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I'm ambivalent about Lincoln.

Some here loathe him. Some love him.

The war did eventually lead to freeing slaves but that was not in my opinion Lincoln's first reason for waging it. I was taught as a boy (in the South) that he fought to preserve the Union and to keep the Cotton states in and I still believe that.

Unfortunately, in doing so, he led to Federal power which has reached proportions that I don't think anyone ever imagined. Call it the "incorporation of the Union" as much as the fight to preserve it. Granted, some before him were also advocates of Federal expansion over local soverignty.

I do wish he had lived. I As a Southerner think he would have offered better terms and his popularity would have kept the RRs in check to a degree.

The incorporation that has taken place from Washington was inevitable given our expansion and industrialization and concentration of populace in the NE at the time. I think many here simply wish the brakes had been applied at some point and Lincoln takes a bit of heat for that.

If you look at Garibaldi, Ghengis Khan, Alexander, Charlemagne, Napoleon, Oliver Cromwell, William the Conqueror, Gorbachev, and Lincoln...You see persons who made decisions that put a nation together and took them apart.... You may question Lincoln's motives and you can easily question his methods but I personally am not unhappy with the end result...

Do you think he belongs on that little display in South (or is it North?) Dakota?

The war did eventually lead to freeing slaves but that was not in my opinion Lincoln's first reason for waging it.

No one who examines the record will have that opinion. Lincoln said over and over and over that it was Union first. He said it plainly before the war; he said it plainly during the war.

But it is also true that the slave power precipitated the war because they knew that slavery was doomed if a man with Lincoln's convictions could get elected.

The loss of their dominance over the federal government dictated the timing of the rebellion.

Walt