[CaptainsJournal] For those who say the Civil (sic) War was “all about slavery”, I like to point out that slaves in the South were “identified as free” by the Emancipation Proclamation — issued two years after a war that was “all about slavery” started — but weren’t actually free because there were no blue-clad troops to spring them. Slaves in DC were freed by ordinance in 1864. Slaves elsewhere had to wait until the 13th amendment in December 1865, 8 months after a war that was all about slavery ended. It appears the DC politicians didn’t get the memo about the war being all about slavery, and Lincoln, himself, didn’t realize it for two whole years.
The Emancipation Proclamation, America’s first major PR effort, was (much more likely) a ploy to “make the war about slavery” which would operate to bring lots of Northern abolitionists down to the recruiting stations. This, in turn, would beef up the ranks of the Union army which was then getting its clock cleaned.
Had Lincoln been keen to erase slavery, he could have done it far cheaper than ruining the South’s economy and threatening the North’s — at a cost of 620,000 dead — had he done it the way the Brits had 30 years prior; he certainly had to know about that. The Brits outlawed slavery, then bought out all the slaveholders for cash. It was a good deal for anyone who could see the onrushing Industrial Revolution, an event which would, in short order, make human chattel slavery an economic dead-end.
But Lincoln was not keen to empower the South with such a scheme. Lincoln wanted to OWN the South. The tariffs had done that. If the South rendered itself immune to the tariffs, the Northern economy would crash. This could not be allowed to happen. It is related that one reporter asked Lincoln “Why not just let them depart?” and Lincoln’s answer was “Then who would pay for the government?” That was Lincoln’s (and the North’s) motive.
Foreign newspapers of the day, Corriere della Sera, Le Monde, The Times of London, and others, universally saw the conflict as economic and not connected to slavery. As disinterested spectators, their views are telling.
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