Good Morning...President writes a letter to grieving mother (or not)

[Okla-homey]

Nov. 21, 1864 : Lincoln allegedly writes to mother of Civil War casualties

Legend holds that on this day in 1864, President Abraham Lincoln composes a letter to Lydia Bixby, a widow and mother of five men who had been killed in the Civil War.

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A copy of the letter was then published in the Boston Evening Transcript on November 25 and signed "Abraham Lincoln." The original letter has never been found.

The letter expressed condolences to Mrs. Bixby on the death of her five sons, who had fought to preserve the Union in the Civil War. The author regrets how "weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming."

He continued with a prayer that "our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement [and leave you] the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom."


Executive Mansion,

Washington, Nov. 21, 1864

To Mrs Bixby, Boston, Mass.

Dear Madam:

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from a grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln.

Scholars continue to debate the authorship of the letter, and the authenticity of copies printed between 1864 and 1891. At the time, copies of presidential messages were often published and sold as souvenirs. Many historians and archivists agree that the original letter was probably written by Lincoln’s secretary, John Hay.

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Post war photo of John Hay. A Brown educated lawyer by profession, after the Civil War, he spent the rest of his life in the State Department and served as US Secretary of State. Hay died in 1905

As to Mrs. Bixby’s loss, scholars have discovered that only two of her sons actually died fighting during the Civil War. A third was honorably discharged and a fourth was dishonorably thrown out of the Army.

The fifth son’s fate is unknown, but it is assumed that he deserted or died in a Confederate prison camp. Despite its dubious origins, the letter’s text became even more famous when it was quoted in Steven Spielberg’s World War II film epic Saving Private Ryan (1998).

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[Flagstaffsooner]

Gawd damned yankees. They were all probably oSu fans.

[OklahomaTuba]

Even if it wasn't written by him, it doesn't matter. He is still the greatest man to ever sit in that office, or to sit in a seat of power for that fact.

[TUSooner]

Even if it wasn't written by him, it doesn't matter. He is still the greatest man to ever sit in that office, or to sit in a seat of power for that fact.
Dang. I AGREE :eek:

Well, Washington wasn't bad, either. And Churchill wasn't too shabby in another country's seat of power. But why argue over trifles?

[OklahomaTuba]

Dang. I AGREE :eek:

Well, Washington wasn't bad, either. And Churchill wasn't too shabby in another country's seat of power. But why argue over trifles?

Its pretty damn close, but to me Lincoln is without a doubt ahead. A true gift from God was he.

Amazing how all three were deemed failures and ridiculed as such in their respective times.

[SicEmBaylor]

I've got to stop clicking on these Lincoln threads.
I'm too young for both blood pressure meds and a stroke.

Could you please start tagging these things, NSFSIC

[FaninAma]

Even if it wasn't written by him, it doesn't matter. He is still the greatest man to ever sit in that office, or to sit in a seat of power for that fact.

If you really think that you need to read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Real-Lincoln-Abraham-Agenda-Unnecessary/dp/0761536418

Lincoln single handidly drove a stake through our Republic form of government. FDR simply contributed the finishing hammer blows.

Lincoln was a depressed, morbid individual. He cared not about the great economic and human cost his unnecessary Civil War wreaked on the country, the repercussions of which we are still dealing with today.

Without Lincoln the Union would have survived as a Republic with state's right's perserved. Slavery would have ended without the war and the Constitution would have still meant something.

[SicEmBaylor]

If you really think that you need to read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Real-Lincoln-Abraham-Agenda-Unnecessary/dp/0761536418

Lincoln single handidly drove a stake through our Republic form of government. FDR simply contributed the finishing hammer blows.

Lincoln was a depressed, morbid individual. He cared not about the great economic and human cost his unnecessary Civil War wreaked on the country, the repercussions of which we are still dealing with today.

Without Lincoln the Union would have survived as a Republic with state's right's perserved. Slavery would have ended without the war and the Constitution would have still meant something.

FANIN!
SPEK!

You are my new favorite person on SF.com.

[Frozen Sooner]

If you really think that you need to read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Real-Lincoln-Abraham-Agenda-Unnecessary/dp/0761536418

Lincoln single handidly drove a stake through our Republic form of government. FDR simply contributed the finishing hammer blows.

