Abraham Lincoln was President during a brutal Civil War
in which an estimated 755,000 Americans died.
This is nearly as many as all the Americans
who have died in all the other wars of the United States.
Although Lincoln was obviously not the only cause of the Civil War,
I believe
he was more responsible for beginning and continuing the war than any other individual.
This chapter examines briefly how President Lincoln handled this crisis
and strives to learn the lessons of history by imagining how he might have prevented
the military conflict which had such terrible consequences
and still haunts American politics and social relations.
By looking at the probable consequences of other policies we may be able to find ways
to resolve conflicts more successfully, especially now
when total war could mean mass suicide and the possible extinction of the human race.
The horrible institution of slavery was obviously the issue that provoked the conflict
between the southern slave states and the northern states,
where slavery had been completely abolished by 1860.
Slavery still existed in the border states of Delaware, Maryland,
Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri.
All states south of those were slave states except half of California which was a free state.
Lincoln was a politician, and he did not consider himself a radical abolitionist.
Lincoln definitely hated slavery, and he believed it was very wrong.
He took the political position that slavery was authorized by the United States Constitution
in the states where it already existed; but he strongly opposed extending it
into the territories of the United States or to other states.
He also believed that eventually the United States would have
slavery either in no states or in all of them.
He made his policy clear in his speeches and reiterated it
in his first inaugural address on 4 March 1861.
By then seven southern states had already seceded from the United States
and by using democratic processes had formed the Confederate States of America.
It is ironic that the slave states would have had a better chance of preserving
their nefarious institution if they had remained in the Union during Lincoln’s presidency.
But Lincoln represented the new Republican Party that was formed by northerners,
and he was the first President to be strongly opposed to the extension of slavery.
In the election of 1860 he was one of four candidates and won a majority
in the electoral college even though he got less than forty percent of the popular vote.
His name was not even on the ballot in the southern states.
Many politicians in both the South and the North believed in the sovereignty of the states
that had come together after the War of Independence to form a “more perfect Union”
under the Constitution of the United States of America.
In 1776 the thirteen colonies had essentially seceded from the British empire in order to
establish that sovereignty and to make sure that they were not taxed without representation.
The U. S. Constitution does not mention secession, does not state that the Union is to be
perpetual, and defines no procedure for states to withdraw or become independent.
Some abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison advocated that northern states
should secede in order to form a nation that would be free of slave states.
During the transition between Lincoln’s election and his inauguration
the U. S. President James Buchanan allowed seven southern states to secede
because he did not believe that force or war was justified to stop that.
John Pendleton Kennedy, an ex-congressman from Maryland, advocated a
“separate confederacy of the border states” in his pamphlet The Border States,
which was published on 15 December 1860.
On 2 January 1861 Governor Thomas Hicks of Maryland took the position that
a central confederacy of border states could solve Maryland’s problems.
On that day he met with three members of a Union meeting
and wrote to Governor William Burton of Delaware.
Hicks also wrote to the governors of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia,
Missouri, and Ohio about the idea of forming a central confederacy
if the Federal Union were disrupted.
Like many, Governor Hicks opposed the use of force
to keep Maryland or any other state in the Union.
Thus while the seven states in the deep South were seceding, the border slave states of
Maryland and Delaware were considering seceding and forming a Central Confederacy
with New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York.
Many Democrats and newspapers in these five states advocated this proposal until
Fort Sumter was attacked by the Confederate forces in South Carolina on 12 April 1861.
Then sentiment in the northern states quickly turned to patriotic support for the Union
and its war against the southern “rebels.”
Believing that the war made peaceful secession impossible,
they abandoned the plan for a central confederacy.
Why did seven southern states secede when Lincoln had promised to protect slavery
in their states and even enforce the controversial Fugitive Slave Law in the other states?
The South felt exploited by the North because of the high tariffs that were the largest source
of Federal taxation that resulted in southern taxes being used in other parts of the country.
As a former Whig, Lincoln was a strong advocate of high protective tariffs.
The Morrill Tariff Act was passed on 2 March 1861, and tariffs were increased
early in Lincoln’s presidency to raise revenues to pay for the war.
Politicians are naturally ambitious, and the southern politicians
also wanted to control their own destiny.
Some had imperial ambitions to enlarge their new nation by expanding into territories
and by conquering Cuba and portions of Mexico.
