Lincoln Was A Racist and the “Civil War” Was NOT About Slavery

Lincoln Was A Racist and the “Civil War” Was NOT About Slavery

Paul Craig Roberts

Some black Americans have created a black version of the KKK.  They have even adopted similar terminology.  The leader is called “Grand Master Jay.”  The job of the organization, NFAC, is “to protect the black community” from white people. 

The KKK’s job was to protect the white Southern community, which was under attack by Reconstruction. 

The NFAC sees the plight of the American black exactly as the white liberal elites want blacks to see it—oppression and abuse by whites.  This keeps the American people divided and power safe in the hands of the corrupt elites.

Grand Master Jay wants black people to secede from the US just as the Southern States seceded.  As Abe Lincoln believed, Grand Master Jay believes that blacks and whites can’t live together.

If the NFAC cannot get a piece of the US set aside for blacks as a black country, Grand Master Jay’s “other aim is for an exodus to Africa, to establish our destiny and build our own nation,” another of Abe Lincoln’s intents for black Americans.

Grand Master Jay echoes many prescient observers, such as George Orwell, when he says: “When a people are denied knowledge of their culture and history of self, they have nothing to be proud of.” https://www.rt.com/usa/495109-nfac-black-militia-blm/ 

His statement is one with which many white Americans would agree.  Our history has been taken away from us by falsification by white liberals.  The falsification of American history is institutionalized in the educational system and is ongoing as the New York Times’ 1619 Project.

Falsification is especially the fact in the case of the so-called Civil War.  The name itself is a falsification.  A civil war is when two sides fight for control of the government.  The southern states that seceded did not fight for control of the US government.  They fought because they were invaded. The northern states fought to prevent secession.  Nothing in historical documents is more clearly established.  Yet the War of Northern Aggression is falsified as a war to free black slaves from southern racism, despite Abe Lincoln’s many assurances to the contrary. 

That the War to Save the Union had nothing whatsoever to do with ending slavery is totally clear from everything Lincoln said prior to his presidency and during his presidency.  The evidence is overwhelming.  Consult the War Aims Resolution, Lincoln’s letter to Horace Greeley, Lincoln’s speedh in debate with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, the Corwin Amendment, the Emancipation Proclamation. 

In the US Constitution slavery was not a federal issue.  It was a state issue until the 13th Amendment in 1865. The issue between the North and South was not slavery. On the surface the issue was the tariff.  The deeper problem was that the North and South had different cultures.  They were really different nations.  The South was agricultural.  The North was industrial.  The South wanted free trade.  The North wanted protection from British manufactures. Northern elites wanted the South to subsidize northern industry with higher prices.

The northern elites also wanted empire.  They did not want a second country competing for the lands west of the Mississippi River.  The northern elites were determined that the South remain part of the United States.

The issue between North and South was whether secession was constitutional—a state’s right or an act of treason or rebellion.  The South took the Founding Father’s position that the union was a voluntary act that could be repealed by a state.  Lincoln took the position that the union was permanent and any attempt to leave the union was an act of rebellion that could be ended by military force.

The legal/constitutional argument was between the Jeffersonian South and the Hamiltonian Lincoln.  The 10th Amendment gave states the right to secede.  Lincoln countered with the argument that the union implied perpetuity unless destroyed by rebellion.  This is why southerners were called “rebels.”

The South wanted their secession to be constitutional in order to deprive the North of a pretext for invasion.  This made it impossible for the Southern states to argue that they were seceding because of the tariff.  The tariff was a federal issue.  The Constitution gave the federal government the right to pass tariffs.  So the real reason the South was leaving the union left the South with no constitutional argument.  On the other hand, slavery was a state’s right guaranteed by the Constitution.  This caused the South to seize on the noncompliance of some northern states with the federal law requiring the return of run-away slaves and make a constitutional issue out of it. This argument then appeared in some of the secession documents of the southern states.  See:  https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/11/13/a-civil-war-lesson-for-the-uneducated/  and  https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/08/23/know-called-civil-war-not-slavery/  

It is clear enough that the Constitution was on the side of the South, but the northern elites valued the empire and centralized power more than they valued the Constitution and states’ rights. In an attempt to weaken support in the North for war against southern secession, the South concocted an argument that the refusal of some northern states to return fugitive or run-away slaves, as required by Federal law and the US Constitution, meant that northern states had already violated the union and therefore the South’s leaving was not the cause of the breakup of the union.  This argument was strained, because Lincoln gave assurances that he intended to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law.  

