I agree with Nas about Lincoln. Slavery ended as a result of the Civil War not actions taken by Lincoln. Lincoln even allowed slavery to exist after making the Emancipation Proclamation. His views regarding blacks being part of an inferior race also have to be taken into account. It's not just that he allowed slavery to exist. It is also his beliefs that are oft putting.

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This list is as shitty as the comedian list, Reagan and Bush 2 should be bottom of the barrel.

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Are you suggesting Lincoln is somehow unrelated to the Civil War? That's quite an ahistorical stance, and frankly, downright silly. Without Lincoln the modern United States would almost certainly not exist in the form it (singular) currently does.

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Freedom is our Strength.

Best president since LBJ.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

Starting an unnecessary war in the Middle East, invading Panama to help cover up CIA covert actions, while doing nothing for the the economy. Quite the gem.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

Why are you accounting for the lack of late 20th century social mores in someone who lived in the early 19th century?

England abolished slavery 30 years before Lincoln, it wasn't like ending slavery was unheard of.

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I like Bush I as well, but lets look at some of his competition since LBJ. You had a President who resigned, another nobody ever cast a single vote for, one who was impeached...and Reagan and W. Bush

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What is with the prevailing thought stuff? I could easily use the same argument for Germany during the 30's. That doesn't excuse the actions of Hitler.

Lincoln shouldn't be celebrated for ending slavery if he did very little to end slavery.

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Lincoln was 25 when Britain abolished slavery (in some places). MANY abolitionists were, by today's standards, still virulent, actual, racists. I'm wondering why people insist on judging them by today's standards, though.

But he did do a lot to end slavery, whether he did so for the right reasons or not. The question isn't whether the presidents were saints... the question is who were the best presidents... results matter. Whatever confluence of events led to the end of slavery seems somewhat immaterial to me. The fact of the matter is that it ended, and Lincoln had a lot to do with it. That by itself is enough to put him in the conversation for GOAT after Jordan.

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John Brown is one of the few abolitionist that should ever be celebrated. I choose to not celebrate abolitionist for the very same reason cited by you above.

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I'm not aware of any prevailing societal norm that allowed for the rounding up of people and murdering them en masse, even in 1930.

In that time (Lincoln's) you'd probably have to go 3 or 4 standard deviations from the mean until you found someone with an approach to racial equality on par with what we see today. It's silly to fault someone from that time for not thinking like you do now.

Unless I really wasn't paying attention in school, it's also wrong to say that Lincoln wasn't against slavery. He was... he just didn't think blacks were equal to whites. Now, I realize that that is horrible, but you have to give the guy some slack based on the era in which he lived. Is there a more important event in the history of America (aside from perhaps the Revolutionary War prior to America's official formation) than the ending of slavery? WW2? The Bulls drafting Jordan?

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Anti Semitism permeated German society during the 1930's. Hitler's reaction to it is one of the primary reasons that the Holocaust was able to happen. It wasn't just him. His actions were extreme but there were a large group of people in favor of said actions.

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Lincoln really never demonstrated anything which suggests that he was against slavery. It took 2 years into the war for him to broach the issue. He also exempted states that didn't fight alongside the confederates.

He also infamously stated that the morality or immorality of slavery wasn't really a big deal to him. His only concern was preserving the Union.

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Lincoln was NOT against slavery in the south. There really is no disputing that.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

and yet he did more to end it than thousands of good hearted abolitionists

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

I don't know, man. It sounds like he was against slavery...

Lincoln quotes on slavery:

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature -- opposition to it is in his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks, and throes, and convulsions must ceaselessly follow. Repeal the Missouri Compromise -- repeal all compromises -- repeal the declaration of independence -- repeal all past history, you still can not repeal human nature. It still will be the abundance of man's heart, that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.

I have always hated slavery, I think as much as any Abolitionist.

You know I dislike slavery; and you fully admit the abstract wrong of it.

We believe that the spreading out and perpetuity of the institution of slavery impairs the general welfare. We believe -- nay, we know, that that is the only thing that has ever threatened the perpetuity of the Union itself.

Let there be no compromise on the question of extending slavery. If there be, all our labor is lost, and, ere long, must be done again.

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free -- honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth.

If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God.

I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling.

I will say now, however, I approve the declaration in favor of so amending the Constitution as to prohibit slavery throughout the nation.

Every advocate of slavery naturally desires to see blasted, and crushed, the liberty promised the black man by the new constitution.

You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us.

That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles -- right and wrong -- throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, "You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it." No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.

