[DiogenesLamp]

>>DoodleDawg wrote: "His own actions and that of his government. No Supreme Court. Offering to end slavery in exchange for foreign recognition when he had no power to do so. Policies he enacted which were found unconstitutional in the U.S. - income tax, declaring martial law in areas nowhere near the war. Policies like nationalizing industries that would have been found unconstitutional had Lincoln tried them."

That is not a source. This is a source:

Trying to switch the subject to what Davis did is another of those "Oh Yeah? Well this guy did far worse!" arguments. (Tu Quoque.)

It is an attempt to deflect from the point of Lincoln's abuses. Whether or not Jefferson Davis did anything wrong, has no bearing on the wrong that Lincoln did.

Jefferson Davis doing wrong things does not make Lincoln's wrong things into "right" things. It is not a contest to see who is the lesser evil between the two men. It is supposed to be an objective standard that applies to everyone, not a relative standard that applies between Lincoln and Davis.

Lincoln did objectively do wrong things. Maybe Davis did too, but again, these do not justify the wrong things that Lincoln did.

Lincoln's iniquity must be judged separately from Davis' iniquity.

[DoodleDawg]

It is an attempt to deflect from the point of Lincoln's abuses. Whether or not Jefferson Davis did anything wrong, has no bearing on the wrong that Lincoln did.

Mr. Olive and I have been debating Davis and his constitutional infractions for some time on a number of posts. I like to drag him back to reality from time to time and remind him that he can lie about Lincoln's Constitutional infractions all he wants but he can't change the fact that Davis's contempt for his Constitution were far worse than anything Lincoln might have done.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp to DoodleDawg: "Trying to switch the subject to what Davis did is another of those "Oh Yeah? Well this guy did far worse!" arguments. (Tu Quoque.)
It is an attempt to deflect from the point of Lincoln's abuses.
Whether or not Jefferson Davis did anything wrong, has no bearing on the wrong that Lincoln did."

It's ironic to see DiogenesLamp here carping about "Tu Quoque" since Tu Quoque is pretty much the core essence of the pro-Confederate critique -- whatever Confederates did is not important, they say, because Lincoln was much worse.
They say, don't look at the beam in Confederate eyes, nothing to see there, move along, only look at the splinter in Lincoln's eye.

But Americans in 1861 had only two choices -- were they going to accept Confederate aggressions against the United States or not?
Their decision to resist Confederate aggression had nothing to do with their own "perfection" or not, and everything to do with their perception of existential threats Confederates posed.