Slavery NO; Secession YES

"swindle" (albeit a "benign" one).
In other words, Lincoln's war destroyed the original constitutional relation between the states and the federal government. His own defenders say so - in spite of his explicit, clear, and consistent professed intent to "preserve" that relation.

The Civil War wasn't just a victory of North over South; it was a victory for centralized government over the states and federalism. It destroyed the ability of the states to protect themselves against the destruction of their reserved powers.
Must we all be happy about this? Lincoln himself - the real Lincoln, that is - would have deprecated the unintended results of the war. Though he sometimes resorted to dictatorial methods, he never meant to create a totalitarian state.
It's tragic that slavery was intertwined with a good cause, and scandalous that those who defend that cause today should be smeared as partisans of slavery. But the verdict of history must not be left to the simple-minded and the demagogic.

Copyright © 2001 by the Griffin Internet Syndicate,
Reprinted for Educational purposes only

"QUOTES" … on the "CAUSE"

That either revenue from duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the ports must be closed to importations from abroad.... If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed; the sources which supply our treasury will be dried up; we shall have no money to carry on the government; the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe...Allow rail road iron to be entered at Savannah with the low duty of ten per cent, which is all that the Southern Confederacy think of laying on imported goods, and not an ounce more would be imported at New York; the railroads would be supplied from the southern ports.

New York Evening Post March 12, 1861,
Recorded in Northern Editorials on Secession,
Howard C. Perkins, ed., 1965, pp. 598-599.

"A nation preserved with liberty trampled underfoot is much worse than a nation in fragments but with the spirit of liberty still alive. Southerners persistently claim that their rebellion is for the purpose of preserving this form of government."
Private John H. Haley, 17th Maine Regiment, USA