Lincoln and the revisionists

Abraham Lincoln is one of our nation's most revered figures. His honesty, compassion, determination along his genius for writing and humble origins, have helped endear him to millions of Americans of later generations. That he was often vilified in his own times and had personal foibles has not been covered extensively until books like A Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

But some have attempted to alter our perception of "Honest Abe".Revisionists from the Left and Right have and continue to try to soil Lincoln's reputation with accusations of a lack of concern for the slaves as a result of racist beliefs and acting as a despot.

The former accusation is based largely on a famous statement Lincoln made about his priorities in a letter to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune , on the 22nd of August, 1862. In it Lincoln states that:"

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views."

This is proof, some leftist historians claim, of Lincoln's lack of concern for the eradication of slavery.But as even a cursory review of Lincoln's history reveals, he was an abolitionist and most of all, an astute politician who understood that in order to eliminate slavery he first had to preserve the Union. Without the ability to impose its will, what could the government do for the slaves?

As he would later display in the wording of the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln to walk a thin line between abolition and heeding political and military concerns.(such as preventing border states from seceding)He had to have priorities and preserving the Union had to be number one.

Further, applying modern notions of race to those who lived 140 years ago is a bit preposterous.To judge one who gave blacks the chance to breath air as freeman so harshly is insulting and quite frankly, shameful.

Some right wing historians and southern sympathizers have tried to portray Lincoln as a tyrant who violated the right of the South to secede. The imposition of government upon the unwilling is the very definition of tyranny they say.

Save for the most obvious fact that Southern leaders fought to preserve the "peculiar institution" of human bondage, their argument could possibly generate some sympathy within unbiased minds.The distrust of a powerful, centralized, government is strong among many Westerners.

But one has to ask this: What can be more tyrannical than forcibly bonding someone to a lifetime of backbreaking work with the lash an ever present threat?Who can respect a society that actively works to keep in ignorance 40% of its population?(Bitter Fruits of Bondage: The demise of slavery and the collapse of the Confederacy, 1861-1865. Armisted L. Robinson) Who can sympathize with a society that is built upon the something as immoral as slavery?

In his Memoirs of General U.S. Grant, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant judged the South's reason for secession:

"I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse."