How We Know the “Civil War” Was Not About Slavery

Lincoln and the U.S. Congress publicly declared that their invasion of the southern states was not about slavery but “saving the union.”  The Northern-controlled House and Senate had also passed a proposed constitutional amendment (the Corwin Amendment) in March of 1861 that would have prohibited the federal government from ever interfering with slavery.  Lincoln endorsed this amendment in his first inaugural address, saying that he had no opposition to making the protection of slavery “express and irrevocable” (his exact words) in the text of the Constitution.

So if the North was unequivocally not fighting to end slavery, how could it be that the South went to war only to protect slavery, asks Paul Craig Roberts.


2:38 pm on August 23, 2017