The 5 Presidents that Built America verse the 5 Presidents that Broke America
- Thread starter Librtlover
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Librtlover
Verified User
What damage did Lincoln do?
He destroyed the fabric of this country.
Lincoln’s legacy isn't merely that he “saved the Union" as the zealots so often claim
The Civil War fundamentally changed the constitutional order, and Reconstruction then gave us the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments.
The 14th Amendment in particular became the vehicle through which enormous portions of modern constitutional law were built.
Our Supreme Court still splits 5–4 over what that post-Civil-War constitutional settlement means. You can believe defeating slavery was necessary while still recognizing that Lincoln’s presidency was the hinge point after which the American federal system became something very different.
Librtlover
Verified User
Well, call me a zealot for giving all the credit to Lincoln for his determination to stop the
obvious division that the South was perpetrating on our union, by their allegiance to slavery.
Lincoln didn't destroy the fabric of our country, in fact, he succeeded in uniting our country
by getting the South to come to grips with their anti American racist agenda by following in
line with what our Constitution states, and by surrendering to the pro Constitution Northern soldiers.
Lincoln had nothing to do with whatever your problems are with a post-Civil War settlement. The
fact remains that without Lincoln at the helm in those trying days of our nation, America might well
have been left to the ashbin of history.
You’re proving my point while pretending to rebut it.
I never said Lincoln personally drafted the 14th Amendment. I said Lincoln’s war to preserve the Union was the hinge that made the entire Reconstruction constitutional settlement possible. Saying Lincoln “had nothing to do” with the post-Civil-War settlement is historically absurd.
Without Union victory, there is no Reconstruction on those terms. Without Reconstruction, there is no 13th, 14th and 15th Amendment package as we know it. And the 14th Amendment became the mechanism through which enormous portions of modern constitutional law were federalized—incorporation, equal protection, substantive due process, and repeated fights over the relationship between the states, the federal government and individual rights.
You can believe ending slavery was morally necessary. You can believe preserving the Union was worth the war. Neither proposition requires pretending that the constitutional structure wasn’t fundamentally transformed as a consequence.
And “Lincoln united the country” rather sanitizes what happened. He preserved the Union by military force, and the victorious government then imposed a radically different constitutional settlement on the defeated states.
So yes, give Lincoln credit for the result if you admire it. But you don’t get to give him all the credit for saving the Union and then suddenly declare him completely unrelated to the constitutional upheaval and interpretive disputes that followed from saving it.
I rank Lincoln as our worst president because of the constitutional damage done under his presidency. But I’ll at least grant some credibility to people who put Wilson or FDR ahead of him—they have plenty of material to work with.
Librtlover
Verified User
If Lincoln along with the Northern soldiers hadn't gone on to defeat the South in the Civil War, do you Zymurgy believe that we would even have a Constitution left to adhere to and to be proud of?
Just for a moment if you will, imagine what America would look like if Lincoln didn't make the effort to secure our Constitution with his determination to fight for it. Therefore, if Lincoln hadn't fought for our Constitution, then there would be no constitution left. This is why I say that Lincoln
wasn't responsible for anything having to do with our Constitution post civil war.
The original constitutional design was primarily one of enumerated federal powers: Washington could exercise the powers delegated to it, while the enormous remainder of governmental authority stayed with the states and the people.
The post-Civil-War constitutional order changed that relationship dramatically. Reconstruction—especially the 14th Amendment—gave the federal government a constitutional mechanism to reach deeply into matters that previously belonged almost entirely to the states. Subsequent courts and governments built layer upon layer on top of that foundation.
So when you ask whether we would “still have a Constitution,” my answer is: what does merely possessing the parchment prove?
My criticism is that the Constitution ceased functioning principally as a charter limiting the federal government and increasingly became a charter through which federal power was justified and expanded.
That is the entire point you keep missing. You are praising Lincoln for preserving the name and the Union. I am criticizing what happened to the constitutional structure in the process.
A Constitution that says, in effect, the federal government may do only these few enumerated things is a fundamentally different system from one where nearly every important political dispute eventually becomes an argument over which constitutional provision authorizes Washington to intervene.
T. A. Gardner
Serial Thread Killer
Lincoln was handed a civil war in progress. From the November to his swearing into office in January, Buchanan did nothing about the secession of the South and takeover of federal property. By the time Lincoln was in office the civil war was all but a given.
Even then, Lincoln did initially try to find a non-shooting war solution in compromise. For example, he negotiated with several states truces such as at Sumter and Pensacola, between US forces holding those forts and Confederate forces sieging them. Reinforcements and supplies sat offshore on ships awaiting a resolution.
It was largely on S. Carolina, one of the most aggressively secessionist states, that caused the war to spiral out of control into what it did. They unilaterally decided to bombard and take Sumter. That ended any attempts at negotiation.
The outcome of that war, with a US victory, meant the South was not going to be going back to anything close to what it had been prior to the war. It also didn't help that Lincoln was assassinated as his replacement, Johnson was if anything far more virulent in wanting to deconstruct the South.
This is a much better argument, but I still think you’re being far too charitable to Lincoln.
I am not arguing Lincoln caused secession or that the Confederacy bears no responsibility for the war. I am arguing that Lincoln chose coercive preservation of the Union, and that choice had enormous constitutional consequences that his admirers routinely minimize.
He rejected accepting secession as a fait accompli. In his First Inaugural he explicitly declared the Union perpetual and announced that the federal government would “hold, occupy, and possess” its property. He then chose to resupply Sumter rather than abandon it.
