I can't disagree more with this. The restrictions on liberty at the time of the Civil War were temporary war measures, that ended with the close of hostilities. Violations of civil liberties were at least as severe in the rebel South as in the North. Mark Neely's book, "Southern Rights" documents these violations of individual liberty.
And while it's become common today for many to downplay the role of slavery in causing the war, a look at original documents will confirm the important role of slavery in triggering the conflict. Of course, at the outset of the war, unionists did not want to free the slaves, but rebels feared that Lincoln's election would ultimately mean the end of slavery and this sparked the rebellion.
What gets left out of contemporary defenses of the Confederacy was the great idealistic committment to union, to the flag and the constitution. Many will disagree today, but union meant something more than "economics and greed" to those who fought for it.
Such defenses of the Confederacy are based on today's South. People project back today's values, beliefs and orthodoxies on the Confederate leadership. What they ignore is that mentalities were very different in an age when slavery was legal, common and regarded as the basis of society. Southern elites gambled on secession and war to preserve their slave-based society and economy from what they regarded as Republican hostility.
To be sure, many or most Confederate soldiers did not believe that they were fighting first and foremost to preserve and defend slavery. Like all soldiers, they were fighting for home and family, for friends and native lands. But at a less personal and subjective level, it's clear that things would not have reached a war footing had slavery not embittered relations between sections of the country.
It's not clear that the Civil War greatly increased the powers of the federal government at the expense of the states or of individuals. That change happened in the 20th Century. The federal government wasn't much more powerful in 1880 than it was in 1840.
And the original meaning of the Constitution was in question from the beginning. Washington, Adams, Hamilton and others didn't share the radical Jeffersonian view of the Constitution. Nor did Marshall, the mature James Madison, Monroe or Jackson accept the Confederate interpretation of that document. Lincoln was far closer to the Washingtonian tradition than the Confederate rebels were.
The restrictions on liberty at the time of the Civil War were temporary war measures, that ended with the close of hostilities.
Duh!
So by your definition, the 12 years of Reconstruction, where the Republicans plundered the South was Liberty? God save us all from your type of Liberty.
But at a less personal and subjective level, it's clear that things would not have reached a war footing had slavery not embittered relations between sections of the country.
We know from archived records that even before his election, Lincoln wanted to implement a neo-Hamiltonian Whig-Republican economic system. It irked him that he was blocked by the Constitution and particularly, by the South, who staunchly favored states rights and free trade. Punitive taxes and tariffs had already been imposed that weakened the South's position, before Lincoln was elected. Lincoln's election signaled even more punitive legislation and spurred the legal secession of seven states. To fight this legal action of the South, Lincoln argued on several occasions, prior to hostilities, that in effect, the Union had created the states rather than the other way around and therefore, the states did not have the right to secede.
Lincoln used the whole secession issue to plunge the nation into that terrible and unnecessary war in order to centralize the U.S. government on behalf of the Whig-Republican economic system, based on protectionist tariffs and subsidies for what we today call "economic infrastructure", including a national bank and other forms of government intervention in the market. All of that is still with us today, in slightly different forms, but it can all be traced back to Lincoln and the Whig-Republicans.
Lincoln needed a war to get people to ignore the Constitution, long enough for him to implement his Federal-centric economic plan. Slavery was most definitely an afterthought, that proved a convenient excuse for Lincoln's war. Much of our problems today, stem from that breach of the Constitution.
In fact, the states did create the Union, not the other way around. The Tenth Amendment did vest all power that was not specifically granted to the Federal government, to the states. But, it was Lincoln who argued exactly the opposite in the first case, so he could get the people to ignore the Tenth Amendment in the second case. Lincoln is surpassed in his subversion of the Constitution only by Bill Klinton. At least Klinton didn't get us into a Civil War to further his anti-Constitution agenda.
The problem that you have with quoting revisionist history is that as long as the government archives all of the records of that day and age, Lincoln's speeches and documents will be available to refute your position. Maybe, if you could get the government to destroy those documents, then your arguments might work. Perhaps the US would be more successful at rewriting history than the former Soviet Union. If you had gone to school back when I did, you might have known all this. But Federal intervention in schools (partly supported by Republicans) has totally ruined our schools in the following years, with things like politically correct history.
Fortunately the Republican Party of today is not the Republican party of Lincoln's era. But, on the other hand, they are headed back in that direction at a blinding pace. Such things as the USA Patriot Act, the The Homeland Security Act and the Our Lady of Peace Act do not bode well for where the GOP is headed.
It is that Republican Party race back to even more Federal intervention and control, that now leads me to always vote for the candidate, rather than the party.