Trav's arguments are just nonsensical. Let's see his main thesis.
1) Trav argues that Lincoln was a very nice guy, a true constitutionalist, not a tyrant. If you EXCLUDE the period of time when he was president, you won't find him defending anything that was against the Constitution.
OK, nice. Isn't that true of almost any president? For instance, find a quote of George W. Bush in which he says civil liberties should be evaporated. I guess you problably won't find any such quote. So, if we EXCLUDE the precise moment in which Bush fought strongly against civil liberties, if we exclude his presidency, I guess we should have to conclude that Bush was a strict defender of the Constitution.
This is Trav's argument: if you exclude all violations of the Constitution that Lincoln promoted, than we must conclude that he was a true defender of the Constitution!
2) Lincoln couldn't negotiate with the confederates, because, ABOVE ALL, he was a constitutionalist and was securing the deeds of the Founding Fathers -- says Trav. On the other hand, when questioned about Lincoln's actions during the war, he said all he did is understandable -- although he says he doesn't agree with everything Lincoln did -- in light of the circumstances.
Agains, this argument is just LOGICAL BS. If Lincoln was a principled man, that put his oath to the Constitution ABOVE ANYTHING -- and Trav has said this explicitly --, than he could not violate the Constitution EVEN during wartime. On the other hand, if he could put his principles aside during war, WHY couldn't he do the SAME THING before, AVOIDING the war?
In other words, it's simply not true that Lincoln was forced to don't negotiate because he was all about principles. The war proves this is false. On the other hand, it's clear that, if this was the case, then he would have put his principles aside to commit evil, but wouldn't do the same to avoid the greatest war of all time until then!
3) Anytime Trav reads an objection to which he has no answer, he comes with this response: "well, you must love slavery".
This is just ad hominem. No, Trav, if you don't support Lincoln's dictatorship, it doesn't mean you are for slavery. A lot of people in America seems blind to this, but slavery ended all over the world without war. In my country, Brazil, for instance, we had a process of ending slavery since 1850 until it finally was abolished peacefully in 1888. And, note this, slavery was an institution more important in Brazil than in America. First, there were many more slaves here than there -- the proportion of blacks in Brazilian population in much greater than in America. Second, almost all economic activities in Brazil used slaves. And, third, contrary to what happens in US, here in Brazil we really don't have a tradition of upholding liberty.
To state it in another way, if we managed to abolish slavery peacefully here in Brazil, in a much worse circumstance, there's no reason at all to think that slavery would be prolonged for much longer. And, as a result, we don't have much of an interracial problem here in Brazil. In fact, black racism is growing right now, because Brazilian blacks are trying to copy America's way of fighting racism.
