Slavery was an issue too, of course. While Lincoln was no abolitionist, the South no doubt saw a threat to that horrible institution in the stronger federal government that the Republicans promised. So while ending slavery was a great thing the loss of one million lives to do so was unnecessary. Slavery was everywhere in retreat, and with few exceptions peacefully so. All of the Northern states had abolished slavery by 1858. Most other countries ended the practice peacefully. There is every reason to think that slavery could have been completely ended here peacefully too.
That is why the title of this section is Lincoln the Mass Murderer. He got all those people killed to stop the South from doing what they had a right to do, secede from the Union. He was not interested in ending slavery as the mythology about him says.
It is important to understand the true meaning of Lincoln’s presidency. He marked the end of the republic of the Founders. After the Civil War no longer was "the consent of the governed", to quote the Declaration of Independence, necessary. As the abolitionist Lysander Spooner put it in 1867 in No Treason:
That is why the title of this section is Lincoln the Mass Murderer. He got all those people killed to stop the South from doing what they had a right to do, secede from the Union. He was not interested in ending slavery as the mythology about him says.
It is important to understand the true meaning of Lincoln’s presidency. He marked the end of the republic of the Founders. After the Civil War no longer was "the consent of the governed", to quote the Declaration of Independence, necessary. As the abolitionist Lysander Spooner put it in 1867 in No Treason:
The principle, on which the war was waged by the North, was simply this: That men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and criminals.No principle, that is possible to be named, can be more self-evidently false than this; or more self-evidently fatal to all political freedom. Yet it triumphed in the field, and is now assumed to be established. If it really be established, the number of slaves, instead of having been diminished by the war, has been greatly increased; for a man, thus subjected to a government that he does not want, is a slave. And there is no difference, in principle --- but only in degree --- between political and chattel slavery. The former, no less than the latter, denies a man's ownership of himself and the products of his labor; and [*iv] asserts that other men may own him, and dispose of him and his property, for their uses, and at their pleasure.
Let’s remember Lincoln for what he really did, destroy the republic and one million lives in the process.
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