Quote from the famous Baltimore Journalist, H.L. Mencken regarding the Gettysburg Address:
“But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination— ‘that government of the people, by the people, for the people,’ should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue.
“The Union soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. What was the practical effect of the battle of Gettysburg? What else than the destruction of the old sovereignty of the States, i.e., of the people of the States? The Confederates went into battle free; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision and veto of the rest of the country—and for nearly twenty years that veto was so effective that they enjoyed scarcely more liberty, in the political sense, than so many convicts in the penitentiary.”
— Journalist H.L. Mencken, From “Five Men at Random,” “Prejudices: Third Series,” 1922, pp. 171-76: First printed, in part, in the “Smart Set,” May, 1920, p. 141
“Journalist H.L. Mencken, From “Five Men at Random,”
Well, that is all interesting, but as my brother often says
as we review the past and remember the good times in our lives...”It is all gone with the wind”
The Union soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.
Actually, Lincoln never said the South wasn't fighting for its view of self-determination. He always spoke very precisely. He said the struggle was over whether a government of, by and for the people "could long endure."
Fairly obviously any such government that can be broken up by any significantly-sized minority that comes along will not "long endure."
While the southern people had a right to contend that "the people" in question were the people of the individual states, unionists had an equal right to contend that "the people" were the people of the United States.
Part of them at any rate. That one-third of their population who were considered property and not people kind of missed out on that whole 'governing themselves' thing.