We're now on the 16th day of my daily presidents threads celebrating the 250th anniversary of the USA.Today we have Abraham Lincoln (2/12/1809 - 4/12/1865), who served as president from 1861 to 1865 when he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre, only 5 days after the Confederacy surrendered. Prior to becoming president, he was a representative from Illinois, a lawyer, and a wrestler. He is our tallest president. Notable actions or events during his presidency include the American Civil War, the naval blockade of the South, the suspension of Habeas Corpus, the Trent Affair, the Legal Tender and National Banking Acts, the Homestead Act, the Department of Agriculture, the Pacific Railway Acts, the Dakota War of 1862, the Conscription Act, the Sand Creek Massacre, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, the 13th Amendment, the Freedmen's Bureau, and the beginning of Reconstruction. He was also known for the Lincoln-Douglas Debates immediately prior to his election.What do you think of Mr. Big?
Not touching this one
>>18512214Why didn't we send them back?
Criminal who destroyed the Constitution and states rights and waged an illegal war against fellow Americans.
>>18512264You lost, redneck.
>>18512214>illegally deposed the Missouri state legislature and governor merely for expressing their opinions
odd how much worse of a strategist Jefferson Davis was for being a West Pointer
>>18512293Still, Lincoln and Stanton did make some pretty bad early war decisions such as giving major generals' commissions to political officers like Ben Butler, ensuring they outranked almost everyone, and removing part of McClellan's army from the Peninsula Campaign out of paranoia at Stonewall Jackson's one tiny division.
>>18512293>>18512264it's been like 160 years. will you rednecks get over it already?
>>18512264start shit get hit
>>18512295there was no serious chance after summer 1861 that the Confederates could have taken Washington
>>18512214Anyone who doesn't think that Lincoln was our greatest ever president is either a white supremacist moron or - even worse - a southerner.
>>18512214This man destroyed the US the founders created, all for his greed.
>>18512335See >>18512314
>>18512259It isn't "back" when the black population had been here for hundreds of years. The average slave had been ancestrally living in North America many, many decades longer than the average white American.The freed slaves didn't want to leave to somewhere they knew nothing about.Plus the Republicans quickly understood that they'd be able tor rely on freed slaves votes, which was needed to marginalize the Democratic party.And just economically the idea of sending the freedmen to Africa was just a non-starter.
OP didn't even touch on some of the most controversial aspects of Lincoln's presidency, like his election, which is what actually triggered the secession of the southern states in the first place.
>>18512347The only controversy came from southerners freaking out that they couldn't dominate the country anymore.Lincoln won fair and square, and even promised to be a moderate anti-expansionist rather than an abolitionist, but the southern elites couldn't accept compromise and so destroyed their whole countryside in a pointless war.
>>18512350>>18512347Lincoln didn't do anything except propose to not expand slavery outside of where it already existed and the mere idea of that caused them to chimp out.
>>18512350He won with only 39% of the popular vote, without a single southern delegate voting for him, which was a warning to everyone with a brain that the North had totally captured the federal government and would ensure no southern Candidate ever won another election. >even promised to be a moderate anti-expansionist rather than an abolitionistHis vice president was a notorious abolitionist. He wasn't fooling anybody.
>>18512355It really shows the hubris of the plantation class.I mean they had the resources to, even if slavery were abolished, just transition into other industries, or simply turn their slave plantations into sharecropper farms. But they were so against all change that they waged war which ended up destroying their plantations and giving complete political domination to the Republicans - who also became highly radicalized, and so equal rights were given to African Americans (on paper)Even if they did win the war and become independent, what would be the long-term strategy? Western Europe, namely Britain, was hugely against slavery, and that would be the only people they could sell cotton too.Without being a supported part of the larger USA, and with a new, hostile government besides them, the CSA would have been at risk of potentially enormous slave revolts or another war with the Union.
>>18512360Lincoln was just a few states off from losing. New York and Illinois weren't landslide wins for the GOP.And the south would still have enough delegates in the senate to block or force compromise any anti-slavery legislation.By seceding the south through out any voice in how slavery would end.
