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There is no contest for me in picking my choice for America’s greatest president. That would be George Washington. He had led the 13 colonies to victory over the most powerful army on earth. He was the one man who could unite the various factions into a nation. He gave the new country something else. Dignity. He set the mold of what a president should be, establishing the line between royalty and a man of the people. People have different choices for their top chief executive. Those who idolized Ronald Reagan would have half the public buildings in the country named after him, even a state if they could. I can’t really recall anything great about his presidency. He did like jellybeans and took healthy naps during meetings. But he made us feel good about ourselves. That was important. The majority of Americans today believe Abraham Lincoln was our greatest president, and for the wrong reasons. Coming from the wrong side of the tracks, he was never earmarked for great things when he was a youth. He was a backwoods, self taught lawyer who amused people with his tales that often had a profound moral to them. The national spotlight fell on him during a turbulent time of American history. America in the late 1850s saw the north as an industrial complex and the south as agricultural. Southerners grew the cotton and northerners made it into clothes and built the machinery to work in harvesting. The evils of slavery were manifest mainly in the south. The north didn’t need the cheap labor supply harvesting cotton demanded. Slavery was established in a status quo. From Maryland south, there were slaveholders. Northern states opposed slavery. The struggle was over new states being admitted in the West. Should they be free or slave? Local and national political parties were split over the issues. Likely no other time in history could a candidate such as Lincoln reach the presidency. His speeches and well known doctrines were opposed to the principal of slavery and to its inclusion in new territories. He did not campaign on abolishing slavery. But the South took his election as a reason to secede from the Union. He was so hated that he had to be sneaked into Washington by train at night to avoid the assassination threats on him. Here was this newly elected chief executive in the middle of a hornet’s nest that he didn’t want. He tried to stress that he was not advocating the abolishment of slavery in those southern states. He made the statement that he would accept slavery as a condition to keeping the Union intact. There were many in the North who urged that the South should be allowed to leave peacefully. Lincoln did not visualize when he took office that he would be a leader in an armed conflict. In fact, in earlier days he had sided with the right to secede. As a member of the House of Representatives from Illinois’ seventh district, he had made a speech in congress and said, “Any people anywhere, inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them beter.” The secession of the southern states might have developed into a stalemate had the newly organized Confederate army not attacked and occupied the federal garrison at Fort Sumter in the harbor at Charleston. This was armed aggression and Lincoln began looking for an army that wasn’t there. Most of the seasoned officers trained at West Point were southerners and went with their home states. Lincoln had to rely completely on the judgment of others. A fast learner, he profited by his mistakes in issuing orders and selecting people for key roles. Gen. George McClellan was one of his most painful mistakes. The dapper general was good at parades but not fighting. And he treated his presidency with contempt. On one occasion Lincoln and a cabinet member went to McLellan’s home and were kept waiting on the general. After awhile, the servant came back and said they would have to come another time. The general was taking a nap. Lincoln’s patience and tolerance were among his most admirable qualities. He could suffer an affront and make a cool decision based on the country’s needs. And he was a practical politician. The Emancipation Proclamation was not conceived as a believe in a fundamental right of all men. It was a tool to disrupt the South. Only slave held in those states “in rebellion” were freed. Slaveholders in states that did not secede were exempt. No where did he ever express a belief in the equality of men. In fact, after the war he wanted to send former slaves back to Africa. They weren’t crazy about that idea. Lincoln suffered the indignities of those who had no respect for his intelligence and ability. And he gradually proved them different. Could someone else have taken the reins of government when Lincoln took over and keep the peace to avoid the bloodiest war in American history? Possibly. But Lincoln did take over and his rock solid determination saved the American government. That was his greatness.
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