Lysander Spooner on Lincoln's War (1870)

Ever wonder what the abolitionists thought about Abraham Lincoln's war, its purported motive of "saving the union," and the claim that it was fought to free the slaves?

Here's what leading abolitionist philosopher Lysander Spooner had to say about it all in 1870 (highlights bolded by me)

Now, what is true in Europe, is substantially true in this country. The difference is the immaterial one, that, in this country, there is no visible, permanent head, or chief, of these robbers and murderers who call themselves "the government." That is to say, there is no ONE MAN, who calls himself the state, or even emperor, king, or sovereign; no one who claims that he and his children rule "by the Grace of God," by "Divine Right," or by special appointment from Heaven. There are only certain men, who call themselves presidents, senators, and representatives, and claim to be the authorized agents, FOR THE TIME BEING, OR FOR CERTAIN SHORT PERIODS, OF ALL "the people of the United States"; but who can show no credentials, or powers of attorney, or any other open, authentic evidence that they are so; and who notoriously are not so; but are really only the agents of a secret band of robbers and murderers, whom they themselves do not know, and have no means of knowing, individually; but who, they trust, will openly or secretly, when the crisis comes, sustain them in all their usurpations and crimes.

What is important to be noticed is, that these so-called presidents, senators, and representatives, these pretended agents of all "the people of the United States," the moment their exactions meet with any formidable resistance from any portion of "the people" themselves, are obliged, like their co-robbers and murderers in Europe, to fly at once to the lenders of blood money, for the means to sustain their power. And they borrow their money on the same principle, and for the same purpose, viz., to be expended in shooting down all those "people of the United States" -- their own constituents and principals, as they profess to call them -- who resist the robberies and enslavements which these borrowers of the money are practising upon them. And they expect to repay the loans, if at all, only from the proceeds of the future robberies, which they anticipate it will be easy for them and their successors to perpetrate through a long series of years, upon their pretended principals, if they can but shoot down now some hundreds of thousands of them, and thus strike terror into the rest.

Perhaps the facts were never made more evident, in any country on the globe, than in our own, that these soulless blood-money loan-mongers are the real rulers; that they rule from the most sordid and mercenary motives; that the ostensible government, the presidents, senators, and representatives, so called, are merely their tools; and that no ideas of, or regard for, justice or liberty had anything to do in inducing them to lend their money for the war [i.e, the Civil War]. In proof of all this, look at the following facts.

Nearly a hundred years ago we professed to have got rid of all that religious superstition, inculcated by a servile and corrupt priesthood in Europe, that rulers, so called, derived their authority directly from Heaven; and that it was consequently a religious duty on the part of the people to obey them. We professed long ago to have learned that governments could rightfully exist only by the free will, and on the voluntary support, of those who might choose to sustain them. We all professed to have known long ago, that the only legitimate objects of government were the maintenance of liberty and justice equally for all. All this we had professed for nearly a hundred years. And we professed to look with pity and contempt upon those ignorant, superstitious, and enslaved peoples of Europe, who were so easily kept in subjection by the frauds and force of priests and kings.

Notwithstanding all this, that we had learned, and known, and professed, for nearly a century, these lenders of blood money had, for a long series of years previous to the war, been the willing accomplices of the slave-holders in perverting the government from the purposes of liberty and justice, to the greatest of crimes. They had been such accomplices FOR A PURELY PECUNIARY CONSIDERATION, to wit, a control of the markets in the South; in other words, the privilege of holding the slave-holders themselves in industrial and commercial subjection to the manufacturers and merchants of the North (who afterwards furnished the money for the war). And these Northern merchants and manufacturers, these lenders of blood-money, were willing to continue to be the accomplices of the slave-holders in the future, for the same pecuniary considerations. But the slave-holders, either doubting the fidelity of their Northern allies, or feeling themselves strong enough to keep their slaves in subjection without Northern assistance, would no longer pay the price which these Northern men demanded. And it was to enforce this price in the future -- that is, to monopolize the Southern markets, to maintain their industrial and commercial control over the South -- that these Northern manufacturers and merchants lent some of the profits of their former monopolies for the war, in order to secure to themselves the same, or greater, monopolies in the future. These -- and not any love of liberty or justice -- were the motives on which the money for the war was lent by the North. In short, the North said to the slave-holders: If you will not pay us our price (give us control of your markets) for our assistance against your slaves, we will secure the same price (keep control of your markets) by helping your slaves against you, and using them as our tools for maintaining dominion over you; for the control of your markets we will have, whether the tools we use for that purpose be black or white, and be the cost, in blood and money, what it may.

