posted on Mar, 8 2004 @ 10:28 PM
Let me preface the statement by saying I am a Black male.
We have all been taught in school of a man named honest Abe who freed the slaves, but what we fail to realize is how honest Abe set forth the
autocratic rule of presidents to come. Linconlns pre-emptive strike on the south was illegal and unconstitutional. The Confederacy had a right to
succession from the Union because they were sovereign states when they ratified the constitution. This was not a war about freeing slaves because
Lincoln himself stated "I will say, then, that I am not now, nor never have been, in favor of
bringing about in any way the social or political equality of the white
and black races. I am not now, nor never have been, in favor of making
voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor
of intermarriage with white people; and I will say, in addition to this,
that there is a physical difference between the white and black races
which, I believe, will forever forbid the two races living together in
terms of social and political equality. Inasmuch as they cannot so live,
while they do remain together, there must be a position of superior and
inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the
superior position assigned to the white man." Does this sound like a man wanting to free slaves? We must also consider when was the Emancipation
Proclamation written. It was written well after the start of the civil war. It was the Unions General Grant who said before the war "If I thought
this war was to abolish slavery, I would resign my
commission, and offer my sword to the other side." Why were so many Blacks and white non-slave owners so quick to fight for the south? For the hope
of one day having the right to own slaves themselves, even Blacks. According to federal census reports, on June 1, 1860 there were nearly
4.5 million Negroes in the United States, with fewer than four million
of them living in the southern slaveholding states. Of the blacks
residing in the South, 261,988 were not slaves. Of this number, 10,689
lived in New Orleans. The country's leading African American historian,
Duke University professor John Hope Franklin, records that in New
Orleans over 3,000 free Negroes owned slaves, or 28 percent of the free
Negroes in that city. So what were the other alternatives to freeing slaves? Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833. This act gave all
slaves in the British Empire their freedom. The British government paid
compensation to the slave owners. The amount that the plantation owners
received depended on the number of slaves that they had. For example,
the Bishop of Exeter's 665 slaves resulted in him receiving �12,700. In that era, that was a fortune. So Britian wiped out slavery without a single
shot being fired. Lincolns war has only caused an evolution of eroding individual and states rights, and tyranny by every U.S. President in the 20th
century and beyond.