printWhat if Lincoln had not won the War of Northern Aggression?
According to the quintessential neoconservative, filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, had Lincoln lost, America would not be America. By which D’Souza means that the “union would not have existed. And America would be completely different.”
The Anti-Federalists warned that the creation of a national government would sunder the autonomous states and usher in an empire.
Indeed, if not for Lincoln, the US might have reverted back to a decentralized confederation of sovereign states (and slavery would have ended without bloodshed, as it did almost everywhere else).
“While a national government will add to the dignity and splendor of the United States,” wrote “A Farmer” (an anonymous anti-Federalist), in March of 1788, “true happiness lies in a simple quiet government.”
Before consolidation under the Constitution, Americans hardly had a government.
If only…
* Dreams from My Father is a book by Barack Obama.