On this principle, and from this motive, and not from any love of liberty, or justice, the money was lent in enormous amounts, and at enormous rates of interest. And it was only by means of these loans that the objects of the war were accomplished.

And now these lenders of blood-money demand their pay; and the government, so called, becomes their tool, their servile, slavish, villanous tool, to extort it from the labor of the enslaved people both of the North and South. It is to be extorted by every form of direct, and indirect, and unequal taxation. Not only the nominal debt and interest -- enormous as the latter was -- are to be paid in full; but these holders of the debt are to be paid still further -- and perhaps doubly, triply, or quadruply paid -- by such tariffs on imports as will enable our home manufacturers to realize enormous prices for their commodities; also by such monopolies in banking as will enable them to keep control of, and thus enslave and plunder, the industry and trade of the great body of the Northern people themselves. In short, the industrial and commercial slavery of the great body of the people, North and South, black and white, is the price which these lenders of blood money demand, and insist upon, and are determined to secure, in return for the money lent for the war.

This programme having been fully arranged and systematized, they put their sword into the hands of the chief murderer of the war**, and charge him to carry their scheme into effect. And now he, speaking as their organ, says, "LET US HAVE PEACE."

The meaning of this is: Submit quietly to all the robbery and slavery we have arranged for you, and you can have "peace." But in case you resist, the same lenders of blood-money, who furnished the means to subdue the South, will furnish the means again to subdue you.

These are the terms on which alone this government, or, with few exceptions, any other, ever gives "peace" to its people.

The whole affair, on the part of those who furnished the money, has been, and now is, a deliberate scheme of robbery and murder; not merely to monopolize the markets of the South, but also to monopolize the currency, and thus control the industry and trade, and thus plunder and enslave the laborers, of both North and South. And Congress and the president are today the merest tools for these purposes. They are obliged to be, for they know that their own power, as rulers, so-called, is at an end, the moment their credit with the blood-money loan-mongers fails. They are like a bankrupt in the hands of an extortioner. They dare not say nay to any demand made upon them. And to hide at once, if possible, both their servility and crimes, they attempt to divert public attention, by crying out that they have "Abolished Slavery!" That they have "Saved the Country!" That they have "Preserved our Glorious Union!" and that, in now paying the "National Debt," as they call it (as if the people themselves, ALL OF THEM WHO ARE TO BE TAXED FOR ITS PAYMENT, had really and voluntarily joined in contracting it), they are simply "Maintaining the National Honor!"

By "maintaining the national honor," they mean simply that they themselves, open robbers and murderers, assume to be the nation, and will keep faith with those who lend them the money necessary to enable them to crush the great body of the people under their feet; and will faithfully appropriate, from the proceeds of their future robberies and murders, enough to pay all their loans, principal and interest.

The pretense that the "abolition of slavery" was either a motive or justification for the war, is a fraud of the same character with that of "maintaining the national honor." Who, but such usurpers, robbers, and murderers as they, ever established slavery? Or what government, except one resting upon the sword, like the one we now have, was ever capable of maintaining slavery? And why did these men abolish slavery? Not from any love of liberty in general -- not as an act of justice to the black man himself, but only "as a war measure," and because they wanted his assistance, and that of his friends, in carrying on the war they had undertaken for maintaining and intensifying that political, commercial, and industrial slavery, to which they have subjected the great body of the people, both black and white. And yet these imposters now cry out that they have abolished the chattel slavery of the black man -- although that was not the motive of the war -- as if they thought they could thereby conceal, atone for, or justify that other slavery which they were fighting to perpetuate, and to render more rigorous and inexorable than it ever was before. There was no difference of principle -- but only of degree -- between the slavery they boast they have abolished, and the slavery they were fighting to preserve; for all restraints upon men's natural liberty, not necessary for the simple maintenance of justice, are of the nature of slavery, and differ from each other only in degree.

