Of course, by its very nature an exercise such as this must be speculative. Trying to gain enough distance from our own time and personal convictions to evaluate these people is an extremely difficult task and may not be altogether possible. Your comments about Metternich vs. Lincoln illustrate the difficulty and BTW, I am not so sure that all of Europe would agree with your assessment.
I wanted to emphasize that since one cannot time travel, there must be an underlying theory to support the evaluations, right or wrong. On Metternich, however, enough time has elapsed: the Congress of Vienna was a holding action, the settlement that he achieved based on the principle of legitimacy exploded, and the Ancien Regime that he defended was swept away, within a hundred years. The Union was saved, freedom was more or less vindicated, and the United States was placed in a position to play its historic role in the 20th century, all essentially because of the will of Lincoln, and his persistence, in the face of military incompetence, in rallying the Union and seeking the generals necessary to accomplish the task of putting down rebellion.... |
