🚀 go-pugleaf

"Seymour Bigby-Heinz" <sbutz@crock.o-stuff> wrote in message 
news:ojheg2d4ld9k9bv3aufk4fv62uhqq3gf2h@4ax.com...
> On Tue, 12 Sep 2006 21:58:23 GMT, hchickpea@hotmail.com wrote:
>
>>As you probably know, the civil war wasn't as
>>much about slavery as the power of the central government, an issue
>>which had been unresolved, or at least untested,  since the
>>revolutionary war.
>
> Confederate sympathizer, huh?  The importance of slavery in the Civil
> War depends upon the individual answering the question. Different
> people were fighting the war for different reasons.  For wealthy White
> Southerners, the war may have been almost entirely about slavery.  The
> same goes for African-Americans, both North and South.  For poor,
> non-slave-owning White Southerners, slavery might have been less
> important, as long as they retained lynching rights.
>
> The simple fact of the matter remains: if the Confederacy had won,
> slavery would have continued. Because of the motivation of the Black
> troops who entered service in the latter part of the war, one might
> justifiably say that slavery had less influence on the starting of the
> Civil War than it had on the winning of the Civil War.
>

a great book on the reasons lincoln started the civil war is:

the real lincoln   by thomas dilorenzo
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=br_ss_hs/103-7402952-1763845?platform=gurupa&url=index%3Dstripbooks%3Arelevance-above&keywords=the+real+lincoln

frm the reviews:

"Lincoln's defenders often employ the slander that criticizing the Great 
Emancipator is the moral equivalent of defending slavery.  But history shows 
that slavery ended around the world during that era, and no place required 
the bloody war Lincoln waged. DiLorenzo proves that throughout his life, up 
to and including the War, Lincoln's driving force was his devotion to Henry 
Clay's 'American System' of internal improvement, nationalized banking, and 
a powerful central government. As DiLorenzo shows, a confederacy of states 
exercising their (previously unquestioned) right to secession would have 
been an intolerable obstacle to Lincoln's driving ambition."

"The American System was a platform of three planks. 1. Protective tariffs, 
read high taxes and protectionist trade barriers. 2. Internal improvements, 
read welfare for business. 3. Central bank, read welfare for federal 
government. This was Lincoln's vision. Don't all tyrants have a vision? To 
this end Lincoln didn't mind subjugating the North, using the North's 
resources and lives to subjugate the South, killing over six hundred 
thousand Americans in the process, poisoning race relations for over a 
century, and destroying the unique form of government bequeathed to us by 
our founding fathers. Well you can't make an omelet without breaking a few 
eggs, can you? What an omelet indeed!"

"(1) Lincoln basically allowed an unnecessary and horribly bloody war to 
occur in order to further his political vision of a strong state;
(2) Lincoln was a "constitutional dictator";
(3) Lincoln was never terribly concerned with slavery as a moral injustice."

"William Manchester used the phrase 'American Caesar' to describe General 
Douglas MacArthur, but it applies much more fittingly to Abraham Lincoln, 
America's first (and God willing only) full-fledged military dictator. The 
gravedigger of the U.S. Constitution, Lincoln buried the founders' Union as 
completely as Lenin buried the Romanovs. And like Lenin, Lincoln built an 
empire on bayonets, brutality, and centralized power. As historian Richard 
Bensel (quoted by Thomas DiLorenzo in the introduction to this book) wrote, 
any student of the American state should begin his reading with 1865. 
Whatever happened before then no longer has any relevance."

"This book not only tells about how Abraham Lincoln influenced what this 
country has become, but it connects the dots from the big government 
Hamiltonian Federalists to the Federalist Party to the Whigs and finally the 
Republicans of the 1860s, to show how the US strayed from the freedom that 
was our birthright."

"The Real Lincoln" is a fast paced easy to read three hundred plus pages 
chock full of fascinating history. It is a panoramic expose' of America's 
first and (up to now) only tyrant. If you grew up as I did believing that 
Abraham Lincoln was one of the three greatest American presidents and that 
the Civil War was fought to free the slaves, hang on to your hats; you'll 
never be the same again after reading DiLorenzo's book."