Today's Stories

February 13 - 15, 2009

Joshua Frank
The Myth of Clean Coal

George Cicarriello-Maher
Venezuela's Term Limits

February 12, 2009

P. Sainath
Neo-Liberal Terrorism in India: The Largest Wave of Suicides in History

Jean Bricmont
French Echoes of the Israeli-Palestine Conflict

Michael Hudson
Trying to Revive the Bubble Economy: Obama's Awful Financial Recovery Plan

Peter Lee
Pakistan, Not Afghanistan, is the Main Event

Dave Lindorff
Judges Nabbed, Jailing Kids for Kickbacks

February 11, 2009

Neve Gordon
Few Peacemakers in the New Israeli Knesset

Peter Morici
Anatomy of a Hemorrhage

Andy Worthington
Who's Running Guantánamo?

Marjorie Cohn
A Call to End All Renditions

Fred Gardner
Change We Can Smoke?

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The G & O (Geithner and Obama) Bank

Zoe Blunt
Vancouver Island Hippies: Top Security Threat for 2010?

Belén Fernández
Politics on the Panamericana

Martha Rosenberg
Don't Breathe the Meat

Website of the Day
George Dyson on Project Orion

Blues of the Day
David Vest on the CBC

February 10, 2009

Kathy Kelly
How Do People Keep Going?

Nikolas Kozloff
The Stimulus Imbroglio

Uri Avnery
Dirty Socks

Michael J. Berg
Will South Carolina be the Center of the Nuclear Revival?

Russell Mokhiber
Et Tu, Atul?

Joe Bageant
A Commodity Called Misery

Gareth Porter
Petraeus' Subterfuge

Dave Lindorff
Seek Truth, But Prosecute Liars

Rannie Amiri
The Implications of Recognizing Israel's "Right to Exist"

Harvey Wasserman
Nukes and the Stimulus

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What We Didn't Learn at Obama's Press Conference

Website of the Day
RIAA Takes Over DoJ Under Obama

February 9, 2009

Vicente Navarro
Why Sanjay Gupta is the Wrong Man for Top US Health Job

Paul Craig Roberts
Driving Over the Cliff

Julio Sanchez /
Feliz de Bedout
The Threat of Peace in Colombia: an Interview with Hollman Morris

National Lawyers Guild
Strong Indications of Israeli War Crimes

Jonathan Cook
Israeli University Welcomes "War Crimes" Colonel

Alana Smith
The Nightmarish Case of Fahad Hashmi

Binoy Kampmark
Taking the Bong

Sam Bahour
End the Occupation First

Nicole Colson
Can You Afford College?

Ron Jacobs
Remembering the Second Intifada

Website of the Day
The Legacy of Ed Grothus and the Black Hole

February 6-8, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's First Bad Week

Ishmael Reed
Saint Thelma's Book

James Abourezk
Obama, Mitchell and the Palestinians

William Blum
Obama and the Empire

Patrick Cockburn
Maliki's Triumph

Henry A. Giroux
Educating Obama

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Darwin's Living Legacy

Mouin Rabbani
A New Low on Gaza?

David Yearsley
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Springsteen!

Saul Landau
The Wrestler: an American Tragedy

Jules Rabin
Israel's Disproportionate Responses

Raymond J. Lawrence
A Country Awash in Money But Going Broke

Janette Habel
Castro's Socialism in Crisis

Dave Lindorff
Economy on a Thread

Missy Beattie
Blackout at the Gaza Zoo Massacre

Dale Gieringer
The Opium Exclusion Act of 1909: Marking 100 Years of Failed Drug Prohibition

John Ross
Davos vs. Belem; Swine vs. Pearls

Richard Rhames
Jobs is a Four Letter Word

Bob Wing
Obama, Race and the Future of U.S. Politics

Robert Bryce
Corn Dog Update: Another Study Exposes Bio-Fuel Scam

David Macaray
AFL-CIO and Change to Win in "Re-Wed" Talks

James L. Secor
Inaugural Questions Nobody Asks: Notes from Kuala Lumpur

Jason Flom /
Anthony Papa
The Scourging of Michael Phelps

Norm Kent
Ten Reasons to Get High About Pot in 2009

Kim Nicolini
When Utopia Crumbles: Why Revolutionary Road was Shut Out of the Oscars

Lorenzo Wolff
Ridiculous Flow: How Cee Lo Green Sells Soul

Poets' Basement
Emily Dickinson (with Commentary by Daniel Wolff)

Website of the Weekend
S.J. Gould: Darwin's Untimely Burial

February 5, 2009

Michael Mandel
Self-Defense Against Peace

Saul Landau /
Philip Brenner
Killing the Monroe Doctrine

Ralph Nader
Tax the Speculators!