They did not want their slave states to be restricted by Lincoln’s policies.
South Carolina had seceded on 20 December 1860, and by 1 February 1861
South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas
had voted and declared secession.
One week later these seven states adopted a constitution for the
Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Alabama,
and they elected Jefferson Davis president.
If these were revolutions, they were quite peaceful so far.
They went through a democratic process by conventions and in the state legislatures, and
apparently all these state governments accepted the new nation with little or no resistance.
The most difficult bones of contention became the federal forts and installations
in the southern states and the collection of federal tariff revenues in southern ports.
The Federal forces in Charleston harbor withdrew from other forts and moved into the
most defensible Fort Sumter, which was a customs house on an island used to collect duties.
South Carolina had sent three commissioners, who had arrived in Washington
on 26 December 1860 to negotiate a treaty between the new republic
and the United States in order to resolve disputes over the forts, the arsenal, and lighthouses,
to divide the public property and apportion the public debt, and to settle any other issues
necessary to establishing South Carolina as an independent state.
President Buchanan took the weak position that he had no authority to decide
any of these questions, and he declined to make any preparations to fight over them.
In fact by his negligence some weapons of the United States
were moved to the South by their sympathizers during his Democratic administration.
Buchanan was a diplomat who believed in avoiding wars
by finding peaceful resolutions of conflicts.
During the Civil War he wrote Mr. Buchanan’s Administration on the Eve of Revolution
to justify his efforts to avoid war that included these passages:
But even admitting slavery to be a sin,
have the adherents of John Brown never reflected
that the attempt by one people
to pass beyond their own jurisdiction,
and to extirpate by force of arms
whatever they may deem sinful among another people,
would involve the nations of the earth
in perpetual hostilities?
We Christians are thoroughly convinced
that Mahomet was a false prophet; shall we, therefore,
make war upon the Turkish empire to destroy Islamism?
If we would preserve the peace of the world
and avoid much greater evils than we desire to destroy,
we must act upon the wise principles of international law,
and leave each people
to decide domestic questions for themselves.
Their sins are not our sins.
We must entrust their punishment and reformation
to their own authorities,
and to the Supreme Governor of nations.
This spirit of interference with what we may choose
to consider the domestic evils of other nations,
has in former periods covered the earth with blood….
These days of darkness and delusion,
of doing evil that good might come, have, it is to be hoped,
passed away for ever under the pure light of the Gospel.
If all these acts were great wrongs
in the intercourse between independent nations,
if they violated the benign principles of Christianity,
how much greater would the wrong have been
had one portion of the sovereign States
of a confederate union made war against the remainder
to extirpate from them the sin of slavery!1
Lincoln took a strong position, which some called tyrannical,
that states have no right to secede from the Union.
He believed it was his obligation as President to enforce the laws
that would keep the states in the Union even against their will
as expressed by democratic conventions and state legislatures.
His policy is ironic and even hypocritical because this position conflicts
with Lincoln’s own doctrine of the right of revolution that he expressed in the
U. S. House of Representatives on 12 January 1848
during the Mexican War when he said,
Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power,
have the right to rise up
and shake off the existing government,
and form a new one that suits them better.
This is a most valuable,—a most sacred right—
a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.
Nor is this right confined to cases in which
the whole people of an existing government
may choose to exercise it.
Any portion of such people that can,
may revolutionize and make their own
of so much of the territory as they inhabit.
More than this, a majority of any portion of such people
may revolutionize, putting down a minority,
intermingled with, or near about them,
who may oppose their movement.
Such minority was precisely the case
of the Tories of our own revolution.
It is a quality of revolutions not to go
by old lines or old laws,
but to break up both, and make new ones.2
In his inaugural address President Lincoln warned against a civil war
while promising that he would not invade the South.
Yet he indicated that the Federal Government would continue to occupy
its property in the South and would attempt to collect “duties and imposts.”
He promised he would not impose “obnoxious strangers”
in Federal offices in hostile regions.
The mails would continue unless repelled.
He called for “a peaceful solution of the national troubles
and the restoration of fraternal sympathies and affections.”
In his view this came to mean only by the retention of the states in the Union.
From the beginning of his presidency Lincoln rejected
the option of letting the southern states withdraw peacefully.
