VIEWSrnMr. Lincoln’s WarrnAn Irrepressible Conflict?rnby Patrick J. Buchananrn”[T]he contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independencernon that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between thernNorth and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen RevoltedrnProvinces. These opinions … are the general opinions of the English nation.”rn—London Times, November 7, 1861rn”The preservation of the union is the supreme law.”rn—Andrew Jackson, December 25, 1832rnv%rnThe Civil War was the greatest tragedy ever to befall the nation.rnBrother slew brother. Six hundred thousand ofrnAmerica’s best and bravest died of shot, shell, and disease. ThernSouth was bled to death, invaded, ravaged by Union armies, occupiedrnfor a dozen vears. Under federal bayonets, her socialrnand political order was uprooted and the 11 states that hadrnfought to be free of the Union were “reconstructed” bv thatrnUnion. America’s South would need a centurv to recover.rnThirteen decades after Appomattox the questions remain:rnWas it “an irrepressible conflict”? Was it a necessary war? Wasrnit, as Churchill wrote, “the noblest and least avoidable of all therngreat mass-conflicts of which till then there was record”? Wasrnit a just war? What became of the great tariff issue that had dividedrnand convulsed the nation equallv with slavery in therndecades before the war? Are there lessons for us in this mostrnterrible of tragedies where all of the dead were Americans?rnThis article is a chapter from a forthcoming hook on America’srnwars by Patrick J. Buchanan.rnAfter any such war, it is the ictors who write the history.rnThat has sureh been true of the Civil War. Among the greatrnmyths taught to American schoolchildren has been that thern”Great Emancipator,” Abraham Lincoln, was elected to freernthe slaves from bondage, that America’s “Civil War” wasrnfought to end slavery in the United States.rnThis is fable. Even the name given this terrible war is wrong.rnA civil war is a struggle for power inside a nation like the War ofrnthe Roses, or the horrible war between Bolsheviks and Czaristsrnin Russia, “Reds” and “Whites,” after Lenin’s October Revolution.rnThe combatants from 1861-1865 were not fighting overrnwho would goern the United States. The South had neverrncontested Lincoln’s election. The South wanted only to be freernof the Union.rnThe war was not over who would rule in Washington, butrnwho would rule in South Carolina, Georgia, and the five Gulfrnstates that had seceded by the time of Fort Sumter. From thernstandpoint of the North, this was a Wir of Southern Secession,rna War to Preserve the Union. To the South this was thernOCTOBER 1997/13rnrnrn