[KTM rider]

personally , I hate Lincoln.

That tyrannical basterd crapped on the constitution and needlessly caused the death and suffering of hundreds of thousands of good americans. He could have done the right thing and took the federal governments boot off the neck of the south, instead he chose war

the south got screwed over and Stincoln Lincoln was a dirty rat basterd.

Obama loves Lincoln

[jmacusa]

Boy, living in the 21st.century must really suck for you, huh? Would you be happier living in 1861?

[central_va]

Excellent post. We were a republic, until the lanky yankee came along.

[robowombat]

Actually BHO is rather cool toward Lincoln. He seems to have absorbed the view of Lincoln propagated by Lerone Bennett in Forced into Glory Abraham Lincoln's White Dream which Beginning with the argument that the Emancipation Proclamation did not actually free African American slaves, this dissenting view of Lincoln's greatness surveys the president's policies, speeches, and private utterances and concludes that he had little real interest in abolition. Pointing to Lincoln's support for the fugitive slave laws, his friendship with slave-owning senator Henry Clay, and conversations in which he entertained the idea of deporting slaves in order to create an all-white nation, the book, concludes that the president was a racist at heart—and that the tragedies of Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era were the legacy of his shallow moral vision. In this treatment Lincoln comes across as ambitious, indecisive, manipulative, misguided, decidedly racist and desperately craving some kind of long lasting historical legacy.

Equally interesting is that early in BHO’s presidency he made it a point while starting to have an official Memorial Day wreath laying at the new Black Civil Soldier's Memorial in DC to considerably amp up the wreath laying at the huge Confederate Monument in Arlington Cemetery. This had declined, especailly in the Clinton and Bush 2 administrations to a very perfunctory action carried out by a colonel or even LTC. Under BHO a general officer and an honor party appeared. The general was, interestingly, always black. The wreath was much l;arger and more impressive and the GO delivered some very curious prepared remarks to the effect that while none would defend slavery these men, pointing at the massed figures on the monument, acted to defend what they saw as their rights. They may have been grievously in error but their sincerity cannot be doubted any more than their courage. I don't know what to make of it other than BHO sees himself as part of the ‘other’ and somehow sees Confederates as part of the ‘other’ that the USA has crushed in its its career of empire.