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Abraham Lincoln - Right or Wrong?

Jack Webb

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This is probably a bad idea for a poll. I just want to apologize right now for starting this poll. I'm already embarrassed...

Here's one opinion:

Top 10 Most Influential Presidents
By Martin Kelly, About.com Guide

"Of the 43 men who have been president of the United States, there are some truly clear choices of who were the most important and influential presidents.

1. Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln saved the Union during the American Civil War. His leadership during the war was one of no compromise but at the same time understanding that he would eventually have to unite the states once the North won the war. His actions eventually led to the abolition of slavery across the United States."


Ranking the Top Ten Most Influential Presidents

***
Here's another source:

Historical rankings of Presidents of the United States

"George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt are consistently ranked at the top of the lists."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States

***
And another:

Lincoln wins: Honest Abe tops new presidential survey

"It's been 145 years since Abraham Lincoln appeared on a ballot, but admiration for the man who saved the union and sparked the end of slavery is as strong as ever, according to a new survey.

Lincoln finished first in a ranking by historians of the 42 former White House occupants."


Lincoln wins: Honest Abe tops new presidential survey - CNN

***
Does everyone agree?

How long was Killing Lincoln by Bill O'Reilly the New York Times best-seller? It's still in the no. 2 position right now.

I can't find anyone that's critical of Honest Abe. I guess this is a non-subject to everyone. I apologize again, I'm sorry.
 
Here's one dissenter. *raises hand*

His importance is hard to deny, but I'm no fan of Lincoln.
 
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Interesting that my favorite presidents and least favorite presidents can all be on the same list.

Personally I think a lot of what Lincoln did was inevitable and unavoidable. He certainly had his negatives but there are multiple presidents on that list I'd raise an eyebrow to before Lincoln.
 
Thank you Black_Zawisza and Republic Now! for participating in my poll. I wondered if anyone would venture near. The topic of my poll looks like a camouflaged elephant trap with neon arrows pointing to it. The option that Lincoln was "WRONG" is surely sacrilege. History is clear, Lincoln was great! Experience tells us that hindsight is 20/20, right? And, historians have the advantage of mulling-over events and decisions. But there is something known as "The Historian's Fallacy." The top engineer of Chrysler's military defense division explained something to me called the hemi-bell curve. As a practical example, say your retail store's sales lobby has on average 12 customers waiting for 15 minutes. The hemi-bell curve graph might predict that adding another cash register changes the paradigm and the result is the customer count drops to three, with a wait-time of only three minutes. Since I managed a retail outlet for said engineer, his engineer's approach was more than abstract, and though it seems simple and easily understood as I present this, most people experience something we call, "not seeing the forest for the trees." Our minds are trained to organize thoughts using idioms, phrases and stereotypes. We gladly subscribe to the "bandwagon effect and groupthink." That "Historian's Fallacy" I mentioned earlier falls prey to some of these thinking patterns. Are you still with me? Sorry I can't just jump into telling you WHY Lincoln was "WRONG." There's more prep still...

Analogies are useful to communicate. They're great. I find that when I look at politics, there's one analogy that "FITS" almost every situation. It's turned out to be my favorite 'analogy.' I call it, 'the train analogy.' Here it is: You're going on a trip, so you take your shower, get dressed, take your suitcase to the train depot. Everything is going well, you board the train and it's clean and the passengers are friendly. You put your suitcase in the over-head compartment and take your seat. You see the conductor walking toward you, smiling and joking with the passengers, taking their tickets and using his "puncher" to punch their tickets and hand them back to the passengers. He arrives at your seat and smiles as you hand him your ticket. He jokes with you too, and punches your ticket and hands it back to you. The train gets underway and it's a beautiful day - the scenery is gorgeous today as the train steams down the tracks. The problem? It's the wrong train. It's not taking you where you really want to go.

O.K. There's all my groundwork, and now the movie, Why Lincoln Was "WRONG."

Top Five Causes of the Civil War

1. Economic and social differences between the North and the South.
2. States versus federal rights.
3. The fight between Slave and Non-Slave State Proponents.
4. Growth of the Abolition Movement.
5. The election of Abraham Lincoln.

This is where "seeing the forest for the trees" enters. Being too close to "issues" has taken the "train" of our country OFF the tracks and into the woods more than once.

The first time our country's train was taken off the tracks and into the woods was 1798. Yeah, our country didn't go far before that happened, eh?

But you say, Lincoln wasn't born until 1809... Hold on, I'll explain.

The French Revolution's reign of terror was causing paranoia in Europe and it was bleeding over into the United States, calls for secession reached unparalleled heights, and our young nation seemed ready to rip itself apart.

