In recent years kids no longer learn what the USSR was (is?) and the damage of socialism and the masses of citizens that die when is finally fully in the grip of it.

American blacks (along with everyone else here) are taught a fantasy about black history and the ones that travel to Africa and discover the truth of how their ancestors became slaves are blown away at how all they were taught was total crap. Had seen a travel channel show myself on same thing about 1 couple visiting an old city on the coast, don’t recall which one, but the guide there was some great granddaughter (whichever generation) of the village king from the days when their tribe rounded up slaves to sell to the white slavers. The couple cried and outraged at being taught such a huge lie, but it’s typical of politics.

There are so many examples now and in our books of complete rewrites of our history. Decades ago i got tired of so often hearing such things and no specifics, so i went to researching it myself and found nobody had told a scratch of how much has been hidden, lost, rewritten. And in recent years it’s being altered before our eyes.

The war was about the protection of Northern industry by the levying of tariffs on the south, and that was it. Lincoln promised no invasion if the tariffs were paid, regardless of the fate of slavery. And besides, slavery was on its way out. Abolition was a topic in the southern states just as it was in the north, and many abolitionists actually favored the Confederate cause because they knew that the federal Constitution protected slavery.

Also, look at what happened to slavery in the rest of the Western world. In every country but America it was abolished peacefully. In America, it stayed around for so long mainly because the South was prevented from industrializing as the rest of the world had, because of Washington’s tariffs, and also because of federal favor given to northern banking interests who held southern debt.

To ask questions about the causes and motivations behind the civil war in no way endorses slavery or racism. Rather, it opens doors to discussing how those things may have been ended peacefully, and without the unprecedented expansion of executive power that Lincoln created during the war. Which power has led America into immeasurable crises and bloodshed ever since.

So whereas the South did technically fire the first shot, they did so because the North was clearly setting up Fort Sumter as a staging point for an invasion. And if you look further back, you will find that Lincoln had been saying all along that he would invade if the South didn’t pay up on the unconstitutional and economically-crippling tariffs that he had levied on them. Also, the evacuation of the fort was reached as one of the terms of peace settled by Secretary of State Willam Seward – which settlement was ignored entirely by Lincoln.

I suspect that things would have turned out much better for the South if Beauregard had not ordered the fort fired upon; the soldiers inside it were on the brink of leaving anyway because the US was provisioning them with ammunition but little food. And as Lincoln clearly ordered the fortification as bait to excuse his impending invasion (there were already columns moving southward before the battle of Ft. Sumter), the war would have lost support and the Southern states may have been able to depart the union peacefully.

So slavery really had very little to do with the war. But then in another sense, slavery in some form or other is at the heart of ANY political struggle.

Incidentally, the Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave and slaves in Union slave states (Missouri, Kentucky, and Delaware) were not freed until December, 1865, eight months after the War ended. Delaware voted AGAINST the 13th Amendment ending slavery.

OFFICIAL history likes to leave out that stuff. As they say, the winners of wars write the histories.

For a funny trick question ask someone “Who was president during the civil war?” When they say “Abraham Lincoln” say “No, Abraham Lincoln AND Jefferson Davis”