"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. This is a most valuable — a most sacred right — a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much of their territory as they inhabit."These remarks were made in 1847, when Lincoln was defending the right of Texans to demand their independence from Mexico. A dozen years later, when six southern states tried to declare their independence, Lincoln's response was to wage war on them.
As H.W. Crocker III puts it in The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War (Regnery Publishing, 2008), "If abiding by the law of a free republic and fighting a defensive war solely against armed combatants be flaws, the South had them and the North did not. Lincoln ignored the law, the Constitution, and the Supreme Court when it suited him. His armies waged war on the farms, livelihoods, and people of the South, not just against their armies."Of all the big lies about the War Between the States, the biggest of all may be that it was necessary to end slavery.
Abraham Lincoln, more than any other president who came before him, changed the very nature of our government. There would never again be as many limitations on the powers of the federal government. And just as tragic, the concept of states' rights suffered a blow from which it has never recovered.
Read the rest of the article in Chip Wood's "Straight Talk."
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