Kind'a sounds like our nation just before the Civil War, doesn't it? So what happened next? The Federalist Party passed some legislation designed to muzzle free speech, and deal with "THE ISSUE."

The Alien and Sedition Acts were four bills passed in 1798 by the Federalists in the 5th United States Congress in the aftermath of the French Revolution's reign of terror and during an undeclared naval war with Britain and France, later known as the Quasi-War. They were signed into law by President John Adams. Alien and Sedition Acts - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The two founding fathers who basically started this country, the guys who wrote The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, flipped out. Yes, I said they "FLIPPED OUT!" Now we're getting to the heart of the matter. This is how I can be correct in my judgement of Abraham Lincoln, instead of doing what "everybody else" does and look at the retail store lobby being full of angry, waiting customers, I see the hemi-bell curve that the engineers, Jefferson and Madison, showed us. O.K., O.K., so when Jefferson and Madison flipped out, what did they do?

They started Democratic-Republican Party to oppose the Federalist Party and the wrong direction the country was going.

The Democratic-Republicans denounced the Sedition Act as invalid and a violation of the First Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights, which protected the right of free speech.

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which called on the states to nullify the federal legislation.

The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions reflect the Compact Theory, which holds that the United States is made up of a voluntary union of states that agree to cede some of their authority in order to join the union, but that the states do not, ultimately, surrender their sovereign rights. Therefore, under the Compact Theory, states can determine if the federal government has violated its agreements, including the Constitution, and nullify such violations or even withdraw from the union.

It turns out, the MAIN cause for the Civil War was number two on the list from above: 2. States versus federal rights.

Not only was Lincoln not right, "at least 618,000 Americans died in the Civil War, and some experts say the toll reached 700,000."

Casualties In The Civil War

There is"ZERO" doubt that had Thomas Jefferson and James Madison been in government, the most horrific war of our history would not have happened.

Oh, you say, "but what about slavery and the other forest trees, etc?" There's where "The Historian's Fallacy" comes in. As a historian, you can very easily say Pearl Harbor being bombed by the Japanese should not have happened, there was voluminous evidence, blah, blah, blah... But, in reality, when you add another cashier and cash register, you just can't imagine how happy your customers are and how many people they get you through word-of-mouth advertising. Likewise, every complaining customer REPRESENTS a couple of hundred unsatisfied customers that you never hear about.

Don't you just love the communication advantages of using analogies?

And hey, FDR was the opposite of what everybody thinks too. Don't even get me started. Lincoln was WRONG. The federal government was set up as a provider of specific services. When a service provider fails to do it's job, you fire it and replace it with another competing provider of services. The word "DEMOCRACY" does not appear in The Declaration of Independence or in The U.S. Constitution. It's a REPUBLIC, folks. The federal government "represents" we the people by doing what we authorize it to do. And, since we can't take money from our neighbor by threat of force to give to another neighbor, we CANNOT delegate that activity to government. It's called theft if we do it. It's called RULING us if government does it. (I know, I know, this isn't about Lincoln, but I thought I'd throw this in while I had your attention.) Lincoln was a scrapper and liked a good fight. His flaw. Forcing soverign states to stay in the union was not constitutional. Jefferson and Madison would have had none of it. Lincoln was wrong!
 
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I feel a slavery apologist thread coming along... It's always fun to watch Libertarians downplay the importance of slavery to the civil war. Lol "social and economic differences". Yeah and WWII was really about German anger towards the economy. The annihilation of Jews was just ... you know... a side issue.
 
I feel a slavery apologist thread coming along... It's always fun to watch Libertarians downplay the importance of slavery to the civil war. Lol "social and economic differences". Yeah and WWII was really about German anger towards the economy. The annihilation of Jews was just ... you know... a side issue.
It was, actually, insofar as it wouldn't have happened had Germany not gotten curbstomped by the Allies. Many Germans believed they lost because the Jews stabbed them in the back. Note also that the "Final Solution" policy wasn't decided upon until early 1942 at the Wannsee Conference.

Wannsee Conference - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
He was definitely one of, if not the, most influential presidents ever. He was also one of the most tyrannical.

He didn't give a damn about blacks or their plight. He himself said that if he could save the Union and not free a single slave, he would. All the talk about Bush suspending habeus corpus? Lincoln did it freely and blatantly. Dissenters would be shot on the White House lawn under the guise of treason.

If you want to believe the American 6h grade social studies and worship him, that's your problem. In my mind, he will go down as probably the biggest despot in American politics.
 
He was both actually. He did things that were right but in the wrong way;
What he did right:
1) Did not end slavery but did get the ball rolling in that direction
2) Made the best effort possible to keep the U.S. together as a unified nation
3) Fiscal policy during war time was adequate.

