Lincoln a better was president than vet Davis?https://twitter.com/Mdiesel16/status/1420237577429336066 …
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Replying to @RBrookhiser
The two greatest contributing factors to the North's victory in the American Civil War, by far, were that Lincoln presided over the Union and that Davis presided over the Confederacy.
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Replying to @hulsey_ryan @RBrookhiser
But anyone in 1861 who examined the credentials of Lincoln & Davis would have expected the opposite to prove true: Davis was the West Point graduate and former Secretary of War, while Lincoln was a frontier autodidact who tried & failed to lead militia during the Black Hawk War.
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Replying to @hulsey_ryan @RBrookhiser
Davis's resume was ideal for a wartime President, much as James Buchanan's resume was ideal for a peacetime President. The mid-19th century in America was, among other things, an age of highly credentialed incompetence, and the calamity of the Civil War exposed it all.
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Replying to @hulsey_ryan @RBrookhiser
Anybody who actually knew the records of Davis before 1861 & Buchanan before 1857 could have told you they were the wrong men for those jobs, though. Experience matters, but so does your record & demonstrated character.
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Replying to @baseballcrank @RBrookhiser
Nobody saw that with Buchanan. He'd been involved with all levels of government & served with distinction wherever he had been. And aside from a bit of silliness involving eggnog at West Point, there were no blemishes on Davis's character: Davis's military record was excellent.
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You couldn't ask for more ostentatiously qualified establishment men than Buchanan & Davis. They were Emerson's "city dolls," while Lincoln was the "sturdy lad" who "tries all the professions [...] teams it, farms it, peddles [...] and always, like a cat, falls on his feet."
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Davis' record showed him to be an inflexible man addicted to petty quarrels. Buchanan's showed him to be an inveterate schemer. Qualified, yes. But the wrong men for the jobs.
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