Lester Ness
Changchun
China

I'm not pro-South, the CSA was a coercive monopoly just like the USA. My comment was regarding Lincoln. Lincoln was a murderer and did more to centralize power through usurpation than any prior US president (and paved the way for future tyrants, both domestically, and internationally through example). I stand by my statements which are not fake, irresponsible, or based on any grievance (I have no ties cultural or otherwise to the South).

I said nothing about the South's secession. But you're wrong to assert it was over slavery. For you see, in linear time, cause must precede effect. The Emancipation Proclamation and the subsequent 13th amendment came AFTER the South's secession. There was no pending law to prohibit slavery that provoked the South to secede. In fact, Lincoln was a supporter of the Corwin amendment to the Constitution that would have prevented any interference with the institution of Slavery. If you think the mislabeled Civil war was over slavery, you're really uninformed, or you know better and you're a liar.

Lest you think I'm pro-confederate (an irrelevant point even if it was true), I subscribe only to the recognition of human self-ownership, that is, liberty. ALL government (even in theory) is coercive and therefore incompatible with liberty. Though I recognize that the same grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence against the King of England were almost all also applicable against Lincoln – and thus, if the war for independence in 1776 was just, the war for independence in 1861 was also just – I don't recognize the legitimacy of any government and therefore would not have supported the CSA anymore than I support the USA.

Those who control history control the present and those who control the present control the future. The 21st century is a product of that which came before and the Lincoln myth is a crucial element in the state-worshiping religion that enslaves the people of America. If men are ever to be free, they must know truth, and the truth about Lincoln is a foundational expose in that so many of the lies that prop up the US government have their origins in the Lincoln myth.

If you're posting on antiwar.com, I question why you would have such a kneejerk reaction to defending a president that was aggressively pro-war and murdered so many people. The abolition of chattel slavery was done without bloodshed in all other industrialized nations. The war against the South was completely unnecessary and all that destruction and blood is on Lincoln's hands.

Lincoln Unmasked by Tom DiLorenzo is an excellent factual assessment of the murdering bastard. He was an enemy of all free people.

I hope the current batch of torturers get their due soon.

Maybe Holder does have some balls – I mean all of'em are white guys, right?

Read the US Constitution, and by that means learn that it not only limits the Federal gov't, it also imposes limits on the STATES, one a prohibition against them forming "confederacies".

Then read the "confederate" constitution: you'll discover it is essentially the same as the US Constitution with one central — difference: its prohibits enacting any laws adversely affecting the institution of slavery; and prohibits any amendments of that constitution which would adversely affect the institution of slavery.

Smearing Lincoln in effort to continue the lie that the South's secessions were not over the issue of slavery is intellectually dishonest. But if you can't handle non-fiction, then see "Riding with the Devil". Both sides committed atroctities; but the Northerners did not murder and scalp African-Americans.

Drop the fake, irresponsible, and short-sighted "grievance" and wake up in the 21st century.