South Carolina fired the first shots. I have no problem assigning responsibility for that decision to South Carolina. But “they fired first” does not magically turn Lincoln into a passive observer. His policy was to preserve the Union rather than permit peaceful separation, and he was prepared to use federal power to accomplish that.
And this is where my original criticism begins. Once Lincoln chose preservation of the Union by force, the resulting victory made Reconstruction on Union terms possible. That produced a fundamentally altered constitutional order.
His assassination may mean Lincoln did not personally design the final Reconstruction regime. It does not mean he was somehow unrelated to the circumstances that created it.
What Lincoln broke was the original federal compact.
If America is understood as a union of sovereign states that delegated limited powers to a federal government, then the ultimate test of that arrangement was whether a state could withdraw from it.
Lincoln answered that question with force. After the Civil War, the practical answer was no: a state could enter the Union, but it could not leave without the permission of the national government.
T. A. Gardner
Serial Thread Killer
There was going to be no "peaceful separation." Certain Southern states already made that choice by the time Lincoln came into office. Others had restrained their secessionists from assaulting and taking federal property. The problem was the South was acting as a whole. That is, as a separate nation. It would be the acts of states like S. Carolina that determined the initial relationship between the Confederacy and Union.
Any reasonable president would have done as Lincoln did. Protect federal property in Southern states to the extent he could while attempting to find a peaceful compromise to the situation. Again, it was states, like S. Carolina, that were determined to break from the union with no compromise that forced the war on both parties.
The problem with the states being sovereign or not lay in how they would break that relationship. The South chose to do this by force of arms rather than political maneuvering. That ended the debate and set future outcomes. In other words, the South made a choice and that choice was a poor one.
Into the Night
Contributor
You forgot FDR, the Thief.
Into the Night
Contributor
Lincoln did not destroy the fabric of this country at all. DEMOCRATS did.
The United States has never suffered a civil war. DEMOCRATS want to start one, though. They've called for it several times.
The so-called 'Civil War' was a war between two nations.
There is no such thing as 'modern constitutional law'. The Constitution IS the law.
The Supreme Court has no authority to change the Constitution.
Into the Night
Contributor
Lincoln didn't break anything.
Into the Night
Contributor
States, of course, are still soverign.
You keep returning to who fired first as though that settles the constitutional question. It doesn’t.
I am not absolving South Carolina or the Confederacy of responsibility for Sumter. I am saying Lincoln still made a political and constitutional choice to preserve the Union by force rather than permit secession. “The Confederates behaved badly” does not magically eliminate Lincoln’s agency.
And your claim that “the South was acting as a whole” actually obscures an important fact: only seven states had seceded before Fort Sumter. Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas did not leave until after Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to suppress the rebellion. His decision to use federal military force was itself one of the events that expanded the Confederacy.
You can argue that Lincoln’s choice was justified. Fine. But “any reasonable president would have done the same thing” is not history; it is your value judgment. Secession was a genuinely unresolved constitutional question, and alternatives existed: evacuating Sumter, negotiating the disposition of federal property, recognizing separation, or continuing negotiations rather than compelling the states back into the Union militarily.
And this is where you keep dodging my actual argument: I am interested in the consequences of Lincoln’s choice.
Once preservation of the Union by force became the governing principle, the federal government claimed powers that would have been almost unimaginable under the old federal arrangement. Then came military occupation, Reconstruction and the Reconstruction Amendments, followed by generations of litigation over the radically altered relationship between Washington, the states and the individual.
So by all means argue that Lincoln made the right choice. But stop pretending he made no choice at all.
“The South fired first” does not answer whether coercive preservation of the Union was constitutionally required, nor does it erase the enormous constitutional consequences of Lincoln deciding that no state would be permitted to leave the Union, even by force if necessary.
TRUMP? What did Trump build???? He doesn't even build most of the buildings with his name on them! A LOT of his business is just licensing the name "Trump".
Hate to break it to you but the emperor ain't got no clothes.
Just dimwits who think he's great when it's all just a con job and his followers were all duped.
Librtlover
Verified User
Well, he did break a few redneck heads.
And there it is. When the constitutional argument runs out, just reduce hundreds of thousands of dead Americans to “redneck heads” and cheer.
That pretty well illustrates the problem with Lincoln worship: federal force becomes virtuous simply because you approve of who it was used against.
And saying Lincoln “broke nothing” is absurd. Why do we even distinguish the antebellum constitutional order from the constitutional order that followed the Civil War? Because the old federal arrangement did not survive intact. The war settled secession by force, dramatically expanded federal and executive power, and created the conditions for Reconstruction and the Reconstruction Amendments.
You cannot seriously argue nothing was broken when the entire federal-state constitutional relationship was transformed.
What I find comical about your list is the inconsistency. Wilson is bad, Lincoln is great, and FDR—the president who presided over perhaps the largest peacetime expansion of federal power in American history—is mysteriously absent.
That looks less like a coherent constitutional standard and more like the standard of the typical neoconservative: centralization and executive power are terrible when you dislike the president or his purposes, but admirable when they are attached to a war or cause you approve of.
If breaking the old constitutional restraints makes Lincoln “great,” then by your own apparent measuring stick, FDR deserves a prominent place on the list.
Ultimately, though, your rankings seem to have at least as much to do with whether there is an “R” next to the president’s name as with any consistent principle about limited government, constitutional restraint, or the actual institutional damage each president left behind.
Librtlover
Verified User
Of course I approved of the force used against the Southern rednecks. Again, without Lincoln and the North putting the South's seceding nonsense to rest, America would probably have been on course to destroy our Constitution altogether. Would you still be ragging on Lincoln if the South
had won that civil war, and our constitution was torn to pieces from that outcome?