History has proven that the Confederate mentality was as grossly naive as it was morally bankrupt, but that won't stop the Confederate glorifiers (who curiously seem to be all Southerners who rely heavily on rednecks for their financial support) from trying to blame Abe Lincoln for every government abuse that has occurred since 1860. It saddens me to see Walter Williams eroding his credentials as a fine free market economist by buying into the Confederate glorifiers' delusional fantasies, but no one is perfect -- not even Abe Lincoln.
What none of these Lincoln bashers ever bothers to tell us is, though, is how they would have orchestrated the abolition of slavery quicker than he did.
Or, another question is why did Lincoln NOT free the slaves in 1861 at the onset of his war?
I know this will appall you, but I don't really care about this argument, because it's irrelevant. That means it has no bearing on Constitutional questions, other than as a side note about how that Constitution allowed slavery to begin with. Bringing it up is simply a means of covering your backside when logic and a clear reading of the document in question has sent you Unlimited Government Supporters scurrying for cover. And that's what this battle is about, and the root of Dr. William's argument, that the Constitution places limits on what can be done to the citizens and in their name.
You may be passionate about your Yankee heritage, but your ancestors trampled the U.S. Constitution, and doing so has led us to this point. It is you who should hang your head in shame, for only 15% of Southerners owned slaves, the rest were fighting for their personal rights. All of your ancestors fought to partially free the Black slaves, but in doing so made slaves of us all! No middle passage, just a March to the Sea.
There, now, can we get back to how you're argument has no basis in the Constitution?
LTS
Well, let's see. Great Britain did it within 6-7 years, no bloodshed, Mexico by 1829, and France and her colonies by the early 1850s. Guess what? No bloodshed either. To quote from DiLorenzo's book
Dozens of countries, including the possessions of the British, French, and Spanish empires ended slavery peacefully during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. ONLY in the United StateS was warfare associated with emancipation
That's amazing isn't it. Within 6 years in Great Britain AND colonies without any bloodshed. Yet lincoln uses it as an excuse to put the nation $600 million+ in debt, spends 4 years, has the blood of 300,000 of his own citizens and 300,000 citizens of another nation on his hands, and achieves the exact same thing. Surely you would imagine that lincoln was not ignorant to what had occurred a scant decade earlier in the world. Of course it was over slavery < /sarcasm>
While speed is an admirable quality, effectiveness is better. The way it was done, in violation of the Constitution itself, in several areas, was not a good thing. Something like taking the slaves with compensation and then freeing them, would have been much better. Besides Lincoln was not all that interested in freeing the slaves, he only freed those in the states "in rebellion" but did not free those in other states, such as Maryland, (and Kentucky ?? IIRC) that were not then "in rebellion". This is the the clearest indication that his interest was in preserving the Union, not freeing the slaves.
In my opinion the slaves would have been freed in the next few decades anyway, as they became uneconomical. They were likely already uneconomical before the Secession War ever began, but certainly the handwriting was on the wall.