Lincoln was a depressed, morbid individual. He cared not about the great economic and human cost his unnecessary Civil War wreaked on the country, the repercussions of which we are still dealing with today.

Without Lincoln the Union would have survived as a Republic with state's right's perserved. Slavery would have ended without the war and the Constitution would have still meant something.

Magic leprechauns would have descended from the Thetan homeworld to give us all horns of plenty, too.

[OklahomaTuba]

Without Lincoln the Union would have survived as a Republic with state's right's perserved. Slavery would have ended without the war and the Constitution would have still meant something.

The war was going to happen no matter what after Dred Scott. Lincoln had no part in that.

The fact is Lincoln saved the republic from its self so that today there is a Constitution that still means something, instead of having two nations in which one nations constitution made it impossible to ban the act of slavery as the CSA's did:


No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed [by Congress]

Nice. No doubt that would still exist in the libertarian paradise of the CSA. Also, I should note that the CSA Constitution was no more "states rights" friendly than the US constitution, and it even allowed the President to have a line item veto. A HUGE increase in power of for the executive branch.

Lincoln was the savior of this nation because he understood the Constitution is not a suicide pact nor infallible. The fact that he is considered a butcher just goes to show how strongly the south felt about about their "property" rights. And his centralization of certain government functions helped this nation become very powerful and a force for good in the 20th century IMO.

[SicEmBaylor]

The war was going to happen no matter what after Dred Scott. Lincoln had no part in that.

Lincoln had no part in it?
Are you kidding me? He illegally invaded (without any sort of Congressional approval) and declared war upon half the nation for exercising their reserved constitutional right. You're telling me he had nothing to do with it?


The fact is Lincoln saved the republic from its self so that today there is a Constitution that still means something, instead of having two nations in which one nations constitution made it impossible to ban the act of slavery as the CSA's did:

This is the dumbest piece of **** you've ever said on the board, and that is saying quite a lot when it comes to you Tuba. "Saving the Republic from itself", no what he did was kill the patient in order to cure the disease. If that's your remedy for solving a problem then fine. But this business that he "Saved" the Republic for the sake of the constitution is utter and complete nonsense. EVERYTIME you complain about a runway Federal government with too much power the root of that is the destruction of state sovereignty that resulted from the war.

Tell me, was Lincoln "protecting the constitution" when he suspended the writ of habeas corpus with no constitutional guideline for doing so without congressional approval? Was he "protecting the constitution" when he issued an arrest warrant for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court because the CJ issued an opinion that the Lincoln should have gotten Congressional approval before invading the south. Was he protecting the constitution when he imprisoned thousands of northern journalists for speaking out against the war and its unconstitutionality? Was he "protecting the constitution" when he literally deported a sitting US congressman to Canada for suggesting that the war was unconstitutional?



Nice. No doubt that would still exist in the libertarian paradise of the CSA.

It has nothing to do with being libertarian, conservative, or liberal. It has to do with a collection of states exercising the their constitutional right to leave a voluntary compact that they themselves helped create in the first place.


Lincoln was the savior of this nation because he understood the Constitution is not a suicide pact nor infallible.
WTF, what "suicide pact?" Was every man, woman, and child in the nation in danger of dying because of rigid interpretation of the constitution? Hardly. Do you consider it "suicide" for the individual people to choose their own form of government? Please pray tell how the south leaving the Union would have made it impossible for the people of the north to continue with the government of their choice?

[quoteThe fact that he is considered a butcher just goes to show how strongly the south felt about about their "property" rights. And his centralization of certain government functions helped this nation become very powerful and a force for good in the 20th century IMO.[/QUOTE]

Well, he authorized and allowed a war of terror against an entire civilian population including destroying what he himself purported to be AMERICAN cities all for the sake of coercing a group of people into accepting a form of government they no longer wished for themselves. Property rights were only one small part of the equation, a much larger issue was with tariffs imposed by the Union in a corporate welfare scheme that crippled the southern economy while receiving very little in return.

But ****, I suppose having a "strong federal government" is far more important than limited government.

_____________

Tuba, from here on out you have truly made it known that you are NOT a conservative in the sense of valuing limited government in the Jeffersonian model. When you start screaming that the newly elected Democratic congress is exceeding its power then you'll be met with deaf ears. It truly disgusts me to no end that your blinded love for the Republican Party is such that you can't bring yourself to admit that MAYBE just MAYBE there was something important lost in Mr. Lincoln's war to keep union together. :eyeroll:

Let me also say that had it not been for the Republican Party at the time and its Whig predecessor there would never have been a secessionist movement in the first place. Lincoln and the Republican Party caused the war.

