Against the American mythology of Lincoln and the crusade to free slaves, it should be clear by now that the US civil war was a contest between two ruling groups who exploited labor in different and eventually incompatible ways - chattel slavery in the South, wage slavery in the North.
Lincoln’s launching war for that purpose was hardly a "clearly legitimate use of military force…”
See now William Marvel, "Mr. Lincoln Goes to War” (2006); and Douglas A. Blackmon, "Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II” (2009).
Regards, CGE
> On Jun 1, 2016, at 7:42 AM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
> The ORIGINAL purpose of Memorial Day was to celebrate/mourn those who died
> in the struggle tocrush the Confederate slime. That is, it memorialized the
> only _clearly_ legitimate use of military force in U.S. history.
>
> I can't figure out how to do it (how to sloganize it), but there ought to be
> a movement to return Memorial Day to its original purpose.
>
> Carrol
>
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