Yes he was wrong when he said the above because the people of the STATES of the south were not too few in number to control their STATES' administration. We are (or were, sadly) a federation of independent, sovereign states. Before Lincoln people said "the United States are..." after Lincoln people say "The United States is...". The difference is more than grammatical. It suggests that we are one nation, a single entity with no significant difference between Colorado and Connecticut or between New Hampshire or New Mexico. Well there are differences and those differences are valuable and worthy of protection. The federal state is oppressive. We now pay fifty times the tax that drove Bostonians to dump tea into Boston harbor and we fight for a 10% cut and count ourselves lucky to get it. It is hypocritical to honor the Founders and honor Lincoln. His opposition to slavery, while it may have been meager and politically motivated, is to his credit. I can think of little else that is. For his posterity and historical place he has Booth to thank.
Obviously not. The rebellion did collapse after all. The control of those states fell into the de facto control of the United States government.
Walt
That's a sound bite. It's what Shelby Foote (perhaps among others) said in Ken Burns' "Civil War".
But people -didn't- say that.
"That the United States form, for many, and for most important purposes, a single nation, has not yet been denied. In war, we are one people. In making peace, we are one people. In all commercial regulations, we are one and the same people. In many other respects, the American people are one; and the government which is alone capable of controlling and managing their interests in all these respects, is the government of the Union. It is their government and in that character, they have no other. America has chosen to be, in many respects, and in many purposes, a nation; and for all these purposes, her government is complete; to all these objects it is competent. The people have declared that in the exercise of all powers given for these objects, it is supreme. It can, then, in effecting these objects, legitimately control all individuals or governments within the American territory.
The constitution and laws of a state, so far as they are repugnant to the constitution and laws of of the United States are absolutely void. These states are constituent parts of the United States; they are members of one great empiure--for some purposes sovereign, for some purposes subordinate."
--Chief Justice John Marshall, writing the majority opinion, Cohens v. Virginia 1821
Had "people" in fact said "the United States are", before the war, you would not have seen the rallying to the colors of thousands of loyal Union men in 1861. To them, it was always "the United States IS." That is why they were fighting -- to maintain the "is". Sometimes you neo-confederates don't stop and think.
Walt