Where does Abraham Lincoln rank?

[JakeStarkey]

The South started the war

I stopped reading here. The South didn't start the war.

And that's why you will always be wrong on this issue. The South refused to accept due Constitutional and electoral process and refused to not attack federal property. The South fired the first shots. These facts are incontestable, and the conclusion is logical: the South alone bears fault for the war. Let's move on.

 

[Charles Stucker]

I am correcting Charles Stucker's analysis above so that it is more in line with what happened, why, and its effects.

As interpreted by an absolutist perhaps.
Ooooh more popwer to the Federal Government, that's the ticket, more power, more powerMORE POWER

 

[JakeStarkey]

I am correcting Charles Stucker's analysis above so that it is more in line with what happened, why, and its effects.

As interpreted by an absolutist perhaps.
Ooooh more popwer to the Federal Government, that's the ticket, more power, more powerMORE POWER

The interpretation is mainstream and supported by the contemporary evidence.

Yes, the Civil War did give the federal government greater power.

That issue is completely different than the fact that the war was caused by southern aggression.

 

[Dr.Traveler]

He is second after George Washington. George is first cause he could have been King and instead only served 2 terms as President and refused to run again.

I have to agree. You have to also add to Washington's list that he pretty much instituted all of the "Unwritten" parts of the Executive and defined the office for everyone that followed.

We really had a winner for the first guy in place. Lincoln is second, but Washington is clearly at the top of the list.

 

[Charles Stucker]

Yes, the Civil War did give the federal government greater power.

That issue is completely different than the fact that the war was caused by southern aggression.

Bullshit.
The war was caused by Abraham Lincoln.
He had a lot of options - he could have sold those federal forts to the South, which had offered to purchase them.
He could have allowed the Southern states to be independent.
He could have avoided spillling a lot of blood.
Lincoln CHOSE war believing it would be over with one quick decisive battle - that is what all the records indicate. Nearly Everyone in the North believed that the first battle would also be the last that they would have a cheap victory over the South and could proceed to do as they pleased.

Lincoln greatly expanded the power of the central government SOLELY because he sought that power. Had his goal been to "free the slaves" that would have been his first act as president. It was not. His first act was to incite the South to further acts of defiance. Only when the political timng was "optimal" did he free the slaves. He was no better than Stalin, just another political opportunist who gathered as much centralized power to his hands as he could. Had he not been assassinated he might have been the first president to ignore Washinton's precedent, rather than the other great American Tyrant FDR.

You Jake are either a budding tyrant or a total imibecile to blindly support all the power aggrandized by the central government.

 

[JakeStarkey]

I am sorry, Charles Stucker, that you cannot face facts that contradict your a priori view of the world. You are fun to discuss these issues with, because I like the topic, but the fact remains the aggressive South was beat down by an assertive and constitutional Lincoln: appropriately so.

 

[Dr.Traveler]

Bullshit.
The war was caused by Abraham Lincoln.
He had a lot of options...

Your options all end with the South breaking free and the institution of slavery continuing. That was never going to happen.

In the end, it was the South that repeatedly had threatened secession. Prior Presidents had backed off when the South had done its saber rattling. Lincoln called their bluff.

Once a group of people decide to pursue a course of War, as the South did, then the consequences are on their own heads.

 

[Charles Stucker]

Your options all end with the South breaking free
That was never going to happen.

Once a group of people decide to pursue a course of War, as the South did, then the consequences are on their own heads.

Lincoln pursued a war agaist the South.
To keep them from being free.
Slavery was an afterthought at that point.
For someone who actually crusaded against slavery you should check out an Englishman named Wilberforce.

 

[Dr.Traveler]

Your options all end with the South breaking free
That was never going to happen.

Once a group of people decide to pursue a course of War, as the South did, then the consequences are on their own heads.

Lincoln pursued a war agaist the South.
To keep them from being free.
Slavery was an afterthought at that point.
For someone who actually crusaded against slavery you should check out an Englishman named Wilberforce.

You skipped the middle point in my post, namely the fact that the South had threatened secession multiple times before. In fact, any time the North took an action that could be conceived as an attempt to roll back slavery in any form, the South threatened to seceed.

Slavery is/was/always will be mixed in with the reasons for the war because Slavery was an issue that the South had threatened to seceed over in the past. A free and independent South with the institution of slavery intact was never going to happen.

The South always had it in their power to have ended the Civil War free from the North. If the South had abolished slavery, support in the North for the war would have collapsed over night and the Europeans would have quickly intervened. Slavery kept the South isolated from the Europeans and kept the North in the fight. That is why a Slave-holding Independent South was never ever in the cards.