The war did not take us out of the depression, the civil war was not about slavery, the union did not raise the standard of living, etc - alternate interpretations of US history.
What about other countries? Are there other libertarian studies of history interpretations in other countries?
Not in my part of the woods. There are no libertarian historians to begin with so there is no specifically libertarian alternative view.
But that is not to say people have acess to only one interpretation of history either. Just the opposite, particularly on 20th century history, there is quite the variety of views.
rosstaylor: the civil war was not about slavery
I disagree, there wouldn’t have been a question of state’s rights without slavery.
The states had many heated regional disagreements both before and after, but none resulted in war.
WIthout slavery, passions are not incited to the level that led to war.
I hope you are kidding. According to us Austrians, the civil war was not even a civil war. It was a war of secession. It was not about slavery (mainly). The south was taxed more than the north. What the war was about was consolidating power, creating a stronger union.
Read Tom Woods’ work.
rosstaylor: I hope you are kidding. According to us Austrians, the civil war was not even a civil war. It was a war of secession. It was not about slavery (mainly). The south was taxed more than the north. What the war was about was consolidating power, creating a stronger union.
Read Tom Woods’ work.
I am aware of Tom’s work, he is wrong.
I mean srsly. dude. If the war wasn’t about slavery why do you think that all of the states that seceeded happened to be slave states ? Coincidence ?
And if oppressive taxation was the causa belli, then why start a war that was several orders of magnitude more costly in both human and economic terms then decades of supposedly unfair tax policy?
The truth is that the more statist a regime, the more Tom hates it. And this pretty much drives all of his prose. I mean the guy thinks the Constitution is a joke. Thats not the type of dude I look to for an objective opinion on American history.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Tom’s attacks on statists, but you have to admit both him and Lew got alterior motives when they start attacking anything statist.
even if the south left over slavery, the north aggressed in order to get them to come back. still a war of succession and of states rights and of oppressive central government etc. BTW slavery is bad, just shoulda bought the slave holders off.
Slavery was certainly the main spark of secession, particularly as a symbol of the North’s political dominance over the South. The main goal of the war was to bring the southern states under the power of the central government, with the issue of slavery to be decided afterwards (and with the South crushed).
Incidentally if Lincoln had lived, it’s entirely possible that most of the former slaves would have been sent to Africa. Lincoln firmly believed that Europeans and Africans could not live side by side peacefully. John Wilkes Booth ensured that the former slaves were allowed to remain in the USA.
Why does this guy assume Austrians (a school of economic thought) all agree on a Rothbardian’s analysis of history? He wouldn’t be the first Rothbardian to deliberately twist facts to fit his agenda (Rothbard was the first, after all).
Slavery played a role, but it wasn’t the only big factor. Denying that it mattered at all is just intellectually dishonest.