I must confess that I'm not a fan of Mr. Lincoln

Foseti has a long and thought provoking review of a new book on Mr. Lincoln:

The book is really about why the Civil War was fought. There are basically three competing theories: 1) ending slavery; 2) preserving the Union; and 3) ending federalism. The third is, of course the Southern position, and it’s Masters’.

Every other civilized country ended slavery without resorting to civil war, let alone one that ended with the death of roughly 2.5% of the country’s population (something like 7.5 million deaths in today’s population).

I've been saying something like this for a while, although that item #3 is new and thought provoking.  Masters raises some issues that are well known:

For in six weeks he was to inaugurate a war without the American people having anything to say about it. He was to call for and send troops into the South, and thus stir that psychology of hate and fear from which a people cannot extricate themselves, though knowing and saying that the war was started by usurpation. Did he mean that he would bow to the American people when the law was laid down by their courts, through which alone the law be interpreted as the Constitutional voice of the people? No, he did not mean that; because when Taney decided that Lincoln had no power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, Lincoln flouted and trampled the decision of the court. . . .

He also introduces ideas - connects dots, really - that I hadn't.  In retrospect it seems obvious, which is a little humbling:

The War between the States demonstrated that salvation is not of the Jews, but of the Greeks. The World War added to this proof; for Wilson did many things that Lincoln did, and with Lincoln as authority for doing them. Perhaps it will happen again that a few men, deciding what is a cause of war, and what is necessary to its successful prosecution, may, as Lincoln and Wilson did, seal the lips of discussion and shackle the press; but no less the ideal of a just state, which has founded itself in reason and in free speech, will remain.

Foseti sums up the book will soon make an appearance here in Camp Borepatch:

I think Masters explanation for why the war was fought is better than most. As I said, we must judge wars based on their outcomes, not based on propaganda. By that metric, the slaves weren’t free and the resulting “union” was absurd. The South was no more united with the North than occupied France was united with the Third Reich. If you kill enough people, you get a union of some kind. To Masters’ point, there certainly was no union on the legal terms that prevailed prior to the fighting. In both cases, it’s impossible for the resulting outcome to justify the loss of life and the level of destruction.

The quotes that Foseti leads off with are particularly interesting.  I was struck by the absence of Lord Acton (who corresponded with Robert E. Lee after the war).  Everyone is familiar with Acton's famous dictum:

Power corrupts.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Fewer are familiar with the next sentence:

Great men are almost always evil men.

The hagiography of President's Day is that Lincoln was a Great Man.  I'm quite inclined to agree, at least on Acton's terms.