What he did wrong:
1) Failed to compromise in a way that would have ended the war. The way to accomplish this would have been less than desirable from a standpoint of keeping our tenets of "all men are created equal" but would have allowed a slower and possibly less racially charged means to that end. This is a half-wrong because slavery really needed to end, could have been handled better.
2) Should have ended the tariff system that kept the south at an economic disadvantage. The tariffs put Europe at an advantage trading with the south's own country. This was a main factor leading to the intial tensions that ignited over the slavery issue.
3) Should have ended the occupation of Fort Sumter. I've heard the "It was federal land" argument but it was in southern territory. It would have been fair to leave and ask for compensation. The occupation started the aggression from both sides. Peace then was off the table.
4) Should have never challenged the state's right of secession. This was a powerful tool alluded to by the founders, the constitution did not allow for enforcement of the union and neither disbarred the states from disengaging thereof. State's losing the power of secession would come back in the next century as an expansion of federal powers not ever intended it by the founders. Woodrow Wilson, FDR, LBJ, Nixon, Carter, and Obama would all follow with enormous expansions of the supposedly least permitted of the governments to reign supreme.
 
He was definitely one of, if not the, most influential presidents ever. He was also one of the most tyrannical.

He didn't give a damn about blacks or their plight. He himself said that if he could save the Union and not free a single slave, he would. All the talk about Bush suspending habeus corpus? Lincoln did it freely and blatantly. Dissenters would be shot on the White House lawn under the guise of treason.

If you want to believe the American 6h grade social studies and worship him, that's your problem. In my mind, he will go down as probably the biggest despot in American politics.

You know, i don't disagree with anything you said. He was tyrannical. The thing is I also have to take into consideration the grave circumstances. I can't see any other way things could have worked out. There are times when uncompromising people have to take an uncompromising position to gain something big. It easily could have gone the other way. Let's just say the South won - Lincoln would be one of the most hated and spit upon Presidents. That he was on the winning side certainly helps - his methods were not good in any sense of the word but again, someone used the word "unavoidable" and that's about right.

Give almost 150 years of perspective, we can look back upon that time and reflect. I can understand and empathize with Lincolns actions and goals, but that doesn't excuse his methods. I think that he paid for that with his life. I couldn't see anyone in modern history doing any better in a similar time and similar situation.
 
ohhh im a good ol rebel now thats just what i am
 
I feel a slavery apologist thread coming along... It's always fun to watch Libertarians downplay the importance of slavery to the civil war. Lol "social and economic differences". Yeah and WWII was really about German anger towards the economy. The annihilation of Jews was just ... you know... a side issue.
"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union." -Lincoln

Slavery is probably the most atrocious part of our history, and Lincoln did help put it to the end, but it was not his sole motivation for the war he fought. I see him as neither a hero or a villain.
 
For Lincoln I would have included the creation of a coalition that, for all intents and purposes, lasted until the 1930s.
 
In response to Lincoln challenging the state's rights to secede, in his doing this (legal experts correct me if I am wrong) doesn't it create a legal precedent that can be used in the future if a state decides to secede from the union?
 
i was watching the history on jesse james,and watching what the union did to missouri,its no surprise the south still hates lincoln.missouri was a state mostly in support of the union,but with a few countries in extreme support of the confederacy.the union would either imprison or execute anyone showing any sympathies for the confederacy.sad because my great great great grandfather was from misouri and served the confederacy,under my same family tree his brothers were all imprisoned for relations to a confederate supporter.2 of them died in prison and the other 3 were let go after the war ended.


how can someone be proud of an administration that ended civil liberties and free speech for a cause.lincoln may have fought a good fight but the means didnt justify the ends.he could have found a more peaceful solution than he did.
 
In response to Lincoln challenging the state's rights to secede, in his doing this (legal experts correct me if I am wrong) doesn't it create a legal precedent that can be used in the future if a state decides to secede from the union?

Yes, but its a moot point anyway. If a state wants to secede and does so, it's not going to be swayed by any legal argument made by the nation from which it's seceeded. Even back then strong legal arguments were made that it was not legal, but why would the new nation (as they saw themselves) submit to U.S. law or mandate? The very act of secession made them unbound to US law (of course the US disagreed).

Basically, the decision comes down to the nation from which the state seceeded -- either let it happen or send in the troops to prevent it from happening. Lincoln, of course, chose the latter and set that as the precedent.

