> From: "Jim Farmelant"
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Thus, whereas upon ascending to the presidency, Lincoln sought a compromise that would have preserved the Union, and was discinclined to do anything more (in terms of limiting or abolishing slavery than he absolutely had to, nevertheless, circumstances were to drive him in an increasingly radical direction as the Civil War proceeded. He found, that despite his original intentions, the winning of the war required the abolition of slavery in the rebellious states, the acceptance of African-Americans into the Union Army, and indeed even the treatment of African-Americans as if they had certain basic civil rights. To some extent all these moves were made against his own basic instincts, but he came to realize the necessity of them, nevertheless.
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CB: Marx made an assessment of Lincoln
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1862/10/12.htm
-clip- (Block q)Lincoln's (Emancipation) proclamation is even more important than the Maryland campaign. Lincoln is a sui generis figure in the annals of history. He has no initiative, no idealistic impetus, cothurnus, no historical trappings. He gives his most important actions always the most commonplace form. Other people claim to be "fighting for an idea", when it is for them a matter of square feet of land. Lincoln, even when he is motivated by, an idea, talks about "square feet". He sings the bravura aria of his part hesitatively, reluctantly and unwillingly, as though apologising for being compelled by circumstances "to act the lion". The most redoubtable decrees - which will always remain remarkable historical documents-flung by him at the enemy all look like, and are intended to look like, routine summonses sent by a lawyer to the lawyer of the opposing party, legal chicaneries, involved, hidebound actiones juris. His latest proclamation, which is drafted in the same style, the manifesto abolishing slavery, is the most important document in American history since the establishment of the Union, tantamount to the tearing tip of the old American Constitution.
Nothing is simpler than to show that Lincoln's principal political actions contain much that is aesthetically. repulsive, logically inadequate, farcical in form and politically, contradictory, as is done by, the English Pindars of slavery, The Times, The Saturday Review and tutti quanti. But Lincoln's place in the history of the United States and of mankind will, nevertheless, be next to that of Washington! Nowadays, when the insignificant struts about melodramatically on this side of the Atlantic, is it of no significance at all that the significant is clothed in everyday dress in the new world?
Lincoln is not the product of a popular revolution. This plebeian, who worked his way up from stone-breaker to Senator in Illinois, without intellectual brilliance, without a particularly outstanding character, without exceptional importance-an average person of good will, was placed at the top by the interplay of the forces of universal suffrage unaware of the great issues at stake. The new world has never achieved a greater triumph than by this demonstration that, given its political and social organisation, ordinary people of good will can accomplish feats which only heroes could accomplish in the old world!
Hegel once observed that comedy is an act superior to tragedy and humourous reasoning superior to grandiloquent reasoning.[Lectures on Aesthetics] Although Lincoln does not possess the grandiloquence of historical action, as an average man of the people he has its humour. He issued the proclamation declaring that from January 1, 1863, slavery in the Confederacy shall be abolished at the very moment when the Confederacy as an independent state decided on "peace negotiations" at its Richmond Congress. At the very, moment when the slave-owners of the border states believed that the invasion of Kentucky by the armies of the South had made "the peculiar institution" just as safe as was their domination over their compatriot, President Abraham Lincoln in Washington.