Please Don't Shoot the Messenger

[L Verge]

I mean exactly what the title of this thread means because I am only sharing something that I found online while searching for some information concerning Woodrow Wilson and his risque love life! What I stumbled across was a Facebook page from someone I have never heard of, but he is no fan of Abraham Lincoln.

The man's name is Chuck Baldwin, and his short bio says that he is a radio broadcaster, columnist, and pastor. This particular posting from him gives a lengthy diatribe on the ten worst Presidents of the U.S. (in his opinion). Mr. Lincoln ranks first, and I decided to post his opinion here - not because I agree with all of his points, but because it should enliven this forum a bit during the dog days of summer.

"Without an ounce of doubt in my mind, Abraham Lincoln is America's absolute worst President. He did not free a single slave; but what he did do was begin the process of enslaving free men. It is no hyperbole to say that Lincoln truly governed as a dictator, not as a President.

"Virtually every single problem we are having today (and have had ever since Lincoln's presidency) with an overbearing, encroaching, authoritarian federal government in Washington, D.C., came as a direct result of Abraham Lincoln's presidency. EVERY SINGLE ONE!

"Abraham Lincoln destroyed the Washington/Jeffersonian model of American government and replaced it with an imperial White House. His own statements prove that he cared absolutely nothing for the black race and was indeed himself a racist – unlike many leaders of the Confederacy, such as Robert E. Lee, T.J. "Stonewall" Jackson, et al., who publicly and adamantly spoke in support of ending slavery and NEVER said anything remotely derogatory or racist against the black people.

"Beyond that, in his first inaugural address Lincoln actually SUPPORTED an amendment to the U.S. Constitution (which would have been the 13th Amendment) proposed by Ohio Congressman Thomas Corwin that said, "No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State." In other words, the amendment would have forever guaranteed the right of people to own slaves.

"Lincoln violated every constitutional restraint on the office of the President possible. He used the Union army to invade independent sovereign states, and he invaded the State legislature in Maryland, kidnapping and incarcerating the legislators to prevent them from voting on secession. He used force to bully and intimidate other State legislatures in the North to keep them from supporting southern independence. He authorized Union forces to hunt down and imprison "Copperheads" (individuals in the North who supported southern independence).

"While Lincoln drafted black men from the North to serve in the Union army in segregated units, southern blacks were fighting voluntarily side-by-side with the white men – in the same units as the white men. And what most history books fail to mention is that there were reportedly over 300,000 slave owners fighting in Lincoln's Union army during the Civil War. (Mildred Lewis Rutherford, "Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States, and Abraham Lincoln, the President of the United States," 1861-1865, p. 35)

"Lincoln's so-called Emancipation Proclamation was an attempt to give the North moral justification for continuing his unconstitutional and immoral war of aggression against the South (and which the North was miserably losing after two years into the war) by issuing an edict to a nation that had already seceded (the Confederacy) and in which he had NO AUTHORITY, while leaving the institution of slavery completely intact among the states in which he did have authority (the Union). Lincoln was also hoping that his proclamation would incite southern blacks to insurrect against the southern states. However, this goal was never remotely accomplished.

"England's William Wilberforce had already shown how slavery could be peacefully ended. The institution of slavery was already dying in the United States. There was absolutely NO REASON why over 600,000 Americans had to die in Lincoln's War of Aggression. Abraham Lincoln cared nothing about freeing slaves; what he cared about was enslaving free and independent states to an all-powerful, dictatorial federal government.

"There really wasn't a "bad" President before Lincoln. But with Lincoln as a model and with the constitutional restraints against an imperial presidency left torn in shreds, we haven't had an abundance of "good" presidents since him. In fact, without Abraham Lincoln the nine "worst" presidents below would probably have never been President."

If it makes you feel better, Mr. Baldwin doesn't take sides; he castrates Republican and Democratic Presidents. His other nine victims are Grant, Wilson (#2), FDR, LBJ, both Bushes, Nixon, Clinton, and Obama (not necessarily in that order.)

Remember, do not aim any of your salvos at me. I am only posting what is out there already for the world to see. Now, I'm going back to picking on Wilson.