The Trunk writes on Powerline:
I would go one step further and observe that the little history that contemporary high school students learn (Hanson refers to it as “therapy”) is more often than not factually wrong — that blacks and women were excluded from the proposition that “all men are created equal,” that the founders believed in the rightness of slavery, that Lincoln was a racist and a politician who would change his tune depending on his audience, that the Civil War didn’t have anything to do with slavery, and so on.
I don’t know where Scott went to school as a kid, but in my Minnesota public school, we sure learned that the Civil War was about slavery and nothing else. Also, I’m pretty sure that if George Bush proposed shipping off America’s blacks to Africa tomorrow, he’d be considered a racist by people of every color. There’s no debate about Lincoln’s personal racism, which he repeatedly demonstrated in his own words.
And while slavery played a role in the events that brought about the Civil War, it certainly wasn’t the primary element involved. The fact that 35 percent of the slave “states” fought for the Union – Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, the District of Columbia and the rump state of West Virginia – suffices to prove that.
Lincoln was the great centralizer, who respected American freedoms and civil liberties, not to mention the Constitution, less than any president prior to FDR. He was, in my opinion, the third-worst American president, following FDR and Woodrow Wilson. Of course, if George Bush manages to turn NAFTA into the Union of the Americas within the next three years, I may have to rethink that rating.
Nate, if you’re so inclined, perhaps you might email Scott a few of Mr. Lincoln’s choicer quotes regarding his warm feelings towards his fellow human beings possessed of more melanin.
However, the Trunk remembers things a little closer to our own historical epoch very well indeed, as he demonstrates in this amusingly titled piece on the Star & Sickle’s two-faced approach to filibuster reform.
CORRECTION – I am informed by our resident War of Northern Imperialism expert that Kentucky did not send troops to fight for the Union as a state although it stayed in the Union and contributed money and supplies to Union armies. As this was a blatant violation of the state’s neutral position, the state legislature was disbanded and the new legislature voted for secession. However, it is estimated that three times as many Kentuckians fought for the Union as for the Confederacy despite Kentucky’s status as a slave state. In fact, Kentucky and Delaware, two Union states, were the last American states where slavery was legal and both voted against ratification of the 13th Amendment.