I suspect that current polling data contradicts your contention. Though, We The People are notorious complainers and non-doers. In other words, the feds suck, except my fed.
A victim of our own design me thinks. But, this does not change the fact that our elected reps are certainly not representing us once we put them in office.
Yet we continue to re-elect them overwhelming this is objective data that cannot be refuted. So either "we" (collectively) are stupid, OR, they are actually representing the majority. Either that or there is massive vote fraud to the benefit of the incumbents. Take your pick. Either I have a low view of my fellow citizens as being stupid, or I have low view of them for wanting what they are getting (and your contention that "we" are not being represented is challenged), or the entire election is a total sham.
Which do you suppose it is? Or do you have another alternative?
Just a nit. The point is that the (then) federal government, that Lincoln perpetuated, continued to abuse the states...before they were states. very relevant in my view.
Kind of begs the question doesn't it? My point is that Lincoln didn't express any desire to punish the south or persecute the Mormons. Both happened after his death. The punishment of the south would not have been possible save for winning the war. But the federal government doesn't need to be overly-large in order to mistreat residents of mere territories or to impose unequal requirements to become a State.
Utah had a choice to make and they chose to become a state. Granted, they thought that statehood meant more autonomy vs. being a territory, but, the citizens held great power over the feds via sheer numbers as just one example.
"The Fed" was comprised of millions of citizens of union States. The entire Confederacy failed to break away. A single, relatively small population territory? The privations suffered as a territory made Statehood the least offensive option.
Men were jailed in terrible conditions. Women had the franchise removed in an effort to disenfranchise Mormons generally. We were being "governed" by those who hated us. This after having been run from State to State to State, murdered, raped, looted, and turned out in winter multiple times.
It wasn't the government of Lincoln that persecuted my ancestors. It was the people of the Northeast (and then South) who hated Mormons.
I cannot argue this, yet those who the citizenry of the south elected were exempt from the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction. No, Lincoln would not tolerate total reunification...though, what "general" would not exempt those who waged the war beyond the fodder that were the front line of battle. Winners do get to be choosers. Might makes right...even to this day.
Yup. Even Lincoln wasn't perfectly charitable. But far more so than those who followed.
I again asj what wrongs? Utah agreed to the land grab as a condition of entry into the union as a state. I see no impetus to take the lands back from the feds? At least the south tried, and failed, to act on their constitutional right.
Agreed at the point of a gun. Agreed as every prior State (after the original 13 agreed) under the implicit understanding that once clear title was obtained by the feds, the land would quickly be returned to the State, on equal footing as it had been with prior States.
Those who do not see the wrongs do not understand the impact of having land withhold.
60% of my State's land cannot be developed without federal (ie "environmental") consent. It is also beyond reach of State property tax or even State regulation. My State spends one of the highest percentages of its budget on education of any State in the union, yet is second to bottom in per pupil spending. How would your State fair on school taxes if 60% of your land mass were beyond State taxes? How would your economy fair if 60% of your land could not be developed?
Despite being a geographically large State, Utah is one of the most urbanized States in the nation. Land for housing is relatively limited. Roads are routinely closed to public access. Land is closed to hunting and motorized recreation on the whims of unelected bureaucrats in agencies that barely even exist in most eastern States. What know you of the BLM? Or the Antiquities Act?
The wrongs committed by the feds in Utah and other Western States come to a head in issues like the Bundy Ranch in Nevada.
Anyone who presumes to care about federal over-reach who doesn't familiarize himself what the feds have done and continue to do in/to Western States is not really worried about federal over-reach nearly so much as just about some personal grievances.
I've been to Utah and certain geographical realities make your claimed suffering ring hollow. Not much in the way of Utah is needed for useful things, certainly not past Lake Point and Windover, nor Spanish Fork to St. George. Also, there is a whole lotta green on the Utah map. If Utah objects to this there is a process to get the feds to return that green, and remaining lands, to Utah.
Your ignorance of the realities of Western living make your opinions of very little value since they lack information. In our semi-arid region, 40 acres and mule won't make a living. Grazing cattle requires large areas of land. Ditto any logging operations. The second largest low sulfur coal deposit in the world is located near Escalante, but is locked up in a federal monument created by the stroke of Clinton's pen to curry political favor with California and east-coast tree huggers. We have massive reserves of natural gas and shale oil that cannot be developed because of federal land policies.
The South has been oppressed by the North since at least 1850. For southerners to be blind to the way the same northern region imposes on the western States is unfortunate. What is worse is when southerners implicitly approve of or attempt to diminish the extent of that abuse.
Lincoln was "bad" not because I say so, but because his entire effort on preserving the union was based on the irrefutable fact, in his mind, that secession was a attempt to overthrow the then federal government. Not merely several states exiting from the union while leaving the remaining union's federal government to its own devices. Rebellion/insurrection, as cited in the constitution, was redefined by Lincoln.
I won't dispute this. What I do dispute is the extent to which current ills can be rightly laid entirely at Lincoln's feet.
No doubt, he redefined the relationship between States and feds. Sadly, the strongest attempt to correct that was again on the part of the South in its attempt to maintain racist Jim Crow laws. It is a shame--and not Lincoln's doing--that "States' rights" is so often associated with racism, bigotry, and attempts to discriminate and ignore constitutional rights.
Had the South's secession not been so much about slavery, they might have actually seen England jump into the war and assist them. (Whether that would ultimately have been good or not is another question.) Save for slavery, northern residents would likely have lost resolve and let the South secede once it was clear the fight would be long and hard. Save for racism and resulting Jim Crow in the South (the north was a bit more subtle in their racism by 1960 it seems), we might have seen some return to the proper balance of power between the feds and the States. But when "States' rights" is used to impose Jim Crow, it is hard to get any moral support for local authority.
Charles
