The enormous amount of civil war documentation (not later historian interpretation) available to the public shows what the Northern and Southern politicians, organizations and citizens did and said before, during and after the war. In researching my history as a black woman, I’ve studied thousands of these documents, so I know for a fact that the North wasn’t all good and the South wasn’t all bad. My family is from Mississippi, and ironically when the slaves were freed my relatives and other former slaves stayed on at the plantation well after the Reconstruction era ended because my great-grandfather and his family were fair and supported his former slaves. Even as a Christian I have to reconcile my Lord and slavery in the New Testament.

But the reason why he was great is because ultimately he held unity and equality of the people as higher priorities than his own personal bias, prejudice and racism. His country was falling apart then, just as it is today, and he knew there would be discontent on both sides no matter what solution he came up with. Like today, politicians and corporations then had agendas and reasons for going to war and satisfying their self-interests, but the end result was still war regardless who had the higher moral ground to stand on. Even amongst slaves, abolitionists, and northern citizens, their reports, letters and other statements documented differ drastically from each other although they were all technically on the same side.

Please let’s stop butting heads and acknowledge that there was good and bad on BOTH sides, including Lincoln himself, but more importantly what Lincoln wanted us all to have in common to overcome these divisions is that we are citizens of the UNITED states of america. Let’s dialogue for togetherness instead of debate for separation.