Lincoln owes his reputation to some remarkable displays of humanity and to his oratory, which was as groundbreaking for its day as it was brilliant. Of all of the figures in American political history, you could count the number of people who even approached his gift with language on your hands.
As a war president, his record was mixed. On the positive side:
- He did a good job of mobilizing the obviously superior resources of the Union;
- He managed to keep Britain and France from intervening;
- He wrote the Emancipation Proclamation, which helped define the Union’s war aims and won the support of abolitionists at home and abroad; and
- He succeeded in positioning the Confederacy as the aggressor, which also helped win support from neutrals at the beginning of the war.
On the down side, his grasp of military strategy was limited, and his taste in leaders left a lot to be desired. In particular, he should have fired McClellan far earlier than he did.
Would, say, a President Seward have won the war? Given the Union’s considerable material advantages, my guess is yes, but we’ll never know.