Who's writing history textbooks these days? Not just these days, but in my lifetime too. Abraham Lincoln gets treated incredibly well in the books I have ever been exposed to. It's not easy to figure out why this is so. The U.S. had a slavery issue at the time. Lincoln's solution was a decisive one and the fastest solution to accomplish. The political establishment after the war campaigned long and hard (and rather brutally) to ensure that the issue of slavery would not reappear. Part of doing this meant that they needed to treat the leader of the war to free slaves in the best light possible. So they did. Lincoln was a hero, a decisive man who pushed for right to be done. He was wise and led the country out of a dark chapter in its history.
The other side of the coin is not bright and shiny like history books tell it. Lincoln was an on again, off again politician, losing in as many races as he gained office. He was elected with less than 40% of the popular vote. He wasn't even on the ballot in 10 of the 15 states that formed the southern slave states. In his own Republican convention before the election, Lincoln obtained the Republican party nomination on the third round of balloting. In the main election, Lincoln's position on slavery was the most divisive, stating that if war was necessary to end slavery, then he would wage it. The other three candidates had more diplomatic stances, such as allowing each new state in the Union decide its status of slave or free, having an alternating pattern of free-slave-free-slave status as they entered the Union, or trying to bring pressure on the South through economic modifications. When Lincoln won, the Southern states wasted no time in seceding, nine of them before Lincoln was inaugurated.
The most divisive president in U.S. history is remembered kindly. He has books published about him touting how he lingered long on his decision for war, concerned about the great lines of division that would be caused. He has movies made of how he labored with Congress to win their support for getting Black Americans to have the right of citizenship. Modern books contain the wit and wisdom of Lincoln. It's one of the greatest sell jobs ever.
We all have a choice on which voices we choose to hear. We all decide how we want to interpret the world around us. We all select which details to remember and drop from memory. And we all elect to act and react in ways we deem consistent with all the details. That's what gives us individuality. Even those we love choose, decide, select, and act according to a little different line of thinking than we have. It's what gives us our destinies.