He took the position that secession is illegal and that the use of force against
the Federal Government, even over forts in states of the Confederacy,
was rebellion and treason against the United States.
He refused to recognize the Confederate States as legal entities,
and he would not let anyone in his administration negotiate with their representatives.
He also rejected an offer of mediation by Napoleon III of France.
The historian Allan Nevins suggested that Lincoln had underrated the seriousness
of the crisis while overrating Union support in the South
without realizing that it had been conditional.
In March 1861 the Confederacy President Jefferson Davis sent peace
commissioners to Washington with an offer to pay for all Federal property
in the South and to take on the southern portion of the national debt.
President Lincoln refused even to acknowledge them, thus blocking
any attempt to resolve the conflicts by peaceful means.
He took the hard line that the southern states must return to the Union.
Unless they did so, or unless he relinquished the forts and tariffs,
conflict over then became likely.
His position has been compared to the British empire when they demanded
that their American colonists pay their taxes without giving them
any representation in their government.
President Lincoln was careful to avoid beginning the war with an attack.
Yet he managed to instigate an attack on Fort Sumter, South Carolina by refusing
to negotiate with South Carolina or to withdraw Federal forces from there.
Others like Secretary of State Seward advised evacuating that fort.
If Republicans had nominated Seward for President,
the Civil War probably would have been avoided.
During the Mexican War the Congressman Lincoln made a point of demanding
that President Polk explain exactly on what “spot” that war began
whether it was in Texas or in Mexico.
There is no question that Fort Sumter was deep in the Confederate States of America
that had formed a sovereign government by elections with a constitution.
They believed they had the same right to be independent of the United States
as the colonies had to be independent of the British Empire.
Lincoln informed the government of South Carolina that he was sending in supplies
to his besieged men with the warning that he would retaliate against an attack.
President Davis and his cabinet authorized the attack by the forces of South Carolina
that began the fighting.
Lincoln had provoked it by insisting on keeping control over Federal forts in their territory.
He took the position that a minority who lost an election should not be allowed
to withdraw from the nation, and he jumped to the erroneous conclusion
that to do so would destroy democracy.
Yet from the other point of view, he was denying democracy to the seceding states.
If he had recognized their right to be independent states,
surely both nations could have co-existed as republics.
I do not believe that we should be blind to these democratic rights, as he was,
simply because we believe that slavery is wrong or because we have a desire that
the Union should be perpetual.
Clearly the main motive for the South’s withdrawal from the Union was a bad one,
but that does not mean that they did not have sovereign rights as states.
I believe that both sides were responsible for the war and that either side
or both together could have prevented the massive violence of the war.
The Confederacy could have used nonviolent methods to refuse to pay taxes
as the American colonists had done from 1765 to 1775,
a period that John Adams considered was the real revolution.
On April 22 Rev. Richard Fuller had led a delegation of 35 delegates
of the Young Men’s Christian Association from Baltimore,
and he asked President Lincoln to avoid war by recognizing the independence
of the southern states; but Lincoln obstinately referred to Washington, Jackson,
and manhood in refusing to consider a peaceful approach.
He complained that people in Baltimore had harassed Federal troops on their way
to Washington, and five days later he suspended the writ of habeas corpus
so that such people could be arrested without being charged with a crime.
Conflicts in Missouri led to the imposition of martial law there.
In May a list of more than a hundred newspapers that opposed the war was published,
and Lincoln ordered Postmaster General Blair to deny those papers mail delivery,
the usual means of circulating newspapers at that time.
President Lincoln widened the suspension of habeas corpus, and during the summer
Maryland legislators who favored secession were imprisoned
so that they could not even meet to decide the issue.
Lincoln was a pragmatic commander-in-chief, and he was afraid that if Maryland seceded,
his capital at Washington would be surrounded by Virginia and Maryland.
General Nathaniel Banks reported to Lincoln that every Maryland legislator
who advocated peace had been arrested, and in their November elections
judges were instructed to disallow votes for candidates who opposed the war.
Peace Party ballots were a different color so that they could be thrown out,
and those carrying them were arrested.
In the first ten months of the war Lincoln’s Federal Government arrested 854 civilians.
On April 15 Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers for three months to add to the
small Union army of 17,000, and he proclaimed a naval blockade of southern ports in May,
excluding even drugs and medicine.
By June 8 the states of Arkansas, North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee
had also seceded and joined the Confederate States.