In the end, the question of the legality of secession only mattered (or matters) in retrospect. The south fought the war under the notion that they were a separate nation and the north did so believing secession was not possible in the first place. Ironically, when it came time for reconstruction, each side claimed the exact opposite! This allowed the north to place the south under provisional military rule and set requirements for "re-entry" into the union. The south, meanwhile, said that if they had never left the union in the first place then "re-entry" was not necessary. The north won the argument; they had the troops to enforce their mandates.
 
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Say what you will about Lincoln, I believe the man had a good heart when it came to the slavery issue, he was instrumental in passing the 13th amendment at a time when the civil war was all but won. He did this because he thought it was the right thing to do.


But the final version of the Thirteenth Amendment--the one ending slavery--has an interesting story of its own. Passed during the Civil War years, when southern congressional representatives were not present for debate, one would think today that it must have easily passed both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Not true. As a matter of fact, although passed in April 1864 by the Senate, with a vote of 38 to 6, the required two-thirds majority was defeated in the House of Representatives by a vote of 93 to 65. Abolishing slavery was almost exclusively a Republican party effort--only four Democrats voted for it.

It was then that President Abraham Lincoln took an active role in pushing it through congress. He insisted that the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment be added to the Republican party platform for the upcoming presidential elections. He used all of his political skill and influence to convince additional democrats to support the amendments' passage. His efforts finally met with success, when the House passed the bill in January 1865 with a vote of 119-56. Finally, Lincoln supported those congressmen that insisted southern state legislatures must adopt the Thirteenth Amendment before their states would be allowed to return with full rights to Congress.

"The fact that Lincoln had difficulty in gaining passage of the amendment towards the closing months of the war and after his Emancipation Proclamation had been in effect 12 full months, is illustrative. There was still a reasonably large body of the northern people, or at least their elected representatives, that were either indifferent towards, or directly opposed to, freeing the slaves."


Great American History Thirteenth Amendment-
 
more than 2 million people were killed in the Civil War. many sources estimate a much smaller number, the figure of more than 2 million was determined by obtaining the names and other identity information of everyone killed, and counting them, it was not an estimate. The southerners were often drafted, and desertion was met with the death penalty. the northerners chose to accept the risk of death, believing that the cause was worth more than their lives. No one was drafted in the north, the northern soldiers all enlisted. Lincoln granted a blanket pardon to all deserters, any soldier from the north could leave at any time if they came to the conclusion that the cause wasn't worth their life, without penalty, any southerner was pardoned for desertion too, too, if they had fled to the north successfully. This blanket pardon was a totally unprecedented act that no President nor Prince had ever done in any war before or since, and totally worthy of inclusion in the new movie "Lincoln", although I doubt that the fictionalized movie "Lincoln" mentioned it at all.
 
Here's one dissenter. *raises hand*

His importance is hard to deny, but I'm no fan of Lincoln.

Hating Lincoln for the various events surrounding the Civil War was the cause celebre in right libertarian circles a decade ago. Some seem to have switched their hatred and loathing to FDR in the last few years. I suspect the more racially conservative among them still has a special place in their cold hearts for Lincoln while the more cerebral save most of their loathing for Roosevelt.
 
He was a despot and a tyrant. Sic semper tyrannis
 
He was a despot and a tyrant. Sic semper tyrannis

How so? Because he suspended habeas corpus during a time of rebellion?

Presidents have done worse.
 
How so? Because he suspended habeas corpus during a time of rebellion?

Presidents have done worse.

Because he denied people the right to self determination.
 
That would be great if secession were legal. But, it's not.

Secession is beyond legality. Secession is denying the authority who is enforcing the legality.

It's not illegal if you don't recognize the authority behind the law. You don't recognize the law because you don't recognize its authority.

It then becomes a matter of force. Does the denounced authority have the capability to force its authority, and by extension its laws upon the those who don't give their consent? If it does, is this not tyranny? Yes, yes it is.

We are a country where our government's authority is derived from the consent of the governed.(supposedly) If enough people in a territory, a State revoke their consent and place it in the hands of another, than the government who lost their consent can pound sand.

Legal shmeagal...
 
"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union." -Lincoln

Slavery is probably the most atrocious part of our history, and Lincoln did help put it to the end, but it was not his sole motivation for the war he fought. I see him as neither a hero or a villain.

Make no mistake, the Civil War was about slavery. The South seceded because in their eyes, an anti-slavery President was elected, and they feared Lincoln would take their slaves. The "social and economic differences" argument has some merit, until you look and see that half of the country had a society and economy that was based on racial slavery.

This famous quote from Lincoln that gets trotted out every time is taken out of context. What he's saying is that preserving the Union was first and foremost, but he was certainly anti-slavery. It was also a political statement intended to try to calm the fears of Southerners that he would take their slaves by executive writ.
 
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