re: #438 marjoriemoon

Actually, ignoring the truth and written history is the revisionist version. Lincoln was a great man. He was also what would be considered today a racist. His own words reflect that fact.
Recorded history also proves, without a shadow of a doubt, that slavery was not the main issue of the civil war. It became a central issue, but, the actual economic and political issues that started the war had been brewing for almost 40 years before it began.
President Lincoln’s only concern was the preservation of the Union.
Whatever he had to do to accomplish that, he did. He made that very clear. 11 states had seceded, fracturing the Union. He did what he had to to put that union back together. His own words.
History is a funny thing. Lots of factors are forgotten or ignored to make it either more palatable to some, or, in the case of the Civil War, with the immensely important Emancipation proclamation, other causes and facts leading to the war are simply ignored, because folks feel that seizing on the slavery issue sums up the war in and of itself. While it may seem to define the war today, there are a lot of factors that led to it, slavery was one of the least issues at the time. You can call me whatever names you want to. I spent a good chunk of my life studying the issue, reading documents, news accounts and other material from the period, contained in the Library of Congress, Harvard University library and archives (where I graduated from with a degree in history) and from several other sources just as reliable. The revisionist part of the history of the civil war comes from folks, who, not meaning to, think all there was to it was what they learned in high school history class. In fact, it was much, much more than that, without taking anything away from the importance of the slavery issue. Understand this, Lincoln said what he meant, and meant what he said. If preserving the Union would have been accomplished by keeping slavery in tact, he would have done that without blinking. He said so himself.
I am not trying to repudiate a great man at all, just being factual.