🎤 George Washington vs. Abraham Lincoln  vs.  The Greatest U.S. President on :

Okay, let the debate begin!

**Round 1**

**George Washington:** Gentlemen, the question of the greatest President, I suppose, is up for consideration again. I stand before you, not just as your first President, but as a man who led a nation to independence and laid the very foundation for this republic. A strong central government, judicious management of debt, and neutrality in foreign affairs were the cornerstones of my administration. These principles allowed a fledgling nation to survive and flourish. Surely, stability warrants significant consideration in this debate.

**Round 2**

**Abraham Lincoln:** Mr. Washington, a privilege to share the stage with the Father of Our Country. I agree that stability is crucial. However, merely maintaining what is, without addressing fundamental flaws, leaves us perpetually tethered to injustice. The question of greatest President, I submit, hinges on action, courage in the face of existential threat, and a willingness to heal deep wounds. It is about evolving our nation, not just preserving its current form. Maintaining stability when fundamental values were challenged was never the best course of action.

**Round 3**

**George Washington:** Mr. Lincoln, with all due respect, preserving the Union, vital as it was, involved tearing it apart. I sought unity through compromise. The Whiskey Rebellion tested our authority, yet we diffused it without wholesale bloodshed. The ability to prevent calamity through reasoned discourse should be paramount. War always has consequences. The ideal President works for peaceful, measured advancement, and building unity with many viewpoints, not bloodshed.

**Round 4**

**Abraham Lincoln:** Sir, your methods worked for a simpler time. The moral stain of slavery had festered and poisoned our republic. To ignore it in the name of compromise would have meant condemning millions to perpetual bondage, a moral degradation for our young nation that could never be forgotten. It was compromise that enabled the cancer of slavery to survive that could be overlooked for future generations. Some divisions, I’d contend, require stark surgery, no matter how painful the course of action must be.

**Round 5**

**George Washington:** But at what cost, Mr. Lincoln? A house divided cannot stand, as you so aptly put it, but must it be utterly demolished to be rebuilt? The loss of life, the destruction… were these not exorbitant prices to pay? And for what? To create two houses forever divided and angry, or to restore harmony at all, even a flawed version that we had initially began to construct. Such upheaval, when the price for survival has so much heartache and scars the land itself, are the ends justified.

**Round 6**

**Abraham Lincoln:** The cost, though terrible, secured liberty. I would say, what is a man, what is our republic, without it? To place an economic value on freedom would be a far more egregious evil. Moreover, the alternative — a permanently fractured nation with slavery enshrined in the South — would have represented a failure on an entirely different scale, not the healing balm for a nation’s division that was your approach. True healing is the only route forward. The disease had to be treated, lest it destroy the patient entirely.

**Round 7**

**George Washington:** And is the healing truly complete, Mr. Lincoln? Scars from such wounds last generations. The unity I forged after the Revolution faced disagreements, but was based on a consensus of shared purpose. Are these results from bloodshed better when measured with the test of time? My objective was always one: establishing self-government. The end of slavery has left far-reaching and deep problems to confront which continue to trouble our house in America today.

**Round 8**

**Abraham Lincoln:** Time, indeed, is the ultimate arbiter. Yet, to suggest slavery would have withered away without a decisive break is naïve, I dare say. Did any planter want to change or allow changes? We are a grand experiment, one always becoming better. Is justice served for some and withheld for others truly America? And, I’m aware Reconstruction remains unfinished, but it began precisely so your fears, regarding lasting division, should come untrue with time. My objective: a new birth of freedom for all men to be treated the same under God and within law.

**Round 9**

**George Washington:** "Becoming better" presupposes there's a path predetermined, which our path in this republic, with freedom of thought, always had many different pathways from day to day. I am certain and secure with freedom to know my neighbors might see issues different. Justice does not need perfection or force when it arises from compromise. Your path has proven divisiveness over progress and reconciliation as far too often the ends have failed to justify the methods required. In securing one freedom, other liberties were ignored.

**Round 10**

**Abraham Lincoln:** My path acknowledged imperfection, and the cost it will exact. I never supposed perfection, or absolute solutions. Progress isn’t pre-ordained; it requires active choice, a conscious turning toward what’s right, even when difficult. Is that turning what has improved the trajectory toward growth and opportunity as envisioned? Ultimately, I return to my core belief: preserving liberty requires action, courage, and a willingness to confront the deepest moral failings that this nation has always struggled against and still struggles to resolve within ourselves. Only in doing so does the experiment of America have merit to pursue!