I've come to disagree with common idolatry, but I may be wrong. Anyone care to defend Lincoln ? Let's put myths to rest and more of the same.... Six big lies about Lincoln
I've never bent over a horse in heat, but I imagine it would feel kinda like this. I'm going to withdraw most of what I said. I think it's a little more debatable whether secession is constitutional, but now that I've had a chance to think about it and research the topic, I'm coming down on your side. Fuck Lincoln. Aaron wins.
Wish I had seen this sooner, great thread Aaronman, Lincoln was a two sided sword, he was a the first republican president, but money was not an object to him. He spent and spent hundreds of millions of dollars, on some great things like the intercontinental railroad, and on some really bad things like the civil war. What he did the the south economy shows evident today, before the civil war Alanta was on the path to suceeding Chicago as an economic wonder, now it is a tangled mess after being burnt to the ground.
arron i would +rep u everytime u make a post... if ure soo smart bout politics, why dont u become president??
The author of that article seems to be presenting facts with a slightly twisted perspective. In my opinion, Lincoln was a fairly decent president. There are some things he could have done better, and some things he could have done a lot worse. I wouldn't consider him in the same league as Jefferson and Washington, but overall he wasn't bad. Part of the reason the United States has been able to become such a strong and prosperous nation (at least in the past) is our balance of state and federal government. We're all united under the U.S. Constitution, but our local governments are free to pass their own legislature as long as there's no conflict. I know I'm talking in a very general sense, and it isn't quite like that anymore. But that's how it's supposed to be. Then there's an issue like slavery, where people are completely divided and neither side wants to compromise. Like this article says, we've seen in other countries that it's possible to end slavery without war. And I also agree that the United States could have done it without war, although it would have taken quite some time. But the Civil War was not directly caused by slavery, it was caused by secession. The South declared their independence from the rest of the country as a direct response to Lincoln being elected. They were all afraid he was going to make slavery illegal, but it wasn't a sure thing at all. In fact, what Lincoln said was: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. 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." - Abraham Lincoln in a letter to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862 Also, it's important to note that in his inaugural address, he supported the Corwin Amendment, which said: "No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State." He never at a chance at "compensated emancipation" because by the time he was in office, the South was already identifying itself as a separate nation. We didn't win our independence from Britain one by one as separate states... we put our efforts together and won it as a whole. For a state or group of states to secede for no legitimate reason is unacceptable.
Well it is a fact that Abe was a bigot like 99% of the rest of the white people then and slavery being abolished was not about equal right among men but more so the crippling of the souths economy. The south was only trying to retain the wealth that they had created by seceeding, which until that point many thought was fine and good way of becoming rich. The burning of Alanta further proves my point, there was no reason to burn these prosperous cities to the ground unless there was an underlying motive here.
How does seceding create prosperity? And what makes you think Abe's efforts were all to hurt the southern economy? If he was attempting to hurt the southern economy, it was to win the war, not the other way around.
Well lets look at the greatest slavery advocate of that time, Fredrick Douglas, he hailed the amacipation proclamation as the single greatest event in our nations history he made it evident to not give credit to Abe because he understood that Abe was just as bad as his southern counterparts. It wasn't until Abe started to give more rights to union black soldiers, that Douglas had anything good to say about the president. The closest the South ever got to retaliating agianst the north came in DC, but the civil war was never fought in the Union, it was only fought in southern states. The south was only trying to protect its economy when it seceeded, you see seceeding entitled them to there economy that they needed to survive. The american people ended up not wanting the war soon after it's conception, brothers were killing each other, and the union held superiority over the confederacy, the south had two cannon factories while the North had thirty two. The North had a full set of railroads to move equipement to battle field, while the south had sparse railroads. The south was destined to loss the war, and it is quite evident that they were only trying to defend there homeland agianst union. I ask you this, if Abe did not have economic interest in crippling the south, why did he order Altanta to be burnt to the ground, along with many other cities that were economically prosperous, soon to trumpth that of union cities of the north?
How to build an empire... Many people in the South know this to this day as the direct cause of the Civil War and is why there are still people that fly the rebel flag.
Competition creates prosperity. If the North and South were two competing trade regions there would be more growth, thus prosperity. Abe only hurt the southern economy to win the war, and fought the war because he wanted the southern economy to be a part of the union.
Watch this. The war on the souths economy started years before the civil war, the civil war was a bi-product of the war on Dixy. I find it odd that many southerners are republican now, when it was a staple of dixy to be democrat. I gave you the history lesson to awnser the other questions, I forgot to awnser the last one, my bad.
I'm not inclined to believe a youtube video that doesn't source its evidence/quotes. Like at one point, it quotes a general Atkins and says he said that to "an SC woman". That doesn't sound like something that meets the burden on proof. Dixiecrats and democrats are two different things. The history lesson didn't tell me why you believe the Civil War was fought just to cripple the southern economy, instead of the other way around. It doesn't make sense, and that whole retelling of the Civil War proved to be a lengthy non sequitur. And it certainly didn't explain how secession creates prosperity.
The crippling of the souths economy allowed the North to take control of it's wealth and make a centralized government. Secession entitled the South to it's wealth which intern translated to prosperity. Abe hailed seccesion as a most sacred right of a people before getting elected in office, then right after being elected in office, he declared the act anarchy. Honest Abe was a bigot, who waged a war that killed thousands of americans lives over greed and sunk us into the fiat spending prison that we are still stuck in to this day. Arguebly to me the worst president ever, and is only hailed great because the powers to be make it so.