Yeah. Michael Holt, he's an idiot.
(My guess is that you are more selective than the folks like Holt in what you read and how you interpret it.)
ML/NJ
When the South Carolina Legislature, the first state to leave, PUBLICLY states in a UNANIMOUS declaration that the reason they secede is because of slavery; when some historian claims that it was about something else; I hold as authoritative that declaration and assume the historian, as is their wont these days attempt to revise history to conform to their personal taste.
I read enough books by “historians” who try to perform freudian phsyco-analysis on all the characters. OK, Lincoln was melancholy, gay, hated his mother ya da ya da ya. Spare me. I can read his speeches, letters, proclamations, etc. I can read the accounts of those who knew him: Douglass, Herdon, Seward, Grant etc. I’ll take the historians who stick to the facts. Lincoln wasn’t gay. Shakespeare wasn’t gay, and Jesus wasn’t married to Mary Magdalen. There’s no Big Foot, Loch Ness Monster or Space Aliens at area 51and Sirhan Sirhan shot Bobby Kennedy...