• bdonvr@thelemmy.clubEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    Yes even Lincoln. He was brutal with the indigenous Americans just like all his contemporary genociders.

    And even on the subject of slavery, he was basically forced into it. He also really hampered radical reconstruction which sought to actually change the power structure, take land from slaveholders and give it to the freedmen… Went way easy on former Confederates and let them slip into (subdued, but still significant) control. He wasn’t as bad as his successor in that regard but he’s no role model. Read “Black Reconstruction in America” by W.E.B. DuBois if you’re interested.

    • xor@infosec.pubEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      he was basically forced into it

      you’re basically making shit up

      • Scubus@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        5 months ago

        I mean the emancipation proclamation didn’t ban slavery, it just banned it in rebelling states by freeing the slaves in those states. It was a year/years later that the 21(?) 13th Amendment was signed that actually banned the practice.

        Lincoln didn’t want to free the slaves, he just didn’t want the south using them as an army.

        • xor@infosec.pubEnglish
          0·
          5 months ago

          he definitely wanted to free the slaves, talked about it and wrote about it extensively, and definitely why we they started the civil war.

          his bff was a former slave, even… and just how do you suppose he was supposed to add that 21st amendment before the civil war? you know the president isn’t dictator, right? half of congress was the south, at the time… and they were voting pretty heavily in favor of slavery…

          members of congress actually beat members of congress to death, in congress, in the lead up to the civil war… while arguing about slavery (in particular about accusations of members of congress owning slaves for raping purposes, rather than their arguments about labor)

          • bdonvr@thelemmy.clubEnglish
            0·
            5 months ago

            He was always ambivalent about abolition. Not a fan of slavery, sure. Maybe. But he made it clear over and over and over again that he would much rather keep the country together than free any slaves if he could.

            He also MANY times said he wouldn’t even know where freed slaves fit into American society, proposing they be shipped off to some island to colonize so he wouldn’t have to deal with them.

            It was only at the insistence of his generals that it was a military necessity or they’d lose the war that he freed some of the slaves.