>>18512360The Democrat split basically ensured Lincoln's victory.
>>18512367>Even if they did win the war and become independent, what would be the long-term strategy?they had ambitions of seizing territory in the Caribbean and Central America to create a great slave-holding empire
>The Confederacy's hopes that Britain would enter the war on their behalf in a similar manner to France's intervention in the War of Independence proved unfounded--the British government and public were strongly anti-slavery. Confederate leaders took a little too seriously Lord Palmerston's personal animosity towards the United States and assumed it was representative of the entire UK.
>>18512259>4 million blacksGood luck with that.
>>18512374That was always a pipedream. I mean even if the CSA would be able to win a war against Spain and take over say Cuba and Puerto Rico, why would Britain or France ever let that stand?Where else could they go? Try to take over Mexico? The Central American states? It's a lot of resources to spend, a lot of risk, just for some land that would be damn near impossible to turn into plantations
>>18512383The British populace for 20 years after the Crimean War were very strongly antiwar anyway so there was no chance they'd enter the Civil War.
>>18512383they also assumed their cotton could be used as leverage, but that hope was unfounded as Britain was opening new cotton plantations in Egypt and India and they needed the North's food imports more. In any case, the war years also brought about a run of excellent weather to the Northern states and bountiful harvests.
>>18512393Economically there was nothing to gain.The only possible positive of intervening on the side of the south was to get cheaper cotton imports, but changing where their cotton was grown was not a particularly Herculean task.In comparison the USA was one of their biggest trade partners, and undermining them could disrupt British commerce massively for many decades to come.And that's not even accounting for the monetary investment that would have needed to be put in to change the outcome in any meaningful way.
>>18512295Lincoln knew he was not a trained soldier and had minimal knowledge of military matters, he made it clear that he did not want to intervene in the strategic aspects of the war if he could help it. His complaint was that generals until Grant would refuse to take any responsibility and keep trying to push strategic decisions off on him.
>>18512214To make a long story short. Lincoln is saying that he violated the Constitution for the “greater good.”“I did understand however, that my oath to preserve the constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government-that nation-of which that constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the constitution? By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the constitution, through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground.”~ Abraham Lincoln to Albert G. Hodges, April 4, 1864, Collected Works, vol. 7, p. 281..
>>18512214Constitutional integrity meant nothing to the Lincoln administration in 1860. "I don't give a damn whether they are guilty or innocent. I saved Maryland by similar arrests, and so I mean to hold Kentucky."~ William Seward, Secretary of State, 10/1861, (Stahr, Seward, p.288)
>Grant recalled in his memoirs "Those officers who believed in devising new theories of state governments, issuing emancipation proclamations, and invading Canada came to grief almost as surely as those who believed their primary duty was to safeguard Rebel property and keep the slaves working in the fields while their owners were off serving in the Rebel army."[2]
>>18512410Kentucky lived under the delusion that if they didn't secede they would somehow be allowed to keep their slaves.
>>18512370Without Southern Congressmen there was also nothing to stop the passage of the Homestead and Trans-Continental Railroad Acts, both of which the South had stalled for years prior to the war.
>>18512295Military ranks above major are political, always have been.
>>18512214"If the Union is not dismembered, it can only be held together by force, and that is despotism — military despotism. We prefer to see the South any day under Alexander, Napoleon, Francis Joseph, Victoria, or any other crowned head of Europe, than under Abraham Lincoln."-NY Express 5/10/1861(reprinted in the Richmond Dispatch on 5/14/1861)
>>18512421>As Sherman was trying to mold his raw recruits into an army in the fall of 1861, he was aware of how many officers had political ambitions. It was said that every lieutenant and captain planned to run for mayor of his home town, every major and lieutenant colonel wanted to run for the state legislature, every colonel run for Congress, and every brigadier general for the governorship or Senate in his state. Sherman asked one officer "How long do you plan on staying in the army?" "Three years, sir" was the reply. "Well, that's a relief," said Sherman. "Most of you fellows intend on staying for three weeks and then leave to run for Congress.[2]
>>18512295most of the regular army officers were Democrats, many preferred the South from a cultural POV, and few had any moral issue with slavery. for some they just couldn't adapt and overcome their existing biases.
