Lamenting the Loss of Lincoln

THE MOST TRAUMATIC EVENT IN AMERICAN HISTORY, the civil War, and the second most traumatic event, the history of the United States after the Civil War, can be traced to a single cause; the unwillingness on the part of the American south to give Abraham Lincoln a chance. When Abraham Lincoln was elected President, in 1860, the southern states seceded because, and only because, of his election, not because of anything he did after being elected. Hell, he never had a chance to do anything. The minute he was sworn in, out walks the south. Which is ironic, because if South Carolina @ the others had stayed in the Union, and not seceded, they could have kept slavery; Lincoln had no intnetion of abolishing it. But they chose a war instead, which they lost, which ended their precious states rights independence, forever. When the war was over, Lincoln planned to treat the defeated Confederacy compassionately, with dignity; but he was murdered by a southerner who assumed, as did most southerners, incorrectly, that Lincoln would exact revenge on the south. With Lincoln dead, the south got Andrew Johnson instead; a southerner, who hated the confederacy, and inflicetd "reconstruction" upon the vanquished south, which lasted for tewlve miserable years. In a sense, all the racism, all the resentment, all the negative struggle which has happened in America since the civil war can, in theory, be traced to the life, and death of Lincoln. If only we'd just let him do his thing, and not gotten in the way.