Reseña del libro "The war to Prevent Southern Independence 1861-65 (en Inglés)"
This is the third of my series of books analyzing the history of the American South and its relationship to the rest of the country. In time sequence, I have published a three-volume set of books entitled Antebellum (1492-1860) and Sumter (1860-61). This book I believe is correctly entitled The War to Prevent Southern Independence because that is what it was. I reject the name “Civil War” because it was not neighbor against neighbor; and I reject “War between the States” because this title implies that both parties share equally in the movement to war. In fact, the Confederacy never wanted war and would have ended it at almost any point had the Union (federal government headed by Abraham Lincoln) agreed to peace. For those of you so ignorant as to say “what about Ft. Sumter?” Please read Sumter. Or at lease look up the date of Sumter and the dates of exiting the union of the Confederate states. You will find that at the time of the exchange of cannonade at Fort Sumter (in which no one on either side was killed or seriously wounded), Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas were still in the Union. Given that most of the war was fought in these States and that these States provide a disproportionate number of men and materials to the War effort for the Confederacy, it is apparent that the War (i) did not depend on the cotton trade and would have quickly ended have these States be devoted to the Union cause. I also encourage you to read the documents in which Virginia, New York and Rhode Island accepted the US Constitution (1787). One of my major conclusions from this study, has been that Abraham Lincoln (who was self-educated and the first US president born and raised west of the Allegany Mountains) was actually completely ignorant of key American history and Constitutional law. In his ignorance (typical of mid-westerners and recent immigrants to the US) he truly believed that the US was a “Sovereign Nation” and the States were little more than administrative districts. That, of course, turns history (well-understood and beloved in the South) on its head. I have gone into great detail on the reasons for the War [(i)unfair taxation of the South, (ii) imbalance in federal expenditure to support northern interests, (iii) continuing violent threats and harassment by abolitionists, and (iv) a growing imbalance in political power as new European immigrants entered through entered through northern ports and were indoctrinated in the North] in Antebellum. This book, focuses on the impact of the War on the South and how northern propaganda before, during, and after the War have been used and are now being used to tarnish the South. I have not yet analyzed the period 1865-1965, which I hope to do. My working hypothesis is that as a result of the War (not an inherent Southern tradition) white southerners lashed out at freed blacks who became manifestations of Northern Imperialism. By the end of the War, the abolitionists had had made “slavery” the official cause of the War and as a result, it was easy for white southerners to view blacks as the cause of their misfortune. Thus, there are reasons to chastise the South, but the fault lies with Lincoln, Seward and the northern abolitionists, not the southerners prior to 1865.
