[Hoot Gibson]

Taking historical quotes out of the context of history is what liberals have done to vilify or marginalize heroic figures of western civilization. If Lincoln had held a modern liberal view of blacks in the mid-1800s, nobody but his family would have remembered him longer than a generation or two. People are not perfect and it is impossible for them not to be influenced, for better or worse, by the times and places in which they live.

I think that Lincoln is overrated as a U.S. President because he disregarded important Constitutional principles and set some very bad precedents. Furthermore, he served as president during a Civil War in which more than 618,000 American troops died. Technology was quickly making slavery economically less feasible and other modern societies managed to outlaw slavery without sacrificing hundreds of thousands of their own citizens. A better president might have worked out a compromise to preserve lives while pushing slavery toward the ash heap.

That being said, I still view Lincoln as a great U.S. President and when viewed in the context of his life and times, he was no racist. He was a transitional leader whose actions were heroic. The country was not ready for a Martin Luther King or Bobby Kennedy and only half the country was ready for Lincoln. Lincoln did what he believed was right and made possible the civil rights movement that continued for decades after his death.