Lincoln claimed the North was fighting to preserve the Union. However, fighting to preserve a voluntary Union is a contradiction since force is antithetical to voluntary consent. Alexander Hamilton noted: “To coerce the States is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised…Can any reasonable man be well disposed toward a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself; a government that can exist only by the sword?” The New England power structure did just that. The South, with its culture of individualism and dominant Christian faith, was to be subdued.
The Northern Government/Corporate alliance that opposed maintenance of the original voluntary federal republic of sovereign States was multi-faceted and included tactics/agendas that discourage, rather than encourage unity. Examples include:
Lincoln refused to negotiate peace. Every effort the South made for compromise before and during the war was rebuffed.
Lincoln and Grant introduced total war on American soil through William T. Sherman, Phil Sheridan, John Basil Turchin, and others. Making total war on women, children, and other noncombatants is barbaric as is slaughtering animals and stealing and/or destroying private property. President Harry Truman, a descendant of Missouri Confederates, was told by his mother to check the White House silverware because it was probably theirs (the Trumans).
Karl Marx, Frederich Engels and others philosophically similar supported Lincoln. The predominantly German Socialist “48ers” were thrown out of power in the 1840s. Many moved to the Midwest and became a powerful Republican voting bloc.
Lincoln violated the constitution in multiple ways: Coercion, Violation of International Law and constitutional laws of neutrality, illegal suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, blockading ports still claimed to be in the Union, the “war measure” known as the Emancipation Proclamation, the illegal creation of the State of West Virginia, violation of the First Amendment (shutting down anti-war newspapers and arresting American citizens for exercising their free speech rights), illegal invasion of the State of Maryland, and violation of the Fugitive Slave Law.
Lincoln’s government made medicine and medical supplies contraband of war. Thomas Bland Keys states: “From early 1861 throughout the war, the Lincoln Administration kept all medicines and medical supplies in the list of contraband of war, and would not permit their importation into the Confederacy, if it could prevent it. Even existing supplies in the hands of private physicians were destroyed when located. Not only did wounded and sick Confederate soldiers and civilians suffer terribly as a result, but so did thousands of Union soldiers held in Southern prison camps, including such prisons as Andersonville, Libby, Belle Isle, Salisbury, Florence, and others. It is interesting to note that such action today would be an atrocity.” (Department of the Army Field Manual No. 27-10 (July, 1956), The Law of Land Warfare, Para. 234.)
Although supplies were plentiful in most Union prisons, captured Confederates were abused. At Andersonville, Confederates received the same rations as the Yankee prisoners.
The Union recruited approximately half a million foreign immigrants and/or mercenaries. A “righteous cause” would not have to recruit foreigners. According to Robert C. Wood, the numbers were: “Germans 176,800; Irish 144,200; British-Americans 53,500; English 45,500; Others 74,900. This makes a total of 494,900.” Confederate troops commonly fought “Yankees” who did not speak English. (Confederate General Richard Taylor referenced this fact.) The 494,000 foreigners plus 186,017 Blacks (680,917), equaled almost the total Southern force, which was perhaps as high as 800,000. The South was often outnumbered three to one or worse.
No post-war redemption of currency. With Confederate money relegated to a worthless status, Southerners were further punished for the “crime” of believing in self-government and defending their homes against an invasion.
Lincoln, a corporate lawyer and mercantilist, stated in 1832: “My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance…I am in favor of a national bank…the internal improvements system, and a high protective tariff.” Those were the interests he served throughout his career.
It is alleged that Great Britain pushed for the U.S. to be split into two regions to dilute power. If true, that should have been an incentive for Lincoln to compromise and listen to Southern grievances instead of waging war. Post-war, the South received no “Marshall Plan” but was instead placed under martial law and a significant number of ex-Confederates were not allowed to vote. Taxes were raised and property devalued. Outside vultures (Carpetbaggers) and their equally sinister Southern counterparts (Scalawags) purchased depressed property and continued to pillage the South. The South’s generational hatred of the Republican Party is easy to understand.
Lincoln did not preserve the Union—he transformed it by centralizing the powers of the general government, diluting the power of the States, setting the precedent to invade and destroy any State seeking independence, and helping to create the “Imperial Presidency.”
Originally published at the Alabama Gazette.
The views expressed at abbevilleinstitute.org are not necessarily those of the Abbeville Institute.
Your first sentence says it all;
“Lincoln claimed the North was fighting to preserve the Union. However, fighting to preserve a voluntary Union is a contradiction since force is antithetical to voluntary consent.”
Great article!
John M. Taylor:
“Lincoln claimed the North was fighting to preserve the Union. However, fighting to preserve a voluntary Union is a contradiction since force is antithetical to voluntary consent.”
Which is why Lincoln took away free speech on April 27 of 1861, with the following rationale:
“Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert? I think in such a case to silence the agitator and save the boy is not only constitutional, but withal, a great mercy.”
And as George Washington’s warned that the people would be led, dumb and silent, like sheep to the slaughter, if this were to happen; to show that George never told a lie, people thus believed Lincoln’s false claim on July 4 of 1861, that 1) the Union was NOT a voluntary international union among separate sovereign nations, but a compulsory national union; on the allegation that 2) that no state except Texas was EVER a sovereign nation:
‘What is a “sovereignty” in the political sense of the term? Would it be far wrong to define it “a political community without a political superior”? Tested by this, no one of our States, except Texas, ever was a sovereignty; and even Texas gave up the character on coming into the Union, by which act she acknowledged the Constitution of the United States and the laws and treaties of the United States made in pursuance of the Constitution to be for her the supreme law of the land. The States have their status in the Union, and they have no other legal status. If they break from this, they can only do so against law and by revolution.’
–President Lincoln, July 4, 1861: July 4th Message to Congress
When in reality, every state was always a sovereignty (i.e. a separate sovereign nation); as I prove in my article here: https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/state-sovereignty/
And thus this historical fact wholly invalidates the US government’s claim of national union over any state; thereby allowing each state and citizen to now challenge the USA’s legal claim of national union over it— as shown at my website TakeBackSovereignty.com
Amen. I would say we are singing out of the same hymn book. Lincoln was a tyrant.
Not just a tyrant; but a traitor to the sovereign nations that he swore to serve; instead conquering them for his true oligarch masters– to destroy budding democracy in each, supplanting it with false freedom.
Not just a tyrant; but a traitor to the sovereign nations that he swore to serve; instead conquering them for his true oligarch masters– to destroy budding democracy in each, supplanting it with false freedom under Crony Capitalism.
P.S. But the fact remains, that each state remains a sovereign nation, by law; since this is historical fact from 1783, and never lawfully changed.