After much deliberation, and quietly following this entire thread, I have decided I will be making an endorsement based in part on answering the following question.
Question:
Of these options, which (in your opinion, based on historical evidence) best describes Abraham Lincoln?
-Institutionalist focused on preserving the constitution
-Poltical pragmatist focused on navigating currents
-Aggressive political radical
-Racially driven moral crusader
-None of the above (explain)
I believe it is important for the first President of the War Room to be able to demonstrate the ability to analyze history and critically evaluate different approaches to understanding important figures.
I think to some degree he was all of those things. He was a moderate by the standards of the time. He absolutely hated and opposed slavery. He openly opposed the war with Mexico as a Member of the House because he saw it as an American expanionist venture with the objective of illegally adding more territory to slave holding states. Lincoln was completely morally opposed to Slavery, but he was more concerned with the preservation of the Union, and thus the Constitution, than he was with the ending of slavery. He was at the same time just as opposed to the spread of it, at least early in his political career.
He was also very obviously a political pramatist who understood his situation, both prior to the election, and after the war started. You can see this in the numerous pure political appointments he made within the military itself, and with the way the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. Lincoln didn't have a lot of Political friends, even after winning the Presidency. He was always keenly aware of whose head he needed to pat and whose he needed to thump. The upper echelons of the Military were filled early in the war by men who hadn't served a day in the military prior to the war, all of them appointed by Lincoln. He did this to curry favor with people who would otherwise cause him lots of problems. If you know or read anything about the Irish during this time period, much of the actual enlisted ranks of the Union Army was made up at the time by fresh Irish immigrants who were for the most part staunch Democrats. Lincoln worked very hard to secure the good will and personal admiration of Thomas Francis Maher, the General in charge of the Irish Brigade who was himself a Democrat and an Irish Revolutionary who dreamed of forming the Irish into a fighting unit that would learn to fight in the organized, European style in the Civil War, return to Ireland and overthrow the English Government. Lincoln mercilessly exploited and propogandized the links between the Irish history of oppression in England to the history of oppression of the African Slaves in the US, all to keep a massive Democrat population of immigrants fighting and dying against other Democrats on behalf of a Republican President.
You can also see his pragmatism in the way he handled the Emancipation Proclamation. The Proclamation was finalized and presented to the Confederates in September of 1862, it wasn't issued until January of 1863. It was intended as a warning, as a last chance for the Confederates to end this foolishness, come back to the Union and keep their slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation affected only the Confederate States, it didn't affect the slave states that had stayed part of the Union. It was a final warning to either accept, or there will be no resolution other than a destruction of your way of life, of total war until one side or the other is finished.
Lastly, I think Lincoln was a bit of a private Political Radical. I think he honestly felt the things that he said, that he believed that if he could preserve the Union by keeping Slavery here and ending it there, that he would. I think he knew in his heart that there was no way that would ever work, and that war at some level was going to be neccessary to end the system as it currently stood. While I don't believe he wanted that, I believe he accepted that and prepared for it even while trying to do his best to prevent it. That in my mind is further proof of his pragmatism.
