Special to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise
No, that's not Abe Lincoln, there, though it does look a lot like him,
don't you think? It's the hired gun,
Daisuke
Jigen. They really have a lot in common, both apparently having
learned their trade in the nasty streets of Chicago, the main
difference being that Jigen does his own killing and doesn't pretend
to any kind of moral superiority or any of that "four score and seven"
blather. But that comparison is just a hangup of mine. And this
isn't just about Abe Lincoln, but about the Civil War. They're hard
to separate, though. I never could get into the Lincoln cult, and for
whatever reasons
I've
always thought of Lincoln as a politician,
not a demigod, and despite Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman and Steven
Spielberg, I see no reason to change my mind. Why is the guy who
almost destroyed the Union thought of as the guy who preserved it?
The Brits couldn't break us, but Abe Lincoln almost did. We had a
hellish stupid four-year war that killed seven hundred thousand
Americans and we're perversely proud of it and we deify the clumsy
politician who caused it. Well, I'm starting to rant. Let me hand
the baton to the cooler-headed Steve Sailer, who can point out the
madness of the Civil War and its aftermath in a much more measured
way. For example, he writes:
The 16th president has been so sanctified that we're not supposed to
notice that Lincoln's insularity left him unready to lead during the
great crisis of secession in 1860-1861. Conversely, Lincoln's
detractors like to portray him as a power-mad dictator. Yet his
actions during the crucial months in which the Civil War might have
been averted are most redolent of a crafty small-town lawyer who was
badly in over his head in his new role. Lincoln worked hard and
learned fast, but by the time he was ready for his job, the worst
catastrophe in American history was underway.
In early October 1860, the experienced Democratic candidate
Stephen
Douglas conceded to his secretary, "Mr. Lincoln is the next
President. We must try to save the Union. I will go South."
Ouch! Not much "Oh, Captain, my Captain" there. I've always felt
that Douglas and Seward and Buchanan and Davis and Lee and even Grant
were metaphorically bigger men than Lincoln anyway. Steve Sailer is
really on a roll with this one.
Read
the whole thing HERE. Whoa! He just did
ANOTHER
POST ON THE SUBJECT.
Reprinted from Mr. May's
"Ex-Army" blog
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