lincoln
In Mexico City there is a mural by Diego Rivera which depicts Hernando Cortez as a one-eyed syphilitic hunchback. What this lacks in historical accuracy it makes up for by faithfully reflecting the artist's attitude toward the conquistadors. We are repeatedly told on public television that Lincoln was a clearly heroic figure. If heroism is measured by the size of the pile of corpses a man leaves behind, this is correct. We must not let our emotions deprive us of objectivity. Lincoln was neither one-eyed, hunchbacked nor syphilitic but on the other hand, he never deserved the name of "Honest Abe". Like some other politicians, maybe all politicians, he spoke with a forked tongue.Lincoln came to power at a unique time, with a unique opportunity to decide the fate of the nation and of a million of his fellow citizens, who wound up as casualties of the Civil War. There was no lack of counsel. Editor Horace Greeley and a host of others advised letting the seceding states go in peace. More ardent abolitionists were outraged by this suggestion. Ralph Waldo Emerson and James Russell Lowell welcomed a civil war as an antidote to the greed of Northern merchants and the cruelty of Southern slave owners. Outgoing President Buchanan thoug
But the war proceeded slowly and there was always the threat of foreign intervention to maintain the flow of Southern cotton to English mills. After all, the British had burned the White House less than half a century before. Something else was needed to counter the claim of the Southerner's that they were only fighting for their independence, as the thirteen original colonies had the previous century, just one slave power fighting to free itself from another. Lincoln told Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy, that freeing the slaves was an absolute military necessity and the only way the war could be won. This was followed shortly by the Emancipation Proclamation and then the Gettysburg Address, harking back to the Declaration of Independence and its affirmation that all men are created equal. Thus the resourceful (some would say two-faced) president who would not risk the union to free the slaves turned to freeing the slaves to save the union. Of course Lincoln stoutly denied it was to abolish slavery. The four slave states which did not secede had a greater population greater than half that of the eleven states which did. To proclaim an anti-slavery crusade would substantially increase his problem. As a minority president (from a field of four candidates) his mandate was thin; his party platform did not call for abolition, but merely containing slavery within its present borders. His real motive was manifest destiny, the control of the West and the wealth of the orient beyond. As a lawyer and politician he had worked to authorize rail road bridges across the Mississippi River both to
Some common words found in the essay are:
Slave Power, Southern Initiative, President Buchanan, North South, Hernando Cortez, Springfield Allow, White House, Honest Abe, Declaration Independence, South Midwest, civil war, slave power, freeing slaves, manifest destiny,
Approximate Word count = 1077
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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