During the American civil war, the Manchester Guardian—the great newspaper of English classical liberalism—sounded like Tom DiLorenzo on the subject of Lincoln. Martin Kettle is slightly alarmed to discover this, but reports the fascinating facts in honest fashion. Writes Mr. Kettle:
The issue that caused the problem for the Guardian was not slavery. The Guardian had always hated slavery. But it doubted the Union hated slavery to the same degree. It argued that the Union had always tacitly condoned slavery by shielding the southern slave states from the condemnation they deserved. It was critical of Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation for stopping short of a full repudiation of slavery throughout the US. And it chastised the president for being so willing to negotiate with the south, with slavery one of the issues still on the table. All of which criticisms were true….
The great stumbling-block issue for the Guardian and many other liberals was the right to self-determination. The paper believed that the south had the right to secede and to establish an independent state. It suspected that it would succeed. It thought, as Gladstone did, that this might hasten the end of slavery — and it may have been right, since no slave society, including Cuba and Brazil, survived into the 20th century. Above all, though, the paper wanted to be consistent. It had supported independence for the Slavs, the Hungarians, the Italians and the Egyptians — so why not for the Confederates, too?
More than anyone, Lincoln stood for the preservation of the union at all costs. As a result the Guardian was ferociously against him, to a degree that now seems not just perverse but even shaming. Lincoln was undoubtedly sincere, the paper said in October 1862, but “it is impossible not to feel that it was an evil day both for America and the world, when he was chosen president of the United States”.
The Guardian’s anti-Lincoln obsession reached its heights in the April 1865 editorial on, of all things, the president’s assassination. “Of his rule we can never speak except as a series of acts abhorrent to every true notion of constitutional right and human liberty,” the paper wrote, before tactfully adding that “it is doubtless to be regretted that he had not the opportunity of vindicating his good intentions”.
(Thanks to Robert Hiett)
2:16 pm on February 27, 2011
