What the people missed was their personal freedoms that had just been won in the Revolution. Now here we are with another "King George" wanting political worship just like all the kings to be before him.
Our most recent King George W. looks like he is headed in the same direction. Here is what the war was really about.:
"Given that, Lincoln was very concerned about his tariff revenues in the absence of the Southern states. After Fort Sumter, the (Northern) President unconstitutionally established a blockade of Southern ports on his own motion. Soon, Lincoln had robbed Maryland of self-government and was making other inroads on civil liberty – his idea of preserving the Constitution via his self-invented presidential “war powers” (of which there is not a word in the actual document)."
Wrong. The question of the legality of the blockade was decided by the Supreme Court in 1863 in what are commonly called the "Prize Cases". The Supreme Court decided that the blockade was a legal extension of the President's powers to supress rebellion.
That is my major complaint with Adams' book. It if very poorly researched and full of inaccuracies such as these. The Civil War is one of the most thoroughly documented wars of the 19th century. There are warehouses full of government documents before, during, and after the war for both North and south. Every major figure in the war except Lincoln wrote memoirs. Every political leader of both the North and the south left masses of written documentation on their thoughts and positions both before the war and after. And yet Adams uses none of this. He quotes endlessly from newspaper editorials and nothing from the figures who actually made the history. All in all it is a very poorly researched work and little more than page after page of his own opinions.
BTW, I have a used copy of the book I am willing to sell cheap.
Seeing that my forefathers were slaves, what "personal freedoms" are you talking about?
This is what kills me about people who will not allow the Civil War, War Between the States, or War of Northern Aggression to die. When I hear people speak of the times before this war as some sort of utopia I cannot help but become extremely perplexed.
These people speak as though slavery didn't exist at all. Please! Keep your talk of freedom and liberty when there were people held in chattel slavery. That is hypcocrisy to the utmost!
The Civil War is over. Get over it. How can you live life and go forward by perpetually looking in the rearview mirror? Lincoln is dead. Davis is dead. Lee is dead. Grant is dead. Forrest is dead. That was the 19th century. We now live in the 21st.
Get with it! And save your hypocrisy on your so-called "liberty." Speaking of "liberty" while people were in chains?
Lord help me!