[Mongo]

Lincoln had no part in it?
Are you kidding me? He illegally invaded (without any sort of Congressional approval) and declared war upon half the nation for exercising their reserved constitutional right. You're telling me he had nothing to do with it?



This is the dumbest piece of **** you've ever said on the board, and that is saying quite a lot when it comes to you Tuba. "Saving the Republic from itself", no what he did was kill the patient in order to cure the disease. If that's your remedy for solving a problem then fine. But this business that he "Saved" the Republic for the sake of the constitution is utter and complete nonsense. EVERYTIME you complain about a runway Federal government with too much power the root of that is the destruction of state sovereignty that resulted from the war.

Tell me, was Lincoln "protecting the constitution" when he suspended the writ of habeas corpus with no constitutional guideline for doing so without congressional approval? Was he "protecting the constitution" when he issued an arrest warrant for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court because the CJ issued an opinion that the Lincoln should have gotten Congressional approval before invading the south. Was he protecting the constitution when he imprisoned thousands of northern journalists for speaking out against the war and its unconstitutionality? Was he "protecting the constitution" when he literally deported a sitting US congressman to Canada for suggesting that the war was unconstitutional?




It has nothing to do with being libertarian, conservative, or liberal. It has to do with a collection of states exercising the their constitutional right to leave a voluntary compact that they themselves helped create in the first place.


WTF, what "suicide pact?" Was every man, woman, and child in the nation in danger of dying because of rigid interpretation of the constitution? Hardly. Do you consider it "suicide" for the individual people to choose their own form of government? Please pray tell how the south leaving the Union would have made it impossible for the people of the north to continue with the government of their choice?



Well, he authorized and allowed a war of terror against an entire civilian population including destroying what he himself purported to be AMERICAN cities all for the sake of coercing a group of people into accepting a form of government they no longer wished for themselves. Property rights were only one small part of the equation, a much larger issue was with tariffs imposed by the Union in a corporate welfare scheme that crippled the southern economy while receiving very little in return.

But ****, I suppose having a "strong federal government" is far more important than limited government.

_____________

Tuba, from here on out you have truly made it known that you are NOT a conservative in the sense of valuing limited government in the Jeffersonian model. When you start screaming that the newly elected Democratic congress is exceeding its power then you'll be met with deaf ears. It truly disgusts me to no end that your blinded love for the Republican Party is such that you can't bring yourself to admit that MAYBE just MAYBE there was something important lost in Mr. Lincoln's war to keep union together. :eyeroll:

Let me also say that had it not been for the Republican Party at the time and its Whig predecessor there would never have been a secessionist movement in the first place. Lincoln and the Republican Party caused the war.

Take a deep breath and count to ten. Go to the fridge and chug a Zima or two and try to relax.

[SicEmBaylor]

Look,
I apologize if that comes off too strong. It's absolutely MADDENING to me to talk to fellow "conservatives" about the size of government, over spending, and getting itself involved in policy that is supposed to be a state matter (like education) and then have them turn around and say, "but Lincoln was a great president!!"

I guess if you're a fan of the authoritarian-right then Lincoln probably was the best President you could imagine. He was a nationalist who consolidated central power moving it away from state and local governments close to the people to a centralized capital where that power could be projected around the world. In that context, yeah I guess he was a great President.

I, however, do not believe that a centralized Federal government projecting its power around the world at will is quite what the Founders had in mind especially when it comes at the expense of reserved state powers. I don't think they intended for the central focus of power in these United States to shift from local and state governments to Washington D.C. Unless we're talking about Hamilton...

[Mongo]

SicEm, I think the main thought that Abe is/was a greatest POTUS in history was that he would not let the potential of the greatest power ever created get divided by an issue that was obviously wrong. He did do some bad things(habeas corpus, states' rights), but those can be overshadowed by the great things that were accomplished.

I just want Cali to break away from the union to make the US suck less( the US doesnt suck, it would be better off without Cali).

[OklahomaTuba]

Lincoln had no part in it?
Are you kidding me? He illegally invaded (without any sort of Congressional approval) and declared war upon half the nation for exercising their reserved constitutional right. You're telling me he had nothing to do with it?