>>18512314^This. The antebellum South was not Wakanda.
>>18512293Davis just treated everything like a good ol' boys club giving commands to his army buddies regardless of their competence. Lincoln, not being a soldier, had less sentimental attachment to generals and was more willing to fire them for screwing up.
>During his command of the occupation force in New Orleans, Butler earned the derisive nickname "Spoons" for the rumors that he personally stole silverware from homes. While most of the men in the Big Easy quickly calmed down and accepted the Union occupation, the women remained viciously defiant--as Admiral Farragut was riding through the city, one lady attempted to dump the contents of a chamber pot out a second floor window onto him. Butler responded by issuing a decree that any female caught disrespecting or defying a uniformed officer of the United States military would hereby be treated as a "lady of the town plying her trade." The Richmond government decreed Butler an outlaw who if captured would not be held prisoner, but merely hanged on sight. Nonetheless, his rule was controversial enough that in November 1862 he was removed from command in New Orleans and replaced by Nathaniel Banks.[9]
>>18512453>In addition, Butler hanged William Mumford, a professional gambler and ardent Southern patriot, for treason after he climbed to the roof of the US Mint and tore down the US flag.
>>18512453the real reason Butler was removed from New Orleans was suspicion that he was involved in illegal cotton smuggling
>>18512460>>18512453>hanging a man without trial and denigrating women merely for expressing their opinionare you Yankees even human?
>>18512466>how dare he punish 'hos who were disrespecting the occupying army
>mfw Cletus started a war he couldn't win near me
>>18512264Dixietards are some of the biggest dindonuffins on /his/.
>>18512264>and states rights>mmuh right to own slaves
>>18512214Radical Republicans imported violent Haitians and seeded them in the South during Reconstruction..
>All the way back in 1854, Lincoln had confessed that for the life of him he could not solve the slavery question. Sending blacks back to Africa was clearly an impossibility, but it was also impossible that they could ever be made equal to the white man.[3]
There's a statue of him in Manchester
>It was a curious twist that both Lincoln and Davis were born in Kentucky, one's family moving north to Illinois, the other south to Mississippi. One wonders how history would have played out had the reverse happened.
The South were total crybabbies. They had absolutely dominated the government since Thomas Jefferson's day and almost always got their way that whole time.
America's Lenin. A man who would stop at nothing and expend as many lives as necessary all for some deranged economic plan he devoted his life to. Probably the first genuine atheist president as well, so that's what you get.>>18512346Italians have been living here for generations and they're not Americans. Sometimes the racial difference is simply too large to assimilate. It goes without saying this is a thousand times more true for literal Africans. And even if sending them all to Liberia wasn't practical, settling them somewhere in America (like Florida) absolutely was.
>>18512649Bragging about rank historical literacy doesn't make you look smart. Jefferson's presidency was the high point, it was all downhill from there. Of course the Mexican war looked like it could change that; suddenly the future of America looked like it could be heading in the southern direction. But then the Yankees decided they'd just illegally steal all the land they cried about the South fighting for, and so the South seceded.
>>18512713>Italians have been living here for generations and they're not Americansactual Italian here. we really don't identify with I-As that much they're too American and have a very different mentality than us.
>>18512730Yes I'm not saying they actual Italians, but they're not our people either, indeed their whole identity is basically just based around insisting on living with us while not being us; a bit like Jews in that regard. It's kind of sad too because I think real Italians would normally be thrilled to have their own diaspora nation in the New World, but instead of their own Quebec it just resulted in a bunch of dumb heebs making life hard for Anglo-Saxons. They are your spawn though, make no mistake of that.