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"You think slavery is right and should be extended, while we think it is wrong and should be limited. That, I suppose, is the trouble. It surely is the only important difference between us."

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

That's not enough? He ended slavery!

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Solely for political reasons. Then he wanted to ship us back to Africa after we helped him win the war and save the union.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

How do you celebrate John Brown?

What is funny is that many of your views right now will likely be seen as backwards and barbaric by the standards of say 2060. If you wanted to free the slaves you were on the right side of history, and without people pushing for that there would not have been anything resembling our modern views on equality.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

His political move to weaken his opponents and win a war led to the end of slavery. We agree on this. However history has led us to believe that it was because of his strong conviction and great character. That's absolutely wrong.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

Nas tears down Lincoln based on his beliefs but loves FDR and LBJ.

FDR spoke at the 1924 Democrat National Convention, also known as the “Klanbake” for the “heavy representation of Ku Klux Klan-friendly delegates,” as reported at the Wall Street Journal. According to Digital History, after the Klanbake, “some 20,000 Klan supporters wearing white hoods and robes held a picnic in New Jersey…”

Roosevelt appointed “confidant” James Byrnes to the Supreme Court, who was so powerful that he was known as the “assistant president on the home front” and who “believed in racial segregation…and worked to defeat anti-lynching bills introduced in Congress.”

Despite the fact that Byrnes was not elected by the people, FDR “assigned Byrnes more powers than ever held by a public official.”

Even worse, FDR appointed prominent Ku Klux Klan member Hugo Black to the Supreme Court. Black’s involvement in the KKK was confirmed by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette journalist Ray Sprigle, a journalist who won a “Pulitzer Prize for Reporting” for his exposé.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt additionally refused to meet with black Olympian Jesse Owens. As reported at the Daily Mail:

President Franklin Roosevelt never congratulated Owens or invited him to the White House. ‘Hitler didn’t snub me – it was FDR who snubbed me,’ Owens said.

But all of the above offenses pale in comparison to Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, which “authorized the internment of tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry and resident aliens from Japan.” Some Germans and Italians were also interned. Expressing about his position on German and Italian Americans during World War II, Roosevelt stated “I don’t care so much about the Italians, they are a lot of opera singers, but the Germans are different. They may be dangerous.”

According to Caro, Robert Parker, Johnson’s sometime chauffer, described in his memoir Capitol Hill in Black and White a moment when Johnson asked Parker whether he’d prefer to be referred to by his name rather than “boy,” “n****r” or “chief.” When Parker said he would, Johnson grew angry and said, “As long as you are black, and you’re gonna be black till the day you die, no one’s gonna call you by your goddamn name. So no matter what you are called, n****r, you just let it roll off your back like water, and you’ll make it. Just pretend you’re a goddamn piece of furniture.”

LBJ pushed ahead with his “great society” program “which gave rise to Medicaid, Head Start and a broad range of other federal anti-poverty programs,” declaring that “negroes” are “getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us since they’ve got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness….” and claimed further that his efforts would secure the vote of the “n****rs” for “200 years.”

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Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.- JD Vance
If you committed violence on that day, obviously, you shouldn’t be pardoned.- JD Vance on the J-6 insurrectionists

Lincoln clearly though slavery was morally wrong. And as for the second part, he wanted to grant full citizenship for all veterans. I believe he would have moved onto full citizenship for all former slaves eventually. Part of the problem was that Lincoln had limited experiences with black people in the early part of his life. If you are told from birth that a group is not as human as others I am guessing that you will likely believe it. It's similar to people accepting gay people after meeting some.

I just do not understand this attitude where Lincoln, would was killed for freeing the slaves, was not as good of a president as George Washington who owned hundreds of slaves and thought it was perfectly fine to continue this practice because Lincoln only freed the slaves for "political reasons".

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

The tail is wagging the dog in your exploration. That's what happens in these postdated analysis of the souls of people in history. The act matters far more than the word.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

It has always puzzled me why people are unwilling to see old Abe for who he really was. Furthermore, the theory that the great Abe's thoughts were hijacked by the time he lived in is absolutely ludicrous.

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How can your thoughts be anything other than the product of your experiences in the time you are living in?

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

Imagine this hypothetical- in 150 years the world views abortion as unquestionably to be murder. Then people like us disqualify any politician for supporting murder. Take those Presidents' names off of every building and wipe their accomplishments out of the history books. And there you have the problem with judging people in our time for what was acceptable in their own time.

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Hawaii (fuck) You