Life with Mr President

Life with Mr President In the much studied by me 1963 National Geographic magazine article Disneyland and Disney studios there was a mechanical working model of President Lincoln as an example of America’s greatest President in the process described in the previous posts whereby the American political system which we outsiders see as being deeply flawed is ordained as a religion sent down by God. Therefore somewhat randomly I tackled a chapter in journalist David Remnick ‘The Bridge’ and came across some valuable deconstruction in ‘To the Whitehouse’ of how President Lincoln following on other slave owning Presidents held personal views which were are different to those who see the American Civil War as being fought for the ending of slavery. Instead an examination of Elizabeth Keckley’s book ‘Behind the scenes of thirty years a slave and four years in the White House’ gives valuable insight so that as historians we can reconstruct what really went on and how the American political and business system really operates. And of particular interest to me is the ‘buried’ Biggest and Most Important battle fought in July 1863 in New York -70,000 involved; which must be for genuine historians the lens through which we view dysfunction to strip away myth and structure; Reality of Empire State- Capital of the World- founded by Peter Minuit –American Empire from New York. ‘If Lincoln grew, the abolitionist Wendell Phillips said –it was because we have watered him. For Lincoln The Union came first. As he wrote to Horace Greely; (Special Note: Horace Greely the Editor of New York’s The Tribune was so influential in New York that the view of Greely expressed at the time ‘employment of the greatest possible force in suppressing the mob’ is part of the story line which still captures people studying that event; But Greely attracted a mob of thousands intent upon hanging Greely singing ‘We will hang old Greely to a sour apple tree and send him straight to hell’ Greely narrowly escaping with his life when the mob attacked and set fire to his newspaper building Evening of July 13 1863) ‘If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing slaves, I would do it.’ It was only late in 1862 that Lincoln determined the military necessity demanded that he put forward a proclamation of emancipation. But he neither denounced slavery as a moral travesty nor liberated slaves in states loyal to the Union. The Emancipation Proclamation was the cagiest of historical acts. The resulting document Hofstadter notes ‘had all the moral grandeur of a bill of lading.’ Even in August 1863, nearly a year after Emancipation Douglass (Fredrick Douglass a black man) remained deeply distrustful of Lincoln calling him a ‘genuine representative of American prejudice’- and with reason. In the early summer, there were draft riots in New York.(See note above) White protestors, many of them Irish were furious that they were made to fight for the rights of ‘niggers’ as they invariably put it, and hundreds of men rampage through the city, torching black owned houses and charities and lynching blacks from city lampposts. It took four days for the Union troops to quell the rioting. In the end there were a hundred dead and hundreds more injured. (Conservative estimate -2,000 killed 8,000 wounded-H. Asbury 1927 ) And to Douglass’s dismay. Lincoln so feared any further insurrection from whites angry at conscription that he refused to declare martial law or even prosecute the rioters…. ‘ p569 The Bridge-Life of Barak Obama David Remnick A Knopf 2010 www.theartofthecitynewyork.blogspot.com That blog gives more details quoting H Asbury ‘The Gangs of New York’. Tonight on the TV- Hong Kong has tens maybe hundreds of thousands protesting but China refuses to cover the story! The largest most significant popular event in USA history- is still being downgraded as a non event in the Obama book! Unless we deal with reality we are doomed to see a repeat- Watch out New York- It will happen again, Worse? End?