I've heard both well-informed and uninformed people say that they think Lincoln was our best president. As far as I understand, the uninformed people like Lincoln because he freed the slaves. While Lincoln didn't like slavery, he was not initially an abolitionist and abolishing slavery was not really his goal: source: http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/greeley.htm Indeed, before the Civil War, he was a moderate who only sought to prevent the expansion of slavery. I'd say he was a great orator, but he didn't seem stellar in his decision-making. The North should have easily crushed the South, and it was largely things like the excessive tolerance of General McClellan's ineptitude against Lee's brilliance that caused the war to drag on. Lincoln did eventually remove him, though. The more important question though, is if preserving the union was really a worthwhile goal... i.e. worth killing hundreds of thousands of Americans. I mean, we seceded from Britain because they were parasitic. Why didn't the south have the right to secede from the north because of irreconcilable differences? In terms of social policy, I think America would have done better without the South if they had been allowed to leave. Slavery would have eventually fallen on its own, and it really wasn't for another hundred years that black people were treated even remotely fairly anyway - due in part to having the South still a part of our country. These are my thoughts on it, but it's not like I'm completely set in my position. I hope some of you will have good reasoning behind calling Lincoln great and the Civil War worthwhile. Because even now I hate to think those hundreds of thousands died for nothing worthwhile, like many wars.
