It’s a terrible thing that Lincoln did to the country. When he assumed office we were independent states that had voluntarily banded together for our common good. We were ‘These United States”. After the war we became ‘The United States’. At that point the identity of our nation ended. The dreams of our founders perished at the hands of the first activist president.
It’s hard not to see the irony in his statement. How about that confederacy of states that tried to throw off the yoke of an overreaching federal government? Were their citizens not entitled freedom? Entitled to self-determination?
Don’t feed me that holier than thou we had to preserve the union crap, once you initiated a war with half of the country it was no longer a union. Slavery? It would have died on it’s own moral weight in a few short years.
Lincoln, the man that destroyed these United States.