Robert Bryce
The Unraveling of the Ethanol Scam

Russell Mokhiber
Occupied Territory

Sameh Habeeb /
Janet Zimmerman
Innocents Lost

Dave Lindorff
Small Change

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
Beyond Green Capitalism

George Ochenski
A Blow to Big Coal in Montana

Website of the Day
Putting CEO Pay in Context

February 4, 2009

Arno J. Mayer
On Corruption

Paul Craig Roberts
The War on Terror is a Hoax

Patrick Cockburn
The Iraqi Elections

Jonathan Cook
An IDF Jihad?

Fred Gardner
Obama's Mixed Messages on Marijuana

Stan Cox
Slumwrecking Millionaires: India's Fragile New Temples

Margaret Kimberley
The Deepening Economic Crisis

Lawrence Velvel
Agony & Desperation: Madoff's Victims

Dave Lindorff
A Generals' Revolt?

Doug Giebel
A Helping of Bitter Beltway Baloney

Serge Quadruppani
Student Protests Sweep Italy

Website of the Day
The San Francisco 8

February 3, 2009

David Price
Counterinsurgency & Anthropology: Roberto Gonzalez on Human Terrain Systems

Bill Moyers
Obama's Wars: an Interview with Pierre Sprey and Marilyn Young

Kirkpatrick Sale
Obama's Lincoln Thing

Conn Hallinan
When Mind Wounds Don't Count

Peter Morici
The Slippery Slope of Stimulus

George Ciccariello-Maher
From Oakland to Santa Rita: "Fired Up, Can't Take It No More"

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
The BBC's Nadir

Allan Nairn
What Does It Take to Get a Meal Here, an Earthquake?

Norman Solomon
Why are We Still at War?

David Macaray
The Late, Great UAW

Website of the Day
The Bloody Cove

February 2, 2009

Uri Avnery
Under the Black Flag: Israeli War Crimes

Ralph Nader
What to Do About Wall Street

Gareth Porter
Generals Move to Obstruct Obama's Iraq Withdrawal Orders

Paul Craig Roberts
The Death of American Leadership

Harvey Wasserman
The Nuclear Industry's Latest Money Grab

Rannie Amiri
Gaza and the Crimes of Mubarak

Cal Winslow
Stern's Gang Seizes UHW Union Hall

Steve Early
Checking Out of Stern's Hotel California

Alan Farago
Superbowl as Panopticon

Diane Farsetta
Banning Domestic Propaganda

January 30 / February 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama and the Oddsmakers

Michael Hudson
Obama's New Bank Giveaway

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
"Too Big to Fail:" a Bailout Hoax

Dave Lindorff
The Ugly Truth: the American Economy is Not Coming Back

Saul Landau
Freedom Fighters, Terrorists or Schlemiels?

Andy Worthington
Blame the Chef: How Cooking for the Taliban Can Get You Life in Gitmo

Subcomandante Marcos
Gaza Will Survive

Robert Jensen
Future Farming: an Interview with Wes Jackson

Ron Jacobs
Return of the Democrats

Gareth Porter
Is Gates Undermining Another Opening to Iran?

Allan Nairn
Hope for the Dump Cities?

Laura Carlsen
NAFTA's Dangerous Security Agenda

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Feelings of a Stranger

Christopher Brauchli
From Gitmo to Supermax?

Jules Rabin
Israel and the Bomb

Col. Dan Smith
Thoughts From an Inauguration Refugee

Missy Beattie
The US Garden of Evil

Tom Barry
Obama's Immigration Challenge

J. Michael Cole
The Downfall of an Academic

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Burning the First Amendment

Dan Bacher
How Dam Removal Can Save the Klamath River

David Rosen
Last Gasp of the Culture Wars?

