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Comment by RcouF1uZ4gsC | Hacker News Reader

In my mind, there are only two indispensable Presidents without whom there really would no be a United States of America: George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln had the rare traits of dogged determination, clear headed pragmatism, and a rare humility that allowed him to do the seemingly impossible and hold the Union together while still ending slavery. Truly, one of the great people of history.

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Yes there would be no USA without him, but as a foreigner, reading that, he seems like a brutal federalist.

He literally says 'we don't want bloodshed, but hey, the constitution says you cannot secede, so there will be bloodshed if you try to'.

We have several secessionist movements around the world: Canada, Spain, UK (Scotland/Northern Ireland), EU (Brexit) - to name just a few.

Literally the 'land of the free', a new country, with a lot of devolved power ... but 'if you try to leave we're going to invade you'. It seems really inconsistent with democratic principles.

Though histories and legalities are quite different, I was pretty shocked by his stark position.

His tone is not aggressive, but his position is pretty hardcore absolutist.

Secession in the case of the American South was not a clear-cut case of everyone in a region wanting to live in their own country. The owners of the large slave-based plantations wanted to secede, and since they were the wealthy political elites, they made it happen. However, poorer white farmers who owned no slaves were either ambivalent about secession or outright pro-Union, and of course the black slave population weren't enthusiastic about the Confederate elites' aims.

So, Lincoln was advocating for the large Southern population that did not want to divide the Union, not quashing regional democratic aspirations.

So that's a good point but - "was not a clear-cut case of everyone in a region wanting to live in their own country"

Neither was the American revolution in the first place.

Where was the referendum? What would have been the results? Would the secessionists even have won?

Lincoln maybe didn't live in a time where he had a lot of historical examples to follow, fair enough, but the argument that 'some didn't want to separate' doesn't quite cut it fully because that's pretty much a pervasive context.

Public pronouncements like this are only nominally statements of the speaker's beliefs; they are intended to persuade people to support the speaker's future policies.

Few abolitonists felt that secession solved anything, and many would regard it as creating a rogue state. These people were already behind Lincoln's policies. The people who he had to persuade were abolitionists who worried whether they had the right to act, those who just wanted some way to make the issue someone else's problem, and those in the North who didn't find it troubling (and if he could persuade some of those who were pro-slavery, so much the better.)

You're confusing cause and effect. The goal of the south was slavery and leave if they did not get it - cause. The north was then handed a problem to which civil war. Effect. The south lost. Lincoln was trying to avoid bloodshed by arguing that the union could not be recinded unless all agreed. As such he was arguing for a third way to resolve the issue. The south didn't find third way. It got the problem it wanted and paid the price for it.

Franklin Roosevelt? While it's debated on whether the New Deal policies actually lifted the United States out of the Great Depression, it's undeniable that a mix of the New Deal and his leadership during World War II propelled the country to becoming a global superpower.

One way to measure the impact of the New Deal, whether or not it caused the end of the depression, is to look at all the time, money, and political effort that has been and continues to be spent to systemically dismantle everything it put in place.

It basically defined the agenda and focus of the Republican Party from then until now.

Most of the New Deal has been struck down as unconstitutional. I don't think the idea that there could be a special police force by NRA which would walk around Manhattan and watch for anybody who's lights are still on after the twilight , knock at the door and tell them that they are violating the NRA policies by working past the allocated quota, is constitutional. It was the right thing to do by Supreme Court.

Haha. That’s a funny but minor example.

I was referring more to the socialist aspects - taxing corporations and wealthy individuals, the social security program, unemployment and welfare, workers rights, financial regulations, etc.

My opinion is that FDR didn’t really love any of those things, but saw a potential for widespread social unrest, and tried to mitigate that by working out a deal with the oligarchy.

This lead to the terms “liberal” and “conservative” defining the 2 parties and seems to have laid the groundwork of the extreme bifurcation we experience today.

> My opinion is that FDR didn’t really love any of those things, but saw a potential for widespread social unrest, and tried to mitigate that by working out a deal with the oligarchy.

How do you justify him fighting with Supreme Court and planning to pack it? That has to be one of the most unethical power grabs any President could go for? What you're describing above sounds like a mythology being attempted to be built around him.

I wasn’t intending to imply that he or the new deal were good or bad, just how I interpreted the history.

I’ve yet to find a US president that I would classify as benevolent, honest, or worthy of exaltation.

His internment of the Japanese should not be forgotten. It could also be argued that he empowered the Soviet Union. FDR has a mixed record in my mind. He also maintained a segregated military that Truman ultimately integrated in 1948.

While FDR was instrumental in the USA becoming the superpower that it became, even without FDR, the United States would still have been a world power (due to its combination large population, high degree of industrialization with lots of manufacturing, and lots of natural resources) and would still have continued to have a democratic government. Even without FDR, the USA while maybe not developing into the superpower that it did, would still have been recognizable as the USA. Without Washington or Lincoln, the USA would either not exist or been completely unrecognizable.

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