Maybe Civil War is a slightly different context, just throwing that out there.

Perhaps, but America is still operating under the context of two massive skyscrapers plummeting to the ground from an attack carried out with almost military precision. It's not as if Bush Jr. just woke up one day and decided that it was time to whip up some secret prisons. So if "context" is a defense then there's at least a little of it to spread around here as well.

So that excuses any human rights abuses?

Feel free to point me to where I said or implied that.

Lincoln was not the man we make him out to be. The Emancipation Proclamation was purely political. Lincoln wanted to split the country and pick up the bigger half.

I suspect that, if not for the Emancipation Proclamation, we might call Lincoln a bad president.

I suspect that you have no idea what you are talking about and like many others on the internet, like to marginalize good people with your 20/20 hindsight.

What does that even mean? What would Lincoln gain by splitting the country in half? Do you even bother thinking about points before you make them?

>What would Lincoln gain by splitting the country in half?

Do you understand that this is the single most successful way to political success in a historically bipartisan political system? This is how American politics works (and always has worked). Political parties make a big deal out of what are small issues in other countries in order to try to polarize the American public. The emancipation proclamation was simply one of these polarizing tactics.

Here are a few Abraham Lincoln quotes you might enjoy:

>“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

>“Negro equality! Fudge! How long, in the government of a god, great enough to make and maintain this universe, shall there continue to be knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagogue-ism as this?”

>"there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality."

>"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it"

>"In the course of his reply, Senator Douglas remarked, in substance, that he had always considered this government was made for the White people and not for the negroes. Why, in point of mere fact, I think so too."