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Before the Civil War the federal government was becoming too powerful. The southern states saw what was happening and decided to secede from the union and form the Confederacy. They followed the example of how the colonies seceded from Britain, which started the Revolutionary War. The Civil War, of course, will not be remembered as a revolution, but as a war to end slavery. In 1848, as a congressman, Lincoln said, "Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much territory as they inhabit." For Lincoln to turn around and fight against the right of secession he claimed to believe in was not admirable or praiseworthy. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation more than a year after the war began, and it only affected the southern states, not the northern or border states. The proclamation applied only to the states that were fighting the Union. Therefore, not one slave was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln did this because the north was losing and needed a reason to fight, and the spirit to win. This was in direct conflict with Lincoln's stated belief about races. He said, "I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position." Lincoln stated his political motives clearly when he wrote the following to Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, 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; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help save the Union. . . . I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free." He had to free the slaves to keep everyone in bondage to an increasingly powerful federal government. Many people see Lincoln as a hero who fought to free the slaves. Instead of being a hero, Lincoln would not let the south secede because he thought it was impossible, and the Union was strong and lasting.. The truth is he fought against freedom, the freedom to secede. Though slavery became an issue, it was not why the war began or the reason men gave their lives. The war began as a result of states' rights being violated by the federal government. As the book "The Wars of America" reads, "the Union was merely a loose compact of states with nothing sacred about it, any member of which had the right to secede. To prevent secession was unjust; it was an invasion of the south." When the government took power that Constitutionally belonged to the states, the southern states rose up and defended their rights. The history of the Civil War was distorted because the winners wrote it. In conclusion, the true reason the Civil War was fought will have been forgotten, and will be remembered as the war to end slavery. Abraham Lincoln will be a hero who freed the slaves. The masses will become even more ignorant and the states' rights will not even exist in memory. Freedom will be a dream of the past. |
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