Abe Lincoln Was A Bigot

Making a hero out of Lincoln, who is responsible for the deaths of 750,000 Americans, is like chickens making a hero out of Colonel Sanders.

 

Who said "hero"?

Lincoln was president during a critical time in the history of this country.
What ever his personal feelings about race don't change that at that time, there was going to be a major change in the US. And he was the president how had to navigate through out that change. (And it might have ended up differently than it actually did, depending on what President X did at that time)

Looking back and labeling historical figures "hero" or "villain" is a People magazine approach to history.

 

well he was a lot of different things, just like everyone is a lot of different things. he certainly wasn't a saint or a god. he could have just let the southern states become their own country, go their own way, more likely sooner or latter rot, and made everyone free in the majority of the country which had not interest in 'the south's succession. as long as it didn't actually attack the north. of course if it did, he still would have had war.
we can only guess at paths not taken.
but a man who is president, and his presidency are two different things. a lot of people forget that, because a president isn't a king. so his personal thought on matters, whatever they might have been, and what he actually did in office, these i think are somewhat seperate matters.
one thing he did do, that i see negatively, is that he created this whole concept of corporate personhood. his resume, before becoming president, was that of corporate lawyer. he sort of almost invented corporate law as a profession. i'm not saying he deserves complete credit/blame, everything in law has precidents, even if some of them seem a bit of a stretch to everyone other then another lawyer.

 

Agreed. But even though the past is stagnant, history is not. So when such historical figures have been painted a hero or villain in former decades which still has their effect on how people view them in this day it can of course be worthwile to critically look at that portrayal again.

 

Lincoln was a tyrant.

If Abe Lincoln was in Mikhail Gorbachev's position as president of the Soviet Union in 1990, he would've launched an all out war against: Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Moldova, and all the Eastern European Satellite States.

 

^
Lol. Why do you think so? Why did you compare him to Gorbachev exactly? Isn't that a completely differrent time, country and thus situation?

 

Lincoln created the
"whole concept of corporate personhood?" What exactly do you mean?

 

The beast that enslaves the whole world....every person.

 

There were many, many corporations BEFORE Lincoln was born. The beginning of what is now Citibank and Chase Manhattan---1816. Lincoln was born in 1822.

Although, I don't disagree with your statement.

 

Lincoln detested slavery, yet in the spirit of the times, made some conflicting statements in order to balance them politically with the conflicting factions at play.

 

Lincoln and Sherman were war criminals.

 

This simply isn't true. History is not lying on the subject. The most basic research into the Civil War or Lincoln will reveal a wealth of writings and quotations showing exactly what Lincoln thought and did regarding the issues of slavery and equality. It certainly is true that the average American doesn't know anything about the Civil War or about Lincoln, but the truth is written in the history books. I have a history of the Civil War written in 1961, it contains endless quotes and letters describing exaclty what Lincoln did and felt. I have another history written in 2000, it says the same things. Even a popularised telling of the history such as Ken Burns' The Civil War discusses Lincolns attituteds accurately and at great length. Really the author of this new book is depending on his audience only knowing that "Lincoln was a great president" so that they are shocked when they hear the purpose of the book. You cannot blame the histories for the fact that people leave the history books on the shelf. I have actually been studying the Civil War on an almost daily basis for the past several years, and I have not come across a single history, touching on the subject, that fails to represent Lincoln's true thoughts and actions.

And as an interesting note: Benjamin Butler did more for freeing the slaves in American than any other person. He did this by refusing to return slaves to their owners under the Fugitive Slave Acts. His argument was that slaves used by the conferderacy were liable to be seized as contraband of war. Further the Fugitive Slave Acts, Butler argued, did not apply to foreign nations, which the confederacy was claiming to be and "..she should reckon it one of the infelicities of her position in so far as we take her at her word." Lincoln approved the argument and from then on wherever the Federal armies went, the institution of slaverly crumbled.

A few other points: Lincoln ran on a platform of promising to not interfere with slavery. Readers must be careful to separate statements that Lincoln felt forced to make to appease the politcal machinery he was a part of, and his actual innermost feelings. Lincoln was certainly terrified at the prospect of equality (possibly more for pragmatic reasons than his personal opinion of black people) but it does seem clear that he believed slavery to be immoral.

TLDR, History does not consider Lincoln a champion of blacks, only people who don't bother learning history think that. And for that matter Lincoln never wanted to be a champion of civil rights. He wanted to restore the Union. Job well done.

 

Some people in this thread seem to be laboring under the mistaken assumption that because the average soldier neither fought for nor against slavery that we can conclude that the war was not about slavery, as if soldiers have the ability to choose why a war occurs. There were many disputes between north and south, but the only one that led to secession was slavery. The immediate preamble to secession was the splitting of the democratic party, and this was caused almost entirely by the dispute over nominations. Southern democrats would only nominate someone who was devoted to vigourously defending the institution of slavery, nothern democrats would only nominate someone who was willing to compromise with a view toward the slow death of slavery. After secession Lincoln wrote a letter to southern politicians asking them "What separates us?" to which Lincoln answers his own question "Our opinions on slavery are the only thing I can see." Of course by the time secession occured pro and anti slavery men had already been killing each other for a while in Kansas, and they stated explicitly why there were doing so.

 

people seem to forget that america doesn't have a king. its run by the vote in congress. so it doesn't really matter what his personal feelings might have been.
he did get elected because of a lot of support from abolitionists.
presidents of course like wars, because a state of war gives them certain extraconstitutional powers and perogatives (though constitutional lawyers are always splitting hairs over which are ligitimate)