On June 26 the New York Tribune published “The Nation’s War Cry,”
urging capture of the new Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.
The next day the Republican Chicago Tribune repeated the same cry.
Nearly four years later on 23 February 1865 when Chicago Tribune editor Joseph Medill
and others pleaded with Lincoln not to draft more men, the President reminded them
that Chicago was one of the cities that had called for war,
and he told them to go home and raise the men.
The Union Army began robbing and plundering in the disastrous battle
at Bull Run (Manassas) on 21 July 1861,
and the next day Lincoln called for the enlistment of 500,000 men for three years.
This military victory gave the South hope that they could win the war
despite their disadvantages because they believed
the northerners would eventually give up the task as not worth the costs.
Lincoln expanded the power of the Presidency and the Federal Government
to prosecute a civil war against a dissenting region using the tyrannical method of all-out war
including a complete blockade of all southern ports, arresting critics and suspending
the right of habeas corpus to keep them in jail without giving them trials.
He had extraordinary determination and eventually found generals ruthless enough
to win battles while suffering enormous losses.
The overwhelming advantages of the North in industrial power were used to slaughter
and capture those he considered “rebels” who were committing treason.
During the Civil War about 2,100,000 men served in the Union Army,
and about 880,000 were in the Confederate Army.
After suffering several defeats by the Confederates led by General Stonewall Jackson,
General John Pope began waging war on civilians in Virginia.
His General Order No. 11 was issued on 23 July 1862 and required men behind Union lines
to take a loyalty oath to the United States;
those suspected of breaking their oath could be shot and have their property confiscated.
Hundreds of southern churches were burned,
and ministers who refused to pray publicly for Lincoln were imprisoned.
On July 25 General Pope issued General Order No. 13 which ordered soldiers not to
guard private homes or property of those who were hostile to the Federal Government.
This and the previous General Order No. 5
allowed Union soldiers to rob and mistreat civilians.
Two days after he announced the Emancipation Proclamation on 22 September 1862,
Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus throughout the nation.
Careful research by scholars such as Mark E. Neely Jr. indicates that
during the Civil War the Federal Government imprisoned more than 14,000 civilians
for opposing the Government or its war in some way.
Lincoln authorized military officers to shut down newspapers
if they were disrupting recruiting or the war effort.
The Provost Marshal General’s Bureau was organized in 1863, and by the end of the war
two years later they had arrested and returned to the Union Army 76,526 deserters.
During the military draft 161,286 citizens failed to report to the Union Army,
but how many of them were arrested is unknown.
Lincoln also had imperial ambitions for the United States, and he used
Government subsidies to finance the transcontinental railroad to the west coast.
In 1862 a crop failure caused starvation among the Santee Sioux
because the Federal Government refused to pay them the $1,410,000 owed them
from the sale of 24 million acres in 1851.
When the Sioux revolted, General John Pope tried to exterminate them.
Hundreds of Indians were held as prisoners of war
and were given military trials that sentenced 303 to death.
President Lincoln commuted most of these sentences,
but 38 were put to death in the largest mass execution in the history of the United States.
After Lincoln’s death under mostly Republican administrations the experienced military
would be used to attack any Indians who were in the way
of the railroads and the western expansion of the United States.
Lincoln was ambitious on behalf of the United States
and did not want to see the empire divided.
He developed the power of the imperial presidency as commander-in-chief
by arrogating to himself extra-constitutional “war powers.”
In 1863 at Geneva efforts were made to codify an international convention
on the conduct of war, and on April 24 President Lincoln issued General Order No. 100
on proper conduct during war.
Written by his advisor Franz Lieber, this was issued as
“Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field.”
This code allowed military commanders to make exceptions
when they believed it was necessary.
Specifically the code allowed them to destroy property and withhold the means
of subsistence from the enemy and to appropriate
whatever the country afforded for the subsistence of the army.
This code also endorsed military retaliation,
and Union commanders were allowed to take hostages to deter guerrilla action.
While General George McClellan and other generals in the East tended to be
more conciliatory, in the West the generals Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman,
and others soon began foraging and burning towns and crops.
Sherman declared all people in the South enemies and traitors so that
he could justify waging war against civilians.
As they closed in on Vicksburg in 1863, the Union Army strippe
the surrounding land in Mississippi of crops and burned the houses.
