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He gets well deserved credit for keeping the US together, and perhaps too much credit for ending slavery.
However there is a lot of flaws and questionable actions he took to get there. Some legitimate complaints.
He was terrible situation that put a lot force on him to bring the southern states back into the fold by any means.
He through trickery mislead the South into thinking he was resupplying Ft Sumter by force, which left them no choice but to fire on what they believed to be an attack. You can debate on who fired first or whatever, but its clear that this confrontation was forced on purpose by Lincoln.
He refused to negotiate with the South any terms, in fact he delayed them while carrying out the previously mentioned deception and started the war.
He illegally without congress went to war.
He violated the constitution in numerous other ways from ordering newspapers shutdown and editors/owners arrested, ordered the arrest of US congressmen for speaking out against him, ordered the arrest of US judge that ruled against him, he ordered the arrest of many prominent Maryland citizens including most of the state legislature and many many regular people. Many of these people were held without trial for years in military prisons. If a US president did these things today...people wouldn't be calling him a hero.
He was a terrible commander in chief. His decisions were atrocious, his appointments were worse.
I could go on. But those are the major points of why I am not nearly as enamored with him as many are.
This is one of the most ill-informed suggestions of the lost cause revisionists. There was a 20% increase of the enslaved population from the 1850-1860 census, and that population had increased with every census. There was no indication it would reverse itself in 1861. Even free soilers believed it would take decades even if the legislation they favored passed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2nd trick op
Hindsight is always 20/20, but barring the possibility of continuing forestallment of Civil War until slavery became economically unsustainable (not likely!) most of the blame for fanning the flames lies at the doorstep of the fanatical abolitionists. (And for my money, they bear an unflattering resemblance to some of our own Social Justice Nazis).
It's generally recognized that Lincoln -- a product of the border states who sound himself in favor with a diverse coalition of advocacies -- saw preservation of the Union as his foremost concern and that, combined with strong support within the Union armies, solidified his re-election in 1864, Once war broke out, Lincoln abandoned principle and did what pragmatism and survival demanded be done. Fate didn't allow us the luxury of learning what his actions would have been upon the final cessation of hostilities, but it could hardly have turned out much worse than what actually happened.
Lincoln holds the highest position in the Pantheon of American Statesmen because in the public mindset, he preserved the Union at the cost of his own life. That statement might be subject to a lot of qualification in the academic world, but barring the emergence of some very serious new facts, it's going to hold for a very long time.
While I would agree with you that the aftermath of the war was a disaster, comparing people who favored the immediate emancipation of enslaved people, including former slaves themselves, to nazis makes it hard to give much credence to anything you say.
For one thing he was not a popular president back in the days that he got elected but got in by some kind of a fluke in the political system.
It wasn't via a fluke. It was by the fact that the Democrats fractured into two parties and there was yet a fourth party. That's one of the reasons I get upset when people talk about voting for a third party; I remind them that extra parties can create results they would never want
Quote:
Originally Posted by nickerman
Also, he ordered the first shots fired of the civil war when he ordered union ships to fire on fort Sumter South Carolina.
Wrong. He ordered that Fort Sumter be provisioned rather than abandoned. His choices were:
To evacuate Fort Sumter and thus implicitly recognize the secession;
To allow Biafra-like starvation if the fort weren't provided with food and other supplies; or
To provision the fort.
The Confederacy fired the first shots.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nickerman
In the debates between Lincoln and Douglas I thought that Douglas was the realist and was more in tuned to what the issues were about. But also just the fact that he is given this almighty super human aura by the media and historians makes me wonder about the truth of who Lincoln was. Anytime someone says someone is so great I have to catch myself and say lets looks at things closer. The old saying goes if it looks too good to be true it probably is.
Douglas advocated the well-intentioned but impractical "third way." The prior system worked well before the country was knitted together by railroads and stage coach roads. Once the country was so knit together the northern states were forced into the unwilling role of returner of fugitive slaves. A slaveowner could and often did travel to major urban centers such as New York City or Chicago. A slave could "free" himself while the master took a nap. Douglas wanted to hold the Union together with the idea that technology made unrealistic that the country could be split between slave and free regions.
Hindsight is always 20/20, but barring the possibility of continuing forestallment of Civil War until slavery became economically unsustainable (not likely!) most of the blame for fanning the flames lies at the doorstep of the fanatical abolitionists. (And for my money, they bear an unflattering resemblance to some of our own Social Justice Nazis).
I am responding to your post separately rather than together with some truly deplorable posts above. I place the blame for "fanning the flames" at the doorstep of slaveowners who insisted on the tightening of fugitive slave provisions already in the Constitution. Most northerners were not "fanatical abolitionists" but they were not willing to deploy their police forces to return escaped slaves to certain torture and likely death. It was them who violated the principals of federalism since they insisted on federal help and help of free states to preserve their "property."
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2nd trick op
It's generally recognized that Lincoln -- a product of the border states who sound himself in favor with a diverse coalition of advocacies -- saw preservation of the Union as his foremost concern and that, combined with strong support within the Union armies, solidified his re-election in 1864, Once war broke out, Lincoln abandoned principle and did what pragmatism and survival demanded be done. Fate didn't allow us the luxury of learning what his actions would have been upon the final cessation of hostilities, but it could hardly have turned out much worse than what actually happened.
