrated by the Republicans' free labor ideology. The Republicans castigated slavery for limiting the opportunities of poor whites in the South, curtailing the economic aspirations of nonslaveholders in the western territories, and stunting the growth of the northern economy. More generally, Republicans insisted that southern opposition to high tariffs, free homesteads, and internal improvements inhibited both individual mobility and its concomitant, social progress. As with the moral and political arguments, economic antislavery ideas possessed their own inner logic and were not dependent on any other antislavery claim. Thus, to take one example, many inveterate racists avidly supported prohibitions on territorial slavery in order to preserve the western territories exclusively for whites.

The application of these categories to Lincoln and Douglas in the late 1850s is quite revealing. Although some historians have claimed that not much separated the two candidates on slavery, in fact Lincoln opposed slavery for all of the reasons listed above excepting probably its sinfulness, while Douglas opposed slavery, if he did at all, only due to its economic consequences, and even on this subject his beliefs were not unambiguous.

While it is correct that Lincoln's religious views in 1858 were probably such that slavery-as-a-sin did not enter into them, the same could not be said as of the Second Inaugural Address. As with all things Lincoln and religion, the crucial question you have to ask is "When?"  

I will add that, though beyond the scope of the above essay, it is beyond dispute that Douglas was definitely anti-black, and his race-baiting throughout the 1858 campaign was incessant and vicious.

 

Like churches, mosque splits happen, too.

Imam Hassan Al-Qazwini is the most prominent Shia Imam in Michigan, and until recently headed up the Islamic Center of America mosque in Dearborn. 

It appears that ethnic infighting played a role his ouster--he is Iraqi, and the ICA is largely Lebanese.

Still, an interesting look at one of Michigan's unique communities.


Outside, the walls of the Lebanese-American center had been spray-painted sometime over the past 24 hours with anti-Iraqi graffiti aimed at denigrating Qazwini, who is of Iraqi descent: “The Iraqi Center of Baghdad,” read one insult. It was a symbol of the lingering tensions that remain over his forced departure from the Islamic Center.

But despite the vandalism, Al-Qazwini garnered a massive show of support that day as he talked about the importance of educating the public about Islam. That night happened to be what is called in Islam the Night of Power, when one’s prayers and good deeds are believed to be worth more than those done in 83 years.
Jabbing his finger in the air to stress his points, Al-Qazwini cited a survey in which “62% of Americans ... have a negative view of our religion.”

“They think that Muslims are either terrorists or they support terrorists,” he said. “Who’s going to change that perception? You. Us. ... Allah will not change any people’s conditions unless they change their own conditions. We cannot sit aside and blame the Jews, continue to blame the Zionists for our pain.”

A few minutes later, he started a bidding process to help raise money for the new mosque. It’s common during the Night of Power for congregations to raise money.

“I need 10 hands, 10 people, brothers and sisters, who would donate $10,000,” he said.

In 15 minutes, Al-Qazwini raised $129,000 for the mosque.

One further note.

I expect to write about church matters very sporadically, if at all. I've said all I can say, and there are few left to be persuaded. 

Strike that: there are few left who can even be spoken to.

While it's hard to believe after the Conciliar Gospel Hour dropped no-fault quickie annulments on us (note especially the pernicious et cetera), 

October's Vatican 2.5 may prove a rude shock to some people, and maybe then it will be worth broaching again.

Other than that--screw it.

Sounds familiar.

The events of the fifties [1850s] offered a telling demonstration that the attitudes of various groups in a society toward upholding the law is in direct proportion to their approval or disapproval of the law which is to be upheld.

--David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis: 1848-1861 (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 296.

So, anybody want to talk about politics?

I'll start.

 

Saddest Three Word Poem, Michigan Edition.

Same/
Old/
Lions...

The Cubs of the NFL, and the reason I'm relieved to have other things to do on Sundays.

On the other hand, I have cause for hope down the I-94 in Ann Arbor, which is more than welcome. Still, the Wolverines will exceed my expectations if they win 8 games this year, so realism is the order of the day.

 

From the Moral Relativism Files.

Our nation's leaders have deemed that those who intervene to prevent or punish the rape of boys in Afghanistan must themselves be punished:

“'The reason we were here is because we heard the terrible things the Taliban were doing to people, how they were taking away human rights,' said Dan Quinn, a former Special Forces captain who beat up an American-backed militia commander for keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave. 'But we were putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the Taliban did — that was something village elders voiced to me.'

The policy of instructing soldiers to ignore child sexual abuse by their Afghan allies is coming under new scrutiny, particularly as it emerges that service members like Captain Quinn have faced discipline, even career ruin, for disobeying it.

After the beating, the Army relieved Captain Quinn of his command and pulled him from Afghanistan. He has since left the military.

Four years later, the Army is also trying to forcibly retire Sgt. First Class Charles Martland, a Special Forces member who joined Captain Quinn in beating up the commander.

'The Army contends that Martland and others should have looked the other way (a contention that I believe is nonsense),' Representative Duncan Hunter, a California Republican who hopes to save Sergeant Martland’s career, wrote last week to the Pentagon’s inspector general."

So, I was asked...

"Are you over 50?"

--The ticket-seller at my eldest son's football game yesterday.

Sigh...

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'/

We are not now that strength which in old days/

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are...

 

 

For the curious.

I have deactivated my Facebook account. The medium became toxic and I need to dump it for the foreseeable future. To crib a phrase: it is a wretched hive of smug and stupidity.

Social media has its merits, but--for me, at least--they are far outweighed by the negatives. If you need to get in touch with me, here's the e-mail: dhprice2@hotmail.com.

Back to blogging--maybe. 

Fun with memes.

I'm not sure how I feel about Kim Davis, but here's my rebuttal to the too-cute-by-half "did their jobs" meme.

Unfair comparison? Sure, Godwin's and all that. But can we at least agree that there comes a point where you cannot leave your conscience with your timecard when you punch in?

If our sensibilities are going to be entirely utilitarian in these uncertain days of the Republic, then we will only be hastening its end. Careful what you bay for.

A side note: what's interesting is that the "do your job" folks overlap a lot with the people who call her a c--t or laugh at the thought of her being raped in prison. One of the things that really poisoned me about social media.

It's been an illuminating summer.

A horse is a horse, of course...

One of the benefits of a semi-classical education is that you can find in the ancients metaphors for our times.

Anyway. My family is well and the books are still being indexed. A lot of Civil War-era reading of late, spurred by an excellent Teaching Company course on Lincoln's rhetoric. I finished an excellent biography of Grant, a solid-if-imperfect biography of Sheridan and a where-was-your-editor biography of Lincoln.

If you want to know about the run-up to the Civil War, you will never do better than this masterwork by the late David Potter. In addition to being a superb historian, he was also an excellent, sometimes even puckish, prose stylist. Discussing the horrific flare-up (and almost-as-rapid flame-out) of nativism in the mid-1850s, he describes the risible Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk as "the Uncle Tom's Cabin of nativism."

That might sound bad except that Potter forthrightly states that the titanic success of Uncle Tom's Cabin has nothing to do with that book's decidedly modest literary merits. I'm not quite done with The Impending Crisis yet, but it is utterly superb so far, quite worthy of the Pulitzer it won (sadly for Potter, posthumously).