If you asked your average American who the top 3 US Presidents of all time are, I'd bet that one of the answers would be Abraham Lincoln. I'm here to tell you that he was one of the worst presidents of all time. I thought this would be an appropriate time for this article, with "Lincoln" being released in theaters. Daniel Day Lewis, if you're reading this, I think you're a great actor...but...fuck Abe Lincoln.
I believe there are a plethora of reasons why he sucked balls, but I figured the best way to position this article would be to counter the common reasons people use when labeling Abe as a great president. The #1 reason is that he ended slavery. Lincoln didn't give a shit about slaves. In a famous letter to Horace Greeley, he said the following:
"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or 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."
In addition to his indifference to slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation was purely a propaganda piece. It didn't free a single slave. It "freed" slaves only in territories not under Union control. So, basically, it didn't free anyone. Lincoln and the US had no power in the Confederate states. He could have made an effort to free the slaves in loyal states as well as the Union controlled Confederate states, but he didn't. As the Union Army made its way through the South, the slaves were able to join the Union Army. With the way that the Union was fighting the war (a war of attrition), the freed slaves became barely more than cannon fodder.
The other big reason your run-of-the-mill mouthbreather will use is that Lincoln kept the Union together. While this is technically true, at what cost? Over 600,000 Americans died; the bloodiest war in our history in regards to American casualties. Even though he may have kept the Union together, it took an act of killing the very essence of the United States' birth. Lincoln totally hijacked the Constitution. His most major offense of the Constitution, in my opinion, was suspending the writ of habeas corpus. He had anti-war journalists arrested and held without charges. He had an outspoken member of Congress, Clement Vallandigham, deported! He also jailed a few Maryland elected legislators. Elections were rigged in the North under Lincoln's orders with the help of intimidation by Union soldiers. Un-fucking-believable. He was an outright dictator.
Finally, even when confronted with these facts, some may say that war with the South was the only way to end slavery. Even if I give you that he actually cared to end slavery, I fundamentally disagree that slavery could have only ended through bloodshed. Countries all over the world were getting rid of slavery in the early 19th century; nearly all of them through peaceful means. The Brits ended slavery in the 1830s. Slavery was a dying trend. Google it.
The South wasn't as bent out of shape about slavery being ended as they were about the economic hardships placed on them by the North. Extremely prohibitive protectionist tariffs were put into place that basically forced the South to trade with the north by making imported goods unreasonably expensive. If the South had been able to secede, they could have traded goods at market value. Instead, their markets were rigged by the Tariff of Abominations and Morrill Tariff. Lincoln wanted to preserve this limited competition, and allow the North to prosper at the expense of the Southern economy. Lincoln's protectionist ideals are well founded.
After all was said and done, we lost over 600,000 Americans, along with our founding principles. Lincoln took a shit and wiped with the Constitution. The very same way our country was created, through secession from an oppressive government, was used as a reason to strong-arm our country into an essential dictatorship which would forever change how the country was run. If you think FDR over stepped his power, or Bush or Obama or any other president, you can thank good old Honest Abe. And like I said'Abraham Lincoln, literally Hitler.
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