Abraham Lincoln

[milestogo]

Today I was thinking about all that he went through just during the years of his presidency.

Trying to keep the country from splitting in two.
Wrestling with the issue of slavery.
The loss of a son.
His own depression and his wife's mental illness.
People who hated him and wanted to kill him.

He had a real moral center, a real love for our country, and real humility. Every president should emulate him, though none will ever live up to him. He rose to the challenges of the time he lived in.

I hope our next president can do the same.

[hlthe2b]

1. Indeed. But, I would encourage any who have not watched the History Channel documentary

On Grant to do so. Without Grant, Lincoln would have absolutely been sunk and it is clear that the revisionist history of the South is what has suppressed the true appreciation for what Grant accomplished and experienced as President. Those protestors who destroyed a statue of Grant over the weekend have no understanding nor appreciation of what he tried to do for those previously enslaved before, during, and after the war and his efforts to restore reconstruction efforts to those Lincoln originally intended--after Johnson's abysmal course. Grant's going after the KKK--sending the military in to combat them is but one small piece.

I knew some of this before watching the documentary but never appreciated the full extent of how and why his legacy was so besmirched.

Lincoln is worthy of a lot of admiration. So, too is Grant. Neither was perfect, but we were sure lucky to have had them.

[moondust]

2. Had he lived,

he *might* have understood the danger of allowing the Confederate symbols to live on and continue to divide. He *might* have banned them like Germany later did with Nazi symbols, although enforcement across the Confederate South would have been a challenge. I doubt that Andrew Johnson even considered it.

[milestogo]

3. But weren't a lot of the confederate statues put up much later?

From Wikipedia:

Scholarly studies of the monuments began in the 1980s. In 1983 John J. Winberry published a study which was based on data from the work of R.W. Widener.[33][34] He estimated that the main building period for monuments was from 1889 to 1929 and that of the monuments erected in courthouse squares over half were built between 1902 and 1912. He determined four main locations for monuments; battlefields, cemeteries, county courthouse grounds, and state capitol grounds.

Over a third of the courthouse monuments were dedicated to the dead. The majority of the cemetery monuments in his study were built in the pre-1900 period, while most of the courthouse monuments were erected after 1900. Of the 666 monuments in his study 55% were of Confederate soldiers, while 28% were obelisks. Soldiers dominated courthouse grounds, while obelisks account for nearly half of cemetery monuments. The idea that the soldier statues always faced north was found to be untrue and that the soldiers usually faced the same direction as the courthouse. He noted that the monuments were "remarkably diverse" with "only a few instances of repetition of inscriptions".[34]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Confederate_monuments_and_memorials

[moondust]

4. Yes they were.

But if the Confederate symbols had been banned after the Civil War, the Confederate statues would not have been allowed later.

[Igel]

5. He did.

Although he sometimes lapsed, as in the suspension of habeas corpus and detention as political prisoners of some state legislators in order to prevent a suspected vote of secession.

One can be generally moral and make mistakes--and still be honored for being generally moral. Many cannot conceive of such a thing; sadly, many such used to be confined to some more restrictive churches. With the reduction in church attendance, they're set free on the country.


Part of his moral center also included the following, from his last public address, in which he says something very much at odds with modern sensibilities and even the politics of those who followed him in high office:

... I have been shown a letter on this subject, supposed to be an able one, in which the writer expresses regret that my mind has not seemed to be definitely fixed on the question whether the seceding States, so called, are in the Union or out of it. It would perhaps, add astonishment to his regret, were he to learn that since I have found professed Union men endeavoring to make that question, I have purposely forborne any public expression upon it. As appears to me that question has not been, nor yet is, a practically material one, and that any discussion of it, while it thus remains practically immaterial, could have no effect other than the mischievous one of dividing our friends. As yet, whatever it may hereafter become, that question is bad,as the basis of a controversy, and good for nothing at all--a merely pernicious abstraction.

We all agree that the seceded States, so called, are out of their proper relation with the Union; and that the sole object of the government, civil and military, in regard to those States is to again get them into that proper practical relation. I believe it is not only possible, but in fact, easier to do this, without deciding, or even considering, whether these States have ever been out of the Union, than with it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial whether they had ever been abroad. Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to restoring the proper practical relations between these States and the Union; and each forever after, innocently indulge his own opinion whether, in doing the acts, he brought the States from without, into the Union, or only gave them proper assistance, they never having been out of it.

http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/last.htm