If their object had really been to abolish slavery, or maintain liberty or justice generally, they had only to say: All, whether white or black, who want the protection of this government, shall have it; and all who do not want it, will be left in peace, so long as they leave us in peace. Had they said this, slavery would necessarily have been abolished at once; the war would have been saved; and a thousand times nobler union than we have ever had would have been the result. It would have been a voluntary union of free men; such a union as will one day exist among all men, the world over, if the several nations, so called, shall ever get rid of the usurpers, robbers, and murderers, called governments, that now plunder, enslave, and destroy them.

Still another of the frauds of these men is, that they are now establishing, and that the war was designed to establish, "a government of consent." The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this -- that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot. This idea was the dominant one on which the war was carried on; and it is the dominant one, now that we have got what is called "peace."

Their pretenses that they have "Saved the Country," and "Preserved our Glorious Union," are frauds like all the rest of their pretenses. By them they mean simply that they have subjugated, and maintained their power over, an unwilling people. This they call "Saving the Country"; as if an enslaved and subjugated people -- or as if any people kept in subjection by the sword (as it is intended that all of us shall be hereafter) -- could be said to have any country. This, too, they call "Preserving our Glorious Union"; as if there could be said to be any Union, glorious or inglorious, that was not voluntary. Or as if there could be said to be any union between masters and slaves; between those who conquer, and those who are subjugated.

All these cries of having "abolished slavery," of having "saved the country," of having "preserved the union," of establishing "a government of consent," and of "maintaining the national honor," are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats -- so transparent that they ought to deceive no one -- when uttered as justifications for the war, or for the government that has suceeded the war, or for now compelling the people to pay the cost of the war, or for compelling anybody to support a government that he does not want.

The lesson taught by all these facts is this: As long as mankind continue to pay "national debts," so-called -- that is, so long as they are such dupes and cowards as to pay for being cheated, plundered, enslaved, and murdered -- so long there will be enough to lend the money for those purposes; and with that money a plenty of tools, called soldiers, can be hired to keep them in subjection. But when they refuse any longer to pay for being thus cheated, plundered, enslaved, and murdered, they will cease to have cheats, and usurpers, and robbers, and murderers and blood-money loan-mongers for masters.

**Editor's Note: Spooner's "chief murderer" reference is to Union General and then recently elected President Grant

That is a very biased view of Lincoln?s feelings toward slavery.

How so? It's based upon an authentic citation of Lincoln's speeches themselves.

Further, I don't believe it could even reasonably approach the bias contained in most yankee presentations of Lincoln's views, which tend to reprint what suits their agenda and ignore what does not.

But any fair reading of Lincoln?s words on slavery show that he also opposed it on moral, religious and philosophical grounds as well.

I've long conceded that Lincoln had some sort of underlying moral opposition to slavery so I don't see what your purpose is. As far as I am concerned the debate over his moral position is one over the degree it influenced him, when, and where.

After all, was not the nation physically destroyed by the war to a degree never before and never since seen? Did not Lincoln trample upon the Constitution's plain meaning in order wage that same war?

The reality is that the largest economic expansion in the history of the world occurred in the 30 years after the war.

...which could have been larger had the nation not destroyed a huge chunk of its economy and workforce by war.

It is true that much of the south did not enjoy as many fruits from that expansion as did the rest of the nation. But that was the fault of the south itself for attempting to resurrect their pre-Civil War economic and class systems

Nonsense. The main fault itself lies squarely with the fact that a vibrant southern economy was thoroughly decimated by the physical destruction of the war itself. What you suggest is at most a distant secondary factor, if anything at all.

As to ?trampling upon the Constitution? that is your opinion.

