Greg Krehbiel
Was Lincoln the worst president ever?
by Greg Krehbiel on 3 December 2006
I was just reading an article from Pravda On the Potomac (aka The Washington Post) about how Bush is the worst president ever, which got me thinking … who was the worst?
I’m no historian. I couldn’t name most of the presidents. But it seems to me that Lincoln might have been the worst. He certainly brought more destruction on the country than any other president.
Of course there’s this fiction that Lincoln fought to end slavery. He didn’t. That was an afterthought to rally support in the Northern states. He fought the war to “preserve the union.”
But after having voluntarily joined the union, didn’t the states have the right to leave? I’ve read arguments going both ways, and the matter was certainly debatable. Was it worth the cost in bloodshed?
Someone might say that slavery wouldn’t have ended without the war, but I don’t believe that’s true. England stopped slavery without a war. I don’t see why we couldn’t have.
In addition to the incredible cost in lives, the war completely changed the nature of the U.S. government — elevating the federal government’s importance in some very unfortunate ways. A lot of the problems we have today (like the idea that the establishment clause applies to every action of any government body) stem from this federalization of power.
And then there’s the question of Lincoln’s prosecution of the war and the dastardly tactics used against the South. And then there’s reconstruction. (Not on Lincoln’s watch, but part of the evil he unleashed.)
Again, I’m no historian, but it seems to me that Lincoln has a far better claim to “worst president ever” than Bush. (Not that I like Bush.)
2006-12-03 » Greg Krehbiel
4 December 2006 @ 5:00 pm
I’ve maintained for quite awhile now that Dubya is The New Lincoln and I haven’t meant it as a compliment. The abuses of power that have taken place on Dubya’s watch are straight from Lincoln’s playbook and made possible by Lincoln’s federalization of power.
Interestingly enough, in the 19th century, the Republicans and Democrats had exactly the opposite platforms as they do now. The Democrats were state’s-righters, strict constructionists, and social conservatives, while the Republicans were the Big Government liberals seeking to expand Washington’s power at the expense of the states. Because of their state’s-rights, strict-constructionist heritage and because of the “Civil War”-era Radical Republicans, the South remained yellow-dog Democrat for generations after the War. It was only with the socially-conservative Reagan and the Democrats’ complete liberalization on social justice issues that the South finally went Republican.
Bush Jr. may just change all that for many social conservatives in the Red States.
4 December 2006 @ 5:07 pm
Saying “Bush is the new Lincoln” is very interesting because it totally confuses people. Lefties who hate Bush but have absorbed the “Lincoln was great” virus will be offended, and conservatives will think you’re praising Bush when you’re actually criticizing him.
4 December 2006 @ 8:15 pm
I will have to use that line. Regarding your question about leaving the union. Three of the original states would not join the Union unless they were able to explicitly reserve the right of sesession. two of those were NY and NH (I think NH was the second) who fought for the North.
Glad you brought this up. Most people have such a skewed view of history today. But then again, we learn our history from the victors.
4 December 2006 @ 10:23 pm
Had the South chosen to leave peacefully, there would have been no war. Although Lincoln did not want to fight a war to end slavery, influential people in the South were willing to fight a war to preserve it.
Lincoln’s 1st Inaugural Address was devoted primarily to assuring the South that he would not interfere with their right to hold slaves. The text is here:
http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres31.html
It reads in part:
“One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. The fugitive-slave clause of the Constitution and the law for the suppression of the foreign slave trade are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever be in a community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports the law itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each. This, I think, can not be perfectly cured, and it would be worse in both cases after the separation of the sections than before. The foreign slave trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived without restriction in one section, while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at all by the other.
Physically speaking, we can not separate. We can not remove our respective sections from each other nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country can not do this. They can not but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory after separation than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you can not fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions, as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you.
In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect, and defend it.’
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. ”
The whole text is well worth reading, as is is short 2nd Inaugural, where, four years later, he looks back on the war.
There is a lot of disinformation about nowadays about Lincoln. A careful study of history, however, does reveal that Lincoln’s reputation a a great president was well-deserved.
John
5 December 2006 @ 11:27 am
>Had the south decided to leave peacefully, there would have been no war.
That’s a very simplistic statement. The south attempted to leave peacefully. It was only after Lincoln refused to relinquish Fort Sumtner, and was actually in the process of sending reinforcements to the fort that the south realized they needed to strike before the reinforced fort could strangle all shipping in/out of Charleston harbor.
After South Carolina drove the Yankee invaders off of thier sovereign soil, Lincoln raised an army to put down the “rebellion”.
“Live and let Live” was the South’s motto. They just wanted to be left alone. Lincoln would not allow the union to be “torn apart” and decided to forcably require the south to remain in the union.
This is why the war is known as the 2nd War of American Independence or the War of Northern Aggression in the south.
Also, while Lincoln may have “assured” the south he would not interfere with slavery, the results of the election (due to the addition of “free” states to the union) allowed the Federal government to being passing punitive tax & trade laws that were very detrimental to the south.
Prior to this, there was a very evenly divided balance of power between the two parties (as partisan as anything we see now). It was this even division that prevented secession for as long as it did.
This is one of the reasons why gridlock is a good thing. When the Republicans gained an overwhelming majority, the south decided to seceed.
I do agree with Greg that slavery would have eventually died of natural causes without the war.
6 December 2006 @ 2:21 am
A gratifying post. This “Bush is the worst president” is a shiboleth from the pathology of animus realm of politics. Not surprisingly, its based on terribly arbitrary criteria (and arbitrary metrics).
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t like Bush. I think he has proven to be a bad president. But the worst? I don’t have a way to measure that. But on the face of it, I suppose Lincoln was indeed the worst.
21 September 2007 @ 9:13 pm
Lincoln’s war crimes were among some of the most dispicable acts ever done on American soil. He imprisoned 13,000 people who opposed his thoughts or who even supported peace! He hated blacks and supported slavery. In his 1858 debate with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln said that he “had no intention ti interfere with slavery in the South and doing so would be unconstitutional.” Just a few years later he emancipated the slaves in the South. Lincoln was without a doutb the worst US President and a very clear example of what the AntiChrist will look like politically.