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05.15.02 : Mitcham, Samuel W., It Wasn’t About Slavery: Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War, published in 2020

ItWasntAboutSlavery_SamuelMitcham_Cover

Notes Concerning the Author

Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr. received his PhD. from the University of Tennessee. A university professor for twenty years, he is the author of more than forty books. A former army helicopter pilot and company commander, he is a graduate of the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College and is qualified through the rank of major general. He is a holder of the prestigious Jefferson Davis Gold Medal for Excellence in the Researching and Writing of Southern History.

Our Review

This book is a riveting read. The real cause of the war was dispute over money and self-determination.

Before the War of Northern Aggression, the South financed most of the federal government – because the federal government was funded by tariffs, which were paid disproportionately by the agricultural South, which imported manufactured goods.

Yet most federal government spending and subsidies benefited the North. The South wanted a more limited federal government and lower tariffs – the ideals of Thomas Jefferson – and when the South could not get that, it opted for independence.

Lincoln was unprepared when the Southern States seceded, and force was the only way to bring them – and their tariff money – back. That was the real cause of the war.

To understand the North-South conflict, one also has to understand the history of slavery and who was involved, secession and who almost did it five times before 1861 (hint – it wasn’t the Southern states), the tariff rates from 1789 through 1865, why the North wanted to keep slavery out of the territories (for free, white labor and to limit Southern agrarian political power), why the Buchanan administration did not coerce the South back into the Union, how an independent Confederate States of America would devastate the North economically, the cultural differences between the sections (which went back long before the war), how the government was changed by Lincoln, his total disregard for the Constitution, the North’s total war policy, etc. It’s all here.

Availability of this Book

This book is readily available. Go here for the Amazon listing.

JW