Fair enough, though I contend it is a thoroughly evidenced one with several clear cases of constitutional abuse that are documentable.

I apologize to you if you have not done that, but you know other Lincoln bashers constantly do

It's entirely possible, but I am no more in control of their actions than they are of mine. I?m not sure what quotes from McPherson you have in mind, but I would caution that there is and was a significant difference between ?abolitionism? and Abolitionists.

The quote is a passage where he directly references the abolitionist movement in what he describes as its militant faction - obviously the John Browns, Spooners, and Garrisons. He uses Lincoln and abolitionism interchangably as if they were one in the same. Here's the quote:

"What explained the growing Northern hostility to slavery? Since 1831 the militant phase of the abolitionist movement had crusaded against bondage as unchristian, immoral, and a violation of the republican principle of equality on which the nation had been founded. The fact that this land of liberty had become the world's largest slaveholding nation seemed a shameful anomaly to an increasing number of Northerners. "The monstrous injustice of slavery," said Lincoln in 1854, "deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world - enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites." Slavery degraded not only the slaves, argued Northerners opposed to its expansion, by demeaning the dignity of labor and dragging down the wages of all workers; it also degraded free people who owned no slaves. If slavery goes into the territories, declared abolitionists, "the free labor of all the states will not.... If the free labor of the states goes there, the slave labor of the southern states will not, and in a few years the country will teem with an active and energetic population." - McPherson, article on the causes of the war, history channel website

The main fault itself lies squarely with the fact that a vibrant southern economy was thoroughly decimated by the physical destruction of the war itself. What you suggest is at most a distant secondary factor, if anything at all.

The "vibrant" southern economy you speak of was built on slavery. Slave property accounted for over 60% of the privately held wealth of the region and that 'wealth' was destroyed with a stroke of a pen. The actual "physical destruction" is not what kept the south poor after the war. Yes, several cities were badly damaged as was some of south’s limited railroads and industrial facilities. But they were rebuilt in relatively short order. But neither was the source of pre-war wealth in the region. Plantations were the source of wealth and aside from burning down the "big house" there was little critical infrastructure to destroy. The south stayed poor after the war because they insisted on maintaining pre-Civil War social and political institutions that were not compatible with a free labor market economy. They did not encourage education, technology, wage labor or enterprise. With a very few exceptions in the post-war era, the south did not produce people like Edison, Carnegie, Westinghouse, Mellon, Rockefeller, Ford or the thousands of other creative industrious young men who rose from humble beginnings to shape a nation and bring general prosperity to the north. The class system of the south did not encourage such men. Some "southrons" point to those facts with pride, but there was a heavy economic cost to pay for preserving that "culture".

Abolitionism was a belief that slavery should be ended, and Abolitionists were an organized political faction whose sole purpose was to end slavery through any means available. I return to my analogy over abortion today.

Well, it's an interesting distinction, but I wonder, does it make a difference?

Consider for a moment, if you were a Virginian who thinks there is a movement afoot in the North to impair your political ability to resist tariffs (e.g., the Morill Tariff), work your plantation, and be secure in your bed at night, is there a useful distinction to be made between limousine-liberal spewers like Garrison and Wendell Phillips, both of whom publicly cursed the Constitution and made their contempt for it known? Phillips pulled this stunt in 1842, Garrison in 1851, both of them failing to decline, on principle, the protections of the republic afterward, however, or to seek the protection of some European power.

The point of distinguishing between an abolitionist and an Abolitionist, if you insist on a distinction, would be to show someone on the other side some reason to apprehend the approach of the one, but not the other. But as we have seen from the progress of Republicanism from 1856 to 1868, the fulminations of the most ardent abolitionists were shorn of the trappings of power, whereas the policies of Abraham Lincoln were decidedly not.

From some abolitionists, the Southern planters received incendiary pamphlets and rhetoric. From Lincoln, authentic fire and sword. If I had to choose, I'd name the fire-eaters as the "small-A" abolitionists, and capitalize the title for Lincoln and Grant and their two-million-man army.

