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Yeah, Lincoln should know all about binding up the Nation's wounds.
He is the one that inflicted them!

Lincoln constantly held out the hand of conciliation and forgiveness to the rebels.

All through 1862 he would have allowed the slave owners to keep their slaves if they would just acknowledge the authority of the national government. He suggested relocation schemes and compensated emancipation schemes; he was always ready to stop fighting and start talking--always.

As late as February 1865 he suggested that $400,000,000 in bonds be made available to the rebel states if they would acknowledge emancipation and federal supremacy.

It was the south that was bent on conquest and subjugation:

"We have the Executive with us, and the Senate & in all probability the H.R. too. Besides we have repealed the Missouri line & the Supreme Court in a decision of great power, has declared it, & all kindred measures on the part of the Federal Govt. unconstitutional null & void. So, that before our enemies can reach us, they must first break down the Supreme Court - change the Senate & seize the Executive & by an open appeal to Revolution, restore the Missouri line, repeal the Fugitive slave law & change the whole governt. As long as the Govt. is on our side I am for sustaining it, & using its power for our benefit, & placing the screws upon the throats of our opponents".

- Francis W. Pickens, Governor of South Carolina, June,1857

That doesn't sound much like, "with malice towards none, with charity for all," does it?

Walt

The War of 1861 was complicated and it cannot be reduced to simplicity. There were extremists on both sides. There were moderates on both sides. You can make an argument for either side using your moderates and their extremists or you choose the opposite depending on what point you are trying to make.

In the end, it was a great trauma to our national psyche. It is affecting the way we feel and the way we act even to this day. Is that a surprise? Arabs can feel slighted over something that happened to them in the 13th Century.

We simply need to treat each other with respect. Whites should respect what Blacks think about the causes of the war and Northerners should respect how Southerners feel towards their brave ancestors. Be open-minded. Don't defend your position like you are trying desperately to hold onto Little Round Top.

All Lincoln had to do to stop the war was not start it in the first place. Yes, he tried his best to keep the South from seceeding. Yes, he was the best how for reconciliation when the South lost. None of this negates the fact that Lincoln did not believe that

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

All he had to do was recognize the liberty and right to seceed upon which the country was founded and let them go peacefully, and there never would have been wounds to bind.

Never said the two sides LOVED each other, only that there was no bloodshed that Lincoln did not cause.

Had he not been elected, there would have been no secession.

Even as it was, the Southern states left more in a mood of partying and relief, that a long and unhappy marriage was at last over, celebrating a divorce as it were. They were really in part tongue-in-cheek about hating the North; they never dreamed the bloodthirsty, bloodlusting hate that the other side harbored. Never dreamed the North had any such level of hate as to raise an army to level the South, kill or maim its men from 14 to 70, and level its houses, farms, and infrastructure... all over a difference of political opinion!

Let's face it, these Yankees were no gentlemen.