It doesn't help that any primary source scholarship that doesn't toe the line gets blasted. If slavery was the whole reason to fight the war, and less than 10% of Confederates owned slaves, why did 50% plus of the population fight or try to fight?
Tom Woods' "Politically Incorrect Guide to American History" has got some traction.
A relevant quotation from a review of the book by the Mises Institute:
The Civil War—as [Woods] points out, [was] not a genuine civil war since the South did not wish to replace the national government—was not fought to end slavery: Lincoln rather aimed to consolidate national power. In opposing Lincoln’s dictatorship, the South defended the cause of liberty, a fact that was not lost on the great classical liberal Lord Acton. In a letter of 1866 to Robert E. Lee, Acton said that he 'saw in States’ rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy' (p. 74).
It doesn't help that any primary source scholarship that doesn't toe the line gets blasted. If slavery was the whole reason to fight the war, and less than 10% of Confederates owned slaves, why did 50% plus of the population fight or try to fight?
Razor on the Civil War. Razor on Lincoln the tyrant.
Tom Woods' "Politically Incorrect Guide to American History" has got some traction.
A relevant quotation from a review of the book by the Mises Institute: