I think a few here is fond of the old Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but looking into the actions that he did during the years into the prelude of World War 2 was really interesting. At his behest, he supplied Joseph Stalin and the whole Soviet Union of military equipment and intelligence to prepare for the Nazis. I really don't think that Americans during at the time was on board with supplying another enemy, the communists, with their own handmade products just to hold off the Reich.
Let's not get started with the internment camps he did against Americans of Japanese lineage after the Pearl Harbor attacks, how the Democrats were tight-lipped about it to this day, and the communist project that the former First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt did in Arthurdale, Virginia, that was still left untold on how many people died due to starvation on that god forsaken experiment of hers.
I understand the argument, but I wouldn't necessarily say that's a good explanation of what went down, and I'm not even sure I'd agree to the concept that he was the most tyrannical. FDR might still have that one beat. Lincoln clearly didn't want to become "King of America" or anything, and neither did any of the Unionists.
Worse, I'd say that the US had basically fallen apart because of the lead-up to the Civil War.
If you want to talk about extreme federal over-reach, James Buchanan asking the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to personally "solve" the issue of slavery by legitimizing the Fugitve Slave Law which absolutely destroyed the concept of State Sovereignty and was pushed by The Slaveocrtic South, not the North. When the decision came down it utterly invalidated the citizenship of any Americans that were considered black, regardless of their actual citizenship status, military service, political position in government, property ownership, business ownership, family lineage, or whether they even met the correct definition of what any particular states actually claimed was "white"... all while citing English Law, which had basically never allowed Slavery in England in the modern era and was the ideological center-piece of the Abolishionist movement. And the invalidation of citizenship wasn't even in the Fugitive Slave Law. SCOTUS just added that in their decision alone!
The idea that SCOTUS could just literally invalidate 100% of your rights and use Federal power to ignore extradition treaties between the states and even unwillingly deputize uninvolved citizens into private slave patrols was fucking maddness and was why the North voted for the Republicans in the first place and told the Whigs and Democrats to utterly fucking eat shit.
When the Republicans made it clear that they had no intention of enforcing an unconstitutional law and an unconstitutional ruling by SCOTUS, it was this that the Slavocrats justified the right of secession. Because the Republicans weren't prepared to abide by the constitution (by enforcing unconstitutional judicial edicts). Thus, they claimed they had the right to leave the union since the federal government wasn't abiding by the constitution.
But that's just it, nor were fucking they. The Slavocratic government didn't give a fucking shit about the Constitution! SCOTUS had basically over-ruled the whole thing and assumed supreme executive power for no apparent reason than the whims of, of all people, James Buchanan!
Of course the country fucking exploded. What the fuck else would have happened. SCOTUS is trash.
Lets also not forget that due to the fuckery of the slave states and Buchanan, we here in Kansas were shooting each other over the issue before it was cool.
You think the accusations of voter fraud were bad in 2020? We voted on whether or not we were going to be a Slave-State or Free, and some counties that only had 20 residents saw over 1,000 votes because of people crossing the state line from Missouri to vote and make us a Slave-State. Pierce (and later Buchanan) just wanted to ignore the very obvious fraud so that they could put it all behind them and get it over with because, like you said, they didnt want to deal with it. Hell, Pierce went so far as to call the Free-State government in Topeka "insurrectionist" against the "true" Slave-State government in Lecompton.
But we decided that this was the hill we were going to die on, and started bringing in guns. Then when the first shot got fired (ironically, by the Pro-Slavery side, much like what would later happen), we started fighting, and fought like mad against the outsiders trying to overwhelm our state. It only stopped because us Kansas digging in our heels and fighting back had caused some other Northern states to start having some "dangerous" ideas and so the South had to start focusing on the National level instead of dealing with one state. Didnt stop the fact that we were locked out of the US Government until the succession happened because it was only at that point that there were finally enough votes to get us in as the Free-State we were supposed to be.
And of course, during the Civil War we were on the receiving end of several revenge attacks by the South, because they directly blamed us as the cause of all of this, since we had the utter temerity to not just lie down and take it when they cheated.
Sounds utterly fascinating. Got any good book recommendations?
None off the top of my head, but they exist since Bleeding Kansas is one of the causes of the Civil War. A lot of it is stuff I learned just from living here, doubly so because I live in the Eastern Kansas, which is where most of the fighting happened. I actually live near the Beecher Church (the abolitionist who brought the guns in). And yes, this is the same Beecher family that wrote Uncle Toms Cabin.
Oh yeah, Bleeding Kansas went on for years as ideological militias actually waged war over it.
I love how the Democrats have always tried to import or expel voters to win elections.
I did a cursory glance at the history of Kansas and the numbers pretty much speak for themselves. Kansas... when it wasn't even a state... contributed 20,000 soldiers to Unionist forces, including the first black unit to see Combat in the Civil War... and 1,000 to the Confederacy. If that isn't a case of "revealed preferences" I don't know what is.
For rural areas, that's absolutely enormous. The population of Kansas in 1860 was listed as 107,000 approximately. That's a little under a 20% mobilization for a voluntary service. Just to be clear how ridiculous that is: 20% mobilization in Hearts of Iron 4 can only be instituted with an edict called: "All Adults Serve".
That's clearly a bunch of Kansans screaming "You fuckers didn't learn your lesson the first time!"
Minor correction, but we were actually just barely a state in time for the Civil War. Our statehood was on Jan. 29, which was a few days after the first round of secession, because many of the Southern Slave states that had been blocking our statehood were no longer there to do it.
But yeah, Kansas gets overlooked a lot in the Civil War due to the fact that we were out of the way enough to not see any major fights. But as you said, we contributed one of the largest armies as a percentage of population of any state, and IIRC we also suffered the most civilian casualties as a percentage due to said Confederate revenge raids. The Sack of Lawrence was so brutal it got the Confederate government to suspend its guerrilla program. Officially, because it was not the sort of brutality they had authorized. Unofficial, I want to believe they heard the 1st Kansas screaming “Do you bastards have a death wish?!” in the distance and feared for their safety.
I think things would have been different had he not been assassinated. Though he should have just let the south leave, as they probably would have come back anyway later.
I didn't know John Podesta posted here.
Also, remind me who attacked Fort Sumter?
Neo-Confederate BS.
You should look up what happened to precipitate the attack of Fort Sumter. Occupying a previously unoccupied fort and sending a massive military convoy to reinforce it isn't exactly a peaceful overture.
Dude, the war was 150 years ago. You don't need to keep fighting it. We're allowed to state uncomfortable truths about our side. Or maybe you're unaware:
Nor was seizing the dozens of federal forts around it.
The stupidity of Jefferson Davis, for one.
Incorrect, Lincoln was only sending supplies and informed the governor of South Carolina that this is what he was doing. It was not by Lincoln's orders that Anderson occupied Fort Sumter, which by the way, he had every right to do as it was federal property.
Well then next time state something that's true. Also, it's not 'my side'. I'm European. I think it was political malpractice for the British and French not to have backed the Confederacy, as that led to the rise of the American Leviathan. I'd much rather have two, maybe three or four Americas that are constantly at each other's throats.
And you fell right into the trap. I knew you were going to cite that latter. Apparently, you were unaware that as he was writing that, he was also drafting the Emancipation Proclamation, waiting for an opportune moment which came after Antietam. That letter was only an assurance to Northern conservatives who would think that he is making the war about abolition and not preservation of the Union.
The Emancipation Proclamation was a military move, not a humanitarian one. Lord Dunmore and Admiral Cochrane both used similar proclamations during the Revolutionary War, and the War of 1812, respectively. Lincoln just had the added complexity of assuaging Loyalist states.
Honestly, it was a complete disaster, from a humanitarian perspective. The Union columns had no ability or interest in helping these "freed" slaves, and it's estimated a quarter of them died of starvation and disease. But it did help sow chaos into southern states, both economically and socially, so it accomplished it's purpose.
As to his views on it, he seemed mostly Jeffersonian. On one hand, slavery was unnatural and wrong, but on the other, whites and blacks could not coexist on the same functional level.