Five Surprising Facts About Abraham Lincoln
by President Lincoln had a lot of pressure on him coming into office as a little known president in 1860. The radicals of the north supported his campaign and managed to elect him. When the south seceded, he ignored the legality of their secession. He personally commandeered a ruthless war and virtually destroyed the south to get them back into the union but at a horrendous loss of life on both sides.
1. President Lincoln wanted to take all the freed blacks after the Civil War and settle them in Liberia in western Africa if he had lived. That was his Plan A.
2. It’s hard to believe that the Emancipator Lincoln never rose above the vestiges of racism toward African American men even after he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Racism was more prevalent in that American era.
3. President Lincoln did not make the Emancipation Proclamation of slavery an important issue of the Civil War until the south appeared close to the brink of winning the war in 1863. That was two years after the war began in 1861. Lincoln thought it would be easier to get the north excited over supporting the Civil War if he made the issue of slavery the most prominent cause. And it worked
4. President Lincoln’s naval blockade against the south caused the death of women, children and his own POWs in southern prisons. The south could not import food, medicine, etc for themselves, and hardly any more for northern prisoners.
5. President Lincoln’s Civil War tactics were so totally destructive that his strategy killed six hundred and twenty-five thousand people— far, far more deaths than any other president of the United States has presided over.
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Post CommentDebra.
On February 8, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Slavery has raped and murdered an astronomical amount of African Americans, including men, women, children and babies far more than the civil war. Native Americans were being murdered for their land, men, women and babies.
History is history and your very well written. a good educational write.
T.Rex McGoogle
On February 11, 2009 at 10:56 am
Thank you Debra for your comments. Slavery was a lousy testimony to the lack of decency in the hearts of earlier humanity. Slavery was long overdue to end. But Mr. Lincoln was not the catalyst. I think it was the perseverance of Mr. William Lloyd Garrison. Mr. Lincoln used the issue…..his own racist attitudes existed before the Civil War and it was a pretty well kept secret that his own heart, never fully accepted African Americans as genuinely equal. God knows they are. It’s a
sad secret unknown to many people who weren’t paying attention.