Did Lincoln make the right call? (Feb. 1)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
Abraham Lincoln is so idolized that it seems almost sacreligious to consider whether a small group of Southerners might have a point.
These people believe Lincoln was all wrong about wanting to preserve the Union, that he was a war criminal and that his policies needlessly cost some 650,000 Americans their lives in the Civil War.
Most of us gasp when we hear these claims, because we have been educated to believe that preserving the Union was akin to the Holy Grail insofar as its worthiness.
But these Southerners, the descendants of Confederate soldiers and other citizens, say Lincoln didn’t have to prosecute a war which wrecked the much of the South to the point that it was an economic basket case for generations.
What if Lincoln had simply said to the South, “Okay, go ahead, secede”
The Southerners would have had some hard thinking to do. Suddenly, they no longer would have been Americans, but would have been on their own.
Their slavery-based agrarian economy, while prosperous for some, was already being called into question, not because of the inherent evil of slavery but because it was no longer economically feasible except for large plantations which could afford to support slave populations.
If Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and Congress had ratified the antislavery amendment, any slave who managed to escape and head north would have been free once over the border. The United States no longer would have been obligated to hunt the slaves down and return them.
Southerners with family members in the North soon would see great strides being made there in communications, in transportation and in industry. Within a generation, the South probably would have petitioned to rejoin the Union.
That’s the view of some of today’s Southerners, at any rate. Do you suppose they could be right?
Chuck Doud, editor and publisher, of the Madera Tribune, recently wrote an article headlined, “Did Lincoln make the right call?”
His article states in part that a small group of decendents of Confederate soldiers and other citizens believe Lincoln was not so great a president, but rather a war criminal responsible for the death of over a half-million Americans. He further states in part, this group believes the Old South would have rejoined the Union in a generation if they had been allowed to secede from the Union.
Doud ends his article by stating these are the views of some Southerners today, asking, do you (the reader) suppose they could be right?
No! Mr. Doud, I personally, unequivocally do not believe they have a point, and I most certainly do not suppose they could be right.
My question to you, Mr. Doud, is, “Do you believe they have a point and do you suppose they could be right?”
Paul Milor,
Madera
(Editor’s note: No.)