"the alternative to the Civil War wasn’t to do nothing and wait for Southern slaveholders to decide when, if ever, they might emancipate their slaves. The alternative was to recognize that slavery was a gigantic beast, and no single strategy was likely to bring it down, so multiple strategies, including buying off slaveholders, had to be pursued"
The war didn't start because the North marched down to emancipate the slaves. The war started because seven southern states seceded and attacked the Union. Lincoln wasn't an abolitionist who wanted to forcibly emancipate slaves. He wanted to contain slavery where it existed because he thought slavery couldn't survive without expanding. The secessionists agreed with him about that, although many people, opponents and proponents of slavery alike, did not.
I had hoped to see an informed discussion of whether Lincoln's policy of containment would have brought down chattel slavery the way the policy of containment later brought down Communism. I am disappointed to find the old canard that the North went to war to abolish slavery. If so, why did the Union wait almost two years to make emancipation a war aim, and instead started out by offering a Constitutional Amendment to guarantee slavery where it existed?
This is bad history. Does the Cato Institute officially endorse it? Does HNN stand by this misrepresentation of both Union and Confederate war aims?
by John Edward Philips on February 4, 2008 at 3:32 AM