FDR... to put him on the list I for one would need more than just the Japanese internment, which was in response to both military paranoia and public outrage at the presence of Japanese-Americans in their neighborhoods. He shouldn't have done it, but it's easy for me to see why he acquiesced in it: it was a battle he didn't want to fight.
Two points about Abraham Lincoln. First, prior to Lincoln, there was still a bureaucracy in Washington- he merely expanded it and took the first steps towards a permanent bureaucratic class. This sounds horrible... until you consider that prior to Lincoln every job- EVERY SINGLE JOB IN WASHINGTON- could change hands every election, and could be filled by people wholly unqualified for the work except in their support of the incoming administration or party in power. The professional civil service (which really didn't get going until the assassination of James Garfield) was a step forward, not back, for good government and liberty alike.
Second: the Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in areas not, as of January 1, under the control of the Federal government. That said, after the Proclamation, every place the Union armies went they brought emancipation- for good or ill- with them. (One of the most outrageous incidents of the war was when Union general Jefferson C. Davis- no relation- during Sherman's March to the Sea pulled up the bridges behind his division and stranded close to 10,000 slaves to be recaptured or killed by Confederates and outlaws shadowing Sherman's army.) Lincoln didn't free any slave just by issuing an order, but the order gave his armies the ability to gut slavery like a fish being cleaned.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: I'm gonna get yelled at fa' sure...
Date: 2010-08-17 08:32 pm (UTC)Two points about Abraham Lincoln. First, prior to Lincoln, there was still a bureaucracy in Washington- he merely expanded it and took the first steps towards a permanent bureaucratic class. This sounds horrible... until you consider that prior to Lincoln every job- EVERY SINGLE JOB IN WASHINGTON- could change hands every election, and could be filled by people wholly unqualified for the work except in their support of the incoming administration or party in power. The professional civil service (which really didn't get going until the assassination of James Garfield) was a step forward, not back, for good government and liberty alike.
Second: the Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in areas not, as of January 1, under the control of the Federal government. That said, after the Proclamation, every place the Union armies went they brought emancipation- for good or ill- with them. (One of the most outrageous incidents of the war was when Union general Jefferson C. Davis- no relation- during Sherman's March to the Sea pulled up the bridges behind his division and stranded close to 10,000 slaves to be recaptured or killed by Confederates and outlaws shadowing Sherman's army.) Lincoln didn't free any slave just by issuing an order, but the order gave his armies the ability to gut slavery like a fish being cleaned.