Recruiting posters from the Civil War, encouraged men to join the colors, with one or both slogans: Save the Union and Free the Slaves. Kansas called themselves the Free State and it didn’t mean free stuff.
“Recruiting posters from the Civil War, encouraged men to join the colors, with one or both slogans: Save the Union and Free the Slaves.”
For the purpose of this post, let’s stipulate that President Lincoln and the North did indeed “fight to free the slaves.”
In the moral sense that can be justified. If slavery was morally wrong, what could be more justified than using guns to kill people who owned slaves? After all, the purpose of the federal government is to kill immoral people, the argument goes.
But from the view point of the United States Constitution I will argue that Lincoln was wrong to “fight to free the slaves.”
The United States Constitution - the original one - included pro-slavery provisions. Slavery was legal. In fact, of the 13 original states, 13 of them were slave states.
If Lincoln was fighting to “free the slaves” then he was fighting to overthrow the pro-slavery provisions of the United States Constitution.
U.S. Presidents really should not take up arms to violently overthrow the United States Constitution. The peaceful amendment process is the way to legally amend the Constitution. Prior to the war, neither Lincoln or any other member of Congress ever introduced a proposed constitutional amendment to abolish slavery.
It has been awhile since I have heard the argument made that Lincoln “fought to free the slaves.” Maybe he did.
Yes. Kansas also meant “free of Black people”. Their state constitution forbade Black people from living there. No, not just slaves. ALL Black people.