The Real Reason Abraham Lincoln Has the Blood of 600,000 Americans on His Hands

The real Abraham Lincoln is no hero. If conservatives today would study history, they would see Abraham Lincoln was the Great Agitator rather than the Great Emancipator. If you read Lincoln's documents like his inaugural address and his letter to Horace Greeley, you will see Lincoln didn't care about freeing the slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation was nothing more than rhetoric to rebuild Lincoln's image.

I found the commentary below that describes the real reasons for war. For those who want to really look at history, you will see the real Abraham Lincoln has the blood of 600,000 Americans on his hands as he sent northern troops down to Fort Sumter to agitate the South into a state of war--not over slavery like we have been taught in schools--but about taxes and a growing federal government. The South secession was about states' rights to battle tariffs and the heavy hand of government as today we look back to the start of Lincoln's war of northern aggression, which started at Fort Sumter.

What caused the war? Why did the Union defeat the Confederacy? What were the consequences of the War? The premise of the book is that historians have a comparative advantage in describing such events, but economists have the tools to help explain these events.

In contrast to historians who emphasize the land war and military strategy, the authors of Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation show that the most important battle took place at sea. One side, the blockade runners, did not wear uniforms or fire weapons at their opponents. The other side, the blockading fleet, was composed of sailors who had weapons and guns but they rarely fired their cannons in hopes of damaging their opponents. Their pay was based on the value of captured ships. Historians often have argued that the Confederacy lost because it was overly reluctant to use government power and economic controls, but we show the exact opposite. Big Confederate government brought the Confederacy to its knees.

Some now teach that slavery was the sole cause of the Civil War –- an explanation that historians have developed in the twentieth century. However, this analysis does not explain why the war started in 1861 (rather than 1851 or 1841) and it fails to explain why slavery was abolished elsewhere without such horrendous carnage.

The authors emphasize economics and politics as major factors leading to war. The Republicans who came to power in 1860 supported a mercantilist economic agenda of protectionism, inflation, public works, and big government. High tariffs would have been a boon to manufacturing and mining in the north, but would have been paid largely by those in the export-oriented agriculture economy.

Southern economic interests understood the effects of these policies and decided to leave the union. The war was clearly related to slavery, but mainly in the sense that Republican tariffs would have squeezed the profitability out of the slave-based cotton plantation economy to the benefit of Northern industry (especially Yankee textiles and iron manufacturing). Southerners would also have lost out in terms of public works projects, government land giveaways, and inflation.

The real truth about wars is that they are not started over principle, but over power. Wars, however, are not won by power on the battlefield, but by the workings and incentives of men who go to work in fields and factories, to those who transport, store and sell consumer goods, and especially to the entrepreneurs and middlemen who make markets work and adapt to change. This emphasis and this economic account of tariffs, blockade, and inflation reveals the most important and least understood aspect of war.