RateItAll: The Opinion Network

In the right place at the right time, he played his part well. Hard to argue that his presidency is underrated though.

He broke a lot of laws, but I would hope he would have cleaned it up in his second term.

Lincoln often gets credit for freeing the slaves; however, he didn't and he couldn't end slavery as it took a constitutional amendment to do that. Lincoln often gets credit for saving the Union. He didn't preserve the same union that he inherited as his actions actually killed the patient along the way (though perhaps the patient was terminal upon arrival). Returning to slavery, one must ask whether the costs to accelerate the end of slavery were worth the short-term bloodshed and the long-term exacerbation of racial tensions. I say short-term bloodshed to accelerate because 1) slavery had ended peacefully through most (if not all) of Western Europe and in most of the North prior to the American Civil War and 2) slavery would end peacefully in Brazil (for instance) after the American Civil War. (Also note that slavery was more important to the Brazilian economy than it was to the economy of the American South.) There is no reason to believe that slavery would have somehow persisted in the American South. I say long-term exacerbation of racial tensions because societies that change on their own are (of course) more accepting of the changes. As President, Lincoln took an oath to uphold the Constitution. Ignoring same to save the Union kills both. Moreover, legal or not, the South did secede. The arguments for the former is that Northern states had threatened to do the same earlier which suggests that these states were then estopped from denying the right to others, the right to secede was taught at West Point, and Chief Justice Chase advised the Lincoln/Johnson that secession was legal (hence Jefferson Davis was never tried for treason). Moreover, some of the acts and positions of the Union Government were in direct conflict with its official position that the South did not secede. (For instance if the Southern states didn't secede, then they were not readmitted which brings the legality of the slave amendments into question, not to mention the legitimacy of the State of West Virginia.) The bottom line is that Lincoln ultimately killed what he claimed to be saving and that the war most likely exacerbated the long-term loss of civil rights for African-Americans; therefore, he is grossly overrated.

It is only natural to underrate Lincoln's legacy as president. No president ever has had to face a crisis of the magnitude that Lincoln faced, and hopefully no one ever will. The greatest president to sit in the Oval Office.

He stepped up to the plate at a time of great national crisis. However, Honest Abe has become almost a mythical figure in American history due to his tragic assassination. He did not set out to free the slaves, and actually favored a peaceful resolution before the war started that would've guarenteed the solvency of slavery in those states that it existed.

See my comments on this dictatorial tyrant elsewhere on this site.