What an amazing man. Less than a year of formal education, completely self taught, rose from the wilderness living in poverty to ascend to the presidency. Could have been anyone else, but it happened to be him. The happiest accident that ever happened to this country and perhaps humanity. Where would this world be today if someone else had come along who lacked the intelligence , character and fortitude to defend what was at the time a great experiment in self government and settle the question for posterity? There’s a lot of work left to be done, but I can’t imagine what this world would have been like without him.
Thank you for this. With Frederick Douglass's 1852 peroration on the meaning of July 4th to the enslaved, it's all I need for my own, very private celebration of our nation's founding. Here, to give you some idea of my own take on the course of American empire, is what I posted 15 years ago. I can't say I've changed my opinion in any significant way since:
Wonderful to read again! Lincoln's doubts as to how to deal with slavery where it was entrenched have long been waved about by MAGAts and their antecedents as evidence that - what, slavery wasn't really all that bad or something? - but reading the words surrounding his doubts is always sustaining.
There is such a thing as moral intelligence, and there are people who are supremely endowed with it. Say Albert Camus or Jimmy Baldwin. And now I see that Abraham Lincoln was one of them, something that I find amazing for someone who made a career in politics.
Yes: Abraham Lincoln's career was one of the most remarkable blessings to ever happen in American history. The outcome was not great: 5,000,000 slaves freed but then caste-oppressed massively for more than a century (cf.: Gunnar Myrdal’s “An American Dilemma”); and at the cost of 700,000 dead in the Civil War, and another 700,000 maimed. In the Confederate South, of 1.2 million adult white men, 300,000 killed, 300,000 maimed, 200,000 eventually deserted and went home, 100,000 still in armies at the surrender, and 300,000 who never served in the military.
> **Agnor Fenouillard**: There is such a thing as moral intelligence, and there are people who are supremely endowed with it. Say Albert Camus or Jimmy Baldwin. And now I see that Abraham Lincoln was one of them, something that I find amazing for someone who made a career in politics.
What an amazing man. Less than a year of formal education, completely self taught, rose from the wilderness living in poverty to ascend to the presidency. Could have been anyone else, but it happened to be him. The happiest accident that ever happened to this country and perhaps humanity. Where would this world be today if someone else had come along who lacked the intelligence , character and fortitude to defend what was at the time a great experiment in self government and settle the question for posterity? There’s a lot of work left to be done, but I can’t imagine what this world would have been like without him.
It was the greatest tragedy that has ever befallen upon this country
We know what it became without him. I often wonder what would have happened had he not been assassinated.
Thank you for this. With Frederick Douglass's 1852 peroration on the meaning of July 4th to the enslaved, it's all I need for my own, very private celebration of our nation's founding. Here, to give you some idea of my own take on the course of American empire, is what I posted 15 years ago. I can't say I've changed my opinion in any significant way since:
https://dogtownessays.com/2011/02/saved-from-the-american-conflagration/
Wonderful to read again! Lincoln's doubts as to how to deal with slavery where it was entrenched have long been waved about by MAGAts and their antecedents as evidence that - what, slavery wasn't really all that bad or something? - but reading the words surrounding his doubts is always sustaining.
There is such a thing as moral intelligence, and there are people who are supremely endowed with it. Say Albert Camus or Jimmy Baldwin. And now I see that Abraham Lincoln was one of them, something that I find amazing for someone who made a career in politics.
Yes: Abraham Lincoln's career was one of the most remarkable blessings to ever happen in American history. The outcome was not great: 5,000,000 slaves freed but then caste-oppressed massively for more than a century (cf.: Gunnar Myrdal’s “An American Dilemma”); and at the cost of 700,000 dead in the Civil War, and another 700,000 maimed. In the Confederate South, of 1.2 million adult white men, 300,000 killed, 300,000 maimed, 200,000 eventually deserted and went home, 100,000 still in armies at the surrender, and 300,000 who never served in the military.
> **Agnor Fenouillard**: There is such a thing as moral intelligence, and there are people who are supremely endowed with it. Say Albert Camus or Jimmy Baldwin. And now I see that Abraham Lincoln was one of them, something that I find amazing for someone who made a career in politics.
Thanks for this one Brad.