America's Civil War: An Avoidable Failure

Dear Mr . Cohen,

I'm really disappointed that you hosted a Confederate apologist and took his side. Yours seems to me another perverse example of the leftists' flip-side of the conservative coin of "American exceptionalism," whereby the USA is viewed as exceptionally evil. Neo-Confederates still think so, and today you were unwittingly in league with them, giving aid and comfort to one of their valuable propagandizers.

There are many things your guest said in today's broadcast that outraged my understanding of the causes of the Civil War, but chief among them is the first thing he said, that Abraham Lincoln did not offer a compromise with the slavers.

Baloney. His campaign platform was the compromise: No extension of slavery into the new Western territories. Slavery could persist where it was if it would. If it wouldn't, then so much the better, but he wasn't an abolitionist. He most likely agreed with Frederick Douglass that slavery would eventually wither on the vine. The secessionists didn't. The attempted their secessions because they were afraid the Lincoln had a hidden agenda to abolish slavery where it already was. He didn't. His agenda was to halt the spread of slavery, and he laid it out for all to see.

Before he was even inaugurated, South Carolina announced its intention to secede, otherwise unprovoked.

Dr. Goldfield started your show on a false premise and everything that followed was tainted by that first assertion as similar balderdash. I'm disappointed that, when you gave him a platform, you played his sycophant. I didn't hear you challenge him once.

Too bad. The world would almost certainly be a worse place if slavery had been allowed to take its own sweet time to do what it would, and untold numbers of African Americans would have suffered serious delay in achieving equality. They might have had their own united rebellion and then been massacred in a national genocide.

History would've taken many possible different courses, including one that featured Hitler without a strong, unified United States to oppose him. Please think about that.

Yours truly,
Stephen D. Clark
Newmarket

PS: I wanted to dismantle everything your guest said, one by one, but your player is so unwieldy that it kept bogging down my computer, and caused it to freeze up for minutes at a time.

Stephen

First off, he never said Lincoln did not offer a compromise! We all know he did. I did not challenge him much because his scholarship is unchallenged. Read the reviews of the book! Better yet, read the book.

Burt, I heard him. I know enough about history to know a lie when I hear one. He went on about how the United States is a nation of consensus and that Lincoln should've tried to find compromise and a midpoint. It's in the very beginning of the show. I was listening to it at work today, getting more and more steamed about his Confederate apologies getting a sympathetic hearing on your show.

He said (paraphrased): "The U.S. had compromised on slavery" this time, that time and this other time again "and now, at this point [Lincoln's election], how is it that we suddenly couldn't find compromise anymore?" He was blaming Lincoln.

Lincoln was the compromise. The secessionists represented unrestricted slavery and the abolitionists meant its destruction. Lincoln stood in the middle. Let slavery alone except to prevent its expansion. That's a compromise, and Lincoln's winning the popular vote (he won the most votes, electoral college or not) was the constitutional acceptance of his platform.

I sent my friend, Greg Eatroff, a link to your show and he listened to it, too. Here's what he said:

"He talks about Lincoln rejecting compromises, but all those "compromises" involved the extension of slavery even though Lincoln had won a clear victory based on its restriction. He expects the majority to surrender to the minority. He ignores that the south rejected all those compromises too -- they weren't trying to split the territories, they insisted on taking it all" (emphasis mine).

Greg is young. He's a graduate student in Portsmouth, Virginia, but his knowledge of the war and all the surrounding subjects is astounding. And he's quick. I wouldn't dare to debate him. I was pleased to see how closely his opinion tracked mine.

(Your player keeps bogging down my computer. If you have transcripts, I'd appreciate having one too. Then we can discuss things more accurately. I'd listen and pause and transcribe and listen again, but it takes too long for your player to reload after every pause.)

Lincoln had a hidden agenda to abolish slavery where it already was. He didn't. His agenda was to halt the spread of slavery, and he laid it out for all to see.