[You, quoting McPherson quoting Lincoln]: "The monstrous injustice of slavery," said Lincoln in 1854, "deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world - enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites."

As I mentioned to you in a note, I agree that this was Lincoln's motive in taking up the cudgels against slavery. Donald's biography of Lincoln (Lincoln, 1999) adds further evidences from correspondence of Lincoln's motivation, but this quote is expository.

The success of abolition, and its war, was sustained by a Party. The business of finding out which motives for the abolition of slavery and the waging of that war were preponderant and effectual in the coalition of interests and reasons belongs to the historian. Unfortunately, McPherson offers us the aspect instead of a polemicist.

It's too bad the Census of 1860 couldn't have run an excimiating poll on the subjects of slavery, secession, and maintenance of the Union with its "long form" of the day. Then we should know a lot better what we are talking about when we start ascribing motives to large, kaleidoscopic masses of politically active people.

The south stayed poor after the war because they insisted on maintaining pre-Civil War social and political institutions that were not compatible with a free labor market economy. They did not encourage education, technology, wage labor or enterprise.

Could you please substantiate and flesh out these statements a little more? It seems to me that a free-labor, market economy was all they had left. Yes, the cost of the war in human capital, because of emancipation, was enormous -- mind you these were sunk costs paid in gold, which had suddenly to be written off. In the case of Texas, as I've pointed out above citing Fehrenbach, the value of the slaves held in Texas in 1860 exceeded that of all the real estate in the state, and in gold it was an astronomical sum, and the reason why a purchase-and-emancipation plan was never a serious contender (Lincoln proposing one untimely during the war, but offering only about 25 cents on the dollar out of the national treasury for the slaves to be thus redeemed).

Besides the sunk costs of the emancipated slaves, there was also the money factor: the entire stock of currency and other debts of the Confederacy were wiped out by law. I think the modern equivalent would be M3=0.

It's tough to be progressive, son, when all you've got to progress with is the remaining cotton in the field that the carpetbaggers haven't stolen yet (oh, yes -- the stocks in the cities were seized by the Union army), and no hands to help bring it in and take it to market (if the market hadn't been burned down).

Education? Technology? How about finding something to eat? First things first, boy.

But you're right, I'm sure; that South sure was retrograde, wasn't it?

people like Edison, Carnegie, Westinghouse, Mellon, Rockefeller, Ford or the thousands of other creative industrious young men ...

IIRC, Rockefeller was already on his way by the end of the Civil War. The first "oil boom" occurred during the War, in the Pennsylvania oil country, which was PARO ("producing at rate of": oilfield usage) about two million barrels per year in 1863. As yet, its use was primarily as illuminating oil, replacing the declining production of whale oil.

The class system of the south did not encourage such men.

How about, "the economic condition -- called 'prostration' -- of the South did not encourage such men....or their relatives.....or anyone I know....."

Come on, Ditto, you're exceeding the bromide speed limit here. Try to keep it between the ditches.

Further to my last, what you just did is the Marxian equivalent of pivot-and-shoot. Coming off very obvious economic reasons why all these Southern answers to Edison's lab and Ford's assembly line didn't spring out of the ground (and there were geological reasons, too: the South had Appalachian coal in the Alabama Hills and eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, most of which was sucked into the maw of the New York economic machine, but the huge, cheap iron and copper deposits were all in Minnesota and Michigan), you then insert a typically Marxist social criticism that would seem to call for a vanguard-led "revolution from the top" to lead us all into the sunny uplands of Marxist-Leninist comradely equalitarianism. Which still doesn't tell us where the money is going to come from.

.....and he pivots, jumper, andHakeemgoesupwithhimREEE-JECTEDDDD!!!OHwhattablock....

No basket, Ditto. Would you like to try for the rebound? Don't mind Charles's elbows -- they're always like that.

The "vibrant" southern economy you speak of was built on slavery.

