Filling in the gaps in the Lincoln lore would not be complete without his rap sheet of civil liberties abuses. Like Bill Clinton, Lincoln conducted a war without the consent of Congress. He declared martial law, confiscated private property, suspended habeas corpus, imprisoning about 30,000 Northern citizens and 31 legislators without trial, censored telegraph lines, and shut down newspapers for opposing the war. The ignoble institute of slavery dissolved relatively uneventfully in most slave societies around that time, with only Haiti and the U.S. resorting to violence. This makes Lincoln's victory a pyrrhic one indeed.
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