You guys crack me up. You say that Lincoln was an evil dictator, then accuse him of not caring about slavery because he didn't use his dictatorial powers to end it. The fact is that Lincoln had no constitutional authority to end slavery by fiat in states loyal to the Union. He did have such authority in the areas in rebellion, hence the Emancipation Proclamation. What he did do was support the passage of the 13th Amendment by congress and the states, even insisting on it being included in the Republican platform. Missouri didn't wait that long. They abolished slavery themselves in January 1865.
Yet, by installing Military (martial) governments even in "loyal" states, that's precisely what he accomplished. Legislators, newspaper editors, and prominent citizens that thought he was overstepping his lawful bounds in his prosecution of the war were thrown in jail and denied the right of trial. Is that the "lawful" way to amend constitutions, enact legislation, and "ensure a Republican form of government to each State?"
As an example, the Federal government orchestrated the overthrow of the lawfully-elected Government of Virginia, stationed troops outside of the polls in our Western counties (which, admittedly, were not in very close agreement with the Eastern ones already) in order to intimidate "non-loyal" voters, and allowed a puppet government to be stationed in Alexandria, under the farce of a notion that the "Government of Virginia has been vacated." (In blatant disregard of the fact that the lawfully elected legislators were still in their Seats, in Richmond.) This puppet government, staffed entirely by people from Western counties, then proceeded to vote to split the Commonwealth in two, essentially stealing a vast portion of land from a sovereign nation. (When the war had closed, Johnson issued a proclamation declaring that the farce of a government in Alexandria was to become the new lawful Government of Virginia, thus completing the takeover that had been begun in 1861.)
"Dictator" may not be the exact word I'd use to describe him, but I wouldn't exactly think of him in the kindest terms... He and the radical Republicans in Congress didn't exactly follow the letter nor the law of the Constitution, by any stretch of the imagination.
Sheesh. He also had authority to order the CSA back into the Union, yuh think?
And you Yankees are such blind boneheads. The Emancipation Proclimation was only a political ploy to gain popular support for a war that the North was losing by getting whipped in the field up to that point. Now I know there are the usual Holy Temple of Lincoln crowd on here who will try to skew the facts (taking their clues from him no doubt), but up until that point, the North had failed to win any major battle, and Lincoln had sacked McClelland and Burnside for their failures.
Yes, Lincoln was a dictator, he suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus in direct violation of the Constitution (he didn't consult Congess, who had the Constitutional authority to do so nor the Supreme Court). When called on it by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the "Highest Court in the Land" who settles all disputes on Constitutionality of issues, laws and etc, Lincoln issued an arrest warrant for the Chief Justice.
Lincoln declared war on the South without going through Congress for a Declaration of War.
Lincoln suppressed free speech by imprisoning those who disagreed with his war.
Lincoln caused the war by trying to reinforce Fort Sumpter in direct violation of an agreement with the Confederates. Those are facts that you just can't skew. There was no proviso that gave Lincoln the unlimited power to do what he wished. And either the Constitution stands as the LAW of the Land, or its not even worth the paper its written on. If Lincoln violated the Constitution, which he did on a regular basis, he should have been arrested as a domestic enemy of it, or at the very least sacked for failure to uphold his oath of office. Lincoln waged an illegal war to forcibly suppress a sovereign nation, the South who had peacably broken away and formed their own government using the same ideals that the Founders' laid down in the Declaration of Independence "the cornerstone of American Beliefs".
But the South lost and even though the self-determination they fought for was right, the North writes the history books. But then all Southerner's know that with Yankee hammerheads the status quo is always "Do as I say, not as I do" and "our Laws are written in pencil for quick changes when its expedient to do so."
you are right, that kind of anti Lincoln logic always cracks me up as well!