If you read what I posted instead of having a nervous breakdown, you might see I was referring to the Dred Scott decision. Or are you saying Lincoln had a hand in that??




Tell me, was Lincoln "protecting the constitution" when he suspended the writ of habeas corpus with no constitutional guideline for doing so without congressional approval? Was he "protecting the constitution" when he issued an arrest warrant for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court because the CJ issued an opinion that the Lincoln should have gotten Congressional approval before invading the south. Was he protecting the constitution when he imprisoned thousands of northern journalists for speaking out against the war and its unconstitutionality? Was he "protecting the constitution" when he literally deported a sitting US congressman to Canada for suggesting that the war was unconstitutional?

Yes, he was. The country was at war for its very survival, and it survived and we now live under that same constitution.

If the electorate didn't agree with him, they could have, and nearly did, unelect him.



It has to do with a collection of states exercising the their constitutional right to leave a voluntary compact that they themselves helped create in the first place.

If the civil war had anything to do with states rights, then why did those states join a union with an even stronger centralized form of government??



WTF, what "suicide pact?" Was every man, woman, and child in the nation in danger of dying because of rigid interpretation of the constitution? Hardly. Do you consider it "suicide" for the individual people to choose their own form of government? Please pray tell how the south leaving the Union would have made it impossible for the people of the north to continue with the government of their choice?


I hope your not saying that the slaves aren't people????



Well, he authorized and allowed a war of terror against an entire civilian population including destroying what he himself purported to be AMERICAN cities all for the sake of coercing a group of people into accepting a form of government they no longer wished for themselves. Property rights were only one small part of the equation, a much larger issue was with tariffs imposed by the Union in a corporate welfare scheme that crippled the southern economy while receiving very little in return.

But ****, I suppose having a "strong federal government" is far more important than limited government.


Do the words Line Item Veto or Supremacy Clause mean anything to you? They seemed to mean alot to the CSA, so much so they were kept or added into the CSA's constitution.

I suggest you actually read the constitution of the confederate states. I think you will be surprised at how much stronger the federal government is in that system than it is in the one Lincoln saved and which we currently live under.




It truly disgusts me to no end that your blinded love for the Republican Party is such that you can't bring yourself to admit that MAYBE just MAYBE there was something important lost in Mr. Lincoln's war to keep union together. :eyeroll:

The important thing that was lost was the act of slavery. We can say this war was about all kinds of stuff, but if that was true, then the CSA wouldn't have taken the US constitution, dressed it up a little and made a more powerful centralized form of republic that mandated slavery could never be abolished, ever.

Nevertheless, Lincoln saved the union at great cost, and that same union would go on to prosper at levels never seen in history, and which would bring millions of people a better life, and would help rid the world of evils like slavery, fascism and communism. All within about 100 years of Lincoln's Presidency.

Thems the facts sicem. You can ignore them all you want, but those are the facts. If you want to blame the GOP for all that, then I will take that blame any day of the week.

[OklahomaTuba]

I guess if you're a fan of the authoritarian-right then Lincoln probably was the best President you could imagine. He was a nationalist who consolidated central power moving it away from state and local governments close to the people to a centralized capital where that power could be projected around the world. In that context, yeah I guess he was a great President.

And yet, this is some how less appealing then an ever stronger form of national government that was different from the US government only in law that allowed unending slavery and racism?

Interesting.

[Frozen Sooner]

Revisionist history of the Civil War-not only fun, but justification for displaying symbols of slavery and oppression!

[OklahomaTuba]

To be clear, I DO NOT think anyone is being a racist here by supporting the idea of more states rights.

However, the idea that the CSA offered greater states rights much beyond the right to own slaves is simply a myth easily debunked by a simple reading of the confederate constitution. IT A NEAR EXACT MATCH OF THE US CONSTITUTION!

Well, except for one thing at least...

[Frozen Sooner]

Oh, I don't think anyone is being racist here either. I just think that SicEm and others have been swindled by a big lie spread by people with motives other than states' rights.

Like there's probably people who don't believe the Holocaust occurred who aren't anti-Semitic. That's just what they've been taught.

[SicEmBaylor]

To be clear, I DO NOT think anyone is being a racist here by supporting the idea of more states rights.

