One Hundred and Fifty Years Ago On This Day

[donquixote99]

Oh, I agree he's not a diety. But he's got quite a temple on the mall anyway.

He went to war because he was told it would be quickly won, while ducking it would have been difficult and probably politically ruinous. A 'police action' was what was expected; the army would march south and restore order. He had no experience to tell him how bad it could be, and the experienced guys were very confident.

The Habaes Corpus suspension was completely justified and proper under the circumstances, except the Constitution gives Congress the power to do it, not the President. But Congress ducked making it legal, preferring to leave Lincoln stuck with the onus.

Now I'm OK with criticism of Lincoln in principle, if well-founded. But most of it is trite and tainted with Southern Revisionism.