[fastpat]

Originally posted by 1967 R50/2
Best President:

Lincoln was the BEST president this country ever had bar none. He was pure will.

Yep, pure iron will; just like Lenin and later Stalin, with similar results.

I have lived down south and heard all the Civili War apologist arguements, but they carry little weight.

That's like saying, "I have lived in Germany, or France, and therefore understand them perfectly". Kierkegaard's "Subjective Christianity", one of his "Edifying Discourses", will set you straight on that.

If Lincoln had lived, the south would have been rebuilt properly.

There's no reason, other than certain Lincoln rhetoric, that Reconstruction would have been any less than the reign of terror aganst the south than it was had he lived. J. W. Booth did the right thing, killing a tyrant, he just did it about 18 months too late to be as effective as it could have been.

It was his greatest dream to see the country re-united.

No, Lincoln's greatest dream was to see the nation changed into a merchantilist state, a dream he was denied seeing by the Confederate hero, Booth.

But Booth put an end to that. Even Lee lamented the assasination. It was a pity, but his Veep, Johnson had no political clout to carry out plans for reconstuction, whatsoever.

It was a measure of Lincoln's character that Lee, Davis, and the other southern leaders were allowed to live after the war.

Lincoln had no say in that, he was dead. If anything, it was Grant that accomplished that by making it clear that he wanted no part in any war crimes trials because, "I don't want to lose in the courtroom what so many gave their lives to accomplish on the battlefield."

In any other time, they would have been hung as traitors.

Traitors to what? Their respective states lawfully seceded from the Union. If there was a traitor, it was Lincoln, who usurped powers found nowhere in the Constitution he was sworn to uphold.

That's the fact. But Lincoln saw it was better that they be treated as wayward brothers and be given mild, if any punishement.

As far as "fuking up the constitution" I fail to see how adding the 13th amendment that prohibited owning other men as property is "fuking up the constitution". That's Lincoln's legacy if not his actual act.

The 14th Amendment is the culprit, not the 13th.

The "150 years of devisiveness" that you talk about can hardly be laid at Lincoln's feet. He DID NOT secede from the Union.

Secession was lawful. are you forgetting these words, That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government from the Declaration of Independence? The country was founded on the right of secession, further, the whole nation seceded from the Articles of Confederation and voluntarily entered into the Union. Since the Constitution is an envelope within which the federal government must remain, and the power of the states to secede was guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment, the southern states were entirely lawful and correct.

THAT is devisive. On the contrary, he sought to UNITE the country.

By invading and killing 25% of every adult white male, and not a few black men, in the south? Yes, that's really a kindness.

Upon the conclusion of the war he wanted to rebuild and spiritually re-unite the country in the worst way. THAT is not devisive.

Yep, in the worst way, now that's something I'd agree with.