Andy Ferguson talks about his new Lincoln book:
Lincoln hatred as a whole is terribly mistaken, but not everything that Lincoln haters believe about Lincoln and the Civil War is wrong, in my opinion, historically or philosophically. In researching the book I spent a fair amount of time with people who really, really hate Abraham Lincoln — particularly in Richmond, Virginia, when the city fathers down there tried to install a Lincoln statue on public property and set off a storm of protest. One of the things that sparked the book was my realization that many of these Lincoln haters knew a hell of a lot more about Lincoln than I did.
Worse, the people who were defending Lincoln down in Richmond had no explanation for why they thought he was great.
I’m a card-carrying Lincoln-hater myself – a significant moment in my intellectual development was my realization that had I been around in 1860, I would have fought for the South, not the North that I had always idealized while growing up and visiting my Grandfather’s farm near Gettysburg – and while I’m not sure I’ll ever get around to reading Ferguson’s book, it’s a good sign that he’s intellectually honest enough to confess that the so-called Great Man wasn’t a paragon of morality and justice.
But he’s obviously wrong about Honest Abe not being honestly gay, because I’ve seen the video evidence.