Yeah, and ain't it great. Since we will never know how the world would have been with a different outcome it's not possible to say it was a good thing.
He will always be one of the greatest US Presidents because he managed not to be the last US President
Good Presidents don't ignore the constitution and cause the death of at least 600,000 people for a dubious concept.
I can point to several useful accomplishments of the Union that would have been impossible or highly impracticable if the US had been divided.
Good Presidents don't ignore the constitution and cause the death of at least 600,000 people for a dubious concept.
Lincoln didn't ignore the Constitution. He was of the opinion that the Constitution did not mandate its own destruction.
It's an opinion whose merits can be debated, but to say that Lincoln simply ignored the Constitution is an exercise in self-deception.
Ascribing the death toll of the Civil War entirely to Lincoln is, of course, silly. One might as well say that it was Johnston's fault for not taking Washington immediately after First Manassas.
The indivisibility of the Union is not "dubious" or a mere "concept." If one reads The Federalist with attention, one will see that the legality of secession was not contemplated by the original advocates of the US Constitution.
And the physical fact of Union, far from being merely conceptual, had real implications for the safety and prosperity of the inhabitants of the US.
Yeah, and ain't it great. Since we will never know how the world would have been with a different outcome it's not possible to say it was a good thing.
Not with any certainty. But we can look around the world and see where the break-up of larger countries into squabbling smaller governments and elites has produced catastrophes. And where once countries give in to break away factions they find it hard to ever return to peace, order, and prosperity. Or where the loss of unity led to subjugation by foreign powers. The founders of the republic and Lincoln's own generation could look to Latin America, Eastern Europe and other parts of the world to see where such things had happened. So they weren't completely in the dark about such things any more than we are.
Of course there is another side to such things -- large nations can be less subject to popular control, and more apt to impose their will on smaller groups. But some people are so blinded by ideology that they missed what the Framers and Lincoln saw -- that disunity wasn't necessarily freedom, but could be the end of freedom. Let any group break away at its own demand for any reason or none and repudiate its share of national obligations, and the result will be chaos, bloodshed, and perhaps tyranny. Moreover, smaller governmental units often aren't any more tolerant of minority rights than larger units are, as Madison and others knew.
He will always be one of the greatest US Presidents because he managed not to be the last US President
Good Presidents don't ignore the constitution and cause the death of at least 600,000 people for a dubious concept.
I doubt most historians or Americans would put all the blame on Lincoln. The secessionists were certainly willing to go to war to get what they wanted. Moreover, the war came to be fought for liberation of the slaves and that was hardly a "dubious concept," though I suppose one could apply such a description to the idea of secession at will or the vision of a slaveowners' republic.
The Civil War has been over for a good long time. Without neglecting its tragedy and horror, we ought to be able to see things in perspective by now and do without cardboard cut-out saints and villains.
"Good Presidents don't ignore the constitution and cause the death of at least 600,000 people for a dubious concept."
Umm are you forgetting the dubious hand that Jeff Davis and the rest of the "Confederates" had in causing those 600K deaths?
Had Davis and Co. not illegally taken the southern states out of the union...the Civil War would NEVER have happened.
Ergo...Jeff Davis is just as if not MORE responsible for the death of 600K U.S. citizens than Lincoln EVER was.