Crazy, isn't it? But faith-based people just make up whatever 'history' they want to believe (witness David Barton).
Slavery was the reason the South seceded from the United States. That was what they said themselves. It's in their own documents! I've heard right-wingers claim that the Civil War was really about the South's desire for 'small government' and other stupid things like that, but that's not what the Confederates themselves said. It was about slavery, period.
And note that they seceded before Abraham Lincoln had done anything at all. Lincoln hadn't even taken office when the first seven states of the Confederacy rebelled (sort of like modern Republicans agreeing to oppose anything Barack Obama might propose - whatever it might be - before he'd even taken office, too).
Note that the Civil War actually began when the Confederacy attacked the United States, not the other way around. And the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln's executive order freeing the slaves? That wasn't issued until nearly two years later, two years of war - and even then, it didn't apply to the slave states which hadn't seceded.
But according to right-wing apologists like Andrew Napolitano, and many others, now that the GOP's 'Southern strategy' has filled the Republican Party with such people, the Civil War - excuse me, the War of Northern Aggression - was all Abraham Lincoln's fault.
This kind of revisionist history makes me want to vomit! Three-quarters of a million soldiers died in the Civil War, along with untold numbers of civilians. Abraham Lincoln himself was one of the casualties. Let's not forget why.
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