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The Lincoln regime destroyed the system of federalism, or states' rights, that was established by the founding fathers. After the war, the union was no longer voluntary, and all states, North and South, became mere appendages of Washington, DC. Lincoln illegally suspended the writ of habeas corpus and imprisoned tens of thousands of political dissenters without due process; waged total war with the bombing, plundering, and mass murder of some 50,000 of his own citizens; signed ten tariff-raising bills; imposed heavy "sin taxes" on alcohol and tobacco; introduced the first federal income-tax and military-conscription laws; introduced an internal-revenue bureaucracy for the first time; executed thousands of accused deserters from the army; shut down hundreds of opposition newspapers in the Northern states; went off the gold standard and nationalized the money supply; introduced massive corporate-welfare schemes; deported an opposition member of Congress; and exploded the public debt, among other sins. By "targeting and butchering [Southern] civilians," Murray Rothbard wrote in his essay, "America's Two Just Wars: 1775 and 1861" (in John Denson, ed., The Costs of War), "Lincoln and Grant and Sherman paved the way for all the genocidal horrors of the monstrous 20th century." They "opened the Pandora's Box of genocide and the extermination of civilians …"
http://mises.org/daily/4887/The-Great-Ce...in-America
According to the article Lincoln was one of the most reviled presidents of the time. Only due to hagiography, or basically making him into a saint with revision, is he considered such a hero today.What I quoted would not make him that popular. And it seems like he was the one of the first that brought on the centralized government rather than Woodrow Wilson who I thought was the first.
As for the topic of state rights, which was mentioned briefly in the gay marriage thread overriding the red states. This allowance of the federal government to override individual states rights must have originated with Lincoln.