I’d guess to bring the other slave states into the confederacy.
I’m not saying that Slavery was not important. But to say that the Civil War was about slavery is like saying the Revolution was about taxes. It misses the greater context.
Lets get to refuting this terribly supported article by cherry picking a little.
In order for any emancipation scheme to peacefully have worked it would either have required the people and leadership of the Southern states to concede that slavery was wrong and needed to be done away with (which they most emphatically did not, quite the reverse, by 1861 it was not a radical opinion in the South to claim that slavery was a “positive good”) or at least for them to accept the ability of the federal government to regulate the issue, even against their wishes (which they were even more emphatically against).
False. If the South had been allowed to secede slavery would still have been abolished. This thinking suffers from a common historical pitfall: that since the Federal Government brought about the end of (private) slavery the Federal Government is required for slavery to end. The Civil War was a sufficient condition to end slavery, but it was not necessary condition.
Ironically, the Union enabled slavery. If the South had never joined slavery would not have existed by the 1860s.
Lincoln was not even inaugurated into the presidency before the entire lower south “seceded” and Jefferson Davis was in “office” as President of the so-called “Confederate States of America.” The spark with which the war began was not Lincoln marching an army into the South to restore order as certain of his predecessors would have most certainly done, but was the bombardment of a federal fort by the rebels. To have not responded at that moment with the use of force would have been to concede that the government did not have the right to govern and protect its own property, what sort of government would that have been? It would have been no government at all, and therein lies what Mr. Paul was most likely going for.
Another historical pitfall: because the war began at Fort Sumter, Fort Sumter caused the civil war. The fort is only federal property unless you presume that secession was illegal. The war began when the Union refused to acknowledge the secession.
Otherwise, this statement is a blatant contradiction, how could Lincoln wage war to enhance and simultaneously get rid of the original intent of the republic?
Obviously this author doesn’t make the distinction between government by force and government by consent.
Perfectly said.
I agree; I was just trying to be devil’s advocate. Also, isn’t it ironic that the Lincoln cult ignores that Robert E. Lee opposed slavery?
From where did you get Lee opposed slavery?
That article is slander. You might want to go back and peruse the reader comments under it.
Lee did free his father in law’s slaves. The terms of Custis’s will could not overrule Virginia law which required that in order to manumit a slave it had to be demonstrated that the slave was able to support himself. This was to prevent slave owners from dumping slaves when they got old or crippled. Lee had to give money to many of the slaves in order to meet those requirements. Also, Custis died leaving debts and the slaves were considered attachable property. If Lee had simply manumitted the slaves immediately the creditors would have sued to have the manumissions canceled and the slaves seized.
Grant acquired slaves during the war and did not free them until the 13th amendment was passed (ie. even after Lincoln supposedly made the war “about slavery”).
when did we decide that governments speak for the peoples actions?
I strongly recommend these two Lincoln books:
http://amateureconblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/quick-book-review-lincoln-unmasked.html