THE CIVIL WAR: THE TRUE STORY BOOK 1

SIX BIG LIES ABOUT ABRAHAM LINCOLN, THE SLAVES AND THE WAR

SIX BIG LIES ABOUT ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
THE SLAVES AND THE WAR

by Chris Leithner

The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know. Almost everything that Americans in general and Republicans in particular think they know about Lincoln is a toxic mixture of myths, distortions and wicked lies.(1)

Founded in 1854, the Republican Party rose to prominence and power when its nominee, Abraham Lincoln, won the presidential election of 1860. To this day, many people regard it as the "Party of Lincoln" and historians and the general public have long considered Lincoln, next only to Washington, as America's greatest president (see also "Rating the Presidents" by Pat Buchanan and "Down With the Presidency" by Lew Rockwell).

   The first big lie, which is universally believed, is that Lincoln, dubbed the "Great Emancipator" by his cult of worshippers, went to war in order to free slaves. The abhorrence of racial injustice and the desire to abolish slavery played no role in the Union's determination to strangle the Confederacy in its cradle. What did? One factor was Lincoln's determination to preserve the Union at any cost – including the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. In 1862, Lincoln wrote to Horace Greeley (the leading Northern newspaperman of the day): "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it."

Similarly, in 1861 Congress resolved that the purpose of the war was not "[to interfere] with the rights or established institutions of those states," but to preserve the Union "with the rights of the several states unimpaired." On the day that hostilities commenced at Fort Sumter (12 April 1861), only the seven states of the Deep South had seceded, there were more slaves within the Union than outside it and Lincoln hadn't the slightest intention to free any of them. Alexis de Tocqueville's observation in Democracy in America (1835-40) remained true: "The prejudice of race appears to be stronger in the states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists."

Another factor that motivated war was the Republican Party's lust (which, with few and brief exceptions, it has retained to the present day) to tax and spend. The North waged war against the South in order to regain the federal tax revenue that would be lost if the Southern states seceded peacefully.(2) Republicans were then, and remain today, a Party of Big Government. In Lincoln's time, Republicans championed a high (i.e., protectionist) tariff. They used the proceeds – which were laundered through roads, canals, railways, etc. – to dispense lavish corporate welfare to their backers. To Republicans, the fact that tariffs, corporate welfare and the like favoured an anointed few (whose residences, factories, etc., were overwhelmingly in the North) and punished a benighted many (Southerners were mostly "outs" rather than "ins") was inconsequential. What was essential, however, was that consumers, Southern as well as Northern, subsidise Republicans' wealthy backers. Southerners' unwillingness to subjugate themselves to Republicans ultimately drove them to secede.

In Lincoln's view, only by keeping the Union intact – by force of arms if necessary – could Republicans' lust to tax, dispense largesse and build an empire be sated. In his First Inaugural Address (4 March 1861), Lincoln threatened to invade any state that failed to collect federal "duties and imposts." On 19 April, he rationalised his order to blockade Southern ports on the grounds that "the collection of the revenue cannot be effectually executed" in the states that had seceded.(3)

Lincoln the racist
A second wicked lie is that Lincoln championed natural rights and racial equality. Both his words and his deeds utterly repudiated any belief in or respect for these admirable principles. "I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races," he announced in the first (21 August 1858) of his celebrated debates with Stephen Douglas. Like many and perhaps most other men of his time and place, Lincoln was an unapologetic and irredeemable racist: "I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favour of the race to which I belong having the superior position." He added "Free them [slaves] and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this. We cannot, then, make them equals."