Don Monkerud
Religion in the American Bedroom

Binoy Kampmark
Updike: Apostle of the Middlebrows

Lorenzo Wolff
Playing Down a Bad Reputation: the Lovin' Spooful's Near Perfect Record

David Yearsley
When Orfeo and Euridice Lived Happily Ever After in Upstate New York

Poets' Basement
Valentine and Rihn

January 29, 2009

Peter Linebaugh
Tom Paine's Birthday

Paul Craig Roberts
Is It Time to Bail Out of America?

Riz Khan
The Future of Gaza: an Interview with Jimmy Carter

M. Reza Pirbhai
Pakistan: a New Cambodia?

Wajahat Ali
Obama's Al-Arabiya Interview

Gregory Vickrey
What About the Environment? Cap and Trade and Selling Out

Dina Jadallah-Taschler
Whither the Two State Solution?

Alison Weir
Killing Palestinians Doesn't Count: Fact-Checking Ceasefire Breaches

Alan Farago
Economy Without Escape Routes

Walter Brasch
Taxing a House of Cards

Website of the Day
Madoff Inc.

January 28, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
Behind the Bloodbath in Gaza

Noam Chomsky
Obama's Emerging Policies on Israel, Iraq and the Economic Crisis

Patrick Cockburn
Is Mitchell's Mission Already Doomed?

Rob Larson
The Clinton Foundation Donors

George Wuerthner
Who Will Speak for the Forests?

Allan Nairn
South-East Asian Groups Threaten Retaliation Over Gaza Invasion

M. Junaid
Levesque-Alam
A Muslim's Memo to Obama

Stefan Simanowitz
The Silent Trade

Charles R. Larson
The Autumn of the Patriot

Website of the Day
Veggie Love: PETA's Banned Superbowl Ad

January 27, 2009

Winslow T. Wheeler
Save the Economy by Cutting the Defense Budget

Yigal Bronner /
Neve Gordon
Fueling the Cycle of Hate

Joshua Frank
Obama's Neocon: the Curious Case of Richard Holbrooke

Jordan Flaherty
Torture at a Louisiana Prison

Ralph Nader
Access to Economic Justice

Rev. José M. Tirado
How Iceland Fell: a Hundred Days of (Muted) Rage

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Looking Forward

Russell Mokhiber
What If Israel Were in Your Neighborhood?

Martha Rosenberg
Who Says Technology Transfer Doesn't Pay?

C. G. Estabrook
The Inaugural Address: the Digested Read

Website of the Day
Who Profits From the Occupation?

January 26, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Speaking the Truth is a Career-Ending Event

Deepak Tripathi
The BBC's Day of Shame

Vijay Prashad
The India Lobby: Drunk with the Sight of Power

Peter Lee
Geithner's Pop Gun Volley at China

Allan Nairn
The Torture Ban That Doesn't Ban Torture

Uri Avnery
On the Wrong Side of History

John Sayen
The Next Shoe to Drop

Dave Lindorff
Afghanistan is No Threat to America

Lawrence R. Velvel
Investing with Madoff

David Macaray
Obama vs. Labor

Roger Burbach
Winds of Change in Cuba

Norman Solomon
The Ghost of LBJ

Website of the Day
Landscapes of Occupation

January 23 / 25, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Ghosts at Obama's Side

P. Sainath
The Freefalling Economy

Patrick Cockburn
In Israel, Detachment From Reality is the Norm

Saul Landau
Reasons for War?

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Our Current Economic Crisis: the Monks' Cure

Alan Farago
The Problem with the Stimulus

Christopher Brauchli
When Due Diligence is a One-Way Street

Andy Worthington
Return to Law?

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pentagon: Bowing to the Masters of War?

