T hat debate is surprisingly passionate in Maryland, which remained loyal to the Union but only after Lincoln imprisoned a good portion of the General Assembly to head off a secession vote. In the previous chapter we discussed the early stages of the North American War of Secession of 1861-63 as the minority Lincoln government attempted to suppress the legal secession of the Southern United States by military invasion. In this chapter we will discuss the conclusion of the war and some of its consequences. Both Presidents oversaw huge wars that were successfully prosecuted on the battlefield. Churchill had the same post-war battlefield advantage, and he therefore looms large in the textbooks.
Victors write the history textbooks.
Based upon his historical record, Lincoln would have had those members of the Georgia Legislature who supported the old flag arrested and imprisoned without trial. In 1861, when the Maryland Legislature was about to ponder the question of secession, the president had the suspected pro-Southern members of that body locked up and thrown into Fort McHenry without trial. After the fall of the Roman Republic, the citizens of Rome were encouraged to worship their caesars as gods. The United States is little different. The true legacy of Lincoln usually gets drowned in the perennial gush about a president whose name is synonymous with freedom and the end of slavery.