Sherman ordered Jackson, Mississippi bombarded every five minutes day and night,
and then his soldiers sacked and destroyed the city.
Sherman told Grant that they had devastated the land for thirty miles around.
Sherman’s forces also destroyed the town of Meridian.
In the late summer of 1864 Sherman’s army bombarded Atlanta
and then destroyed 90% of the city.
As they marched to Savannah robbing and plundering, Sherman ordered
randomly chosen civilians killed in retaliation for attacks by Confederate soldiers.
Because South Carolina had begun the secession movement, Sherman ordered
his men to pillage, plunder, and sack cities there even more ruthlessly.
His chaplain James Stillwell reported that a majority of the cities, villages,
and county houses were burned to the ground.
In late 1864 the Union cavalry led by Philip Sheridan ravaged
the Shenandoah Valley by pillaging, plundering, and burning.
Lincoln was overjoyed by the “victories” of Sherman and Sheridan
because they assured his re-election that November.
The question I am raising is whether war was the best way to resolve these conflicts.
To answer this question as best we can, let us explore various scenarios of what
might have happened if Lincoln had allowed the South to secede.
In the 19th century most nations in the world which had slavery
had abolished it by peaceful means.
The British freed all the slaves in their empire in six years, completing the process in 1840.
Most Latin American nations emancipated all their slaves between 1813 and 1854,
and the gradual liberation of slaves in Brazil was completed in 1888.
The only other violent emancipation of slaves was the slave uprising in Haiti in 1794,
and the French Government forced Haiti to pay them for the costs of that war,
leaving independent Haiti impoverished.
France, Britain, and the United States imposed a devastating embargo on Haiti
until they agreed to pay compensation to the former slaveowners.
Clearly the historical trend in this era was toward emancipation
and the abolition of slavery.
The proportion of slaves in the population had been declining for three decades
in Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and most of Virginia.
The American Civil War, which Lincoln called the “War of the Rebellion”
and that others named the “War Between the States,”
cost $6.6 billion and was borne about equally by both sides.
The greatest cost of the Civil War was the death of 625,000 soldiers—
one-third in combat and two-thirds by disease.
In the South one out of four males between the ages of twenty and forty perished in the war.
Hundreds of thousands were also wounded, and tens of thousands were crippled.
Nearly forty percent of the American economy was destroyed directly by the war.
From the monetary costs alone all the slaves could have been freed by compensating
their former owners while providing each of the former slaves with forty acres.
If Lincoln had agreed to negotiate the settlement of the Federal installations
in the seceded states and their portion of the national debt,
and if he gave up the exploitative taxes, then most of the costs of the war
probably could have been saved.
The remaining northern states might have lost some of the wealth they were exploiting
from the South by the tariffs, but that would have been a small loss compared to the war costs.
The greatest advantage of a peaceful settlement would have been saving the 755,000 lives
that were lost and the other injuries.
One can hardly overestimate the psychological trauma caused by young men being forced
to kill their fellow countrymen in miserable conditions that caused so many to die of disease.
Many civilians were also killed, wounded, or imprisoned.
The four slave states which remained in the Union, would have continued as before.
Gradual emancipation with compensation to the former owners might have been
negotiated so that the Union would eventually have become free of slavery.
The question is how long the Confederate States would have maintained
their “peculiar institution” of slavery against the trend of modern history.
Instead of being forced to emancipate the slaves without compensation,
they could have worked out some sort of gradual emancipation eventually.
The South was suffering from the tyranny of a relatively small number of slave-owners
who exploited the unpaid labor of slaves to dominate the economy and politics.
If southerners learned how to make the transition from slavery themselves,
they would not have had the immense suffering caused by the Civil War
and would not have built up the resentments against the other states
that still persists among those still believing in the “lost cause.”
Without a war surely most of those staying in the Union
would have been much better off.
I believe the slave states would eventually have reformed themselves because
the non-slaveholding whites and the blacks would have been much better off
without a few slaveholders exploiting the rest of the society.
Also the whites in the seceded states would have been more prosperous and safe
compared to the utter defeat they suffered in the war
and during the post-war years of military occupation referred to as “Reconstruction.”
One can argue that the slaves in the seceded states would have been worse off.
Yet they also suffered in the devastating war.