Lawrence Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience (Part Four)

Henry A. Giroux
The Audacity of Educated Hope

David Yearsley
The Music That Wasn't There: Chamber Music for Obama's Masses

Raymond F. Gustavson
Here We Go Again: General Shinseki and Veterans

Dave Lindorff
The Way Forward

Roberto Rodriguez
Fighting for Migrant Justice in the Desert

Dina Jadallah-Taschler
The Struggle of an Un-People

Fidel Castro
Meeting Cristina

J. Michael Cole
Can Obama's Shift on Terror Succeed?

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman
It's Time to Free Leonard Peltier

Ramzy Baroud
Breaking Gaza's Will

Mohammad Ali Shabani
The Aftermath of the War on Gaza

Richard Rhames
Panning for Pyrite on a Cold Day at the Mall

Stephen Martin
Voices in the Mirror

Lorenzo Wolff
Jurassic Radio

Kim Nicolini
Katrina's Endless Loop

Poets' Basement
Fleming, Henson, First, Jaramillo and Glendinning

Website of the Weekend
Cartoon Love

January 22, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Another Real Estate Crisis is About to Hit

Kathy Kelly
Worse Than an Earthquake

Allan Nairn
US Intel Nominee Lied About Church Murders

Lawrence Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience (Part Three)

Andy Worthington
Halting the Gitmo Trials

Peter Morici
How to Fix the Banks

Joseph G. Davis
The First MBA Presidency and the Business Academy: a Damage Assessment

Adriana Kojeve
The Democrats on Israel: a Brief Oral History

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Poised for Historic Vote

Website of the Day
Support the Gaza Community Mental Health Program

January 21, 2009

Gabriel Kolko
Understanding Gaza

Harry Browne
Obama's Work Ethic

Michael Colby
Ready. Aim. Organize.

Lawrence R. Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience

Audrey Stewart
Starting Over in Gaza

Wajahat Ali
Obama and the Muslims

Binoy Kampmark
The Marketing of Hope

David Kεr Thomson
Abolition

John Ross
In My Own Bones

Allan Nairn
Killer in Chief: Will This President Murder Civilians?

Sheldon Richman
The Peaceful Transfer of Violent Power

Website of the Day
Globistan

January 20, 2009

Chuck Spinney
Hosing Obama Israeli Style

Kathy Kelly
The Strongest Weapon of All

Raymond Deane
The EU, Gaza and the Lisbon Treaty

Ralph Nader
State Terrorism Against Gaza

Audrey Stewart
Why I am in Gaza

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Doctrine of Destruction

Harvey Wasserman
A Ten-Point Solar Agenda for Obama

Christopher Ketcham
Inauguration Ad Nauseam

Robert Jensen
A Citizen's Oath of Office

Dave Lindorff
Commie Chorus on the Mall: This Land Really is Made for You and Me

David Macaray
SAG Watches It All Slip Away

Weekend Edition
February 13 - 15, 2009

The Struggle to Abolish Slavery

Lincoln at 200

By ALAN MAASS

FEBRUARY 12 marked 200 years since Abraham Lincoln was born, and that's probably not news to you. It seems like every institution of American society and every voice of the political establishment is "honoring" the Great Emancipator on his 200th birthday.

But this is only a concentrated whiff of the legends about Lincoln that every one of us heard from our first days in school--a selfless leader, honest to a fault, the president who saved the union, the man who freed the slaves.

This sanctification--and, oftentimes, sanitizing--of past figures is typical. One result is that the ways history is shaped not mostly by individuals, but by the actions of much larger numbers of people, is obscured. Lincoln, for example, couldn't have freed a single slave without the 2.5 million soldiers who served in the Union Army--or without the self-activity of the slaves themselves, struggling for their freedom.

On the other hand, from some on the left, you get a quite different picture of Lincoln, and it's one that people angered by the corruption and hypocrisy of political leaders today find easy to believe: Lincoln the racist, who thought whites were the natural superior of Blacks, and who cared nothing about the question of slavery except how it could help him win a war fought for the profits of northern manufacturers.

That isn't the right picture either. Lincoln didn't "free the slaves" by himself, but he did play an important part in the struggle to end slavery.

Lincoln's importance in history wasn't as an abolitionist thinker--he did, indeed, hold backward ideas about race compared to other opponents of slavery--or as an organizer for the cause, but in the role he played in a specific historical situation.

