Who do YOU think were the worst presidents of the US?

[GuineaPig]

When I think of oppression, I think of people owning and busing others, rather than the government preventing people from owning and abusing others.

[Orthogonal]

When I think of oppression, I think of people owning and busing others, rather than the government preventing people from owning and abusing others.

I'm not talking about Slavery, the South was certainly in the wrong with regards to that. The point is that Lincoln abolished secession and set the stage for massive government.

[Ħ]

When I think of oppression, I think of people owning and busing others, rather than the government preventing people from owning and abusing others.

I'm not talking about Slavery, the South was certainly in the wrong with regards to that. The point is that Lincoln abolished secession and set the stage for massive government.

Yes.  Yes he did.

[Perpetual Change]

I don't see how abolishing secession is "setting the stage for massing government."

Especially when the "secession" was all about the Confederacy being butthurt they weren't going to be allowed to enslave other human beings anymore.

[El Barto]

Regarding Lincoln; You think presiding over a war that cost the lives of over half a million American's qualifies someone as a good president? Really?

  What exactly would you have done in his situation then?

You let them secede, that's what you let them do. Perhaps you forgot, most people have, but the US was founded on the principle of secession, complete with a revolutionary war to escape a central power. The colonists were paranoid of a central authority and placed strict limitations on a federal government with the Constitution, but secession was still an acceptable principle. Membership in the Union has many benefits and a lot of risks for leaving, but it is the "get out of dodge" card from tyranny and oppression from a central authority and was a tool to keep the size and scope of the federal government in check. Without secession, what recourse do you have in the face of egregious violations? The Union was always meant to be a voluntary membership. Regardless of the motivations of the South for seceding from the Union, Lincoln had no right to stop them. By invading the South, he effectively abolished secession and set the foundation for a monumental increase in the size of the Federal government.

In a strange twist of irony, the Federal government today is far more oppressive than King George III in 1776.

I've been trying to devote a few brain cells to pondering this scenario.  It's actually an interesting thing to consider.  What would America be like if Lincoln had done the opposite and legitimized a state's right to secede.  For one thing,  you'd have had zero stability.  Slavery wasn't the only contentious issue back then.  I bet you'd see lots of back and forth with states,  the Union,  and probably new unions. 

"I tell you, I won't live in a town that robs men of the right to marry their cousins."

Eventually,  things would probably start to coalesce.  Like minded people would congregate in near by states.  States would produce generations of like minded people.  All of this would probably boil down to 2 or 3 separate unions.  It wouldn't surprise me if we wound up with two nations,  split along what are our currently defined ideological lines.  In some ways this might be considered a great improvement.  In other ways it would be anything but (New Canada North and New Canada South).  I suspect a unified USA is far more powerful than the sum of it's parts.

The biggest issue is that what we got was one big civil war to determine how things would play going forward.   I suspect under the separatist union  we'd have gotten many smaller wars, and possibly a big one anyway. 

All of this is just idle conjecture,  but it does seem safe to say that despite the ugliness of the American civil war,  the result was a nation that was much stronger as a result of it.

[Ħ]

I also wonder if the South would really have expanded.  Something tells me that most emigrants were from the North?  I don't remember.

[Orthogonal]

I've been trying to devote a few brain cells to pondering this scenario.  It's actually an interesting thing to consider.  What would America be like if Lincoln had done the opposite and legitimized a state's right to secede.  For one thing,  you'd have had zero stability.  Slavery wasn't the only contentious issue back then.  I bet you'd see lots of back and forth with states,  the Union,  and probably new unions. 

"I tell you, I won't live in a town that robs men of the right to marry their cousins."

Eventually,  things would probably start to coalesce.  Like minded people would congregate in near by states.  States would produce generations of like minded people.  All of this would probably boil down to 2 or 3 separate unions.  It wouldn't surprise me if we wound up with two nations,  split along what are our currently defined ideological lines.  In some ways this might be considered a great improvement.  In other ways it would be anything but (New Canada North and New Canada South).  I suspect a unified USA is far more powerful than the sum of it's parts.

The biggest issue is that what we got was one big civil war to determine how things would play going forward.   I suspect under the separatist union  we'd have gotten many smaller wars, and possibly a big one anyway. 

All of this is just idle conjecture,  but it does seem safe to say that despite the ugliness of the American civil war,  the result was a nation that was much stronger as a result of it.

It's hard to say whether the country was better or worse since we cannot predict everything that would have transpired over the last 200 years, but we can judge the actions of those at the time. Lincoln was wrong, and the South was wrong (for slavery) imho.

The North may have stopped using slavery, but it wasn't because they evolved a superior moral code of ethics. It was because the North was more wealthy and didn't need Slavery any more. Slavery is more expensive than you think and the industrial revolution was the catalyst to put Slavery out of business throughout the world. It was only a matter of time for it to end in the South just like the rest of the world. Without the Civil war, Slavery would probably have ended in the next decade or two.

[Scheavo]

The North may have stopped using slavery, but it wasn't because they evolved a superior moral code of ethics. It was because the North was more wealthy and didn't need Slavery any more. Slavery is more expensive than you think and the industrial revolution was the catalyst to put Slavery out of business throughout the world. It was only a matter of time for it to end in the South just like the rest of the world. Without the Civil war, Slavery would probably have ended in the next decade or two.

It's just false to downplay the moral presence in northern abolition. Massachusetts got rid of slavery in the 1783 through a judicial decision, because of what was written in the Constitution.

That said, I think economics did have a huge impact on the issue, but it isn't about wealth. The South was very wealthy, slavery just fit the agricultural/plantation economy much more than it did in the North. Area's where it stuck around in the North were usually limited to dockyards/shipyards and such.