[ml/nj]

There can be no legitimate right for a state to enforce slavery ...

I guess you think the war was about slavery. And to some extent it probably was. But to most of the people who fought in the war it wasn't about slavery. The number of Northerners who would willing die to "free the slaves" probably never reached four figures. The Great Emancipation Proclimation didn't come until 1863, and then it didn't apply to any slaves still held in the "Union" States. Something else was going on, and if you read about it beyond the usual stuff that the victors would write about anything they did, it isn't pretty.

James McPherson (Princeton) is the most mainstream of "Civil War" historians. In one of his books he quotes a Harvard professor writing in 1869 as saying that it was as if he is no longer living in the country in which he was born. McPherson completely misses the import of this. This Harvard professor never owned slaves, and probably cared little if at all about slavery. Certainly the end of slavery 400 miles to his south couldn't have had much impact on the life of a Harvard professor.

The professor was lamenting the passing of Jefferson's America, and that's what I miss too. Lincoln destroyed it.

ML/NJ

[Truthsearcher]

Jefferson's America, is that the one that believes in the liberty of all people, or one that was okay with the enslavement of some by others?

If it's the former, than it didn't exist before Lincoln either, and Lincoln probably brought America closer to Jefferson's vision.

If it's the latter, then I do not mourn its death.

[Question_Assumptions]

I don't blame Lincoln for destroying the Federal system. I blame FDR. America needed to transform from These United States to The United States to become the power it became in the 20th Century and it needed to get rid of slavery (a problem since the Constitution was written and a growing problem as new states were added to the Union as slave or free states). The Civil War did that for America. But it was under FDR that the Federal Government really made its power grab far beyond anything the founders imagined.