Lincoln was the political leader representing the ruling class of Northern capitalists at one of the last points in world history where the interests of that class coincided with an expansion of democracy and freedom. And Lincoln's greatness in this context is that he didn't shrink or retreat from that role--as others around him did--but rather rose to the challenge at each link in the chain of events.

* * *

THE CIVIL War is rightly called the "second American Revolution," because its roots lie in the first revolution of 1776 against the rule of the British monarchy--and the contradiction at the heart of the new United States.

On the one hand, the new government represented the most advanced form of democracy in the world at the time, based on the high ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence, such as "all men are created equal."

But, of course, all men weren't equal in America. At the time of the revolution, there were 1 million African slaves in the colonies, and the most prosperous part of the economy--the agricultural system in the Southern states--was dependent on their labor.

To the extent that this glaring contradiction troubled some early leaders of the U.S., they nevertheless accepted the situation because they expected slavery to die out. But they were wrong in this expectation, and the reason why can be summed up in one word: cotton.

Between 1793 and 1815, cotton exports from the U.S. grew from 500,000 tons to more than 80 million tons. Cotton from the U.S. was the fuel for the Industrial Revolution in Europe and the development of capitalism--and slavery was the key to producing cotton. As Karl Marx wrote from his vantage point in Britain, "Without slavery, there would be no cotton, without cotton, there would be no modern industry."

Slavery not only didn't die out--it thrived. Under the South's oligarchy of big plantation owners, all the horrors of the slave system were intensified.

Meanwhile, the northern U.S. was developing in a very different direction. Small-scale farming continued to remain significant, but more and more, Northern society became organized around industry, built up in the urban centers. By 1850, the Northern system had been transformed by innovations in transportation, technology and communications.

The two systems, North and South, were pulling in opposite directions and increasingly coming into conflict, in battles played out in the federal government--over trade policy (Southern plantation owners wanted free trade; Northern industrialists wanted tariffs to protect their new enterprises), government investment (the North wanted the government to spur innovation; Southerners wanted it to keep out of the economy) and other issues.

The biggest battles of all were over the addition of new states to the Union--because whether slavery was legal or not could tip the balance of power in the federal government between slave states and free states that allowed the South to block the more rapidly developing North.

Alongside the economic conflict was a political one: deepening anti-slavery sentiment in the North versus the hardening of the South in defense of its system, with every new political compromise to paper over the conflict driving the two sides further apart.

An abolitionist movement dedicated to ending slavery had existed in the U.S. from the start--with Blacks themselves among its most powerful voices--but it became more outspoken and radical as the 19th century progressed.

By the 1850s, the intensification of the conflict undermined the moderate Whig Party in the North, which tolerated the North's junior-partner status in the federal government. The Republican Party was founded in 1854 as a third-party challenge--under the influence of the abolitionists, but also a range of other forces that were more hostile to the power of the slave South than to the institution of slavery itself.

Abraham Lincoln became the Republican presidential candidate in 1860 precisely because he represented the middle point among these different forces.

Lincoln, who had been a member of Congress from Illinois, was morally opposed to slavery and expected to see it ended over time. But Lincoln denied that he favored "the social and political equality of the white and black races," as he put it in one political debate. "I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."

Moreover, while Lincoln wanted to see slavery die out, he opposed taking action in the name of abolition--for example, challenging the Fugitive Slave Law that put the power of the federal government behind the slave-catchers who kidnapped free Blacks to "return" them to the South.

The central plank of Lincoln's 1860 campaign for president was the one issue that all the different forces in the Republican Party could agree on--that slavery couldn't be allowed to expand into the Western territories.

Many abolitionists thought this was far too timid, and called for a boycott of the election. The great abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass was more supportive of the Republicans, but still critical. As he put it:

The Republican Party...is opposed to the political power of slavery, rather than to slavery itself. It would arrest the spread of the slave system...and defeat all plans for giving slavery any further guarantee of permanence. This is very desirable, but it leaves the great work of abolishing slavery...still to be accomplished. The triumph of the Republican Party will only open the way for this great work.

* * *

DOUGLASS' COMMENT was prophetic. The victory of Lincoln and the Republicans in 1860, against a divided pro-slavery opposition, did open the way for the struggle to come.

