But if you want to avert a Civil War then he would not be my first pick now would he?
And to prosecute a war ?
that is debatable
to give inspiring speeches and do WHATEVER it took to win...unlike today say when we prosecute wars...then yes...you might have a point.
to offer decent terms to the states he defeated...well there he does have my undying respect and that sets him apart from the jackals that were chomping at the bit behind him to destroy the south as punishment...I believe his written desires at the end of the war prove he did want reconciliation which I admire about him...had he not been cowardly assassinated we might have avoided the pleasures of Reconstruction
The jackals were more honest. Lincoln's feigned magnanimity was explained centuries earlier by Julius Caesar in his Commentaries. Magnanimity in victory is about submission and hand-licking, not kindness.
No submission, no clasping the hem of the robe ..... then he'd have been perfectly willing to burn the entire South to the ground, until there was not one stone standing on another, and nothing left moving except ex-slaves and mountain-county Unionists.
Lee repented his surrender eventually, and wished he'd died at Appomattox instead with his sword in his hand.