The claim that the war was fought over slavery has no more basis than this concocted argument by southerners attempting to prevent Lincoln’s invasion of the Confederacy. 

The honest, truthful, and accurate Lincoln scholar is Thomas J. DiLorenzo.  He is a northerner from Pennsylvania who has the southern trait of despising liars.  His just published book, The Problem with Lincoln (Regnery, 2020) will walk you through Lincoln and his war in ten chapters totaling 161 pages and ten appendices totaling 56 pages. 

In order to prepare readers for a later review essay of DiLorenzo’s book, below I quote from some of the official documents in the appendices.

The War Aims Resolution passed the House on July 22, 1861 and the Senate on July 25, 1861. The two US Representatives and the three US Senators who voted against it were expelled from Congress.  The declaration of war against the Confederate States of America states: “this war is not waged upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpse of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those States, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and to preserve the Union.”

Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, asked President Lincoln what the purpose of the ongoing war was. On August 22, 1862 Lincoln answered:  “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the union and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.”

By January 1, 1863, General Robert E. Lee had delivered defeat after defeat to a succession of Union generals leading far larger armies than the South could muster. With the North tiring of war and discouraged by defeats, Lincoln tried to foment a slave rebellion within the Confederacy that would compel Confederate soldiers to leave the army and return to protect their women, children, and homes.  The Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863) failed to foment a slave uprising. The proclamation states that it is an act believed to be warranted by “military necessity” and “as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing” the southern rebellion. The Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in territories controlled by the Confederacy and, therefore, was meaningless.  No slaves were freed in terrorties controlled by the Union. Lincoln’s own Secretary of State ridiculed the proclamation for freeing slaves in territories we do not control and leaving them in slavery in territories we do control.

In the time between his election and his inaugeration, Lincoln got a constitutional amendment—the Corwin Amendment—passed by the House and Senate and its ratification by states underway. The amendment reads: “No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said state.”

The Corwin Amendment was a bribe to the South to stay in the union. It passed the same day that the tariff that drove the southern states out of the union passed.  Lincoln’s message to the South was clear: stay in the union, pay the tariff, and slavery is forever protected from federal intervention. The South left the union because the South was more concerned with the tariff than with slavery.

In his Inaugural Address (1861) Lincoln states: “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” Lincoln goes on to say that this has forever been his position as many of his similar and never recanted declarations make clear. Moreover, he adds, those who nominated and elected him see it the same way and placed the sanctity of states’ rights in the Republican platform.

In debate with Stephen Douglas (September 18, 1858), Lincoln stated: “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

Lincoln’s policy was to expel blacks to Africa or to a South American country. DiLorenzo cites Phillip Magness’ “Lincoln and Colonization:”  “Ulysses S. Grant made a serious push to annex the Dominican Republic, intending in part to create a refuge location for freed slaves.”

If you consider the hard facts of Lincoln’s own words over the years, you can see how totally corrupt are so-called “Lincoln scholars.”  These frauds have invented a false history whose purpose is to serve the ego and moral self-righteousness of white liberals, almost all of whom are Democrats but who worship a Republican president that they concocted.  No such Lincoln exists as the one fabricated by “Lincoln scholars.”

Consider also that if something as transparent as the so-called “Civil War” can be misrepresented in US education for decades, what cannot be misrepresented by the elites who rule us by controlling the explanations?

After reviewing DiLorenzo’s new book, we will have a look at a newly published monograph by John Remington Graham that presents us with the thesis that the War of Northern Aggression was instigated by powerful banking interests for the purpose of creating a large national debt that would enable bankers to rule by controlling the flow of money and credit. The bankers understood that war required the fomenting of hatred, and they underwrote the fomenting of hatred of the South by the North.  Graham provides strong circumstantial evidence, and it is a thesis that warrants research.

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