However, the idea that the CSA offered greater states rights much beyond the right to own slaves is simply a myth easily debunked by a simple reading of the confederate constitution. IT A NEAR EXACT MATCH OF THE US CONSTITUTION!

Well, except for one thing at least...

Tuba, if you go back and read the papers of Alexander Stephens you would understand why the Confederate Constitution was a near duplicate of the US Constitution. Stephens, who was one of the brightest constitutional scholars of the time, argued that there was NOTHING inherently wrong with the US constitution. The problem lay with those who were inappropriately using the powers of the Federal government to coerce and usurp the rights of the individual states.

It nearly mirrored the US constitution; because, ideally the Confederacy intended to apply the Constitution in the vision of Jefferson's view of a very limited Federal government. The LETTER of the constitution was never the problem it was the interpretation of that document.

Let me also state two things unequivocally, while the leading causes of the war are very important they are not quite as important to me as the RESULT the war had on limited constitutional government.

Secondly, my position would be exactly the same even if we weren't talking about the south. If tomorrow the state of Massachusetts decided to secede because their RIGHT to craft their own social policy on homosexual marriage, for example, was being violated by a central government co-opted by evangelicals who were unconstitutionally using the powers of the Federal government to dictate social policy then I would disagree with their decision to do so but I would defend their RIGHT to do it.

[SicEmBaylor]

Now as for Tuba's post....

The slavery question was a symptom of the same problem of the north hijacking the Federal government and abusing that power at the expense of the southern states. Slavery was wrong, you will never hear me defend otherwise, but slavery itself was simply one issue on a whole host of problems that ranged the gambit of economic to social. The greatest untold cause of the war was over tariffs but you never hear that; because, it isn't "flashy" or justify waging a brutal war in the hearts and minds of the American people. History is written by the victors.

Lincoln fought the war to preserve the union. He did not fight the war to preserve slavery. If he had fought the war for the latter reason the pray tell why he supported a Constitutional amendment reaffirming the south's right to own slaves? He not only supported it but the GOP at the time put it in their damned platform. Time and time again, until the war was well underway and going badly, Lincoln reaffirmed that he was fighting the war to keep the Union in one piece...not slavery.

Slave owners represented a very tiny segment of the southern population. Do you really think over a million southern men would fight in brutal conditions with no industrial support at their back, often with no shoes on their feet, and no roof above their head in the dead of winter all so a bunch of rich guys could keep their involuntary servants?

[Okla-homey]

Slave owners represented a very tiny segment of the southern population. Do you really think over a million southern men would fight in brutal conditions with no industrial support at their back, often with no shoes on their feet, and no roof above their head in the dead of winter all so a bunch of rich guys could keep their involuntary servants?

While I've heard this canard advanced by Confederate apologists most of my life, it's an absurd statement for someone who claims to have seriously studied the period to make.

While you are correct that a majority of the "yeoman farmers" in ye Olde South did not in fact own slaves, the ones who did were responsible for the Southern economy. That ante-bellum Southern economy was not an agrarian economy reliant on the efforts of millions of small farmers. Instead, it was an agrarian economy based on the efforts of thousands of immense agricultural operations which absolutely depended on the cheap labor of slaves to produce profitable, but very labor-intensive crop yields.

Those crops, including of course "King Cotton" -- and tobacco, rice and indigo before it, were the engine that literally drove the Deep South's economy. Those cash crops, produced by slaveowners, were the source of capital that kept the banks and stores open, constituted the principle source of investment capital in the South and permitted the Southern civil infrastructure function.

In short, millions of Southern men went to war to defend chattel slavery because their way-of-life absolutely depended on it, whether they personally owned slaves or not.

Finally, anyone who seriously tries to assert the biggest reason for the war was anything other than the survival of chattel slavery, really should take an hour of their life, "google" up the eleven Confederate states' "Ordinances of Secession" and read them. I have. While they are replete with grand allusions to "states" and "divine" rights, every single one of them principally and prominently addresses the bedrock notion that chattel slavery was right, moral and essential for that states' economic viability. The risk to the continued legality of owning human beings posed by the Federal government's increasingly abolitionist policies was what made those states leave the Union. To assert otherwise is simply indefensible on the historical facts.

[Frozen Sooner]

When people call the Civil War the "War of Northern Aggression," I always wonder who they think fired the first shots.

