Lincoln Wasn’t So Great
He didn’t get his picture on bubble gum cards, did he?
When lists come out from historians that rank presidential greatness, Abraham Lincoln is almost always in the top spot for his handling of the Civil War. Next to him, in no particular order, you will find Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, and George Washington. Lincoln, though, almost always occupies the top spot.
Measuring presidential greatness is no easy task. Just defining the term “greatness” is something of a greased pig contest. It is a noble but slippery abstraction that means different things to different people. One man’s god is another man’s demon. One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. One man’s beer is another man’s bilge water.
And so on.
We have had a lot of unpopular presidents in the course of our country’s history. The perennial threat is that “if so-and-so gets elected, I’m moving to Canada.” I don’t think many people have ever acted on that, but I do hear it almost every election cycle.
Abraham Lincoln was the only person elected president where a third of the states in the union said “We’re outta here” and left. In this regard, Lincoln stands alone. Not even George W. Bush or Donald Trump could achieve that.