How? Because restrictions on the expansion of slavery--the one key plank in the Republican platform--would inevitably undermine the South's dominant position in the federal government, and that would be the beginning of the end for the slaveocracy.

Certainly, that's how the South viewed Lincoln's election. In his inaugural speech, Lincoln pledged, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists." But before he took the oath of office, seven of the 11 states that would make up the Southern Confederacy had already seceded from the U.S.

This sent a panic through ruling circles in the North. Various business and political figures, including fellow leaders among the Republican Party, urged Lincoln to accept a compromise that essentially would have scrapped the party's program on slavery.

But on this score, Lincoln the moderate passed his first big test--by not bending. As he wrote in a letter to one of the Republican advocates of compromise:

We have just carried an election on principles fairly stated to the people. Now we are told in advance, the government shall be broken up unless we surrender to those we have beaten...If we surrender, it is the end of us. They will repeat the experiment upon us ad libitum. A year will not pass till we shall have to take Cuba as a condition upon which they will stay in the Union.

Yet as the Civil War began following the Confederate bombardment of the Union's Fort Sumter in Charleston, S.C., Lincoln was the opposite of his resolve on the question of the expansion of slavery.

The North barely mobilized for the first battles of the war. Lincoln assumed that the Southern rebels would be put down with a minimal effort, and that a "silent majority" of Southern Unionists would emerge to challenge the secessionists. Short of allowing the expansion of slavery, he was willing to make all sorts of concessions guaranteeing slavery where it already existed.

In August 1861, the Northern Gen. John Frémont imposed martial law in Missouri and began freeing slaves as a military measure against Southern forces. But Lincoln modified Frémont's order and ultimately removed him from command--out of fear that the general's action would tip more states into the Confederacy.

This shows that Lincoln still didn't understand the central dynamic of the Civil War--the struggle over slavery. As an infuriated Douglass wrote: "To fight against slaveholders without fighting against slavery is but a half-hearted business and paralyzes the hands engaged in it...Fire must be met with water. War for the destruction of liberty must be met with war for the destruction of slavery."

Douglass was right again. The war went badly for the North because of the half-hearted commitment to waging it in Lincoln's government--and especially among the generals in charge of the Northern Army.

For example, George McClellan, the top commander of the Northern forces, had been appointed to appease pro-slavery Democrats in the North, and the so-called Border States that hadn't joined the Confederacy. Because he favored a compromise that insured the continued existence of slavery, he hesitated to use the full force of his army against the South.

* * *

BY THE middle of 1862, the Southern armies were winning in virtually every theater of the war. Watching from Britain as an avid supporter of the North and abolition, Frederick Engels wrote to his friend Karl Marx that the war looked to be over, and the South had prevailed.

But Marx disagreed. "So far," Marx wrote, "we have only witnessed the first act of the Civil War--the constitutional waging of war. The second act, the revolutionary waging of war, is at hand."

The North had crucial advantages that were necessary for victory--greater numbers, a stronger transportation network, developed industry. But by themselves, these weren't enough. The North also needed the political will to prevail--because the Civil War was bound to be a political war.

Both North and South, the armies of the Civil War were made up of volunteers--to a much larger extent than any other U.S. war. So these armies needed to know what they were fighting for and why.

To the Confederacy, the Civil War was about the survival of its political and social system. But in the North, the political aims of the war had to be made central. Above all others was Douglass' argument--to make war on slaveowners, the North would have make war on slavery.

This first became clear for the North as a matter of military necessity. Slaves themselves forced the issue by escaping to Union lines whenever the Northern armies approached. The practical question arose for Northern officers: Should the slaveowners' "property" be returned to them, thus adding to the enemy's military advantage--or should the escaped slaves be defended?

This became the reality along all the battle lines, with escaped slaves becoming a volunteer labor force accompanying the Union Army. Lincoln at first hesitated to embrace this policy of military emancipation. But once he became convinced of its necessity in order to win the war, it became a cornerstone of his strategy.

