Ron Paul: Not Just a Nutjob - a Poorly Informed Nutjob

Rick Rottman has been doing a great job the last few months at his Bent Corner blog writing about what a crazy old coot Ron Paul is. Congressman Paul's most recent display of televised psychosis was this past weekend on Meet the Press, when, among other things, he claimed that Abraham Lincoln started the American Civil War. Lincoln apparently did this through a diabolical scheme of getting elected President of the United States, then cleverly waiting for Confederate troops in the seceded state of South Carolina to open fire on Fort Sumter. Starting a war by waiting for the other side to start the war . . . he was an evil genius, that Abe Lincoln. (Helluva wrestler, too.)

Not only did Paul blame Lincoln for starting the war, he blamed him for starting it for the noblest reason he could possibly have started it - to free the millions of African Americans enslaved throughout the southern U.S. The bloody Civil War, with its calamitous loss of life and resources, was unnecessary to end slavery, Congressman Paul said. Instead, Lincoln could have freed the slaves by having the government buy them from their owners and releasing them. Except that by the time Lincoln made it to office, the war had already started. Southern state legislatures began declaring their secession shortly after Lincoln was elected, months before he was inaugurated. I doubt they would have been receptive to offers from their most hated enemy to relieve them of their vast force of wage-free labor in exchange for fair market value. Plus, as Rick points out in his article, wouldn't buying the slaves, even if only to free them, legitimize the practice of treating human beings like livestock?

Lincoln didn't start the Civil War, and if he had, it would have been to restore the Union, not to free the slaves. He evolved into the Great Emancipator over the course of the war, but Abe was hardly an abolitionist when the shit started going down. "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it," he wrote in 1862, "and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."