War is the health of government. The Civil War did more to uproot and destroy this country’s founding principles than any other event.
Still.
There was a profound contradiction between the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, and the notion that some people could own other people and that some people were not entitled to the fruits of their own labor, enshrined in the Constitution.
I believe that slavery would have died in the South within a generation or two without the Civil War. The Peculiar Institution was moribund. Abolitionists in the North did as much to percipitate the Civil War as sessionists in the South.
Still, slavery needed to end, and to the bondman, a generation or two was his entire remaining life. Lincoln conducted a war that was initiated by hot heads who had no idea how horrible it would be, and become, and how it would change profoundly and forever cherished and abiding institutions, not just the “peculiar” one.
It is easy to take potshots at Lincoln from this great remove in time and seemingly in place. But Lincoln had witnessed the effects of slavery first hand growing up in Kentucky, and had made his way in the rugged frontier of early America. He was no effete philosopher, viewing the world from an ivory tower, he as a hard-scrabble, tough and principled man.
He was often wrong. He erred.
But he was wise, and he was magnanimous. When he heard that Lee had surrendered during an outdoor concert at the White House, he requested the band play Dixie.
In Lincoln’s day you could not casually assert, “You were never a slave, and I never owned one.”, because all too often, quite the opposite was true.
We can rue the Civil War, and curse its consequences. But it was in our national DNA, the contradictions of our founding played out, and our national character and characters played their roles.
I think we were providentially fortunate to have had a man like Lincoln at that time, and his untimely loss was a catastrophe for the entire nation, North and South, black and white, alike.
Lost causers prefer a simple(minded) binary right/wrong, good/bad, black/white world to the more complex real world that we inhabit. In this case they can’t see that Lincoln was merely the guy who was at the helm when their ancestors played at insurrection - and got their butts kicked for their trouble. He earns their wrath because he opposed their treason. In truth no self-respecting conservative would accept any less if they were thrust into a similar situation.
Lincoln held our nation together. For that I regard him as one of the best.
I actually agree with you quite a bit.
My view is Lincoln was basically a good man who made some horrible decisions. Like Carter. His abandonment of habeas corpus and stationing troops in my state is exactly like British privileges in an earlier time.
BTW, it wasn’t really about slavery, it was about the union. He didn’t think it should be split nor lose those resources.