• AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      edit-2
      8 hours ago

      Ehhhhhhh, Lincoln was totally willing to keep slavery to end the civil war. The Confederates fucked up by refusing to negotiate. So he freed the southern slaves and ordered the South burned to the ground instead, ending the war by destroy their economy. He wasn’t the abolitionist hero American history portrays him as.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        edit-2
        8 hours ago

        Lincoln was totally willing to keep slavery to end the civil war.

        The thing about Lincoln wasn’t that he was willing to keep slavery to end the war. Virtually everyone was willing to do that.

        Lincoln was willing to end slavery to end the war. This was the truly revolutionary view and the reason he’s so celebrated.

        So he freed the southern slaves and ordered the South burned to the ground instead

        I don’t think you get to rampage all the way into Gettysburg, looting and burning and raping and massacring your way straight through the heart of the Midwest, and then discover moralism during Sherman’s March.

        He wasn’t the abolitionist hero American history portrays him as.

        He literally was, though. He wielded abolition, first as a weapon to bleed the Confederacy dry and then as a sucture to knit a new nation out of the 13th-15th amendments.

        He achieved policy the most radical abolitionists hadn’t even dreamed of ten years prior. An absolute living legend.

        If only he’d made Butler his VP or… idk… ducked.

        • AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          8 hours ago

          Don’t mistake me for defending the Confederacy. I can’t disagree that they deserved what they got. War is hell and they started it. My real point is that if they had been more subtle Lincoln would absolutely have let them keep slavery. A lesson the modern South seems to understand well if the last few decades of the Republican party are any example.

    • palordrolap@fedia.io
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      10 hours ago

      If he’d weep at all, it wouldn’t be because a woman says she wouldn’t be interested in him because of his politics – it’d be because of what’s become of his politics.