[Okla-homey]

Don't get me wrong, I respect the courage and conviction of my common Confederate forebears. Indeed I honor it. In the end, those "Johnnies" were fighting to defend their homes, families and firesides.

Unfortunately, the war was begun by the "planter-ocracy" which controlled every aspect of ante-bellum Southern politics. That landed gentry started the war to protect an economic system which depended on an indefensible and morally bankrupt source of labor.

In the beginning, those common Johnnies, who lie today beneath the sod of hundreds of Civil War battlefields, were hurled North to defend that very ugly system. That fact is an enduring blot on our nation's history

No matter what any Confederate apologist crows about "states rights" or "fighting a deviation from the Founders' constitutional principles," please know that's just code for the fact that they disagree with the notion that "all men were created equal," and they believe some group must always remain at the bottom of the social ladder if the majority in a given state wants it that way.

[Frozen Sooner]

I've got nothing against the common Confederate soldier, other than the fact he was shooting at my great-great-gran'thers. I just have a problem with revisionist history.

[Okla-homey]

I've got nothing against the common Confederate soldier, other than the fact he was shooting at my great-great-gran'thers. I just have a problem with revisionist history.

Indeed. It is an affront to anyone who has ever seriously studied it. I'm an equal opportunity hater of revisionist history. I get just as steamed when certain apologists try to paint some buccolic image of the "happy hunting ground" that existed in the "peaceful" Western Hemisphere before the arrival and subsequent "despoiling" by whitey from Europe. Ditto sub-Saharan Africa.

[Frozen Sooner]

On those, I think people tend to idealize and romanticize what was going on before something even worse happened.

Life in pre-Colombian North America was far from idyllic, but it was probably better than having germ warfare practiced on you. Then again, had the Aztecs had germ warfare there's little doubt they would have used it. Those mesoamerican dudes were pretty hardcore.

[OklahomaTuba]

The LETTER of the constitution was never the problem it was the interpretation of that document.

This is why it seems stupid to me to use basically the same damn document (that also allowed for a STRONGER executive branch and the ownership of slaves) after spilling the blood of countless people and waging a war for 4 years.

I think that shows that the interpretation argument was a secondary concern for the confederates. If it had been a primary concern, one would expect the Confederates to actually fix those problems instead of risking more incorrect interpretation in the future.

[FaninAma]

While I've heard this canard advanced by Confederate apologists most of my life, it's an absurd statement for someone who claims to have seriously studied the period to make.

While you are correct that a majority of the "yeoman farmers" in ye Olde South did not in fact own slaves, the ones who did were responsible for the Southern economy. That ante-bellum Southern economy was not an agrarian economy reliant on the efforts of millions of small farmers. Instead, it was an agrarian economy based on the efforts of thousands of immense agricultural operations which absolutely depended on the cheap labor of slaves to produce profitable, but very labor-intensive crop yields.

Those crops, including of course "King Cotton" -- and tobacco, rice and indigo before it, were the engine that literally drove the Deep South's economy. Those cash crops, produced by slaveowners, were the source of capital that kept the banks and stores open, constituted the principle source of investment capital in the South and permitted the Southern civil infrastructure function.

In short, millions of Southern men went to war to defend chattel slavery because their way-of-life absolutely depended on it, whether they personally owned slaves or not.

Finally, anyone who seriously tries to assert the biggest reason for the war was anything other than the survival of chattel slavery, really should take an hour of their life, "google" up the eleven Confederate states' "Ordinances of Secession" and read them. I have. While they are replete with grand allusions to "states" and "divine" rights, every single one of them principally and prominently addresses the bedrock notion that chattel slavery was right, moral and essential for that states' economic viability. The risk to the continued legality of owning human beings posed by the Federal government's increasingly abolitionist policies was what made those states leave the Union. To assert otherwise is simply indefensible on the historical facts.

Baloney. Technology would soon make slavery ecomically unviable. Anybody who feels this war was about freeing the slaves needs to learn what Lincoln's own views on slavery were.

Slavery is a very, very inefficient way to operate any business. The invention of the Cotton Gin and newer ways to harvest crops would have made slavery out-moded within the next 10 years.

So essentially Lincoln and the North layed waste to an entire region of the country, devestated the economy of the region and wasted millions of lives to perhaps gain 10 years on the end of slavery.

In return he created an environment of hate and division that would last well over 100 years.

Quite a legacy.