“The Myth of the Righteous Cause” states that the so-called “Civil War” (which it was not), was “about” slavery (which it was not), and the “righteous” North went to war against the “evil” South to free the slaves (which it did not.) “Civil Wars” are waged among factions struggling for control of the government in question. The Southern States did not want to control the United States government, they only wanted to withdraw from it and form their own – sanctified by the Declaration of Independence. The war was not “about” slavery. Abraham Lincoln said so himself in his First Inaugural Address. He said he only wanted to “save the Union and collect the revenue” – that is, save the Union for the financial benefit of the North at the expense of the South. Cotton was “king” in those days, but with the South’s “Cotton Kingdom” out of the Union and free trading with Europe, and no longer paying extortionate tariffs to support the North’s crony capitalists, the North’s “Mercantile Kingdom” would collapse. Lincoln didn’t go to war to free any slaves. Lincoln went to war to drive the South back into the Union at the point of the bayonet. That is what the war was “about.” Slavery was just the smelly “red herring” covering his tracks in the history books. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was strictly a desperate war measure issued to keep Europe from recognizing the Confederacy when she was about to win her independence. It only claimed to free the slaves behind Confederate lines. Otherwise, it plainly stated that slavery was just fine with “The Great Emancipator” as long as one were loyal to his government, proven six months later when he admitted West Virginia, a “slave State,” into the Union. So the North didn’t “go to war to free the slaves,” for she didn’t even free her own until after it was over. But even then she merely replaced inefficient chattel slavery with the more profitable “debt slavery,” and merely replaced “Ole Marster” with a Wall Street banker. Follow the dollar and know the truth.
2 Comments
Anthony Powell
4/15/2025 05:05:50 pm
I always look forward to an essay with your name at the top, and I am never disappointed. As my daddy used to say, you shelled the corn right down to the cob.
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4/15/2025 05:11:58 pm
Anthony, You de man, Bro!
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AuthorA native of Lynchburg, Virginia, the author graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1967 with a degree in Civil Engineering and a Regular Commission in the US Army. His service included qualification as an Airborne Ranger, and command of an Engineer company in Vietnam, where he received the Bronze Star. After his return, he resigned his Commission and ended by making a career as a tugboat captain. During this time he was able to earn a Master of Liberal Arts from the University of Richmond, with an international focus on war and cultural revolution. He is a member of the Jamestowne Society, the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Virginia, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the Society of Independent Southern Historians. He currently lives in Richmond, where he writes, studies history, literature and cultural revolution, and occasionally commutes to Norfolk to serve as a tugboat pilot Archives
April 2025
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