The Civil War had nothing to do with the fair treatment black people, so why does this excuse keep coming up?

~Abe Lincoln was not an abolitionist and the USA did not go to war to end slavery, nor did the CSA states secede to preserve the "Perculiar Institution".



The right to own Slaves was protected by the US Constitution (Article I, sections 2 and 9, Article IV, section 2, Amendments IV, V, IX and X). Abolition could come only by state law or Constitutional Amendment. Lincoln knew that and said as much throughout the 1860 campaign. As he repeated in his First Inaugural Address, he had neither the desire nor the authority to abolish slavery where it existed. He may have ignored that basic fact when he promulgated the illegal and unconstitutional Emancipation Proclamation, but as a elementary principle of constitutional law, neither the Chief Executive not the Congress could legally abolish slavery or emancipate slaves.



No abolition amendment was ever introduced before 1864 for a very simple reason. The was insufficient support in the north for ratification. The south would not even have had to vote to defeat it. In 1864, with the CSA states absent, Congress considered an abolition amendment for the very first time. It was defeated. Had it been passed in Congress, it would never have been ratified at the polls or in convention. In March, 1861, the Republican dominated northern majority in Congress passed the Corwin Amendment. If ratified, Corwin would have become Amendment XIII. By its terms, Corwin would have prohibited any future attempt to propose an abolition amendment. Rather than to stick around to ratify Corwin, the CSA states seceded. Why would they have seceded to protect a right that was guaranteed, especially when Lincoln and the northern states wanted to extend that guarantee into perpetuity? It is axiomatic that the CSA states did not secede over the slavery issue.



Consider the problems if some four million people, angry, homeless, uneducated, unwanted, penniless, with no means of support and no marketable job skills were unloosed on society. Who would care for them? Who would foot the bill? Who would put down the hordes of rampaging freed slaves set on revenge or marauding, rioting and looting just to obtain the means to survive? How were the owners to be compensated for the wrongful governmental taking of their property. Given the total absence of a labor force in the south, the plantation owners needed the slaves to run the farms and the lion's share of southern fortunes were tied up in the human chattel and in the land that would lie fallow without the slaves to work it. The north relied on those slaves at least as much, if not more, than did the south. Abolitionists were always a minority faction, albeit a vocal one, and they had very few viable solutions for the chaos they were trying to create.The Civil War had nothing to do with the fair treatment black people, so why does this excuse keep coming up?
Good points. I think that America has tried to make Abraham Lincoln into more of a hero in this area than he really was. He was a good President. Anyone who can lead the country through the Civil War and the difficulties that the country was facing would have to be good at what he was doing. But he was not a firm abolitionist like history has made him out to be.

He stated once that if he could bring unity to the country by preserving slavery, then he would do that. The war did start over states' rights, but slavery was a big issue that was being debated in the category of states' rights. But there were other issues too.

People point to the Emancipation Proclamation as evidence of his anti-slavery views, but even that was for political reasons. It was strategic. It made the war about slavery. It allowed blacks to enlist in the war. It allowed foreign countries to come to the aid of the Union army. At the same time, many white soldiers from the north became angry about this, stating that they wrere not going to fight the war to free slaves.

It's interesting what you can learn when you actually look beyond your history books!
WTF is your point, that the Civil War should never have happened and blacks should still be slaves. I wish I could make you a slave, then we would see how much intellectual crap you would vomit then.The Civil War had nothing to do with the fair treatment black people, so why does this excuse keep coming up?
Do you think that you would have done better in Africa? If you were born there you would now be running around naked hunting with a spear. THERE HAS BEEN MORE WHITE PEOPLE IN THE WORLD THAT HAVE BEEN SLAVES. JUST GO TO THE MIDDLE EAST AND THERE ARE MANY WHITE SLAVES.
You don't know the minds of every Union soldier and citizen of the time. You can't pretend that no white person ever killed another white person for the rights of blacks. Freeing slaves is the idea that kept the North fighting. You're ignoring the soldiers' beliefs.
"Consider the problems if some four million people, angry, homeless, uneducated, unwanted, penniless, with no means of support and no marketable job skills were unloosed on society".....



Humm- sounds a bit like we have now with all of the illegal aliens pouring in. Wait until the homeless Japanese starts boating over. Where is Old Abe when we really need him? Rolling in his long a** casket I bet.
Is that mess of words you copy/pasted saying that the war was not about freeing slaves because the slaves could not of been freed anyhow? Cause that makes no sense considering they were freed after the war.

It amazes me how even today blacks still harp on old news and find crap to complain about. You can hang on to the thought of a few men being hung from a tree and martyr them, but heaven forbid you give the 200,000 or so white men who fought and died to free the south any sort of praise.

I see it first hand with many blacks including my wife, always have to find something to complain about, she could win the lottery for millions of dollars and do nothing but complain about paying taxes.

Got to get with the program my man, lots of bad people back then and lots of good people, its just like today, but when you focus all your energy on the bad you are unable to see the good ones. Your thoughts get clouded and skewed, its really unhealthy.


After the Union victory over the Confederacy, a brief period of southern black progress, called Reconstruction, followed. From 1865 to 1877, under protection of Union troops, some strides were made toward equal rights for African-Americans. Southern black men began to vote and were elected to the United States Congress and to local offices such as sheriff. Coalitions of white and black Republicans passed bills to establish the first public school systems in most states of the South, although sufficient funding was hard to find. Blacks established their own churches, towns and businesses. Tens of thousands migrated to Mississippi for the chance to clear and own their own land, as 90% of the bottomlands were undeveloped. By the end of the century, two-thirds of the farmers who owned land in the Mississippi Delta bottomlands were black.