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Most of what we know about Lincoln today has been invented by Northern folklorists, many who were, and are, enemies of the South. In fact, nearly every one of the 16,000 books that have been penned about Lincoln are by Northern writers and have been published by Northern publishers. Can we honestly expect to get a true and unbiased picture of who Lincoln really was from such works?

Can we honestly expect to get a true and unbiased picture of who Lincoln really was from such works?

I am a northerner who happens to be sympathetic to the idea of allowing secession, and that it would have been better in the long run had the Confederacy been left alone.

That said, just because a publisher or writer is from the north, it doesn't mean that he can't approach the topic honestly, especially as more time has passed.

I'm from Connecticut originally, but most of my ancestors came here well after the War of 1861 from places like Poland, Germany and Ireland. We didn't have a dog in that fight. Heck, some southern apologists live right here in the Prairie State where Lincoln resided, like Dr. Fleming of the Rockford Institute. Let anyone write, judge the works on their merits.

History would have been much different if William Seward had been nominated instead of Lincoln. Seward opposed re-supplying Fort Sumter and wanted to strike a deal with the South. Lincoln on the other hand was completely uncompromising and even refused to set foot in the Southern United States during his election campaign. Seward was a major expansionist (Alaska) and offered to annex Cuba as a state if the South would stay in the Union. Lincoln opposed any such deal and merely repeated by the Republican Platform from the Chicago Convention. Lincoln thought that the South was only bluffing, they would never secede. Seward as a Senator knew all of the major Confederate personalities, and knew much better the dire situation than Lincoln did.

Lincoln wasn’t looking for a war , like the Souther Fire-eaters were, but he had no real interest in avoiding a war either. Seward was Lincoln’s opposite in that regard. If anyone could have cut a deal to avoid Civil War, that would have definitely been William Seward, the almost President of the United States.

Many liberal historians make a big deal of the fact that Lincoln appointed a lot of his Republican Rivals to the Cabinet, as that was an act of great courage. In truth, Lincoln HAD to appoint these “rivals” to his Cabinet because many of them had been promised patronage jobs in return for their votes at the Convention.

Though Lincoln received only 39 percent of the popular vote, Lincoln wouldn’t appoint anyone to his Cabinet who did not support him for President.