Lysander Spooner: Civil War was a worse crime than slavery

Hell, even Lincoln himself admited that the civil war was not about slavery
"if I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it"
and just to add insult to injury for any Lincoln fans
"I am not now, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social or political equality of the white and black races. I am not now nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor of intermarriages with white people. There is a physical difference between the white and the black races which will forever forbid the two races living together on social or political equality. There must be a position of superior and inferior, and I am in favor of assigning the superior position to the white man."

 

Yes.

First: The civil war was more about economics and centralizing control than it was about slavery. Slavery was actually an after thought. In fact, when Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation, the union army suffered from a great many desertions because they weren't really fighting against slavery to begin with. As the person above posted, even Lincoln himself wasn't primarily concerned with slavery.

Second: Every other industrialized nation had managed to end slavery without massive civil war.

Lincoln was a tyrant.

 

Lincoln set the stage for the Federal Governments rise to power.

 

Look at it this way:

If, in April 1861, it could have been known that the civil war would drag on for 4 years and result in 600,000 persons dead (1 in 50 Americans), huge swaths of the country decimated (especially after Sherman's March to the Sea), a President assassinated, and decades of military occupation of the South during reconstruction... if that could have been known, it is difficult to say that the fight was worth the staggering cost.

Economically slavery was rapidly becoming simply not viable. We had already banned the importation of new slaves (though the internal trade was self-sustaining), and the problem could have been resolved legislatively within one generation.

In 1860 dollars the war cost in excess of 6 billion.

By 1860 there were apx. 4 million slaves in America. The average market price for a slave in 1860 was about $1500.

It would have been cheaper, and saved 600,000 lives, to have simply bought every slave and released him or her.

When the facts are considered the Civil War becomes very difficult to justify. Legislatively a compromise could have been reached to ban all newborn slave children from being slaves, and to release all current slaves from bondage after X number of years, and in turn some financial payment made to the owners for loss of value.

The opportunity of returning to Liberia was rather popular, and would have eased the social tensions from so many new persons entering the work force. That, combined with the opening of the West, would have further reduced social tension from the event.

The war was unneccessary.

 

This. The man had made himself into a King.

 

Just like how our trillion dollar war in Iraq has far exceeded the GDP of prewar Iraq. Government has no incentive to be frugal with our money.

BTW, Yes slavery would most certainly have ended without war. However this is based on the assumption that we would not have continued expanding into central America. This scenario would have given slave owners far more representation in congress.