Abraham Lincoln said war was over taxes, not slavery

Oh really?

From Lincoln's second inaugural address:

"One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war."

 

Doesn't matter. OP claims Lincoln said the war was over taxes and I provide a direct quote from Lincoln saying, "the cause of the war was slavery."

 

I guess he changed his mind...

 

While Lincoln may have personally been opposed to the institution of slavery, he knew better than to claim that the abolition of slavery was the sole reason for a "civil" war against slave-holding states.

One needs to remember that there were other states whose citizens held slaves than just the ones who seceded.

There were plenty of "border states" in which a percentage of their citizens held slaves.

What made Lincoln hesitant in insisting that each and every state immediately abolish slavery within their respective borders was that, if they did, the District of Columbia, the seat of the federal government, would be cut off from the rest of the US because a number of citizens of Maryland held slaves.

IOW, you'd wind up having all the office buildings such as the Capitol, the White House, various Cabinet buildings, etc., cut off from the rest of the US.

Say what you want about Lincoln, he wasn't that stupid.

Moreover, Lincoln wanted to see if his Union army would ever be in a reasonable position to eventually be successful in overcoming its poor showing vis-a-vis the Confederate forces.

It took until mid- to the latter part of 1863 to overcome the poor showing of the Union forces against the Confederates. Eventual victories at Gettysburg, the siege of Vicksburg [which shut off much of the upper Mississippi River areas from being re-supplied either by the Confederates themselves or by foreign "allies" such as England and/or France and/or Spain---all of whose textile industries were dependent on the importation of cotton from the South.], plus the beginnings of what eventually would become "Sherman's March to the Sea" made an eventual Union victory within reach.

Added to that, the Union naval forces were finally becoming relatively successful in blockading shipping to and from the Confederacy.

You also had the fact that most of the raw materials for waging war were in Union areas--industry, food-producing farms, and a much larger population to fill the ranks of the military were advantages that the Confederacy couldn't match.

When you take into consideration all these factors, it should come to no surprise that the Union would finally be victorious over the Confederacy.

The only thing that surprises me is that it took as long as it did for the Union to defeat the Confederates.

Yes, slavery might have been one factor that brought on the conflict in the 1860's, but it was not the only factor.

Then, when the overt military conflict was over, you still had the so-called "victorious Radical Republicans" practically in charge of most all of the federal government.

Most of them--especially their leadership--wished to punish the South for seceding, and thus you had a vengeance-filled government who wanted to impose their own wills on a war-torn South by means of Carpetbaggers and other hangers-on during the Reconstruction Era.

While the so-called Reconstruction Era supposedly ended in 1877, its long-term effects remained for many decades to follow.

Not only did the individual Southern states impose various "Jim Crow" laws against the now-"emancipated" African-Americans, but also several vigilante groups were created to mete out their own forms of vengeance against not only the Blacks, but any Whites whom they deemed were sympathetic to their Black neighbors.

Lynchings, burnings of not only crosses, but of homes and barns and other privately owned buildings were commonplace during that time period.

The SCOTUS ruling in the Plessey v. Furgueson decision made the concept of "separate but equal" law throughout the land for at least another six or more decades.

The "Solid (i.e., Democrat) South" ensured that practically no Republican candidate--especially for POTUS--would ever receive a majority of votes up until the post-WW2 era.

And even today, after some 50 years of federal civil rights legislation, you still have a lot of resentment, and not just in the South.

I'm no "Lincoln lover," but I doubt that even Lincoln could ever foresee how the land over which he presided for only a few years would ever turn out the way that it did.

 

Yes, which means by that time he's certain of the causes of the war. Meanwhile, you don't rip Revmitchell for quoting his first inaugural address, which was given before the war even started!