Reply #6: # 1 to me is Lincoln

[Yupster]

demanding a quota of militia from each state to be used to put down the seven seceeded states in 1861.

Aside from the fact that the president calling forth the militia is blaantly unconstitutional, Lincoln's blunder forced the eight slave states which had not seceeded to choose sides.

Before Lincoln's call only South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas had seceeded.

There were eight slave states which had not.

They were Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas and Missouri.

Of those Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee were by far the most important because of their large populations.

Whether to secede or not was a hard call in all of those states, but without them the Confederacy would not be able to field an army that could challenge the USA. Of the seceded states, only Georgia had any appreciable population at all.

In fact, Tennessee had just held a special popular vote on whether to call a secession convention, and the vote was a narrow "no".

Then Lincoln makes in my opinion the biggest blunder that any president has ever made. He demands that each of those states provide troops for the invasion of the Cofederacy and gives each state a quota.

That forced each state to make up its mind. Tennessee quickly held another vote and voted 80-20 to leave the country. So did Virginia, and Arkansas and Noth Carolina went too. Kentucky declared its neutrality but along with Missouri had congressional representation in both countries during the war. Delaware stayed and Maryland called a meeting of the legislature but the pro-secession legislators were arrested which ended that problem.

Anyway, Lincoln's blunder turned the Civil War into our largest bloodbath.

Imagine a Civil War where Robert E Lee, JEB Stuart, Stonewall Jackson, Dick Ewell, Jubal Early, AP Hill, etc all fought for the Union? It would have been a much smaller and shorter war.

And by the way, what state lost the most men in the Civil War? North Carolina. The last state to join the Confederacy, thanks to Lincoln's Bush-like diplomacy.

I can't believe the historians missed this one which to me is the clear # 1.