[Non-Sequitur]

"In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere."

Why not continue? Lincoln went on to say, "Where hostility to the United States in any interior locality shall be so great and universal as to prevent competent resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object. While the strict legal right may exist in the Government to enforce the exercise of these offices, the attempt to do so would be so irritating and so nearly impracticable withal that I deem it better to forego for the time the uses of such offices.

The mails, unless repelled, will continue to be furnished in all parts of the Union. So far as possible the people everywhere shall have that sense of perfect security which is most favorable to calm thought and reflection. The course here indicated will be followed unless current events and experience shall show a modification or change to be proper, and in every case and exigency my best discretion will be exercised, according to circumstances actually existing and with a view and a hope of a peaceful solution of the national troubles and the restoration of fraternal sympathies and affections."

Maybe it was all about delivering the mail?

The South opened the war by bombardment of Ft. Sumter. What is the importance of this federal facility? "Because it was a major tariff-collecting facility in the harbor at Charleston. So long as the Union controlled it, the South would still have to pay Lincoln's oppressive tariffs."

That flies in the face on known historical fact, and is makes no sense whatosever if you would only take a moment to think about it. Sumter wasn't staffed by anyone except work men and an officer supervising them prior to Anderson moving there in December 1860. So how would it be 'a major tariff collection facility'? Also, why would the tariff collection point be located miles away from the wharfs where the imports were landed? And what did they do in that Customs House located on East Bay Street?

Slaves that were not in the areas so designated were not covered by it.

Because Constitutionally Lincoln could not do that. And from a strict legal standpoint, Lincoln did not end slavery. He freed the slaves but it took passage of the 13th Amendment to end slavery in those states that had not already done so.

Of course, the winner gets to write the history of the war. And in this case the winner also runs all the schools and they are staffed by people who liked the winner's story. That does not alter the facts, or the real history of this war.

And judging from threads like this it's equally clear that the loser writes the myths.

[theBuckwheat]

Non-

Time, space and circumstances do not permit me to give a thorough rebuttal to your comments.

Lincoln no more had the authority to free any slaves in areas that had seceded than he had to free them in areas that had not. The US Supreme Court in a seminal decision, Dred Scott v Sanford ruled that slaves were the property of their owners. Freeing slaves would be, at the very least, a taking.

You offer that Lincoln moved after the war to advocate the 13th Amendment. Far more important was the next Amendment, the Fourteenth that inverted the relationship of the States to the Federal Government. In the Original Constitution, the one that has been exiled, the State legislature elected the respective US Senators.

That, coupled with what is now known as Incorporation, brought National power to exceed State sovereign power.

It is beyond absurd to seriously believe that when sovereign parties engage an agent to act their behalf that somehow that agent has the power to control the parties who engaged it.

A number of the original States came into Federalism only by reserving the right to secede. In fact the issue of secession was raised by several northern states in the years prior to the Northern invasion of the South.

The various states that seceded were not populated with idiots or morons. Their reasons for secession are stated in their public documents, laws and resolutions easily found with Google. They all state one constant theme: that the Federal government acted in ways that violated the terms of their coming into the union in the first place.

see: http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html

For example, this from Texas: "solemnly asserting that the federal constitution has been violated and virtually abrogated by the several States named, seeing that the federal government is now passing under the control of our enemies to be diverted from the exalted objects of its creation to those of oppression and wrong"

The Federal Constitution is a contract. When one party abrogates it, the contract is dissolved. Of course, the National forces that occupied Washington could not allow the South to flee the Union, for they needed the cash flow from the taxes they levied on the South in order to finance other projects. It is not different today, where socialists cannot allow people to escape Social Security because they need the money to buy power elsewhere.

Please do not waste my time telling me about preserving the Union. I used to believe like you until I read many of the original documents for myself.