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MacLorry chimes in on the side of big government.

Why am I not surprised?

For those of you who still believe that Lincoln fought the war to end slavery,..You need to get over your 3rd grade history lessons.

http://condor.depaul.edu/tps/Abraham_Lincoln_an_Abolitionist_Lincoln_Quotes_on_Slavery.htm

From Lincoln�s Published Response to Horace Greeley, 1862

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. 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 to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.

The first fundamental principles listed in the Declaration of Independence is that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It's only to secure those rights that "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Lincoln and many others of his day saw slavery as an affront to the most basic principle enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. Only those who believe in the validity of Adolph Hitler's idea of the "master race" would now disagree with Lincoln that all races of mankind "are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." Therefore, the Confederacy by enslaving many did not have the consent of the governed, and thus, no legitimacy under our nation's founding principles.

The so-called war of northern aggression was fought to make the words of the Declaration of Independence true for all, not just for some who appointed themselves as the master race.

Not for big government, but for truth and our nation's founding principles.

Why am I not surprised you don't know the difference?

Once again, MacLorry.

Lincoln didn't fight the civil War to end slavery.

Every military action needs a boogeyman story to tell the people.

Lincoln's boogeyman story was slavery.

Anyone who believes the union wasn't split because of slavery only needs to read the actual Declarations of Secession from the various Confederate states to change their thinking.

It was for the institution of slavery that the union was split and preserving the union was Lincoln's purpose for going to war. If not for slavery there would have been no split and with no split there would have been no war, so slavery was in fact the reason for the war even accepting what Lincoln stated as true and not just political rhetoric (rhetoric like Obama saying he supports traditional marriage until he wins election twice).

Take the time to read the actual Declarations of Secession from the various Confederate states and you'll see just how wrong you are.

Lincoln's struggle to pass the 13th amendment before the end of the civil war demonstrates that slavery was the underlying cause of the civil war and its abolishment was required to prevent the same cause of a future war.

In fact, eight months after the end of the war it was former Confederate states that put the 13th amendment over the top and into effect. Eventually all Confederate states ratified the 13th amendment, thus repudiating the institution of slavery as invalid and a just reason for secession in the first place. That people are not property should have been obvious, but economic interests often blind folks to the truth.

http://www.history.com/news/5-things-you-may-not-know-about-lincoln-slavery-and-emancipation

Since Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as a military measure, it didn�t apply to border slave states like Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, all of which had remained loyal to the Union. Lincoln also exempted selected areas of the Confederacy that had already come under Union control in hopes of gaining the loyalty of whites in those states. In practice, then, the Emancipation Proclamation didn�t immediately free a single slave, as the only places it applied were places where the federal government had no control�the Southern states currently fighting against the Union.

You need to give up your elementary school view of history.

Here's as good of a place to begin as any.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo198.html

Lincoln instructed Seward to make sure that the amendment said that "the Constitution should never be altered so as to authorize Congress to abolish or interfere with slavery in the states" where it existed. In addition, writes Goodwin, Lincoln instructed Seward, who would become his Secretary of State, to get a federal law introduced that would have made various personal liberty laws that existed in some Northern states illegal. These state laws were meant to nullify the federal Fugitive Slave Act, an act that Lincoln very strongly supported. Far from putting slavery "on the path to extinction," these actions of Lincoln�s would have granted it more powerful government support than ever. Thus, Lincoln�s actions in late 1860�early 1861 were exactly the opposite of how Professor Striner portrays them as being with regard to the issue of slavery.

The white supremacists of the North were very pleased indeed with Lincoln�s assurances that he would do all that he could to prohibit black people from ever living among them, first by keeping them out of the Territories, and second by enshrining Southern slavery explicitly in the Constitution. He effectively promised to keep black people far away from such places as Boston, Massachusetts. Goodwin writes that when Seward went public and announced these actions to a Boston audience he was met with "thunderous applause."

As you say the Emancipation Proclamation was a military measure, and something that could be imposed by Lincoln only as commander in chief in a time of war. Once the war ended the courts of the day would have quickly struck down that wartime measure and the fundamental reason for the secession of the Confederate states, as expressed in their own documents, the institution of slavery, would have again been at the forefront.

Whatever you believe of how Lincoln viewed salves, it was to preserve the union that Lincoln went to war and to preserve the union from future secession that Lincoln pushed through the 13th amendment. That Lincoln didn't express anything other than equality under the law does not mean he did not hold that slaves were people entitled to the full rights of all other people. It means that to accomplish his purpose Lincoln expressed only that which was for political expediency of the time.

It's evident from Lincoln's last speech in which he publicly expressed his support for black suffrage, that he did in fact view slaves as men created equal and entitled to the full rights of citizenship. Only the most naive would believe that's a view Lincoln had not held from the beginning of his presidency.

I see no value in arguing a point that was decided decades before anyone who could possbily read this was born. What's done is done and can't be undone, even if some folks wish it to be so. Civil war is a tragedy, wherever/whenever, but the American Civil War happened so long ago that the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is likely to have been blurred by the passage of time and the tellers of tales bending "the facts" to meet their perceptions.

When I visit a Civil War battle field, and I've visited all of the majors and many of the minors, I honor the bravery of both Union and Confederate soldier, Americans all.

EDIT: I will state for the record that I have found that some people who live in states that were part of the Confederacy have held on to their association with the Confederacy, either directly or indirectly, much more than people in the states that remained part of the Union. You hardly ever heard anyone in New England, where I was raised, discuss the American Civil War. My Father, being something of a Civil War scholar, was keen on the subject, but had few people locally to discuss it with, even though we lived in an Ivy League college town. My Grandmother, as keeper of the Chase, Dodge, and Tilton flame made it a point to visit all of the Civil War veterans' graves on Memorial Day and insure that their GAR flag stands were set at sunrise and removed at sunset. That made for me, when I was a small boy, a dull day traveling all over central New Hampshire to attend to that job, but some of those people were real to her and just names carved in stone to me.

Over the course of world history every race has both enslaved other races and been enslaved by other races. All races are then equal in seeing others as property and being held to be property. It's to be expected that slaves such as Spartacus would rise up against their masters, but for many of the race of the slave masters to take up arms against their own race to free another races is unique in world history. That it took from 1776 to 1865 to abolish slavery is not surprising, but that it happened at all is surprising.

Let Rev. Barber point to an example showing equality for blacks was tardy before he criticizes the founders of the only government in history to take up arms against its own to abolish slavery.