US President Abraham Lincoln is the personification of America and since his assassination a deep mythology has evolved around him. “Savior of The Union”, or “Great Emancipator” are just a few labels used to refer to the 16th President of the United States. In fact, over 14,000 biographies have been published on Lincoln.

Some say he was a brilliant politician and leader. African Americans used him as a symbol. He was conservative, yet presided over one of the greatest revolutions in American history. Did he do the right thing? Surely in the end he died for what he believed in.

Martin Luther King called him a great and shining beacon of hope. Malcolm X was not so kind. He labeled him as just another white man with empty promises. President Bill Clinton admired Lincoln for having overcome enormous difficulties. Lincoln battled with depression, which may have led to his strong emotional intelligence. But he was also called a white supremacist because of his plan to send the freedman to Africa.

Lincoln was even regarded incompetent. Surely he was inexperienced. Yet he had a great capacity to grow and adapt to changing circumstances. During the time of the election in 1860, his opponents were John Breckinridge from Kentucky, John Bell from Tennessee, and Stephen Douglas from Illinois. They may have been worse. At least Lincoln understood his inexperience at the beginning and elected his rivals to assist him. This shows strength, not incompetence.

He was regarded as a warmonger for beginning a war that was unconstitutional. He neither seemed to have an entry nor an exit strategy to the war. He also treated Southerners very harshly. The South further had the right to secede if it had wanted.

That is according to one interpretation. The Confederates believed that since the constitution was signed by the states and not the people any state could exercise the option of secession. French political thinker Alexander de Tocqueville had addressed this in the following way:

The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the states; and these, in uniting together, have not forfeited their nationality, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of the states chooses to withdraw from the contract, it would be difficult to disapprove its right of doing so, and the Federal Government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly either by force or right. — Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Critics also accuse Lincoln for having unnecessarily closed down newspapers, suspending habeas corpus and jailing hundreds of casualties without trail. Many soldiers lost their lives in a war that was supposedly avoidable.

So why did he do it? Lincoln perceived the secession of the South as a serious threat to the Union. He believed that the war was inevitable. The previous revolution had established a republic, a democratic government of the people, by the people and for the people. As the republic was still an ongoing experiment the secession was a existential threat to the union.

Lincoln was rather conservative at the beginning. He believed in evolution rather than revolution. And the Civil War only changed from a limited to a total war later on. Why was he seen as a racist? In a letter to Douglas during the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858, Lincoln explained that there is a physical difference between the white and black race which will forever forbid the races living together on terms of social and political equality. He also assigned the white race as the superior race.

Although Lincoln shared the racial prejudices of his time and did support the idea of deportation initially, his view on slavery gradually changed. After 1862, he even dropped the plan to deport freed African Americans.

Lincoln also had to be practical. His goal was to win an election. Therefore he could not really advocate for social equality between the races too strongly anyway. Advocating for social equality between the races would have been political suicide. He did oppose the expansion of slavery unlike his opponent.

“Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.” — Lincoln’s Cooper Institute Address, February 27, 1860.

He was against slavery, but as President his hands were tied. He was trapped between his personal wish and professional oath of a pro-slavery republic.

Lincoln could not make the war about slavery right away as the border states (also slave states) may have seceded, too. When the war had changed things, he could free the slaves and the union.

He did say that: “what I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.”

“I never in my life felt certain that I was doing right than I do in signing this paper. If my name ever goes into history, it will be for this act and my whole soul is in it.” — Lincoln

Lincoln freed the slaves. But that freedom did not necessarily lead to political and social equality. Political equality only arrived hundred years later when the 15th amendment was ratified that gave African Americans the right to vote.

Although Lincoln never advocated for social and political equality between the races, he did consider slavery as morally wrong. When the opportunity came to save the Union by destroying slavery, he did not hesitate. If there had been a way to avoid the war, Lincoln as conservative as he was at the beginning of the war, would probably have found it. However Lincoln perceived the risk to allow the South to secede and jeopardize the “experiment” to disintegrate as too high.

It was a dilemma after all and Lincoln did not seek to go the easy way out. If Lincoln had avoided the war, the underlying conflict between the South and the North would have remained, and a war would not have been avoided but just been postponed. It seems that Lincoln did the right thing after all.