I recommend this engaging and moving short series about the character and achievements of Abraham Lincoln during his presidency.
I was afraid that it would be an exercise in historical distortion of the kind to which we have recently become accustomed (the New History of Capitalism, Critical Race Theory, etc.). I was pleasantly surprised.
Apart from a couple of perfunctory nods to the Woke, the commentary, from a large selection of current historians of diverse demographic, was professional, eloquent, and competent, driven by what I see as the fundamental values that we Americans should hold dear - seeing those values as articulated in the Declaration as the very opposite of the institution of slavery, but as universal values applicable to humans - not as culturally bound. And the tone of the comments was inspiring, appealing to the judgement of our better angels, not to our divisive devils (sorry I could not resist).
There were some necessary revisions away from the often superficial interpretations that have come down to us. In particular the role of free black Americans and former slaves was highlighted - the amazing Frederic Douglas of course standing out. In some ways Douglas was as essential to emancipation as Lincoln was.
I have two little criticisms, one minor and the other about something very important, but not an important part of this series.
Concerning the question of how and why slavery was able to last about 100 years after the revolution that espoused and embraced valued completely antithetical to it - even while slavery was abolished all across our neighbors in Latin America decades earlier. This was not analyzed. You can only do so much.
Though the answer is complex, I think it has much to do with the different incentives motivating North and South. Slavery was much more important economically in the USA that it was in Latin America, and the slave states were politically empowered by the notorious three-fifths rule. While a majority of people in the North (at least at first) were in favor of abolition (The Northern states included among them the earliest "countries" to abolish slavery), they were fighting for an ideal; the people in the South perceived themselves as fighting an existential war for their "property" and "way of life". No contest. How this was turned around is a story worth telling.
A more important point. Once slavery was abolished the question became how to heal and how to reform. A couple of the historians inserted some very brief remarks about how freedom had been obtained but equality had not, and that the task now turned to ensuring equality as well as freedom.
Though no analysis followed one cannot help but see this as an invitation to go down the path to top down coercive social policies designed to produce "equality of outcomes" rather than achieving and enforcing "equality under the rule of law". There is in our current discourse a profound confusion about what "equality" (and more recently "equity") means and should mean. In fact, it was lack of clarity of this that resulted in the horror and tragedy of the Jim Crow era which maintained the deep and violent racial bigotry that underlay slavery. Though bigotry cannot be legislated away, laws designed to empower bigotry could have been outlawed - just as similar laws can now. Jim Crow could not have survived under a system of limited government of open markets. There is absolutely no recognition of this in this otherwise commendable series. And that is a pity, because people will inevitably draw the wrong conclusions about necessary next steps.
