I just read in a posting discusing the presidents
and rating them from 1 to 10.
Lincoln 10 this is the reply to that elevational number.
Lincoln is highly over rated, he only freed the slaves!!!!
Lincoln not only freed the slaves, but made the first steps
to create a country as we now know it. What was Lincoln saying in the
Gettysburg address...My definition is......................................
The nation was born in 1776. And we are fighting a civil war so painful
and distructive. But this war, and the deaths of our sons are not in vain.
That the war will bring a new and better country before our eyes.
where the rights of all are reconized, for our children and so on .....
Of course this is a very liberal translation of the address.
But thats about all it really said, anyway, I not posting this for that point.
Lincoln was fighting not only the south during the civil
war. He has a major part of the population of the north against many of his
ideas as well. What a terrible existance his last years must
have been. Stories of the pain he went through watching the dead and
wounded enter Washington are so touching in their fatherly fashion.
The nation as the war approached it's end came to love
Lincoln in a way that has never been repeated.
No president has ever aged as much in 4 years as Lincoln did.
He said himself " I am here to save the union, after that my workis done".
He fought against all to acheve(sp)his goal.
To that, every american can proudly say.
I say THANK YOU Mr. LINCOLN
Im glad Seward wasn't in that office !!!!!!!
Jack Stanley (201) 292 3199
If you are interested in some of this please E-MAIL
or call.
OK, the Devil's advocate will now speak.
I give Lincoln a -10 (thats NEGATIVE 10).
Why? He was a naive idealist in the "tradition" of Wilson
and Carter. These unrealistic idealists have done more harm than
the most venal and corrupt politicians I can think of.
What did Lincoln do? He started the USA down the road to
centralized tyranny by destroying states rights. His politics
resulted in millions of casualties and utter destruction of
the South. So he freed the slaves. They would have been freed
anyway after a short period of time. And we still don't have justice
for blacks more than 100 years later. Just a more subtle form
of exploitation. To hell with moralists who want to take power
for themselves so they can impose their morality on the rest
of us. Up with the dignity of the individual, down with the
worship of the state.
Lincoln did take a number of actions which may be considered anti-civil
rights, but these may be explained as extraordinary measures taken during
wartime. Particularly, Lincoln suspended the right of habeas
corpus and arrested the Maryland state legislature just before the
legislature was about to debate a secession resolution. To do anything
else would have been suicidal, as Maryland was likely to seceed and
the capital would have been surrounded by enemy territory. This incident
is (or has been until recently, I've heard about efforts to get it changed)
commemorated in the Maryland state song, with references to the "Northern
despot." Perhaps someone at Hopkins or UMD could supply the details.
Anyway, any attacks on individual liberties by Lincoln were nothing
compared with those of succeeding administrations during the Reconstruction
period.
Wayne Citrin
(ucbvax!citrin)
And what is the "dignity of the individual", and why is that so
important? Do I see a creeping moral value here?
I sure do. How dare you want goverment to impose your moral value of
"individual dignity" on the rest of us? :-)
Exiting sarcasm mode, it should be obvious from the above that whatever
the form of goverment, it is the imposition of *some* set of moral code
upon everyone. And, in any pluralistic society, there will be people
who disagree with it, thus making the law an imposition on those
people. You think that the principle of States' Rights was more
important than a faster (you claim only marginally faster, which I know
of no evidence for) freeing of the slaves. Talk about an imposition on
the dignity of the individual for some abstract morality! That just
about takes the big one.
Ken Arnold
Lincoln was probably the best politician to ever take the office,
however.