The Civil War was fought between the manufacturing, pro-tariff protectionist North and the free trader, anti-tariff agrarian South.

Popular culture portrays it as a war over slavery. Read Lincoln's Inaugural Address of 1861. The failure of the South to enforce protectionist tariffs is the only fight promised by Lincoln.

Lincoln's resolution of the slavery issue only came into play when his heavy handed efforts to enforce central government expansion in violation of state sovereignty were not yet decisive.

Thanks to the strong central government and the conversion of the United States from a voluntary association to a coercive association, states such as California are restricted in how clean they can keep their air by federal regulations; all states are restricted in their attempts to enact single payer health care by ERISA, another federal regulation.

To those who celebrate the power of the central government and credit it with civil rights legislation, remember it was the Supreme Court that decided and the central government that enforced the Dred Scott decision, and Chief Justice Taney that declared a black man had no rights a white man was bound to honor.

The indivisibility of the Union has been sold as moral war on slavery, while making the states slaves to the central government's bankrupting wars for empire.

The 14th Amendment, again sold under the moral cover of equality for citizens, especially the new black citizens of that era, has given us corporations as "persons".

Is the Federal government capable of committing a moral act for that act's own sake, without covertly seeking a further devious exploitative advantage?