That is likely true, but you can't use a future event to justify past misconduct. Perhaps a rape produces a pregnancy which becomes a wonderful human being that saves millions. It still does not justify the rape.
I’m always curious what a person who views Lincoln as the “worst” considers what a viable alternative to him would’ve been and the consequences of such.
Well the "worst" part is his starting a war that killed 750,000 people directly, and possibly another 2 million indirectly, as well as destroying the original foundational principle of our own government (that people have a right to independence) and establishing Washington DC as a seat of power that was never intended by the Founders. States rights have been effectively revoked, and their sovereignty has been surrendered.
The overbearing Federal leviathan was more or less the consequence of Lincoln usurping for his government more powers than the Federal government was ever intended to have.
Add to this the corruption and influence trading his government established, and it pretty much becomes the root cause of most of the problems we are facing nowadays.
Lincoln not only got a lot of people killed needlessly, he created the Federal monster with which we have to deal today. People blame Wilson, but it really started with Lincoln.
It’s unfortunate that Lincoln can very well be classified as both the best and the worst as a result of his election and administration. It’s a very complicated situation, but frankly, a lot of it was merely the “perfect storm” of delaying dealing with the issue of slavery until both sides could not longer tolerate the other.
Had it been abolished at our founding, so much would’ve been avoided, but that was not possible without a decided split between the colonies, and disunity would’ve allowed a victory for the British monarchy.
The South was clearly playing with fire, and in areas where you had free Whites outnumbered by slaves by margins as high as 10-to-1 (such as Charleston), how long did they think they could maintain a status quo before you had a Haitian situation or more Nat Turner uprisings ? Even without arms, sheer numbers of people could use brute force and then obtain said arms.
As I’ve addressed in other posts, though, the North was hypocritical as well. They abhorred slavery, BUT, did not want an exodus of ex-slaves to their hometowns. They were fine with Black folks so long as there were few nearby and the remainder far, far away from them (something even the Black comedian and satirist Dick Gregory observed as late as the 1960s).
The election of subpar to near-incompetent Presidents from 1836 to 1856 didn’t help matters, delaying what was the inevitable. If only because both the Whigs and the Democrats had balances between their pro-slave and anti-slave wings forced both parties to have to appeal to both sides, allowing for that corrosive status quo to continue.
The explicit creation of the Republicans with the collapse of the Whigs, allowing for a singular anti-slave party meant that the election of even one would spark a war. Had Millard Fillmore not tried a third-party bid in 1856 with the remnants of the Whigs continuing to try for a status quo situation, it would’ve just as easily begun with a President Fremont, and hence would’ve been on his head instead.
There was no one really in 1860 that could’ve stopped the inevitable. Perhaps John Bell (the nominee from my state of TN, whom I would’ve voted for, however futile that would’ve been — of course Lincoln was not on the ballot in TN and Bell was closest to the GOP even as an ex-Whig Constitutionalist), but that again would’ve merely delayed the situation to 1864.
Southern Democrats wouldn’t even tolerate the moderate Stephen Douglas. If the Senator from Illinois had managed to put together a coalition to win, the South would’ve considered him virtually as intolerable as Lincoln. Breckinridge ? Utterly intolerable to the Northern states and likely would’ve faced impeachment with a GOP Congress.
So, then, back to Lincoln. But, again, what was he to do ? If he sat back and allowed 11 states to secede without doing anything, he’d have presided over the effective dissolution of the nation. It would’ve been viewed by the North as gutless, cowardly and perhaps even treasonous. Such weak leadership, again, would’ve almost guaranteed his impeachment. Worse, yet, other states might’ve fully defected as well (MO, KY, MD, DE) and swaths of Southern-sympathizing areas in IL, IN and OH. DC itself would’ve been completely surrounded by enemy territory and likely would’ve resulted in the federal government having to retreat and relocate back to Philadelphia.
Any of that would’ve meant Southern victory outright. With a weakened North, that would’ve emboldened the South to go on an unprecedented territorial gobble, first with Caribbean interests (Cuba), then Mexico (as it was 20 years earlier, Southern interests wanted to annex most of Northern Mexico), and clear down Central America to the Colombian border. You’d also have had skirmishes and battles with the aforementioned weakened North to obtain Arizona, New Mexico and Southern California.
Perhaps, even audacious attempts to move on to South America. Of course, in doing all of this, the Whites would’ve been in the decided minority in such a new country, with a large group of Blacks and Native Indians, with the latter probably being formally swallowed up into a new class of slavery (however longer that would’ve lasted).
By the 20th century, the CSA would’ve probably been closer to Mexico in style and substance. An aristocracy in control of the nation with a gargantuan underclass and probably astronomical crime levels. Likely a third-world country.
The greatly shrunken USA might’ve been more like a slightly stronger version of Canada. Curiously, they’d have likely been the ones to build a wall along the border to keep Southern refugees out (read: Blacks and Indians).
If history had unfolded as it did in Europe and Asia, I don’t think the USA alone would’ve been able to stand up to Hitler, et al. Indeed, it’s even conceivable the CSA might’ve aligned itself with Germany in both wars and we’d have had yet more war between the USA and CSA.
Excuse me for going off on a tangent here. Despite all the problems that Lincoln spurred on in keeping the country together, I’d think we’d be in such a vastly different reality today to the point that it would’ve been far worse. We can only speculate, of course. I do rank Lincoln as “Great”, but with a cost, only one that might’ve been easier to pay than had he failed to win the war.