Answering Nick Gillespie

In an interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano, Nick Gillespie, of Reason Magazine, asked the judge about the motives of the south in seceding. While the judge's response was not wrong it was, for me, unsatisfying. In its place I offer the following.

What were the motives of the South? If you look at the union after the first wave of secession you'll see there are more slave states in the Union than out. They didn't seem to be concerned about slavery being in peril by force of the Federal government or Lincoln's election. After all, Lincoln had stated in his Inaugural address that..
1. He had no authority to end slavery and no intention of doing so, and
2. He was ready and willing to sign the Corwin amendment (many believe he had secretly authored it) that would make slavery perpetual and unchangeable.

The amendment, introduced in the house by Thomas Corwin and in the Senate by Wm. Seward, read as follows:

"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 amendment passed both houses and sat on Lincoln's desk for him to sign. But before he could Ft. Sumter happened and with it the second wave of secession.

If you asked Southerners why they fought, especially after the aggressive act at Ft. Sumter by the Yankees (which was the catalyst for the second wave of secession) most would have said they were fighting to push back an invasion of their home and home state; they were fighting for self determination. They were also fighting because the union had become oppressive and confiscatory for the Southern States.

This is born out in a conversation Lincoln had with the governor of Virginia before the second wave of secession.

Lincoln asked, "What shall I do with these Southerners, governor?"

The governor responded, "Let them go, sir, until they are ready to return."

Lincoln shot back, "What will then happen to my tariff?"

To paraphrase what Charles Dickens wrote in 1861, every Englishman knows this war is about money and nothing else.

To repeat: there was no reason for the slave states remaining in the union to secede because of slavery. Lincoln and the Congress had guaranteed that slavery as an institution was not in danger--in either the short or long term.

Had the states returned and had Ft. Sumter not happened, there is little doubt Lincoln would have signed the Corwin amendment post haste. Why would he not sign an amendment he himself had authored and ordered to be submitted in Congress––submitted by two northerners in states that had voted for Lincoln?!?

After Ft. Sumter, the amendment sat on Lincoln's desk unsigned until the day he was assassinated. Because of the wording of the phony Emancipation Proclamation it had no effect on the force of the amendment were it to be signed, for in the union slavery was practiced by non-seceding states and continued to be the law of the land until the 13th amendment was passed in 1866. The Southern States readily signed the amendment. (So-called reconstruction did not begin over the slavery issue. It began after several southern states––and northern as well–– refused to sign the 14th amendment--the amendment that has subsequently been used to incrementally destroy state sovereignty).

So, with these few things in mind, I now answer Mr. Gillespie's question with a question:

Instead of asking what the motives of the South were in seceding--why not ask with at least equal force what Lincoln's motives were in forcing the war and refusing to even meet with Southern leaders and representatives? They came to him on scores of occasions during the war to discuss terms ending the slaughter. President Davis had repeatedly stated the South had no desire whatsoever to fight. Numerous times during the war President Davis sent representatives to discuss peace, and every time Lincoln categorically refused to even meet with them. Instead, he persisted in viciously prosecuting the war until over six hundred thousand Americans were dead, a million were mutilated, crippled and disfigured, tens of thousands were addicted to morphine and the Southern states were destroyed; their wealth robbed, their cities burned, the property of private citizens plundered and their state's sovereignty taken away. They were then reduced to the status of conquered provinces, put under military occupation and subjected for a dozen years of cultural genocide.

Why did Lincoln and the radical Republicans who supported him do such horrible things?

No one seems to ask such questions. No one suspects Lincoln. No one can suspect Lincoln--it is not allowed.

Are they stupid, brainwashed, ignorant of history--or just corrupt??

Only a few men of honor who love truth and freedom, men like Tom DiLorenzo, Thomas Flemming, Mel Bradford, Clyde Wilson, Tom Woods, Lew Rockwell, the Judge and Ron Paul ––only a few honorable and truly patriotic men like them have had the courage to ask and unflinchingly answer the hard questions.

The rest, the statists, their priests and their prophets, stop up their ears, pierce their eyes, and blindly fall down and worship the false Roman god Lincoln at his temple on the Potomac. They proclaim him to be the savior of the Union. And this is true. He did save the union--but by illegitimate means--by tyrannical force rather than by the compelling rhetoric of a free man appealing to free men. The result of such a salvation?: Millions of once free citizens made political slaves to an oligarchic elite.

As the statists and useful idiots, miseducated in government schools, prate their litany of imperialist lies and propaganda, burn their incense and offer more and more blood sacrifice to the Sacred Union, it seems to matter not to them that Lincoln destroyed liberty and self determination. It seems to matter not to them Lincoln eviscerated the Constitution, gutting it of the core principle of liberty, and replaced it with an endless series of revolutions driven by the Marxist/collectivist principle of government enforced equality.

So it goes in the Empire of lies.