If the end brings me out all right, then what is said against me won’t matter. If I’m wrong, ten angels swearing I was right won’t make a difference.
Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln was ever the realist. He understood that his reputation in his time and in History, relied upon which side won the Civil War. Historians have to guard against the strong temptation to decide that because History ultimately followed a certain path, that this course of History was inevitable.
Well into 1864, certainly into August of that year, Lincoln was presiding over a vast and bloody conflict that often seemed to be a losing one. The Union was making progress, but at a dreadful cost in lives. A lesser man would have bowed to the pressure and “Let the Erring Sisters go.” That Lincoln did not, is his true claim to greatness.