As was the vibrant northern economy. There was no market for much of the manufactured goods without the South and no cotton for the textile mills. The south stayed poor after the war because they insisted on maintaining pre-Civil War social and political institutions that were not compatible with a free labor market economy

Nonsense. The South stayed poor because all of the capitol available in the postwar years was sent to the developing west. There was no money to loan to Southern industrialists until the 1890s and even then each state was saddled with millions in debt incurred by crooked yankees who were appointed to office when elected officials were deposed by the victors of the war: your rotten radical party you now call the GOP. The Southern states were occupied militarily until 1877 and their political institutions were imported form New England. How you manage to live with a head stuffed so full of nonsense is a mystery. Are all yankees ignorant socialists or is it just you few who visit these threads?

There's simply no way you could actually believe all of this rot unless you wanted to be decieved by the marxists who taught you in college.

I don't get your point. The vast majority of people who opposed slavery and wanted its elimination had very little use for Garrison and his radical friends who demanded immediate emancipation by any means possible. This, moderate faction BTW, included a great many Virginians. They saw slavery as morally wrong and inconsistent with our founding principles. Many saw it as economically stifling and as damaging to whites as it was to blacks. But they also understood the political and economic realities and understood that a gradual elimination was the only peaceful way to end slavery.

However, once the war began, they viewed slavery as the underlying cause and moved more toward the radicals in favoring the rapid ending of slavery. U.S. Grant may have said it best.

"In all this I can see but the doom of slavery. The North do not want, nor will they want, to interfere with the institution. But they will refuse for all time to give it protection unless the South shall return soon to their allegiance." -
April 19, 1861, in a letter to his father-in-law, Frederick Dent.

Yes, I have a copy of that one. Scott doesn't quote sopme of the more inflammatory things the radicals said about the South and Southerners. I have noticed that when Wlat the Imbiber casts about for a description of Brooks' caning of Sumner, he seizes upon Theodore Parker's hassayampa account of the caning which substitutes "a lead loaded club" for Brooks' hollow gutta-percha walking stick, and has Brooks creeping around behind the pussyboy Sumner to spring on him. Parker was a liar and a coward himself who fled to Italy once John Brown was arrested, but his accont fo the caning is what GOP historians hold up as the gospel. Gerrit Smith feigned insanity and had himself commited to an asylum, while Freddy Douglass fled to England after admitting that he was a coward himself.

Anyone who reads the words of the radicals themselves would have to be Clintonesque marxists not to be disgusted by them. Those lunatics are still considered early saints of the GOP. Sumner, if he were still a republican in the Senate would make Jumpin Jimmy Jeffords look like a conservative by comparison and still, the republicans worship his memory.

"Further to my last, what you just did is the Marxian equivalent of pivot-and-shoot. Coming off very obvious economic reasons why all these Southern answers to Edison's lab and Ford's assembly line didn't spring out of the ground (and there were geological reasons, too: the South had Appalachian coal in the Alabama Hills and eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, most of which was sucked into the maw of the New York economic machine, but the huge, cheap iron and copper deposits were all in Minnesota and Michigan), you then insert a typically Marxist social criticism that would seem to call for a vanguard-led "revolution from the top" to lead us all into the sunny uplands of Marxist-Leninist comradely equalitarianism. Which still doesn't tell us where the money is going to come from."

LOL. You're starting to sound like Stand Watie or Twodees --- anyone who shoots at your Lost Cause Myth and self-pity is a Marxist. That's ironic as hell since my post extolled the virtues of the northern capitalists who built America into the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth. If your neo-confederate dictionary defines that as Marxist, we must live on different planets.

BTW. New York City had no need for coal from Alabama. Pennsylvania is right next store and to this day can provide enough coal every week to bury New York 100 feet deep. As to your mythical geographic advantage of the north, explain to me what advantage New England had in textile manufacture. Their raw material had to travel 1000 miles! Why did the south wait until the early 1900s before they started to build their own textile mills to process the cotton grown right there? Why did Pittsburgh that had coal just like Tennessee but no iron ore become the steel capital? It would be as easy to ship iron ore from Minnesota to Nashville, Chattanooga, or Memphis as it was to Pittsburgh --- maybe even cheaper since you could take the Mississippi the whole way. Where were the southern Carnegies to take advantage of those opportunities? There was no geographic reason why the south could not have joined the industrial age. It was their culture that prevented it. The reason is that southern culture until the last few decades was always about looking backward, not looking forward. And 100 years later, ironically, the regions have somewhat changed positions. Now it is people in the rust-belt who cling to outdated institutions and pine for the “good old days” of heavy industry and refuse to embrace the future as the sun belt has done.