Wars are messy, no doubt about it. The real problem that the South had was now having to pay for its labor. Saying that this outcome "could hardly have turned out much worse than what actually happened" is like saying that the New Yrok City garment industry did better before the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, when workers could be locked into their workplaces.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2nd trick op
Lincoln holds the highest position in the Pantheon of American Statesmen because in the public mindset, he preserved the Union at the cost of his own life. That statement might be subject to a lot of qualification in the academic world, but barring the emergence of some very serious new facts, it's going to hold for a very long time.
Ahem - people from elsewhere PLEASE do not get the idea that all southern people think this way because we do not .
I am also not sure I believe you live in the deep south yet never saw a black person til you were 13 ??? I was raised ( thank God) by black people in the south, like from day 1. My parents were wild sometimes difficult people .
BTW I believe 2 of my great great uncles where in that same unit as the one pictured I will check my photos .
I do know that Lincoln had alot on his plate with his wife . She was so unstable I am not sure why or how he became president and dealt with that . I have always seen him as mysterious, not so sure he really cared about slavery.
My family was very poor during the civil war and in 2 instances Ga and Tenn, their very small family farms were take over as offices so to speak for the north and my family had to go- just leave - now . My great grand mother was born in 1870 and she talked about how they got to Texas all the time before she was born there . She lived to nearly 1970.
So yeah my family is littered with confederate soldiers far too poor to have any slaves ..
For one thing he was not a popular president back in the day..
Amen.., and good thread.
Lincoln was such a divisive leader that his election was a direct cause for states to secede. And then his conscription of soldiers ultimately compelled Virginia to secede.
These facts are usually omitted from the Lincoln hagiography.. but, history is often told in subjective, glowing terms. It is what it is...
I personally think Lincoln had noble intent, but was a terrible president. And my opinion, he was wrong to hold the Union together with lethal force.
I don't dislike him. I do frequently wonder if the Civil War was a necessary way to end slavery. He did a lot of good and lot of bad.
The Unites States could be a slave owning nation, or it could be a nation where all were free. It could not be both and and if it had to be all of one or the other, then the Constitution would not have been ratified. The compromises made at the Constitutional Convention was the first attempt to paper over this gulf, and the controversy would arise again and again over the next seven decades, each time once more being papered over with a compromise.
The Republicans came to power not with a promise to end slavery, but rather with a platform which called for the end of the expansion of slavery, the end of the compromises. Southern political power was derived from slavery and that is what was immediately threatened by the election of the Republicans, not an immediate end to slavery.
By having slaves counted as 3/5ths for representation purposes in Congress, despite the fact that the slaves were in no manner represented by these officials, gave the South more political clout than it merited. By having two senators from each state regardless of population, the slave owning states could always checkmate the free states so long as the numbers were equal.
That is what was going to end if slavery ceased expanding. With no new slave states, ultimately the existing slave states would have been outnumbered and no longer able to exercise a greater amount of political power than the southern population deserved.
That.....that was the immediate cause of secession, that threat to the southern political clout.
Compromise over that was unacceptable to the South, so they attempted their walk-out.
It was always bound to have come to a head over something, and the above turned out to be that something. Whether you view extending the life of a loathsome institution such as slavery as a justified price for avoiding war or not, the war was going to come eventually because what was at stake was not simply the preservation of slavery, but rather the preservation of an entire political dynamic from which the South gained oversized political power.
Finally, why is this debate centered on Abraham Lincoln, as though he was the only northerner who represented the Republican view? The two principle opponents Lincoln defeated for the nomination, Governors Seward and Chase, were both way to the left of Lincoln in terms of supporting abolition. The Republicans won control of both houses of Congress. The group which became known as the Radical Republicans were much more anti-southern than Lincoln ever was. It is absurd to identify one person in what was seven decades of animosity over slavery, and argue that everything was all his fault.
Lincoln was such a divisive leader that his election was a direct cause for states to secede. And then his conscription of soldiers ultimately compelled Virginia to secede.
These facts are usually omitted from the Lincoln hagiography.. but, history is often told in subjective, glowing terms. It is what it is...
I personally think Lincoln had noble intent, but was a terrible president. And my opinion, he was wrong to hold the Union together with lethal force.
Seven states seceded before Lincoln actually took power, so it wasn't his performance as a leader that caused session, it was his embrace of a free soil position. Conscription didn't come to the Union Army until 1863 (after the Confederate Army), unless you mean his call up of soldiers after Sumter, which again happened after the CSA and Davis started calling up soldiers, so not sure that 'compelled' Virginia's secession.
Lincoln is open to plenty of criticism, like his actions in Maryland or some of his disastrous military appointments. But he didn't cause the Civil War or the loss of so many lives. And there are plenty of scholarly criticisms of his presidency. If you think history is mostly told in glowing terms, then you're reading (or watching) the wrong history.
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I will check my photos . 
