May I just add this. I had a elderly black friend that was told by his grandfather who was a slave until he was 16, "Lincoln did not really care about the slaves." He said there was a time that anyone caught with anyone black on their property would be arrested. So they were driven from the only homes they ever knew. And were roaming down the roads like cattle for days.Quote the 'raping' order, please. Were there then, and are there now, more than a tiny minority of non-racist Americans? If you get into wars, you do what you need to do to win them, surely? As far as I am concerned, he was against slavery, and he stopped it, and he didn't try seriously to deport the black people - though, fair play, the idea of sending back all the settlers to where they came from might have its points - except from the point of view of the old folks at 'home', of course.
In my experience people - some of them -will tell you anything that they think will please you. There is a lot of historical writing that suggests that President Lincoln was far in advance of his time, but one of the key points, surely, is that if there are four million unpaid workers, the paid ones will be vastly worse of than if all labour has to be paid wages. You didn't have to be a holy angel to want slavery abolished - just unbrainwashed.
Far from it. He was a believer in strong and stable currency, arguably the last President to actually try to act on that belief. He was a good leader and some of his stances were very important to this country, although I believe a lot of them have become misinterpreted over time.
The UN is no big feat either
