 | Redoedo (39)
08/23/2003 |  Following Abraham Lincoln's election to the Presidency, seven states left the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. Soon thereafter, four more states joined them. With the southern attack on Fort Sumter, the Civil War had begun, and the greatest crisis that this nation has ever faced was underway. Lincoln's wartime management was second to none. However, a close examination of his leadership during the war introduces some questions. Did Lincoln have the right to do what he did: Go to war without Congressional approval, draft a military, emancipate the slaves, abolish habeas corpus. Hell, my friend Rebelyell will tell you that he didn't have any right to go into the South at all. Constitutionally, the answer to most of those questions is no. Many of Lincoln's critics today deem him a tyrant, hell-bent on controlling everything. His critics back then were even more harsh to Honest Abe. However, Lincoln had a mixed record on this issue. On one hand, he abolished habeas corpus and as a result, over 20,000 citizens, most of which resided in the border states, were detained for suspected disloyalty. Draft dodgers were frequently prosecuted. However, Lincoln the tyrant pardoned nearly 85% of those soldiers sentenced to execution for deserting their unit. Tyrant Lincoln agreed to treat all captured Confederate prisonors as members of a sovereign nation rather than as traitors. Nevertheless, Lincoln overstepped his bounds in his attempts to virtually trample all over the individual rights of the citizens of the United States. Unlike the Confederacy, who believe it or not, fired the first shot in the Civil War, these were simply protestors who opposed the war. Lincoln, however, felt that any additional criticism of the war would result in an even more dissolved union. Lincoln denounced his critics by saying that it made no sense to lose the Union yet save the Constitution. I suppose you could look at it that way. However, it is also debateable as to whether he should've trampled all over the Constitution of the Union that he was trying to save. Despite all his faults and tyrannical actions, I am convinced that he did what he did, the good and the bad, not for self-gain (the only thing he gained from the war was death), but because he thought that it was right. According to Lincoln's mentality, the Constitution of the United States was null when the states of the Union were not united.
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 | RebelYell1861 (9)
08/15/2003 | Read some of my other comments on Lincoln on this site. I'm not gonna say it all again. But if you want to know the truth about Honest Abe, real The Real Lincoln by Thomas DiLorenzo. It's a must-read for any red-blooded American truth seeker.
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