Going After Abraham Lincoln is Political Suicide

Wow, I just read an article today that ripped into Abraham Lincoln. Here's an excerpt:

"Lincoln micromanaged the murder of some 350,000 fellow Americans, including more than 50,000 civilians, in order to "prove" his point that the central government is indeed not voluntary, the states were never sovereign (so he said), and that any group of citizens who contemplate leaving it will be killed en masse, their cities and towns burned to the ground, and their wealth and personal belongings confiscated by the U.S. Army. If we standardize for today’s population, Lincoln’s killing machine would lead to the death of more than 6 million Americans." (http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo174.html)

That's not your typical Lincoln article, huh?

OK, so I know that we all learned in history class that the American Civil War was about slavery. And it was, in part, about slavery. But the thing is... it wasn't actually as much about slavery as Lincoln lovers would have us believe.

We need to remember that, first, Lincoln actually promised during his campaign that he WOULD NOT outlaw slavery. Second, he did not pronounce the Emancipation Proclamation until the Civil War was well underway. And third, the Emancipation Proclamation was more of a posturing move than it was an end to Slavery. Consider that it only proclaimed the end of Slavery in States that had joined the Confederacy rather than all States, including Union States that were actually under Lincoln's authority. These three facts joined together make it fairly clear that the American Civil War wasn't just about slavery. It was about control. Slavery was merely the crowbar that Lincoln used to exert the will of the Central Government, sort of like terrorism was the crowbar that President Bush used to strip US Citizens of their rights during the years after 9/11.

Now, let's be clear- both slavery and terrorism are evils that should be fought! No one argues that. But the fact is, both Lincoln and Bush used these evils as an excuse to undermine the Civil Liberties of US Citizens and States. They used hot issues to expand the control that the Federal Government has over the people of this country. And for that, I think both of them deserve a "Shame on You" at the very least. And in light of the hostile takeover they made on the people they governed, perhaps we should reconsider the rights States actually have under the 10th amendment.

You can read more about that, here:
http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/

And you can check to see what your State is doing about it, here: http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2009/02/23/state-sovereignty-resolutions/

PS. Even though I'm not too thrilled with Lincoln's actions toward the Southern States, I'm glad that slavery is done with. I just wish we'd been able to do it without a war since every other major country in the world has managed to do so. I wonder if we would have been able to avoid a lot of the racism, prejudice, and hatred that we've experienced had we done away with slavery peacefully instead of through war and reconstruction.