The Real Lincoln

The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

This book has altered my view of the American Civil War. For the first time in my life, I have sympathy for the Southern cause. No, not for slavery. That abomination had to end. The South's cause was states' rights. But their horrible contradiction was trying to apply states rights to deny others their rights. As such, it was properly doomed.

That said, that did not make the North's cause automatically just. Had the North declared, at the outset, that its mission was to free the slaves, then its cause would have been just. It would have had the moral right to crush the South by any means necessary.

But it didn't. In yet another horrible contradiction, it felt it had the right to deny others their rights. The Civil War was a cataclysmic orgy of abusing the rights of others.

The North's goal was to stop the South from seceding. The purpose behind that was not to "save the Union" but to crush opposition to Lincoln's goal -- to implement on a national level statist ambitions he had failed to accomplish on a state level for 3 decades. Standing in his way was the constitution -- on state level as well as national. More, the staunchest advocates of states' rights, tragically, were Southerners.

This and more is covered in DiLorenzo's book. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in a fresh perspective on the Civil War and its significant, tragic impact of American life and politics ever since.

I encourage and welcome comments on the book.