Maybe this is sacrilegious but I've often thought that

[mobeau69]

Lincoln left the South off too easily. Their representation in Congress should maybe have been delayed for at lest a generation or more. Of course we'll never know and it's a moot point but I do think about that.

Japan and Germany are not a problem. Trumpklanland has been for going on two hundred years.

[renegade000]

1. Well Lincoln didn't have much say...

Seeing as how he was shot immediately after the war ended. Grant agrees with your assessment though. Reconstruction became unpopular. They had their own contrarian-liberal faction back then too... Look up the election of 1872.

[mobeau69]

3. With malice toward none, with charity for all...

is what i think may have been a mistake.

[LSFL]

2. The leaders of the rebelliion should have been hung.

Letting them live lent credibilty to their cause and so called nation.

[struggle4progress]

4. It was a very big ugly family feud for much of the country

Lincoln's wife was an abolitionist, but her family were Southern slaveholders -- so everybody hated her

Stonewall Jackson's sister, Laura Jackson Arnold, was a Unionist and never spoke to her brother again after war broke out

And so on

The Army of Northern Virginia surrendered on 9 April; and Johnston surrendered to Sherman on 17 April; but Lincoln was assassinated on 14 April --- we don't really know how he would have handled the post-war era

[Warren DeMontague]

5. Yeah, there was far too much appeasement afterwards. Jim Crow, etc. was allowed to advance.

The pushback against reconstruction should have been stopped.

But you can't blame Lincoln for all that, he was dead.

[mobeau69]

6. Not blaming him for all that happened

but he may have been too generous in his 2nd inaugral address thinking the South would go back to being patriotic members of the Union.

The only good thing that's happened to the South since then is liberal Northerners moving down there. The place is full of trumpklans still fighting the war.

[Warren DeMontague]

7. Yeah, I mean obviously some people STILL aren't over it.

So I hear you. I think Lincoln was trying through his words to touch upon greater, timeless truths- "better angels of our virtue", that sort of thing. It was part of his genius.

But unfortunately the reality was ugly and in many ways still is.

[VOX]

8. Reconstruction did NOT address the salient issues...

With Lincoln out of the picture, very little federal help was given to freed slaves in the way of education (reading, writing, math), trade-skills instruction, or anything to assist their entry into the American mainstream.

Instead of "40 acres and a mule," there was segregation (in many Northern states as well); an entire people became "slaves without masters," cursed to slug it out for more than a century for mere crumbs of full citizenship and basic human respect.

Had Lincoln not been assassinated, Reconstruction might have been carried out much differently, to greater positive effect. All a sad mystery now.

[brush]

9. Most don't even want to consider it but you make a good argument for reparations

Think about it. After emancipation millions of formerly enslaved people were cast out into a hostile nation to try and make their way with but the shirts on their back after having worked from dawn to dusk making money for whoever "owned" them.

Of course that is not just injustice, it's inhumanity.

Our country still suffers from it to this day.

[VOX]

10. Precisely. It was, "Okay, you're free, now hit the road."

Which meant stepping from slavery to extensive segregation, in the North as well. IMO, it's as disingenuous to say the North fought to free the slaves as it is to say the South fought for state's rights.

With his Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln only freed the slaves in states that were in open rebellion. It didn't free slaves in the "border states" of Missouri, Maryland, Delaware and Kentucky, as Lincoln feared they might also secede if he did so. Lincoln's move was a calculated gambit, more for effect than out of compassion.

It's important to remember that, as horrible as the Southern states were by maintaining the slave trade, the Northern States weren't exactly welcoming. Blacks were lynched on the streets during the New York City draft riots. When Lincoln's Proclamation was made in January, 1863, there was significant desertion in the Union Army, particularly among units from the Midwest states.

An excellent source:
James M. McPherson, What They Fought For, 1861-1865, pages 62-68.