FROM http://www.ratical.org/corporations/Lincoln.txt
  
  ADAPTED by men-kau-ra !! this is NOT the (entire) ORIGINAL TEXT !

  also see http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/7050  (below the ###-line)



                           What Lincoln Foresaw:
             Corporations Being "Enthroned" After the Civil War
              and Re-Writing the Laws Defining Their Existence
                 by Rick Crawford, crawford@cs.ucdavis.edu


In the last year of the Civil War, on November 21, 1864,
President Abraham Lincoln looked back on the growing power of the
war-enriched corporations, and wrote the following thoughtful letter
to his friend Colonel William F. Elkins:
"We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end.
It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. The best blood of the
flower of American youth has been freely offered upon our country's
altar that the nation might live. It has indeed been a trying hour
for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching
that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country.
As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era
of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the
country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices
of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the
Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety than ever
before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may
prove groundless."

                 -- U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864
                               (letter to Col. William F. Elkins)
                     Ref: The Lincoln Encyclopedia, Archer H. Shaw
                                            (Macmillan, 1950, NY)



     Based on about 3 hrs of research, it appears Lincoln has been
     extensively SANITIZED FOR OUR PROTECTION. The Hidden Lincoln; from
     the Letters and Papers of William H. Herndon, by Emanuel Hertz
     (Viking Press, 1938, NY), details how Herndon (Lincoln's lifelong
     law partner) collected an extensive oral history and aggregated
     much of Lincoln's writings into a collection that served as the
     basis for many "authoritative" books on Lincoln.

     By all accounts, Herndon was scrupulously honest and plainspoken.
     Hertz quotes Herndon's characterization of the various "big-name"
     authors who relied on his collection for primary source materials:

          "They are aiming, first, to do a superb piece of
          literary work; second, to make the story WITH THE
          CLASSES AS AGAINST THE MASSES. [my emphasis added] It
          will result in delineating the real Lincoln about as
          well as does a wax figure in the museum."

     In several books, I found numerous places where Lincoln spoke
     about Capital and Labor ("Workingmen"). Lincoln re-used his own
     material frequently, and virtually identical passages appear in
     several places. Lincoln praises the moral rightness of both
     Capital and Labor, but this is invariably in the context of a
     nation where NO MORE THAN ONE MAN IN EIGHT is a Capitalist or a
     Laborer, ie, where 7/8 of the population are "self-employed" on
     their own farms and homesteads.

     This social context of general self-sufficiency would explain how
     Lincoln could serve for years as a railroad corporation lawyer
     with (apparently) no qualms, yet pen the "corporations enthroned"
     passage to Elkins.

     A final Lincoln tidbit, although it pertains to one very specific
     case:

          "These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in
          concert to fleece the people, and now that they have got
          into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to
          appropriate the people's money to settle the quarrel."

                       speech to Illinois legislature, Jan. 1837.
                   See Vol. 1, p. 24 of Lincoln's Complete Works,
                                    ed. by Nicolay and Hay, 1905)

     -rick     crawford@cs.ucdavis.edu




     ####################################################################


    On December 3, 1888, President Grover Cleveland delivered his annual
    address to Congress.
    Apparently the President had taken notice of the Santa Clara County Supreme
    Court headnote, its politics, and its consequences, for he said in his
    speech to the nation, delivered before a joint session of Congress: 

   "As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the
   existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen
   is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel.
   Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the
   law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters."