Lincoln vs the Copperheads

Comparing what Lincoln did to what Johnson and Nixon did about opponents of their wars, it is impossible not to admire their restraint.

Likewise Wilson and FDR and Truman.

Why don't liberals despise Lincoln as a grotesque tyrant?

He made Nixon and the others look like fanatics for civil liberties.

Even Wilson, with his massive suppression of dissent.

And what about his enthusiastic support for Sherman's style of war, shooting prisoners in reprisal when civilians - or irregulars - killed his soldiers and destroying all in his path - roads,  buildings,  crops,  bridges - on his way to the sea?

Because Lincoln ended slavery,  though he did not set out to do that,  and though  he opposed votes and equal rights for blacks in America, toyed with deportation,  and seems never to have abandoned white supremacy.

And because he saved the union and with it America's rise to globalism?

Ah, yes.

The empire of liberty.

Reading Hummel's history of the Civil War.