#JoanWalsh - Civil War ignorant and gullible

She has a long, large book review post at Salon, with the central tenet of the book under review being that "Northern economic imperialism" was a large reason for the Civil War.

No, no, no!

Southern intransigence after losing control of one of the three branches of government, with fire-eaters ready to run with that, was the cause.

This has to be the worst thing Walsh has ever written at Salon, and she's had clunkers in the past.

With racists, Lost Causers, etc., already advocating crap like this, for her to favorably review such historically-revisionist bullshit is hugely wrong.

As for the "Civil War being a mistake"? Nope? Jim Crow, etc., were the fault of Reconstruction being a mistake for not being vigorous enough of long enough. Good fucking doorknob, Walsh is dumb.

Exemplar:

Even when President Ulysses S. Grant tried to use the military to beat back white Southern paramilitary groups literally massacring African-Americans trying to execute basic rights, he couldn't, because soldiers were deployed out West in the new Civil War against Indians.

Did Grant, or his party, ever propose keeping the military budget higher to keep more troops in the South? No. Was that the fault of the Civil War? No.

And, ignorant about Lincoln:

And as a strict constitutionalist, Lincoln resisted abolitionism, because like it or not, the Constitution made room for slavery. The president disliked slavery, but his priority was the union. He famously told abolitionist Republican Horace Greeley (who later turned against Reconstruction and ran for president as a Democrat, abandoning African Americans as did too many other abolitionists): "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."

She ignores that, in his next sentence, he says that if he could do it by freeing all the slaves, that would be his preference.

Beyond that, as his habeas corpus actions, even with Congress in session, show, he was NOT a "strict constitutionalist" either.