By mid-1862, he had decided on issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, though he waited for a Union victory at the Battle of Antietam to make it public. The Emancipation Proclamation was a calculated half-measure. It only freed slaves in the states that had joined the Confederacy, not in the Border States that remained part of the Union, but where slavery remained legal.

But the effect, as Lincoln knew, was unambiguous. It was a further step toward making the Civil War into a war of abolition--and turning the Union Army into an army of liberation, whose physical presence enforced the Emancipation Proclamation in the Southern states.

In early 1863, Lincoln again hesitated at another measure proposed by abolitionists, but was won over--for the formation of Black regiments to fight in the war. In bringing together soldiers who were fighting for their own liberation, this policy had an enormous effect. By the end of the war, one in 10 soldiers in the Union Army were Black.

The growing importance of emancipation as a war aim had an effect on white Northerners, especially the white soldiers of the Union Army. Few started out the war as ardent abolitionists, but many became so in the course of it. As one Michigan sergeant wrote in a letter to his wife:

The more I learn of the cursed institution of slavery, the more I feel willing to endure for its final destruction...After this war is over, this whole country will undergo a change for the better...Abolishing slavery will dignify labor; that fact, of itself, will revolutionize everything.

This kind of deepening political commitment made the soldiers of the Union Army willing to endure harsh sacrifices--including, like the Michigan sergeant, who was killed by a Confederate sharpshooter near Atlanta in 1864, the ultimate sacrifice.

* * *

THE TRANSFORMATION of Union soldiers, like Lincoln's stubborn commitment to resist compromises, is all the more impressive considering the pressures in the other direction.

The pro-slavery northern Democrats--known as the Copperheads, after the snake--organized around every military failure, including those caused by the incompetence of their hero, Gen. McClellen. They stoked a racist backlash against the Emancipation Proclamation, which created the climate for the deadly New York Draft Riots in 1863.

With each new crisis caused by military defeats and the agitating of pro-slavery forces, Lincoln was urged by leading political figures to compromise--even to offer "peace" on the South's terms.

Among the compromisers were prominent Republicans with a stronger record in favor of abolition than Lincoln before the war. But Lincoln distinguished himself for his refusal to give in. And eventually, he found a group of generals, including Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman and Philip Sheridan, who were prepared to wage an all-out war aimed at destroying the slave power.

Lincoln hadn't thought this out in advance. "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me," he wrote in one letter. But his shift over the course of the war is unmistakable.

Thus, in his first inaugural address, Lincoln said he had "no purpose...to interfere with the institution of slavery" where it existed. By his second inaugural speech, he took an altogether more uncompromising and radical position:

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 up by the bondman's 250 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 3,000 years ago, so it must be said, "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

As for his own attitudes about slavery and race, Lincoln was transformed by events. One famous story describes his visit to the Confederate capital of Richmond after the Union Army conquered it. As historian James McPherson wrote:

[Lincoln] was soon surrounded by an impenetrable cordon of Black people shouting, "Glory to God!" "Glory! Glory! Glory!" "Bless the Lord!"...Several freed slaves touched Lincoln to make sure he was real. "I know I am free," shouted an old woman, "for I have seen Father Abraham and felt him."

Overwhelmed by rare emotions, Lincoln said to one Black man who fell on his knees in front of him: "Don't kneel to me. That is not right. You must kneel to God only, and thank Him for the liberty you will enjoy hereafter."

Lincoln didn't "free the slaves." Slavery was abolished because of the sacrifices and struggles of millions of people--Blacks as well as whites. But Lincoln did play an important role. He deserves to be remembered, not for all the trivia that will be wheeled out at celebrations supposedly in his honor today, but as a participant in one of the great struggles for freedom in history.

Alan Maass is the editor of the Socialist Worker and author of The Case for Socialism. He can be reached at: alanmaass@sbcglobal.net

Now Available from CounterPunch Books!

Waiting for Lightning
to Strike:
The Fundamentals
of Black Politics
Kevin Alexander Gray

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Buy!

The Inside Story of the Shannon Five's Smashing Victory Over the
Bush War Machine
By Harry Browne

Born Under a Bad Sky:
Notes from the Dark Side
of the Earth
By Jeffrey St. Clair

Buy End Times Now!

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Order!

Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont