11-01-2026, 12:29 AM
Well, always a bit of a disappointment to learn I've written rubbish.
At least my shifting evaluation of Lincoln came through, albeit identified as bias. I've long been in a taking against Abe for the damage he did to the constitutional order, but this aspect impressed me with his honest self-evaluation. As a gifted trial lawyer he was always a keen student of human nature, but it was refreshing to see how he applied that analysis to himself.
Lincoln's idea for Reconstruction was to "let 'em up easy," as he put it to Grant. After his assassination, the Radical Republicans went purely punitive instead - including rubbing ex-Confederates' noses in freedmen's rights and privileges - but they couldn't sustain it and Reconstruction basically failed. A counterfactual Lincoln Reconstruction, easier, more of a Reunion, might have taken more time, or less, but might have (as Abe put it) bound up the nation's wounds without leaving such scars.
At least my shifting evaluation of Lincoln came through, albeit identified as bias. I've long been in a taking against Abe for the damage he did to the constitutional order, but this aspect impressed me with his honest self-evaluation. As a gifted trial lawyer he was always a keen student of human nature, but it was refreshing to see how he applied that analysis to himself.
Lincoln's idea for Reconstruction was to "let 'em up easy," as he put it to Grant. After his assassination, the Radical Republicans went purely punitive instead - including rubbing ex-Confederates' noses in freedmen's rights and privileges - but they couldn't sustain it and Reconstruction basically failed. A counterfactual Lincoln Reconstruction, easier, more of a Reunion, might have taken more time, or less, but might have (as Abe put it) bound up the nation's wounds without leaving such scars.
Non-practicing atheist