This is from a blog...Do you agree? :rolleyes:
1. Abraham Lincoln saved limited government.
A government so powerful and so large in scope that steals all the freedoms from the individual cannot exist perpetually and peacefully. Prior to Emancipation, both the North and the South had no limited government, because both governments would take any and all the freedoms from the slaves. A government that tolerates or legitimizes slavery is far more tyrannical than a government that usurps habeas corpus during the events of a rebellion, which is considered constitutional anyway in Article One, section 9. Just as a reasonable man does not risk his life in order to save a single toe, he sometimes needs to risk his toe in order to save his life itself, just as Lincoln did to the Union.
The North always had the highest moral ground at any point throughout the war. An abolitionist President, one who seeks to contain slavery, has a higher moral ground than a secessionist President that seeks the establishment of slavery in his entire nation with plans to even further expand it to new territories in the future. The North initially had no flawless moral ground, because the containment of slavery is not equal to the abolition of slavery, but Lincoln established the highest moral ground by making the abolition of slavery a goal, not only in the South, but in the North eventually as well. There is absolutely no evidence that slavery would have faded in the South, especially with a Constitution inspired by the issue of slavery. The inevitable subsequent racial revolutions, permanent conflict and devastation due to slavery would have made the South a third world country.
The American government was fundamentally wrong when defining some people to be property as opposed to individuals with full rights, making government not only huge, but also tyrannically stupid, inefficient and unjust. Lincoln established a remedy for this problem with the abolition and the future abolition of slavery. Lincoln saved limited government not only because he fought against his own slavery-based large government in order to save the Union, but also because he fought against the much larger "government" of the Southern States.
2. Abraham Lincoln saved the Constitution.
The secession of the Southern States creates a precedent in which any state could spontaneously and successfully "secede" from the Union for whatever reason imaginable and given worth and consideration. The new "seceded" and independent nations would develop and approve their own particular Constitutions, just as The South did, completely unrestrained to differ, or even oppose, the philosophies of the Founding Fathers, and to whatever extent. For instance, the theme of the Confederate Constitution, one that served the economic interests of the South, was slavery, but any other seceding state would have established constitutions based on the principles of socialism, dictatorship, or a theocracy.
By default, it is easier to abandon a debate or a fight rather than actually debate or fight. Thus, the natural disagreements among the states would overtime lead to a continuous fragmentation of the Union to nations ruled under different jurisdictions and constitutions, until the original Constitution of the Founding Fathers would survive in a single, non-secessionist city, because cities actually attempted to secede from states, and they would have successfully seceded then. Thus, the Constitution of the Founding Fathers would have ultimately remained in a single, independent city, where it would be literally impossible to function. As a simple example, it would be impossible to have a Senate. Thus the Constitution would have died.
Since the Constitution of the Founding Fathers is the superior and most brilliant Constitution in history, the only alternative to the original Constitution is an inferior Constitution, and the Constitution of the Southern States was certainly an inferior and an aberration to the Constitution of the Founding Fathers. The Confederate Constitution was an obvious warning of disaster because it opposed the basic principle of the Declaration. The new Constitutions could not be identical to the Constitution of the Founders, because the new Constitutions would, by default, develop as an opposition to the original Constitution.
Lincoln saved the Constitution because there is no better alternative to our Constitution. We still have to this day the Constitution of the Founding Fathers, so Lincoln did not destroy the Constitution, he actually saved it. The only fundamental change that Lincoln did to the Constitution was the Thirteenth Amendment, the eradication of slavery, not a deterioration, but arguably a significant improvement over the original Constitution.
3. Abraham Lincoln saved individualism.
A secessionist movement is in itself a collective forced movement of people against a larger collective. The collective of secession itself forces non-secessionists to secede, which is the ultimate force of a collective, the joining of an unwanted government by force, whereas individually abandoning a government is never a collective movement. An individual or any collection of freely associated individuals, can freely renounce their citizenship and migrate to another nation or establish another nation of their choosing, without creating the social unrest and havoc among the non-secessionists, and bankrupting the former government, as the South almost did. No individual is forced to live in this nation, the idea of individuals being permanently attached to the federal government due to a supposed tyranny is false.
The Southerners who chose not to secede within a government inspired by slavery, where saved by Abraham Lincoln, who brought them back to the America to make an individual choice of either staying or leaving the Union. The frequently forgotten voice of the slaves, which constituted roughly half the population of the South, were individuals that had no choice altogether and were forced by the collective not only to be slaves, but also on joining a new government they never agreed upon. Secession, therefore, is always a forced collective, because even in the fantastic procedure that 90% of a secessionist vote is required to secede, there is always a 10% subjugated by the tyranny of the majority. Secession is the collective tyrant, not Lincoln, because Lincoln did not force anyone to automatically and forcefully secede. Lincoln saved individualism not only because he freed the slaves, but because he freed the non-secessionists and future non-secessionists to exercise their own individual choice. The argument and justification for secession has always been flawed and false if one considers true individualism, and not the collective, to be the ultimate objective of conservatism.