>>18512463>the real reason Butler was removed from New Orleans was suspicion that he was involved in illegal cotton smugglingThe Louisiana theater saw a lot of cotton smuggling throughout the war, with New Orleans corruption and the Mississippi as a major artery into cotton country. There’s a book by a Yankee colonel suspended for calling out crooks in the army called Among the Cotton Thieves. The Red River campaign failed in part because the forces involved were more focused on grabbing cotton bales than beating the Rebs.
so did this guy actually do anything good or did he just die
>>18512747And of course that whole business kicked into overdrive during Reconstruction when there were still millions of bales lying around the South just begging to be looted. Honestly the planters probably could've remained competitive with industrial magnates for the remainder of the century at least and a little bit beyond if their enterprise were not crushed by the war.
Fired his generals until he found one who would use human-wave tactics to overrun the South. Yeah I'm thinking he was a commie.
>>18512752He did a lot of very bad things, but dying was actually his worst deed of all. If he had lived historians would hate him more than Johnson and no one online would be able to claim he wanted to ship all blacks back to Africa. He aimed to pursue a moderate policy towards the South and his opinions on blacks can only be called too liberal for the chuds yet far too racialist for libs today.
>>18512758He got extremely unlucky, by all rights the war should've been won in 1862, even more so in 1863 even despite the fact that Lincoln's strategic meddling was rarely helpful in those days. Grant's performance was genuinely abyssal though and it's bizarre how much it is praised. With the exception of the Soviets I don't think you'll ever see similar praise for sustaining such overwhelming losses in the face of a weaker enemy.
>>18512768I should note that although I dislike Grant I will admit his performance earlier in the war was often good, which just makes his completely unimaginative campaigns against Lee all the more incomprehensible.
>As an honest soldier, Grant wanted to stop the flow of cotton out of the South, but to no avail--in the strange economy of things, war was not going to stop business as usual. Some Southern superpatriots chose to burn their cotton rather than let it fall into Yankee hands, but most were more pragmatic and realized the opportunity to obtain good Yankee currency--they needed to sell and cotton prices were at their highest since Thomas Jefferson was president. This illicit trade, Grant estimated, prolonged the war effort by two years as the flow of cash kept the Confederate war machine funded, and too many in the North were also profiting from the cotton trade.
>>18512770>which just makes his completely unimaginative campaigns against Lee all the more incomprehensibleNot at all incomprehensible. He was commanding an army that had been warped by McClellan and could not do as the Western armies did. An army that was slow, clunky, and always terrified of Lee.
>>18512463During the Petersburg siege it was widely suspected that a good deal of smuggling of war materials was going on, that supplies were going to the Army of Northern Virginia, and Butler arrested people who knew too much. However he was a favorite son of the Joint Congressional Committee For The Conduct of the War, so nothing was ever proven.
Grant also had to make an unfortunate step during the Overland Campaign in ending the prisoner exchange program with the Confederates. This was necessary because paroled Confederates would quickly rejoin the army and Grant figured there was no way to win the war short of totally depopulating the South.By halting exchanges, the Confederate armies were deprived of thousands of men. The regrettable part was that it also meant Union prisoners could not be exchanged and were left to rot in hellscapes such as Andersonville, however Grant considered this a necessary sacrifice--the South had less manpower to begin with and the loss of soldiers to prisoner camps hit them harder than it did the North.The official reason given for halting the exchange program was that the Confederates were refusing to accept black soldiers as legitimate POWs and instead immediately returned them to slavery if captured. In a series of letter exchanges with Grant, Lee argued that the black soldiers were runaway slaves who owed their former masters labor and cited various constitutional and historical evidence for this.
What's the best depiction of Lincoln in pop culture? He is one of the few handful of former presidents that the media remembers exists.
>>18512827Clone High
i warned you this thread was all gonna be bad. don't think we'll have one this bad again until...maybe Wilson?
>>18512781>Grant said in his memoirs that he was not operating under ideal conditions at first. He did not know Virginia that well, nor was his familiar with the soldiers and officers of the Army of the Potomac. "Had I known then what I did six months later, I would have better understood this army and what it was capable of."
