*The initial 13th Amendment — also known as the Corwin Amendment — would have made slavery constitutional and permanent — and Lincoln supported it.
Conservative
historian M.E. Bradford was deeply concerned by the ongoing deification
and cult status of Lincoln, and how Yankee idolatry of him had so
blurred the history, nature and consequences of the war “as to render
Lincoln impervious to serious criticism.”
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
Lincoln’s War to Prevent Self-Government
“As
[historian] Frank Owlsey complained in 1946, there was afoot in this
land, “what seems to me a Lincoln cult bordering on pagan deification
which is taking place in the popular mind of the North”; and it has been
seriously inspired by serious scholars, who have allowed their emotions
and bias to overemphasize certain elements and minimize others.”
In
his essay on “A Southerner’s View of Abraham Lincoln,” Owsley’s
principal complaint was not that Lincoln lacked moral scruples, but that
he frequently exercised poor judgment – as seen, for example, in *his
refusal to accept the Crittenden Compromise and in his naïve, persistent
belief that the people of the South would never support their leaders
in a war of secession.
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*Though he did approve of the original 13th amendment. BT.
I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution--which amendment,
however, I have not seen--has passed Congress, to the effect that the
Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions
of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid
misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to
speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a
provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to
its being made express and irrevocable.
First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln, Monday, March 4, 1861
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Lincoln,
argued Owsley, never fully grasped the depth of Southern patriotism or
the magnitude of the war, until it was too late to compromise. By
denying the South the right to self-government, Lincoln also subverted
the democratic principles of the document he so often cited as authority
for his constitutional views – the Declaration of Independence. “It
seems ironic to Southerners that the United States,” observed Owsley, “a
nation based upon the right of the people to live under a government of
their choice, should make war to prevent a people – the South – from
living under a government of their choice.”
No
less charitable with respect to Lincoln’s motives and moral reasoning,
Donald Davidson also questioned Lincoln’s political acumen . . .
asserting that the emancipator foolishly made war on his own ideas and
objectives, ruining both the South and the North while creating an
America he did not want.
[M.E.]
Bradford persuasively demonstrated [that Lincoln] was more than simply
wrong-headed; he was “dishonest” and “duplicitous” “pseudo-Puritan,” a
disingenuous “opportunist” guilty of “calculated posturing,” “historical
distortions,” and “high crime”; he was indeed “the American Caesar of
his age.” “It is at our peril,” Bradford cautioned, “that we continue
to reverence his name.”
(Walking
the Levee with Mel Bradford, James McClellan; A Defender of Southern
Conservatism,
M.E. Bradford and His Achievements, Clyde N. Wilson,
editor, University of Missouri Press, 1999, pp. 45-46)
