this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2024
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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.
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 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.
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.
Lincoln wouldn't have enjoyed the majorities necessary to rewrite the Constitution without the Civil War. He'd have been in the same position as Quincy Adams or Filmore, two outspoken abolitionists who lacked the tools to functionally end the practice.
The war, the voluntary dissolution of opposition in Congress, and the massive depopulation that neutered immediate blowback left the door wide open for revolutionary change. And Lincoln - unlike his successor Johnson or even more distant successor Truman - walked through that doorway. That's what makes Lincoln significant - he was presented with a serious opportunity to affect change and he took it, when less lucky presidents never had the opportunity and less moral presidents never had the conviction.
What makes guys like Trump and Bush Jr so horrifying is the fact that they did pounce on their opportunities to affect radical change. The Republican Party is seizing their moment and reinventing the country while the Dems dither, trying to extract as much personal profit from the decaying system.
The modern South is a consequence of bold Republicans capitalizing on a wellspring of white nationalism that's been bubbling up since the Civil Rights Era, while Democrats seek to apologize for FDR/Kennedy/LBJ and sell off a generation of progressive reform to the highest bidder. When you look at the Dem strategy in states like Texas and Florida, you see this in spades. Candidates falling over themselves to prove they hate student protesters and brown foreigners and union advocates as much as any Republican.
The lesson we're all learning is that you might as well try to reign in hell, cause heaven is a lost cause.