Dictatorship In America

According to the book “The Lincoln Conspiracy” the United States was perilously close to dictatorship in 1864. The authors noted: “All the elements were in motion: transportation and communication were nationalized, the writ of habeas corpus suspended, military tribunals had replaced civilian trials. Thousands of people were jailed without charge and held without trial. Dictatorship was an evil lurking behind the scenes. The name of the would-be dictator was not discernable to the public.”

Some have claimed the president, Lincoln, was a would-be dictator. Clinton Rossiter wrote a book, “Presidential Dictatorship” in which he pointed to Lincoln as the one that fulfilled that role. While no one can argue that Lincoln usurped power while he was president, it might seem more appropriate to assign the role of true dictator to the one who was in a position to deny Lincoln access to information that came into the War Department. That man was Edwin Stanton.

Lafayette Baker, (another person who will never be a candidate for sainthood), head of the Secret Service (police) said in his cipher-coded manuscript: “I admit my hatred and contempt for Edwin M. Stanton, but I also swear that what I am saying is true. Stanton felt that Lincoln, Johnson and Seward would have to be executed. He told me it would be done quite legally, and in the proper manner for such officials.” Baker was known to be a notorious liar, so whether Stanton ever said this to him is up for grabs. However, you must admit that it does seem to be in keeping with Stanton’s mentality.

When General McClellan pointed out his opinion that emancipation should be accomplished gradually, and that blacks should be prepared for it, via education, recognition of the rights of family, marriage, etc. he ran afoul of the Radical Republicans who had another agenda. When McClellan pointed some of this out to Senator Charles Sumner, the Massachusetts radical, Sumner replied that such points did not concern him and that all this must be left to take care of itself. In other words, let’s just go ahead and do this and kick the can down the road, and let someone else worry about all those nasty little details.

Sumner’s attitude was strongly akin to that of the leftist radicals in the 1960s, who felt that it was perfectly okay to tear down society with no clear picture of what to replace it with. Needless to say, those that financed the leftist radicals and orchestrated their efforts, definitely had an idea of what to replace society with, and they are still working on that. I doubt the public at large would like their solutions–more government and less individual freedom.

Unlike our latter-day radicals, though, Sumner, Stanton, Thaddeus Stevens, and their radical associates did have something in store for a defeated South, almost a kind of reverse slavery as it were, with uneducated blacks being given the immediate vote and white men having all their rights taken away from them. This was a situation guaranteed to produce racial animosity–kind of a sneak preview of Critical Race Theory. That was the name of the game in the South.

Divide the races one from the other so good people in both races can’t see what is being done to them and it’s still at work today. And as for those leftist radicals who are tearing down society, they will find if they are successful, that when their job is done, they are eminently dispensable. When they are no longer needed, they will be dispensed with.