Michael, one of the themes of my book, The Real Lincoln, and of many of my articles on the subject, is that the War to Prevent Southern Independence was first and foremost a war of imperialism, the purpose of which was to destroy the voluntary, decentralized union of the founding fathers and to replace it with a centralized, bureaucratic, patronage-obsessed empire. This of course is exactly what happened. Here’s my Independent Review article on how Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Custer, and all the other “Civil War Luminaries,” as they are called in the literature, commenced a war of genocide against the Plains Indians just three months after Lee’s surrender. Sherman said the purpose was “to make way for the [government-subsidized] railroads” in his memoirs.

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