Dershowitz made a remarkable claim.
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No, not the one that he's already back pedaled on. The story about Lincoln sending a telegram to Sherman telling him to send troops home to Indiana to vote. Did this actually happen? An amazing story. It smells pretty fishy to me. I don't think catching the Trump team in another lie is really going to change anything. But there's usually a kernel of truth in there somewhere, and this one sounds pretty interesting.
So I looked around to find out what the real story is. I couldn't find anything. The search engines just don't return anything useful. I finally had to just read through general history about lincoln and telegraphs in the civil war, and I found a similar story, with some of the details missing and all of the point backwards. Here it is.
History Engine: Tools for Collaborative Education and Research | Episodes
Many of his telegrams addressed to government officials and generals inquired about planned sentences & executions of war criminals, both Union and Confederates. Although he asked for many to be suspended or respited, it is not a compensation for his subordinates' lack of judgment but instead a thoughtful consideration of the implications that executions may hold for a politician who seeks reelection as POTUS. More often than not, Lincoln yearned to be included in the process but left the ultimate judgment in those directly involved, which is supported by his decision to allow Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and General Sherman determine how many soldiers can be released without weakening Sherman's position (October 13, 1864). Clearly, the soldiers who were released were of great political value to Lincoln and his administration now that they could vote in-person, but their absence in the field of battle was feared by Lincoln and therefore configured by Stanton & Sherman.
So it is an interesting and relevant case. I'm glad that Dershowitz brought it up. Let's compare the precedent that Lincoln set to the actions that Trump took. The similarity is that in both cases executive actions have an impact on an election in a way that directly benefits the President. But Lincoln handled the situation very differently.
Lincoln worked through official channels. He had his general and SoD making the decisions, which insulated him from the conflict of interest. Trump got directly involved. He pushed the State Department out of the way and inserted his own personal agents. He ignored State Department and DoD assessments that corruption was being addressed, ignored the prepared talking points of his civil service, and zeroed right in only on two things that benefit him directly.
Lincoln delegated the task to the DoD through official communications that are now public record. We can all read the telegrams ourselves if we feel like doing the homework. Trump is doing everything he can to suppress all of the evidence of who he spoke to when and what he talked about.
If Trump had followed Lincoln's precedent, as soon as he found out that Biden was involved, and thus he might benefit personally, he would have left further decisions to the DoD and since it's a foreign issue the SD. He would release the documents demonstrating his delegation of decision making to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. He wouldn't have had his own personal representatives involved at all. On the July 25 phone call, he would have stuck to the script that the decision makers gave him and certainly never mention Biden.
Dershowitz used Lincoln as a precedent for Trump. But most of the stuff that Democrats are complaining about is stuff that Lincoln never did. Very interesting history. Very bad argument.
YouTube
No, not the one that he's already back pedaled on. The story about Lincoln sending a telegram to Sherman telling him to send troops home to Indiana to vote. Did this actually happen? An amazing story. It smells pretty fishy to me. I don't think catching the Trump team in another lie is really going to change anything. But there's usually a kernel of truth in there somewhere, and this one sounds pretty interesting.
So I looked around to find out what the real story is. I couldn't find anything. The search engines just don't return anything useful. I finally had to just read through general history about lincoln and telegraphs in the civil war, and I found a similar story, with some of the details missing and all of the point backwards. Here it is.
History Engine: Tools for Collaborative Education and Research | Episodes
Many of his telegrams addressed to government officials and generals inquired about planned sentences & executions of war criminals, both Union and Confederates. Although he asked for many to be suspended or respited, it is not a compensation for his subordinates' lack of judgment but instead a thoughtful consideration of the implications that executions may hold for a politician who seeks reelection as POTUS. More often than not, Lincoln yearned to be included in the process but left the ultimate judgment in those directly involved, which is supported by his decision to allow Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and General Sherman determine how many soldiers can be released without weakening Sherman's position (October 13, 1864). Clearly, the soldiers who were released were of great political value to Lincoln and his administration now that they could vote in-person, but their absence in the field of battle was feared by Lincoln and therefore configured by Stanton & Sherman.
So it is an interesting and relevant case. I'm glad that Dershowitz brought it up. Let's compare the precedent that Lincoln set to the actions that Trump took. The similarity is that in both cases executive actions have an impact on an election in a way that directly benefits the President. But Lincoln handled the situation very differently.
Lincoln worked through official channels. He had his general and SoD making the decisions, which insulated him from the conflict of interest. Trump got directly involved. He pushed the State Department out of the way and inserted his own personal agents. He ignored State Department and DoD assessments that corruption was being addressed, ignored the prepared talking points of his civil service, and zeroed right in only on two things that benefit him directly.
Lincoln delegated the task to the DoD through official communications that are now public record. We can all read the telegrams ourselves if we feel like doing the homework. Trump is doing everything he can to suppress all of the evidence of who he spoke to when and what he talked about.
If Trump had followed Lincoln's precedent, as soon as he found out that Biden was involved, and thus he might benefit personally, he would have left further decisions to the DoD and since it's a foreign issue the SD. He would release the documents demonstrating his delegation of decision making to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. He wouldn't have had his own personal representatives involved at all. On the July 25 phone call, he would have stuck to the script that the decision makers gave him and certainly never mention Biden.
Dershowitz used Lincoln as a precedent for Trump. But most of the stuff that Democrats are complaining about is stuff that Lincoln never did. Very interesting history. Very bad argument.
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