Lincoln’s Gift to Posterity

It is ironic that Lincoln stated as a US Congressman on January 12, 1848 that “Any people anywhere, being inclined, and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better”; 13 years hence found him waging total war against Americans and denying them the right of self-government.

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
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Lincoln’s Gift to Posterity:

“An abiding interest will always attach to the greatest war of modern times,” says historian Ellis (Vol. V, p. 266), 2,326,168 men of the North and 750,000 Southerners took part in the struggle. Of these, according to Fox’s estimates in the Photographic History, Vol. X, the North lost 259,528 men killed in the field and died of wounds and disease, and the South lost 135,000 all told.

In this stupendous conflict, therefore, the loss aggregated nearly half a million lives lost and ruined in the armies, and even a greater number of Negro lives caused by neglect, disease and starvation, making a total of upwards of a million human lives. Not only this but the women and children on both sides suffered miseries. Then at the South there was desolation and ruin and poverty estimated in the long run at twenty billions of dollars.

The war was unnecessary. Lincoln could have averted it. Emancipation might have been delayed, but would have come in the natural course of events, without the loss of a single man or a single dollar. With the North calling the South all kinds of names the question could not be calmly considered in 1861.

This unnecessary war was Lincoln’s real gift to posterity, his contribution as a citizen – all else was accidental. So Mr. Lincoln stands in history as one who did more evil than any other man known to the world. It was thought that as President he would not stand by the Constitution…that he was a dangerous man and would tolerate Negro insurrection. Therefore the people of South Carolina thought it best to escape Negro insurrection by leaving the Union. Then six other States followed that example. So it was a personal matter with Abraham Lincoln and he determined to start a war to keep the Southern States in the Union. In his inaugural he sought to lay the basis of a war with the new Confederacy.”

(A Southern View of the Invasion of the Southern States and War of 1861-65, Capt. S. A. Ashe, Raleigh, NC, 1935, pp. 64-65)

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Lincoln’s Gift to Posterity