Adams has suggested nothing. What he has done is show beyond ant doubt that the war, as far as Lincoln was concerned, would not be fought over slavery.
Of that, I see you freely admitt.
Adams has suggested nothing. What he has done is show beyond ant doubt that the war, as far as Lincoln was concerned, would not be fought over slavery.
"Adams suggested", "Adams indicated", "Adams said", it's all the same thng.
Adams --based on the quote you provided-- alleged (that's another verb, don't you know) something that no one ever denied. That's a straw man argument. It knocks down something never set up. He is ignorant of the record, and so, apparently, are you.
Few in Europe were convinced that the war was fought to free the slaves, he says, and you parrot.
Well, I tell you again, that there is no support for that in the record. Northerners made it amply plain that they cared nothing for the blacks.
It's that simple.
You took as gospel possibly the most ludicrous statement in the whole book.
Can I recommend a good general history of the war? Try "BattleCry of Freedom" by Dr. James McPherson. It's wonderful.
"...Anderson's exhausted garrison surrendered. Able to man only a few of Summer's forty-eight mounted guns, they had fired a thousand rounds in reply—without much effect.
On April 14 the American flag came down and the Confederate stars and bars rose over Sumter.
This news galvanized the North. On April 15 Lincoln issued a proclamation calling 75,000 militiamen into national service for ninety days to put down an insurrection "too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings." The response from free states was overwhelming. War meetings in every city and village cheered the flag and vowed vengeance on traitors. "The heather is on fire," wrote a Harvard professor who had been born during George Washington's presidency. "I never knew what a popular excitement can be. . . . The whole population, men, women, and children, seem to be in the streets with Union favors and flags." From Ohio and the West came "one great Eagle-scream" for the flag. "The people have gone stark mad!"
In New York City, previously a nursery of pro-southern sentiment, a quarter of a million people turned out for a Union Rally. "The change in public sentiment here is wonderful—almost miraculous," wrote a New York merchant on April 18. "I look with awe on the national movement here in New York and all through the Free States," added a lawyer. "After our late discords, it seems supernatural."
The "time before Sumter" was like another century, wrote a New York woman. "It seems as if we never were alive till now; never had a country till now.
Democrats joined in the eagle-scream of patriotic fury. [uh oh...] Stephen Douglas paid a well-publicized national unity call to the White House and then traveled home to Chicago, where he told a huge crowd: "There are only two sides to the question. Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war, only patriots—or traitors" A month later Douglas was dead—a victim probably of cirrhosis of the liver—but for a year or more his war spirit lived on among most Democrats. "Let our enemies perish by the sword," was the theme of Democratic editorials in the Spring of 1861."
--BCF pp. 274-75.
See, if you'd read that you would have known that Adams was totally clueless -- as clueless as you.
Walt Walt