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Institute for Political Economy
How Lincoln’s War Was Won
How Lincoln’s War Was Won
Racism was stronger in the North than in the South
Paul Craig Roberts
This article concludes this seven-part series on Lincoln’s war against the South. The war ended 155 years ago. In the century and a half since, the war’s history has been falsified and misrepresented as a righteous war by the freedom-loving North against the slave-holding South.
The absence of supporting facts has not hampered this false history.
As Lincoln said endlessly, he invaded the Confederate States of America for the sole purpose of conquering the states that seceded and reincorporating them into the United States. Lincoln fought what he declared to be a rebellion.
The South fought because she was invaded.
Slavery was not an issue. The US Constitution assigned the matter of slavery to the individual states. Slavery was not subject to federal legislation. Lincoln acknowledged this over and over. Lincoln offered further inducement to the South to remain in the Union with the Corwin Amendment, a constitutional provision that forbade any federal steps against slavery ever.
Lincoln did not campaign for the presidency on the grounds of ending slavery. His first inaugural address in 1861 states: “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
The declaration of war against the South (July 1861) states that the purpose of the war is “to preserve the Union.”
The Emancipation Proclamation (1863) was a war measure declared “upon military necessity.” Unable to defeat the Army of Northern Virginia in battle, Lincoln hoped to stir a slave rebellion that would pull Confederate troops out of the front line and cause them to return home to protect their families and homes. Lincoln’s effort to turn black slaves against white southerners failed.
Uninformed and indoctrinated people claim that secession documents from the states prove the South was fighting for slavery. As I have shown on numerous occasions, southern states wanted a constitutional justification for leaving the Union so that Lincoln could not declare them to be in rebellion and send in the army to quell the rebellion. Lincoln did not accept the argument that the Union was a voluntary act from which states legitimately could withdraw. The South could not make a constitutional case out of the tariff, because the Constitution made tariffs a federal, not state, issue. But slavery was a state issue, and the South concocted an argument that the refusal of some northern states to enforce the federal Fugitive Slave Law meant that the northern states had broken the contract and that the South’s secession was not responsible for the breakup of the union.
This argument was also needed, because just as some in the North opposed the war, some in the South opposed secession.
As Lincoln made it completely clear that he most certainly was not invading the South in order to free slaves, how can it be that the South was fighting to save slavery?
Why is this series important? For a number of reasons. One is that as the war had nothing to do with slavery, neither do the Confederate war memorials.
Another reason is it demonstrates the ease with which history has been falsified in order to serve an agenda. People who can be convinced contrary to all known facts and the documentary record that the war was fought over slavery can be convinced of any lie. Obviously, a free press, free speech, public education, and democratic debate do not succeed in protecting truth. If we are so misinformed about Lincoln’s war, what else are we misinformed about? How much of what we know is real and how much is programmed into us to serve self-interested agendas?
Northerners like to get very self-righteous about their moral superiority over the South. But in fact, many northern states passed Black Codes, laws enacted to discourage free blacks from residing in northern states. Connecticut, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and New York had laws that denied blacks equal political rights, including the right to vote, the right to attend public schools, and the right to equal treatment under the law.
Southerner John Randolph of Roanoke, Virginia, in his will freed his slaves and provided for their survival by establishing a trust to purchase land for them in Ohio. The righteous Ohioans, so intent on giving their lives to free the slaves, drove John Randolph’s freed slaves from the land in Ohio that he had purchased for them.
Lincoln himself said in Illinois on September 18, 1858 that “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races [applause from the Ohio audience]—that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.” Lincoln’s plan for free blacks was to send them out of the country to Africa or South America.
Yet, there actually are Americans dumb enough to think that the North spent white blood and money in copious quantities in order to free black slaves that they considered inferior to whites and did not want anything to do with.
Indeed, the North cared so little about the negroes that nothing was done for them once they were freed by the economic destruction of the South. A fourth or more of the “freed” slaves died of starvation and exposure. Judge William Sharkey, reconstruction governor of Mississippi told Congress:
“I believe that there are now in my State very little over half the number of freedmen that were formerly slaves, certainly not more than two-thirds. They have died off. There is no telling the mortality that has prevailed among them; they have died off in immense numbers. I should say that very little more than half the amount of land that was under cultivation before the war will be under cultivation this year.”
What else was to be expected from Lincoln’s war of extermination against the South? Destruction of the agricultural infrastructure takes away both food and employment, and it disarms an army.
Armies “fight on their stomach,” and it was the absence of food that forced Lee’s surrender to Grant.
The absence of food was due to the war crimes of Lincoln and his Union army. Unable to defeat Robert E. Lee in battle, the Union destroyed the food infrastructure of the South by warring on agriculture, animal husbandry, women and children.
Most people do not understand that Lee won almost all of the battles. But always outnumbered, he never had reserves with which to destroy or force the surrender of the defeated Union army. So his victories were really for nothing. They only prolonged the war.
Gettysburg was a tie, but for Lee it was a strategic defeat as it was his last chance to destroy the Union Army and take Washington. Lee failed to destroy the Union Army at Gettysburg, because he had lost Stonewall Jackson who was mistaken for enemy and killed by Confederate sentries. Had Jackson been present at Gettysburg, Lee might have won the battle. Instead, the commander entrusted with the attack was a general whose forte was defense, and he did not act until it was too late.
The South had blown its opportunity after the first battle of Bull Run, the opening engagement of Lincoln’s war. The defeated Union Army turned tail and fled all the way back to Washington. It was weeks before any military order was restored. Had Napoleon or Robert E. Lee been in command of the Confederate Army at Bull Run, it would have been the end of the war. They would have pursued the defeated and broken Union army and taken Washington. That would have been the end of the war. Stonewall Jackson was present at Bull Run, but he was a subordinare general whose worth emerged that day.
The South looking at the flight of the northern army dismissed the North as a military force to be taken seriously. Northerners, the South concluded, were not only incapable of fighting, they were cowards to boot.
The South lost the war on this reasoning the day they won the opening battle at Bull Run.
The South had a small population relative to the North, no navy, and limited industrial capability. It wasn’t long before there were no replacements for the South’s casualties. But the north had the Irish immigrants. As soon as they landed they were enlisted in Lincoln’s army. Immigrants were the cannon fodder for the Union Army. The South had no cannon fodder.
When Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, Lee’s army, vastly outnumbered, was starving. Lincoln won the war by starving the South.
Such a low and immoral basis for prevailing in a war is the reason the South, what little is still left of it, voted Democrat for decades after the war until the Democrats brought them a second Reconstruction in the form of school busing. School busing severely disrupted family life and destroyed the public school system. Even so, the South is still patriotic and provides the bulk of the elite fighting force of the US military.
We will see if this commitment continues when the dumbshits in Washington dismantle the Confederate memorials and erase southern names from US military bases.