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No, it was the biggest call ever made by a US president. Even the decision to enter WW1 and WW2 do not quite measure up to the "big one" that Lincoln made. He got shot because he made the wrong decision.
Can you imagine a president trying to do that today?
I grew up in the rural south and have heard both the positives and negatives to this choice. I think at the end of the day it has been proven Lincoln certainly did make the right decision, but it must have been horrible to be in the position to have to make it.
What Lincoln did was to put the nation above regionalism. The Confederacy had such an unwieldy political setup (where each of the states held at least as much power as the central government), to say nothing of the fact that it was virtually unindustrialized, that it probably wouldn't have survived for very long. But in 1861, these things weren't speculated upon. Even the southern states' insistence on maintaining slavery probably wouldn't have lasted into the 20th century--the two other governments that permitted the practice (Great Britain and Brazil) outlawed slavery within 25 years of the end of the Civil War.
Has there ever been a more significant single decision by a President in American history?
No probably not. But I am taking this question at face value rather than get into the tired old topic of the civil war and sucession which has been discussed on this forum about a dozen times (which I love to discuss, but on more varied specific topics) -
1.) Louisiana purchase by Thomas Jefferson was possible more significant for effectivly increasing the size of the nation 3 fold.
2.) Monroe Doctrine (obviously by Monroe) was possible as significant - it was the defining article for foreign affairs at least until ww1.
3.) Reagan's decision to escalate the cold war and challenge the former Soviet Union changed history for millions in eastern europe. Not really a single decision, but a policy decision.
This is still a good topic for discussion. A lot of people think of Lincoln as a "great" president. His actions towards the seceding states indicate otherwise to me!
This is still a good topic for discussion. A lot of people think of Lincoln as a "great" president. His actions towards the seceding states indicate otherwise to me!
So you think he should have permitted the breakup of the republic?
Lincoln took upon himself the decision to address the vacuum of guidance in the law (Consitution) about the issue of secession. There had been no case law on the topic up to that time.
Maybe he made the decision on grounds of "national interest"? Would the establishment of an independent Confederacy be an existential threat to the Northern states? Not necessarily so at all. But the ramifications for business interests in the old Union would have been profound, of course. He also anticipated a difficulty with a slave-holding nation existing all along the southern flank of the old Union, with the attendant issues of dealing with escaped slaves, etc.
Lincoln had also been a corporate lawyer representing the interests of certain railroads before he ran for public office. It has been argued that his actions as President were intended to further the corporate interests located in the Northeast United States. He must have anticipated that waging and winning a war against the Confederacy would de facto place northern industrial interests in the "driver's seat" from that time forward to exploit economically the rest of the North American continent.
That's interesting speculation. But I wonder whether anyone, President Lincoln included, could possibly have been anticipating a Union victory in 1861? He certainly was thinking like that in 1862. And had not Britain been wallowing in a bumper crop of Egyptian cotton that year, Her Majesty Queen Victoria was on the cusp of extending diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy. That would have elevated the "internal conflict" into a full-fledged international war. Who knows what might have happened in that case!
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