The southern slaves liberated by the North were given a period of twelve years
to reconstruct their lives during which they were favored with exceptional political
opportunities because of the Union occupation that disenfranchised the rebels.
Yet the resentment of the white southerners for having this forced on them
led to a strong reaction after Reconstruction was ended in 1877.
The whites then developed the segregation system of Jim Crow laws that
perpetuated hatred between the races for the next century.
For several generations this discrimination
lowered the quality of life for the slaves’ descendants.
If there had been no war, the northern abolitionists could have found ways
to help the slaves in the South, and most likely
the Fugitive Slave Law would not have been enforced.
If all the slave states seceded, then slaves could have run away to the northern states.
One could argue that this might also have led to a war.
Yet the North could simply defend its borders.
It seems to me that in this situation it would have been much less likely
that either side would have significantly invaded the other’s territory.
The northerners might have used economic pressures
to urge the southerners to emancipate their slaves.
Eventually the southern states would have learned
what all other countries had found out—
that free labor is more productive and more socially desirable
than slavery and infinitely more moral.
After the Confederate States emancipated their slaves,
they would likely have wanted to be readmitted into the United States.
Thus the nation could have been reunited with less resentment
than after a war because the northerners
would have respected the right of the southerners
to exercise their own sovereignty and learn their own lessons their own way
without having them forced upon them.
Americans claim to value freedom greatly, and the military tradition of fighting
and winning wars is the opposite of the respect for the freedom of others.
The history of the United States since then would probably have been more peaceful.
The United States might not have gone to war against the Spanish empire in 1898.
If the United States had not gone abroad to join the useless carnage of the First World War
in Europe, some historians have argued that the peace may not have caused
the resentments in Germany that led to the Second World War.
Understanding this tragic flaw in Lincoln’s character that led to the terrible Civil War
is especially significant because his virtues of honesty, intellect, integrity, compassion, mercy,
humor, determination, diligence, and sense of justice
make him one of America’s greatest heroes.
His talents would have been much better put to use in using diplomatic and political skills
rather than in prosecuting a brutal war.
Because of Lincoln’s imperialistic approach to this crisis, the Federal Government
of the United States was greatly strengthened and centralized.
Without the war the people in the states would have retained more local control.
He also developed the role of the President as commander-in-chief in one of the
largest wars in western civilization up to that time.
This war was a transition to modern warfare in which the industries of nations
are pitted against each other, and millions of people are put in harm’s way.
Lincoln often said he would not make war on the slave states and that he wanted peace,
but his actual policies and strategies betrayed those promises and ideals.
Many historians and presidential scholars have rated Abraham Lincoln the best
or one of the best U. S. Presidents.
Yet it seems to me that if we evaluate the consequences of his war policy
on the people of the United States, no other U. S. President
has done as much damage to the nation as Lincoln did.
These lessons are important because the United States
became bogged down in war in the Pacific, Africa and Europe during World II
and then in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
The U. S. has extended its military power and threats throughout the world.
When are we going to learn that it does not spread freedom
to force others to do what we want?
Force is the opposite of freedom.
If we used a fraction of what we waste on military spending to help people in other nations,
they would be our friends as well as being much more prosperous.
Humanity needs to learn how to solve its conflicts in peaceful ways
because otherwise we are likely to destroy ourselves and ravage the environment
of this planet with the possible consequence of leaving
a desolate place to those who may survive.
As Americans maybe we need to ask ourselves why we allowed the terrible injustice
of slavery to lead to such a destructive war when every other nation except Haiti
managed to resolve this issue without horrendous violence.
Why is the United States continuing to arrogate to itself
the role of policing the world with our military might?
Huge military spending since World War II and especially since 1981
has led to a national debt that in November 2025 is over 37 trillion dollars.
The United States has been spending almost as much on the military
as the rest of the world combined.
The U. S. Government is currently teetering on the brink of bankruptcy
because we have been wasting our resources and living beyond our means.
Let us pray and work hard in peaceful ways so that the day of reckoning
for our country can be faced and resolved without massive violence and suffering.
Let us work together for a world that is peaceful, compassionate, just, free,
prosperous, and ecologically sustainable.
Notes
1. Mr. Buchanan’s Administration on the Eve of Revolution by James Buchanan, p. 64-65.
2. Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 1, p. 438-439.
United States & Civil War 1845-1865 has been published as a book.
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