Sir, M. E. Synon (May 13th) queries Lincoln's dating of the foundation of the United States from the Declaration of Independence (1776) rather than 1787 (the year of the Constitution). But the Declaration is subtitled "The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America" and the constitution opens with the words: "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union
Now you can form a more perfect anything if you have some sort of that thing in the first place. Furthermore this improvement is carried out by "The people of the United States" not "the peoples of the uniting states".
M.E. says the Constitution "guaranteed the States the right to secede". Where? What article, what section? If there was such a guarantee why didn't they take their case to the Supreme Court, which had shown itself so sympathetic to the South in the Dred Scott case (1857)?
M.E. says: "Lincoln needed an excuse to justify his imperialist aggression against the South." Now at the end of the war more Southern people had more civil rights than at the start of it and no territory had been added to the United States. This is a form of imperialism with which I am not familiar. Perhaps M.E. could explain it to me.
I would have thought that an essential prerequisite of aggression is that the aggressor either initiates or provokes the initial violence. In his First Inaugural Lincoln said: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors." Secessionists started the war by attacking Fort Sumter after Lincoln told them he would send the garrison food but no munitions. Does M.E. think the attack on Fort Sumter was justified? Does she think the defenders had a right to fire back? Should the attackers have sunk a few of the imperialist aggressor's vessels by waiting until unarmed supply ships carrying food to hungry men came within range?
Kevin Myers, M.E. Synon et al are entitled to their views on Lincoln however bizarre. They're entitled not to grasp what Basil Fawlty would call "the bleeding obvious". They're entitled to be selective rather than be fair or balanced in presenting the facts. They're not entitled to distort them. - Yours, etc.,
Drimnagh Road,
Dublin 12.