When someone mentions Abraham Lincoln, I immediately take notice. Yesterday on Meet The Press Ron Paul asserted that Lincoln made a mistake by going to War in 1861.
This statement is so totally false that I can hardly contain myself - it's an effort not to explode into Profanity. (A bad habit of mine.) But since I used my Profanity quota up in a previous Diary, I'll have to restrain myself.
So, in the continuing campaign by the Republican Party to rewrite Civil War history ("History, not Hate!"), comes another installment of neo-Confederate revisionism, courtesy of Mr. Ron Paul.
On Meet the Press yesterday, Ron Paul asserted that Lincoln should never have gone to war. Specifically:
MR. RUSSERT: I was intrigued by your comments about Abe Lincoln. "According to Paul, Abe Lincoln should never have gone to war; there were better ways of getting rid of slavery."
REP. PAUL: Absolutely. Six hundred thousand Americans died in a senseless civil war. No, he shouldn’t have gone, gone to war. He did this just to enhance and get rid of the original intent of the republic. I mean, it was the–that iron, iron fist..
MR. RUSSERT: We’d still have slavery.
REP. PAUL: Oh, come on, Tim. Slavery was phased out in every other country of the world. And the way I’m advising that it should have been done is do like the British empire did. You, you buy the slaves and release them. How much would that cost compared to killing 600,000 Americans and where it lingered for 100 years? I mean, the hatred and all that existed. So every other major country in the world got rid of slavery without a civil war. I mean, that doesn’t sound too radical to me. That sounds like a pretty reasonable approach.
Now just calm down all you emotional abolitionists. If you had just been a little more reasonable and taken a "middle way" on the issue of Slavery, we would have never had to endure the deaths of one in ten adult males in the US fighting the Civil War.
This is so patently false that I have to wonder whether this Man was ever educated (outside of Home Schooling). For those of us who were awake in History class, let's do a quick timeline review:
- The Election of 1860 polarized around one core issue; The extension of Slavery into the Territories of the Western US. The issue of Slavery in the South was not in question. Period.
- Once the Election was decided, South Carolina led the Secession out of the Union. (Before Lincoln was even inaugurated.)
- The Civil War was started by South Carolina initiating military action against Fort Sumpter.
- For the first 18 months of the War, the issue was not Slavery. Lincoln expressedly went to war to Preserve the Union.
In light of these facts, I wonder how Lincoln could have avoided war? Should he have conceded secession of the South from the Union? How long would the Confederacy taken to eliminate Slavery had they won independence from the Union? 20 years? 50 years?
I find it uncanny the similarities between 1860 and 2008. In both cases an aristocratic plutocracy is forcing its economic agenda on the majority of Americans - against their better interests.
Ron Paul is a racist idiot.