“Americans should be proud that their government waged a war to end slavery.”
Really?
Just because one side was fighting to maintain the status quo and slavery doesn’t mean the other side was fighting to end slavery. We take one man’s word when he speaks for all southerner’s who fought but when Honest Abe says he didn’t fight the war to end slavery we ignore it and just pretend the Southerners who point to the other issues - like the taxes Abe mentions - are making things up. Slavery existed after the war and continued to exist for many years under different names under the union.
"My policy sought only to collect the Revenue (a 40 percent federal
sales tax on imports to Southern States under the Morrill Tariff Act of
1861)." reads paragraph 5 of Lincoln’s First Message to the U.S.
Congress, penned July 4, 1861.
"I have no purpose, directly or in-directly, to interfere with the
institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have
no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so," Lincoln
said it his first inaugural on March 4 of the same year."
