Interesting article, and I'm looking forward to the new documentary.
One thing that intrigued me was a quote from the article citing historian R. Blakeslee Gilpin:
Quote:
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Gilpin says Lincoln was great not only for what he got right, but because he could admit what he got wrong.
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There is no doubt that Lincoln was flawed, perhaps severely so. Can anyone show a leading figure of the time who wasn't? Or from any other time, for that matter?
I'm a big fan of Frederick Douglass, and have often called him Lincoln's "black conscience". Lincoln was far from perfect, and had varying agendas depending on the time frame you look at. If not for the abolitionists there might have been no emancipation, but it was Lincoln who signed the paper, whatever reasons opponents want to claim for him.
Lincoln may or may not have been an abolitionist from the start, but the secession began when Lincoln was elected President, and it began because Lincoln was a Republican, and the Republicans of that time were considered the Abolition Party.