The "vibrant" southern economy you speak of was built on slavery.

You are attempting to reduce economic systems to terms of labor alone. Doing so is fallacy regardless of where it is tried, be it by you or by Karl Marx. While slavery cannot be ignored, to claim that it alone, or any system of labor alone for that matter, is the entirity of any economy is to commit the error of labor theory reductionism.

Slave property accounted for over 60% of the privately held wealth of the region and that 'wealth' was destroyed with a stroke of a pen.

Got any sources of those stats, cause most of the figures I've seen assert that between 50 and 65% of the southern economy's wealth as a whole met physical destruction by the war itself. I believe I even saw one of those stats in one of McPherson's books.

The actual "physical destruction" is not what kept the south poor after the war.

According to the commonly accepted statistic I cited above it was.

Yes, several cities were badly damaged

I think 95% destruction qualifies as somewhat more than simply "badly damaged." Try complete destruction.

as was some of south?s limited railroads and industrial facilities.

Don't forget crops, farms, and shipping.

But they were rebuilt in relatively short order.

Of course, for the most part. That tends to be the case after war. But had they not been destroyed in the first place, they would not have needed to have been rebuilt. The destruction was forgone opportunity.

But neither was the source of pre-war wealth in the region.

The commonly accepted stats, between 50-65%, says otherwise.

The south stayed poor after the war because they insisted on maintaining pre-Civil War social and political institutions that were not compatible with a free labor market economy.

You're committing the labor reduction fallacy again. If you intend to take part in this debate, go learn economic theory.

They did not encourage education, technology, wage labor or enterprise. With a very few exceptions in the post-war era, the south did not produce people like Edison, Carnegie, Westinghouse, Mellon, Rockefeller, Ford

Evidently you've never heard of the Texas oil tycoons, Howard Hughes, or the southern wing of the Vanderbilt family.

The class system of the south did not encourage such men.

Labor reduction fallacy. Go learn some economics because you are strongly resembling the class historians of the political left.

Some "southrons" point to those facts with pride, but there was a heavy economic cost to pay for preserving that "culture".

And on the flip side, there was a heavy cultural cost to pay for yankeeland's industrial economic interventionism. We're still feeling it to this day, or have you not noticed what regions of the country are dominated by adamant defenders of abortion on demand, the normalization of homosexual perversions, the elimination of religion from public life, and the substitution of basic morality with systems of environmental pseudo-ethics, idolatrous atheism, and diversitopian communalist philosophies.

In case you're still wondering I'll give you a hint: It ain't the bible belt.

No, it isn't bunk, you imbecile. Southern industry was destroyed by design; railroads, factories and warehousing. Rebuilding couldn't be done without capitol and the bonds sold by individual states to their citizens for the war effort were made worthless by the 14th amendment. This wiped out the assets of millions of people in the South. Banks in the north refused to lend money in the South at any rates of interest because the people there hadn't any collateral other than the land made worthless by the destruction of the infrastructure needed to bring their produce to market. This is all documented history, son.

When an entire section of the country is driven into enforced poverty while its political institutions are taken over by a radical political party backed by the US military and the states of that section are driven into debt with all the proceeds robbed and taken back north where the appointed crooks came from, you can't blame the poverty of the region on anything other than what caused it.

What caused it was your political party. While they were in power, the grossest abuses of authority in the history of this country occurred. The genocide of a race of people was carried out in the western territories while the subjugation of nearly half the country was being carried on as a matter of official federal policy.

Your posturing over what you imagine you know is infuriating. For the love of God, man, get your head out of the sand and do some research. Having your mind made up before you turn the first page is typical of liberals. Surprise me for once and act like a man instead of like a hypnotized sheep.

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