Yyyyeah... that's sweeping an awful lot of dirt under the rug. No president [of the US] has ever been a saint, and no wartime president has even been righteous

Yyyyeah... that's sweeping an awful lot of dirt under the rug. No president [of the US] has ever been a saint, and no wartime president has even been righteous. The civil beatification is almost certainly some combination of propaganda and the pride we feel when our team's captain scores the winning point in the big game. Whenever one is assassinated for political reasons, the record is whitewashed, so as to paint the murderous opposition in a worse light. Lincoln may have been personally against slavery, but he was not an abolitionist--strictly enforcing the fugitive slave act before the war. He was also segregationist--endorsing the deportation of all black people from the US. He may have freed [some of] the slaves, but many of those freed slaves had already been de-emancipated months earlier by Lincoln, when he reversed Gen. Hunter's emancipation order. Emancipation was, to him, strictly a military maneuver, to disadvantage the enemy. Slavery was not truly abolished until the 13th Amendment was ratified, a move first advanced by Rep. Ashley of Ohio. He may have been a skilled debater and orator, but he also raided and silenced newspapers. He may be a symbol of freedom now, but he also suspended habeas corpus, arrested the entire Maryland legislature, and forcibly deported a particularly annoying member of the legislature, the leader of the Copperheads, to the CSA. But he also has an impressive-looking temple on the DC mall, so all that is forgiven and forgotten.