[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Bubblehead1980

Steve, it's not an opinion, ever hear of ex parte merryman?

Yes.

Exactly.Lincoln acted unconstitutionally and thus as a tyrant.

Historians and Judges are still debating today whether the President has the power to suspend Habeas Corpus. When Lincoln did so, was it to further his own personal power or, as he saw it, to "get the job done"? Everything Lincoln did was bound within the same goal - to keep the Union together.

Lincoln jailed many of his critics.

Yes he did. What you consistently miss is the mindset. I'll address that in a minute.

Facts are stubborn things.

Quoting John Adams is a cute trick, but nothing more.

Call it an opinion, but documented facts of his actions show who he was .While the mindless sheep see him as some hero.Lincoln was a terrible tyrant, the end.

No, not the end. You saying it doesn't make it so, nor does it make you right. It's still just your opinion.

Lincoln was not alive during the revolution nor was he an adult, he was child in rural podunk IL that had no clue.

I didn't say he was. I said he was a product of the previous generation, the generation who fought the Revolution and wrote the Constitution. The thing that terrified them most was any split between the States. Lincoln, like them, was convinced the Country could not survive if it were not whole. Everything he did must be considered in that context to be understood. At the time of his inauguration Washington D.C. was under attack. The first chapter of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War is a personal recounting of the danger the President and the city were in from attack, and the efforts to contain those plots. As I said earlier, you can't consider someone's actions without first considering their mindset.

Sure, he made something of himself but he was not the benevolent man.I swear the way some people are about Lincoln is same way many Germans would be about Hitler if war had ended differently for them.The blind would think he was still some great figure, SMH.

Insulting people who disagree with you doesn't make them look bad, only you.

I will clarify my argument about the cause of the war.Sure, south fired first but Lincoln CHOSE to launch a massive, bloody war after tying the souths hands of the south.

How so? Lincoln did everything he could to prevent that. He closed his first inaugural with these words: " In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it.""

Increased tariffs on cotton etc.

Please elaborate.

Why were these tariffs passed(albeit morrill tariff came about under previous admin, it was increased under Lincoln)

Yes and no. The tariffs of 1846 and 1857 were of greatest benefit to the South. The North wanted to increase the tariffs. the South did not. Lincoln's part was that without support for Morrill he and his party had no chance of winning the election. In 1859 Morrill was first presented. It passed the House but failed in the Senate. In 1860 the Republicans' support for Morrill helped get backing from industrialists, and with their vote Lincoln won the White House. Of course the fact that the Democrats were split into several factions didn't hurt.

Once the election was decided the Southern States immediately started seceding. I will repeat that while the Morrill Tariff is cited by Southern Apologists to this day, the Documents of Secession almost unilaterally cite slavery as their main cause for leaving the Union.

Once the Southern States had seceded there was no way to prevent Morrill from passing. If they had stayed in place they likely would have won that fight.

Contrary to opinion you seem to hold, Morrill was not about keeping the South down, but about Trade Protection. After Secession was fact and the War started, Morrill authored two more Tariff Acts, both in an effort to raise money for the war. Since the South had already seceded, these raises affected only the North.

was because his industrial masters in the north wanted this Basically, Lincoln forced the hand of the south, and reacted as a tyrant once they answered his provocation.

Yes he did force their hand. That doesn't change the fact that they started the war, not him. If they had refused to fire on Fort Sumter, what could he have done? Any direct action would have made him the monster you claim him to be.

The war was not directly about slavery, it was about not having a centralized power in a whole other part of the country tell them how to live.

It was about the survival of the country. Lincoln believed the country could not survive as two separate entities. It was about secession, and the Southern States seceded over slavery. As you said, end of story.

Yes, at the time slavery was part of southern society and held dear as it was imperative to the economy.

Only because they made it so. The roots of the Civil War begin with the Constitutional Debates, specifically Slave State representation and the 3/5ths Rule.

Slavery was on the way out, it's a fact.Sure, it would have been around a bit longer but it would have died out.

Easy to say in hindsight. Not so easy from the things they wrote at the time. That "stubborn fact" makes it once again your opinion.

The was of northern aggression was unnecessary and nothing more than Lincoln's lust for power and dominance of a part of the country that refused to suddenly give up their way of life.No man has the right to do that, something mos tof us agree on.

Given what he said in his Inaugural Address and the timing of the Secession, this is again only your opinion. That you state it as fact shows nothing more than extreme bias.

I love our country and what it was meant to be but it's garbage now because of some things that have happened in last century, but fully understand why the south wanted out, I wish we could get out now, it just is not worth it anymore for most of us.

I understand why the South wanted out too, though I don't think we see the same reason and cause.

The south was no different than the founders, they wanted to be free from abusive, centralized power who was threatening their way of life.

Actually the Founders didn't want to be free. They wanted to be good Englishmen. Despite everything that happened they were still struggling to be just that right up until the day that British troops were sent to confiscate their cannons. Only after the shooting started did they actually begin discussing Independence.

The South, on the other hand, acted preemptively. They didn't even give Lincoln a chance. As soon as he was elected they assumed the worst. There is not real basis for comparison between the two.

The northern industrialists pushed the war

Please elaborate.

Lincoln used the moral cause of abolishing slavery as his cause to get many to join the fighter.

Not really. Abolishing slavery really didn't come into play until the Emancipation Proclamation, and that didn't come until the North finally managed to win a major battle, and then the main purpose was to show a moral high ground that would keep England and France from recognizing the Confederacy. It was politics, sure, but it was good politics.

The tactic of getting humans to not think with logic or rationality but emotion is not a new one, sadly it still works.

I'm sorry, but I take you as a prime example of that syndrome.

I will close by saying one good thing about Lincoln was he did not favor the abuse and revenge of reconstruction, he wanted a post civil war america to reunite and move on.Even Hitler had some admirable qualities I suppose.

Comparing the two is understandable, but only from the point of an already established hatred. What you do with your last sentence is not to compare the two, but to try to bolster your argument with more hatred. You might as well say "Even the Devil has his good points." I could just as easily counter with "Even Bubblehead1980 has his good points."

That kind of statement is not debate, it's not argument and it's not logic. It's hatred, mingled with the misplaced confidence of one's own rightness, and it has no part in so-called "reasonable" debate.