Posted on 02/05/2009 11:59:17 AM PST by Edit35
When the American Civil War began, president Abraham Lincoln was far less prepared for the task of commander in chief than his Southern adversary.
Jefferson Davis had graduated from West Point (in the lowest third of his class, to be sure), commanded a regiment that fought intrepidly at Buena Vista in the Mexican War and served as secretary of war in the Franklin Pierce administration from 1853 to 1857.
(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmag.com ...
I was given a subscription as a Christmas present. I read the article. It was pretty good, but as you would expect, it reads Lincoln through the prism of Washington D.C. at the time of 0bama’s inauguration. Thus, everything has to revolve around the slavery issue. Lincoln’s one overriding policy as President was the preservation of the Union. Everything else took a back seat, including abolition of slavery. While he wanted slavery abolished, he went about Emancipation with a very deft touch.
The article quoted black Americans who vilify Lincoln as “just another bigoted slavemaster.” Lincoln was way ahead of his time for many people, North and South. I guess there are some people who prefer victimhood forever, and can never be satisfied. Nor do they care much about truth.
He played the hand he was dealt. It was a crappy hand, but he did what he could with it.
Is it too much to ask the Smithsonian to be historically correct? Once and for all, It was NOT the Civil War; it was The War Between the States.
Many of the issues that divided the country are still here; and I fear that we have learned nothing from history.
War of Northern Aggression. ;-)
Obama closed Gitmo without really closing Gitmo, ended the war in Iraq without ending it. The Employee Free Choice act is not about freedom or choices...
Yup there's a connection there....
>>War of Northern Aggression. ;-)<<
That too!
Deo vindice
Obama’s Lincoln Thing
February 4, 2009
February 3, 2009
Danger Ahead!
By KIRKPATRICK SALE
Let’s just hold it a bit on this Lincoln thing. If Barack Obama wants to lead the nation as Lincoln did, we’re in for a lot of trouble.
The man whose Bible he took the oath on, whose memory he regularly invokes, presided over the creation of what can only be called a nascent fascist government led by a party of industrial capitalism that ran roughshod over constitution and custom, encouraged a form of bloody warfare that defied all civilized practice to date, and was the cause of untold misery, violence, and destruction for the next half-century or more. He was the ultimate creator of an empire that, thanks to military might in service to corporate interests, spread across the American continent, not just north to south but eventually coast to coast, and would ultimately go on to impose itself worldwide.
Read the rest of this entry »
http://gunnyg.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/obamas-lincoln-thing/#more-5272
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