>>18512745>Yes I'm not saying they actual Italians, but they're not our people either, indeed their whole identity is basically just based around insisting on living with us while not being us; a bit like Jews in that regard. It's kind of sad too because I think real Italians would normally be thrilled to have their own diaspora nation in the New World, but instead of their own Quebec it just resulted in a bunch of dumb heebs making life hard for Anglo-Saxons. They are your spawn though, make no mistake of that.
>>18512920Ah yes another smelly brown person is pulling the "If you hate immigrants you're brown" card on me. I definitely have not seen this dozens of times before and am deeply shaken.
>>18512214The 2nd most tyrannical president, after FDR
>>18512950>The 2nd most tyrannical presidentTell me, Cletus, about how the Confederate constitution forbade states to secede and mandated any state or territory to have slavery, they couldn't refuse.
>whole states utterly ravaged by L*ncoln's hired mercenaries like the Visigoths>peaceful civilians lost everything it had taken generations to build
>>18512953>Lincoln was a tyrant >OK, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE CONFEDERATES
>>18512986>>18513153>>18512950Cope.
>>18512214My favorite Lincoln photo
>>18513463>Lincoln>Why not finish off Lee's army they clearly took a beating at Antietam, right?>McCuck>My horses are tired and I need another 50,000 men--army intelligence says that Lee has at least 70,000 reinforcements since the battle>Lincoln>You're fired, dude.
>>18513639To his credit, McClellan told the army that the Emancipation Proclamation was government policy and they must accept and cooperate with it no matter what their own opinion was, and really, nobody except some New Englanders was happy about it.
>>18512335The censorship is bad.Most of this is just complaining that Lincoln didn't let the South do whatever it wanted.
>>18510636>>18512214...Then the south starts shootin' cannonAnd we got a Civil WarA war!A war down south in Dixie!
>>18513754Up to bat comes old Abe LincolnThere's a guy who's really thinkin'!Kept the United States from shrinkin'Saved the ship of state from sinkin'!
>>18513660>After his dismissal from the Army of the Potomac, Burnside offered to resign from the service altogether and return to civilian life. Lincoln declined his offer and told him there was still a place in the army for him. Burnside was then given command of the Department of Ohio, encompassing that state, Indiana, and Illinois, a quiet area with few troops and even fewer responsibilities, and it seemed unlikely that he'd get into trouble there.>But Burnside was a deeply loyal man and the waves of Copperhead sentiment in the Middle West troubled him. Clement Valladigham, a Democrat Ohio Congressman, was making stump speeches openly denouncing the administration and calling for peace. Burnside sent agents to one of his speeches to take down notes. They brought back their findings, and from this he determined that Valladigham was guilty of treason, so he had him arrested.
>Having struck at freedom of speech, Burnside next struck at freedom of the press. Over in Illinois was a certain pestiferous newspaper, the Chicago Times, that had long been saying in print the same things Valladigham was saying in his speeches. Burnside sent members of a cavalry unit to the Times's office and ordered its staff to cease printing.>Both events were embarrassing to the administration. Burnside ultimately proposed that Valladigham simply be released in Tennessee, in the no-man's land between Union and Confederate territory, and allowed to go into the Confederate lines where they were free to do with him as they pleased. This struck Lincoln as a good idea, and Valladigham was summarily turned over to the Confederates while Lincoln ordered the Times re-opened and told Burnside not to shut down any more newspapers or arrest civilians without the White House's permission. The Confederates did not know what to do with their unexpected guest. He was flitted across country to Richmond and an interview with Confederate officials. They then sent him on a blockade runner to Canada where he continued to denounce Lincoln in exile there.
>>18512466If she breathes, she's a thot.
Lincoln was pretty fucking rude to Jessie Fremont, like most men of his generation he didn't take women's political opinions very seriously.
>>18514532>>18514524Valladigham had a tragicomic end a few years after the war.>was defending a client in court during a murder trial>was examining the gun used in the murder when he accidentally discharged it and fatally wounded himself
